The Honor Box on Our Highway Corner

Dwight nodded slow. “Well,” he said, “it’s his building.”

That is the part people always want to argue with me about, when I tell this story at church or at the beauty shop.

Why didn’t you go talk to him, they say. Why didn’t you get the other vendors together, or call somebody, or find another market.

I did talk to him, the next Tuesday, at the elevator in town where we both ran into each other.

I asked him plain if he would meet me at fifty. He said no, and he said it pleasant again, and he said he had his reasons.

The nearest other market was in a town forty minutes the other direction, on a weekday, in a church parking lot, and the folks who bought my pies were not going to drive forty minutes.

And nobody could make Rodney rent his own building cheap. It was his building and his price. So I quit asking.

I did not go to the market the next Saturday. I could not pay two hundred dollars, and I would not pay it even if I could.

I baked anyway, out of habit, and the pies sat on the counter cooling while I stood at the window feeling foolish.

Callie went to town that morning because we were out of eggs, and she swung by the market to get them from the egg lady.

She came home at nine thirty and set the carton on the counter and did not take her jacket off.

“Mom,” she said, “Mrs. Wolter was standing at your stall. Just standing there with her purse. I watched her for ten minutes.”

She had her hand on the door like she was ready to go back. “Rodney told her you quit.”

I asked her what exactly he had said, because I wanted to be sure. Callie is careful with words.

She told me he had walked over and said, “Marla’s done with the market, Inez. You’ll want to try one of mine,” and pointed her to his table.

“Did she buy one?” I asked.

“No,” Callie said. “She stood there a while longer and then she went out to her car. She sat in it a long time before she drove off. I didn’t know if I should go knock on the window.”

I did not sit down and think about it. I boxed up a cherry pie, the lattice one, and I put it on the seat of my car, and I drove the three miles to Mrs. Wolter’s place with my apron still on.

She lived in a white farmhouse right on the highway, a mile east of our corner, with a porch that wrapped around two sides and a row of zinnias along the walk that Thad had planted every spring for fifty years. She had planted them herself that spring, for the first time.

She was on the porch swing when I pulled in. She stood up when she saw the box in my hands.

She had been crying, and she didn’t try to hide it, and she didn’t explain it either. She just held out both hands for the pie.

“I didn’t quit,” I told her. “Rodney raised my stall to two hundred dollars a Saturday, and I couldn’t pay it. I should have told you last week. I’m sorry, Mrs. Wolter. I didn’t want you worrying over my business.”

She set the pie on the swing beside her and patted the seat on the other side. I sat down. We swung a while without saying anything.