I have taken a pie in the face fifteen times, and not once has it caught me off guard.
That is by design. My name is June Albright, I'm forty-two, and I run the Fernhill Community Pantry in Fernhill, Ohio. The title is executive director. The job is mostly carrying boxes of canned corn and arguing with a freezer.
Every October we hold the Fall Supper, our biggest fundraiser of the year. And every October, at the end of the night, somebody pays good money to throw a pie at me.
The pie has its own line in our budget. It also has a rulebook.
The rulebook is a green spiral notebook with a coffee ring on the cover. Across the top, in black marker, it says THE PIE RULES. Underneath, in smaller letters, someone has added (DO NOT LOSE). That someone was me, in year three, right after I lost it.
There are thirty-eight rules. Each one exists because something went wrong once.
The first Fall Supper with a pie was fifteen years ago. I was twenty-seven and had been on the job for eleven weeks. The supper was three thousand dollars short of the heating bill. I stood at the microphone, panicked, and offered my face to the highest bidder.
Dr. Lyle Pruitt, a dentist then in his fifties, bid four hundred dollars. He threw from about an arm's length away, without warning, while I was still thanking the caterer. He mostly got my ear.
We made the heating bill. The next morning, I bought the notebook.
Rule 1 is the oldest and the shortest. Nobody gets pied who didn't say yes. Out loud, on the day.
I say yes every year. I say it into a microphone, so there is a record.
Rule 4 is the one people quote at parties. Soft pie only. Whipped cream on a graham-cracker crust. If it would hurt to drop on a cat, it is not a pie.
I have never dropped a pie on a cat. The rule is about the principle.
Rule 6 is Count of three, out loud. Nobody gets surprised. That one is for Dr. Pruitt.
Rule 9 is Six paces, marked with blue tape. That one is also for Dr. Pruitt.
Rule 13 is the safe word. Say "crumb" and everything stops.
In fifteen years, nobody has ever said it. I keep it anyway. A rule you never use is still holding something up.
Rule 22 is Always bake a backup pie. In year eight, the first pie sat on a folding table near the coat rack. Then a Labrador named Biscuit found it. Biscuit's owner bid another hundred dollars out of guilt, so technically Biscuit is one of our top donors.
Rule 30 is No camera closer than the front row. That one is from last year, and it is about Arlo's drone.
Rule 38, also from last year, I wrote at two in the morning after the supper. Nobody gets laughed at. Everybody gets laughed with.
I don't remember exactly why I wrote it down. I only remember that it seemed important, and that I was still holding the towel.
"That notebook is the most exhausting thing about you," my board chair told me in September. "And I've seen your filing system."
Priscilla Brennan is thirty-nine and a CPA. Everyone calls her Cil. She converts every number she hears into meals. She cannot help it, the way some people can't help humming.
We were standing in the back room of the pantry, listening to the walk-in freezer. Its name is Frosty. Frosty is twenty-six years old and hums in B-flat. Arlo, our volunteer coordinator, tunes his guitar to it.
Lately, Frosty had been humming in something closer to B-flat with doubts.
"The repair guy says it has one winter left," Cil said. "Maybe. A new walk-in, installed, is sixty thousand dollars."
"How many meals is that?"
"About a hundred and eighty thousand. Or, to put it another way, one freezer."
She looked at me over her glasses. "Last year's supper brought in twenty-two thousand. The pie was twelve hundred of that."
"Ray Haskins bid twelve hundred to throw it," I said. "He owns a car lot. He was very happy."
"I'm not criticizing the pie, June. I love the pie. The pie is four thousand meals."
She tapped the freezer door. "I'm saying we need a miracle. And the miracle needs to be about fifty times bigger than Ray."
Frosty hummed. It sounded worried.
The pie itself is made by Nico Pappas. Nico is seventy-one and has owned the Fernhill Diner since before I was born. He has baked every pie I've ever been hit with, plus the backup. Rule 22 was his idea, even though it's in my handwriting.
Nico explains everything with a Greek proverb. As far as anyone can tell, he makes them up on the spot.
"As my grandmother said in Thessaloniki," he told me, when I came by to confirm the order, "a soft pie lands soft."
"Your grandmother said that?"
"She said many things."
He set two empty pie tins on the counter like a man laying down a winning hand. "Graham crust, plain cream, no sugar crystals because of your eyes. Same as always."
"Same as always," I said.
"You're nervous."
"I'm not nervous. I've done this fifteen times."
"In Thessaloniki," Nico said, "we say the cat who has been rained on fifteen times still does not enjoy rain."
That one sounded almost real. I let it go.
Bidding for Pie Rights opens online two weeks before the supper. Arlo runs the page.
Arlo Kemper is twenty-three, has a degree in communications, and says "that's content" about things that are not content. He films everything vertically.
He once filmed a pallet of canned peaches for four minutes because the light was "doing something." Last year, his video of Frosty got eleven thousand views. He titled it he is trying his best.
The first bid arrives in the same minute every year. This year was no different.
"Hattie Sorensen," Arlo announced at 9:01 a.m. "Twenty dollars and her good wishes."
Hattie is eighty-four. She was in the room fifteen years ago when Dr. Pruitt got my ear.
She has bid twenty dollars and her good wishes on every pie since. She has never won, and she has never once bid twenty-one.
"She says she's been practicing," Arlo added.
"She says that every year."
By lunch, the regulars had shown up. Ray Haskins at three hundred. The Fernhill Bowling League, pooling their money, at four-fifty.
Dr. Pruitt, now seventy, at five hundred, with a note that read Six paces. I know. I KNOW.
By the end of the first day, we were at eight hundred and fifty dollars. That is a good first day. It is also, Cil reminded me by text, roughly one-seventieth of a freezer.
I went home and read the rulebook in the bathtub, which is where I read it every year before the supper. It isn't superstition. It's maintenance.
Fifteen pies. Thirty-eight rules. Not one crumb. It was the most reliable thing in my life, including my car, whose passenger door only opens from the inside.
The next morning I came in early. Frosty was humming somewhere between B-flat and a sigh. Arlo was already at his desk with his phone in one hand and his laptop in the other, which is how he holds everything.
He didn't say good morning. He turned the laptop toward me.
"June," he said. "Okay. Don't freak out. But also, maybe freak out a little."
The Pie Rights page had refreshed overnight. Hattie's twenty dollars was still there at the bottom, loyal as a porch light. Above it were Ray, the bowling league, and Dr. Pruitt.
Above all of them was a new bid.
$25,000.
The bidder was listed as B. Vane. There was a note in the little comment box, which nobody had ever used for anything except "Go June!!"
The note said: Chef will supply the pie.
I read it three times. Then I looked at Arlo.
"B. Vane," I said. "Should I know who that is?"
Arlo stared at me as though I had asked him who the moon was.
"June," he said. "That's Barrett Vane. From television."
Behind us, Frosty skipped a note.
Up next: Chef Will Supply the Pie
Continue to Part 2 →