The Pies On The Station Steps

I had known Cody’s people my whole life. His grandmother and I used to sit in the same pew. I had watched that boy grow up from a towhead in a car seat to a young man who could back a fire truck into a tight bay, and I had, though none of us knew it then, baked a great many of the pies he ate at that station.

The whole county went quiet the way it only does for the worst kind of news. I heard it on the radio Saturday evening while my pies were in the oven, and I had to sit down on the kitchen stool and hold the counter.

I did not sleep that night. I baked.

I did not bake two pies. I baked six. Apple and cherry and the last of my pumpkin from the freezer. I baked until the sun came up because my hands did not know what else to do with that much grief, and because I knew those men and women would be sitting in that station the next morning with a hole in them the size of a brother.

I wrapped all six and I loaded them on the car seat and I drove in before dawn like I always had.

I set them on the four concrete steps. Six tins instead of two. And I put my hand flat on that cold concrete and I said the longest prayer I have said in years, for Cody and for his wife and for that baby girl, and for every tired soul who would walk past my pies into that station carrying this.

Then I drove home in the dark and I did not expect anything at all to come of it.