The Chow Chow Table Under the Oak

At eight o’clock the market opened. For about ten minutes, nothing much happened. People walked the row and looked. A few of them stopped at Ashlyn’s table first, because it was first.

Then Mr. Purcell came.

Mr. Purcell is eighty-six. He was a rural mail carrier for thirty-four years and he has walked the market every Saturday since he retired, with a canvas sack over his shoulder and a hat with a fishing lure stuck in the band.

He stopped at the end of my table and looked down at the photograph for what felt like a full minute. He did not touch it. He just looked.

“Lord,” he said. “That’s Ida Mae.”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“That’s her back yard. Out on the Ochlocknee road. I used to deliver her seed catalogs.” He looked up at me. “You’re Renee.”

“Yes sir.”

He looked down at the jars, then over at Ashlyn’s table, then back at the jars. He is old, but he is not slow. I watched him work it out.

He did not say a word about it. He just said, “I’ll take two,” and counted out twelve dollars in ones from a fold in his wallet, and put the jars in his sack.

Then he stood there. He did not leave. He just stood beside my table like a man waiting for a bus.

The next person to come by was Faye from church. Then two ladies I knew from Mama’s Sunday school class, both in their seventies. Then a man who used to run the feed store, and his wife.

Every one of them stopped at the photograph. Every one of them said some version of the same thing. “That’s Ida Mae.” “Look at her.” “I bought from her for twenty years.”

And every one of them looked from my table to Ashlyn’s table and back, and I watched each one of them figure it out, and each one of them bought from me.

By nine o’clock I had a line. By ten it ran down past the courthouse steps. People I had not seen since the funeral came up and hugged me over the jars.

One of Mama’s Sunday school ladies told a story about Mama bringing her chow-chow and a pan of cornbread the week her husband went into the hospital. I had never heard it. She told it to the whole line.

I sold thirty-three jars by eleven. I had three left, and I put them under the table, because I had a feeling I would need them.

Ashlyn sold three jars all morning. I counted. I could not help it.

Two of them went to out-of-town people who did not know anybody. The third went to a young mother with a stroller who did not look up from her phone.

I watched Ashlyn straighten the same row of jars over and over. Turn the lids so the gingham lined up. Turn them back. Move the sign an inch to the left.

Once I saw her turn away from the street toward the tree and wipe her eyes on the sleeve of that green flannel shirt. She did it fast, like she hoped nobody saw.

I saw. And I want to say this plainly: it did not make me feel good. Not even a little.