Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [23]
“A bit of both, I guess. I saw a boy get bit by a rattler right on the ankle. He had on some fancy ball shoes, trying to impress a girl riding by on a horse. His daddy whipped him raw when he found out he wasn’t wearing his boots out in the field. The doctor visit and medicines cost him more than he made all month.” She paused. “Boots cover your leg about as high as a snake can strike,” she noted.
The priest didn’t respond.
She continued. “The spicy food tip I learned on my own after taking a bet from one of my cousins that I could eat a jar of peppers, and the stuff about water I just heard the old folks talking.”
Father George thought about her answer. He wasn’t sure if she was serious or not, but he did think her suggestion of keeping some water with him wasn’t a bad idea. He turned back to face the road just as they passed the sign that read, WELCOME TO PIE TOWN.
“We’re here!” Trina said, sounding excited, sounding as if she had arrived at some point of safety, some destination of possibility.
Father George wiped the line of sweat off of his top lip. He took in a deep breath, trying to calm his stomach as he felt it do a long, exaggerated flip.
And just like that, the clouds broke and the rain fell.
Chapter Nine
Roger was at his usual table, the one in the center at Pie Town Diner, when the station wagon pulled into the parking lot. Alex was sitting across from him. They had just ordered lunch, and they were watching the storm as it rolled in. They ate most of their noon meals downtown at the diner, but they especially enjoyed eating there on Wednesdays. The Wednesday special was chicken and dumplings, and Alex loved chicken and dumplings. He never missed a Wednesday unless he was sick.
“We have guests,” Alex reported as the car came to a stop in a space just by the front door. Like most of the residents, he knew everybody in Pie Town and what kind of car they drove, so he knew when there were travelers and strangers passing through. “You think they just stopped because of the rain or are they here for pie?” he asked Francine, the waitress who was still standing next to the table, and then grinned.
Everybody in Pie Town was used to the tourists driving Highway 60 from Albuquerque to Phoenix who stopped at the diner and asked for pie. With a name like Pie Town, it was a reasonable expectation. The town got the name in the late 1920s when a man settled in the area, selling oil and gas to the cowboys and travelers passing through the territory. He also started baking pies, selling coffee and other snacks, and finally decided to call the stop Pie Town. The next owner of the store added a post office, and with that addition, the name became official. For a very long time, the place was known for its baked goods, its chili con carne, and its fruit pies, but unfortunately, since Fred and Bea had taken over the store and café, now the Pie Town Diner, it no longer served very memorable desserts. Fred and Bea served great daily blue plate specials like dumplings and chicken-fried steak. Bea made the finest tortillas in the county and fixed a green chile stew that even folks in Socorro claimed was the best around. Both Fred and Bea were excellent cooks, but neither one of them was very good at making pies.
When they bought the diner from the previous owners, two sisters from Santa Fe who thought they’d make a go of selling pies and baked goods, they tried to keep up the tasty tradition in addition to serving meals, but they just never seemed to get the hang of crusts and fillings. They gave up trying to load up the menu and the pastry counter with pies and just settled for cooking what they knew best. Nobody in town seemed to mind. Most everyone was sort of glad to get rid of the sisters and the bakery and have a real place to eat lunch.
Francine looked out the window, saw the car with its wipers still moving, and stuck her pencil behind her ear. “If they’re here for the pie, they’ll be disappointed,” she said, answering Alex about the potential request for pie. “Fred