The Fernhill Grange Hall was built in 1911 and has hosted every Fall Supper since the pantry opened. It has a stage, a piano nobody tunes, and a banner over the door that says WELCOME NEIGHBORS. The banner is older than me.
On Thursday at two, it also had Gerald.
Gerald sat in a folding chair in the middle of the floor, wearing his beige cardigan. Somebody had given him reading glasses. He looked like a substitute teacher who had seen things.
"Gerald has been with us since season seven," Delphine said. "He's very professional."
"He's missing a hand," Arlo said.
"Season eight."
Barrett stood at the far end of the hall beside a rolling cart. On the cart sat four Tarte Vanes under glass domes. In the afternoon light, their mirror glaze shone like something you'd find in a museum gift shop. Hal set up a tripod and opened a fresh bag of sunflower seeds.
I had brought the rulebook, a roll of blue tape, Arlo, and two of Nico's pies in a cooler. Nico had sent them with a note. As they say in Thessaloniki, bring your own pie to a pie fight.
I walked out six paces from Gerald's chair and laid down a strip of blue tape. Barrett watched me with the expression of a man watching someone assemble furniture without the instructions.
"Rule 9," I said. "Six paces."
"Six paces is a suggestion."
"Six paces is a lesson. Ask Dr. Pruitt."
Barrett lifted the first glass dome. He picked up a Tarte Vane with both hands and stepped to the tape.
He set his stance. He rolled his shoulders. He looked, for one moment, like a very expensive statue called The Pitcher.
Then he threw.
I want to be fair to the Tarte Vane. It flew beautifully. It was dense enough to hold its line, like a well-made frisbee. It struck Gerald squarely in the face.
Gerald's head came off. It rolled across the floor, under the piano, and out the other side, still wearing its reading glasses.
Nobody said anything. Hal stopped chewing for the first time in two days.
"If it would hurt to drop on a cat," I said quietly, "it is not a pie."
"Gerald," said Barrett, "was poorly constructed."
Arlo crawled under the piano to retrieve the head. He came back out and held it up, like a fisherman posing with a trophy trout.
"That's content," he whispered.
We put Gerald's head back on. It sat a little crooked afterward, which made him look skeptical.
"Okay," I said. "Now we do it properly. With a real pie and a real person."
"I'll do it," Arlo said.
He had already taken off his glasses and handed me his phone. "Rule 1. Yes. Out loud."
"Rule 13?"
"Crumb. If I say crumb, everything stops."
He sat in the folding chair next to Gerald. "I've wanted to do this for three years. This is the best day of my life."
I opened the cooler and handed Barrett one of Nico's pies. He held it at arm's length, like a diaper of uncertain history.
"It weighs nothing," he said.
"That's the point."
"It has no structure. It's a cloud in a dish." He looked offended on the pie's behalf. "How does anyone aim this?"
"Rule 6," I said. "Count of three, out loud."
Arlo counted. "One. Two. Three."
Barrett threw.
Barrett Vane could slice an onion so thin you could read through it. It turned out he had never thrown anything in his life. The pie left his hand at a strange angle. It sailed well to the left of Arlo, cleared the piano, and hit the WELCOME NEIGHBORS banner, dead center.
There was a long silence. Then the banner slowly let go of one corner and hung there, waving, like it was trying to say hello.
Arlo laughed so hard he slid off the chair. I laughed too. Even Hal made a sound, though it might have been a seed.
Barrett did not laugh. Barrett stood very still. For a moment, he looked exactly like Gerald.
The side door opened, and Hattie Sorensen came in pulling a wire cart of folding chairs. She volunteers at the Grange on Thursdays. She is eighty-four and moves chairs the way other people walk dogs.
She looked at the banner. She looked at Barrett. She looked at the empty tin in his hand.
"I could do better than that," she said.
"Ma'am," said Barrett, "have you ever thrown a pie?"
"Not yet," said Hattie. "But I've been practicing." She parked the cart against the wall and left the way she came.
"We'll fix it in post," Delphine said brightly. "Take two."
"There is no take two," I said. "The supper isn't a show. It's live. One pie, one throw."
"Plus the backup," Arlo added from the floor. "Rule 22."
Barrett looked at me. For the first time, he didn't look like he was grading anything.
"Then show me," he said.
So I showed him.
I have never thrown a pie in my life, but I have been on the receiving end of fifteen. You learn things. I told him it isn't a throw at all. It's more of a delivery.
"Underhand," I said. "Low. You're not pitching. You're handing someone a present from a little farther away than usual."
"A present."
"A soft one. Then you let go a little early and trust it."
He tried it with an empty tin first. Then another. Then a third, which landed squarely in Gerald's lap. Gerald took it well.
Then Arlo sat back down. He said "yes" again, out loud, because I made him. I counted to three, and Barrett delivered the second of Nico's pies, underhand, like a present.
It landed gently on Arlo's cheek and slid down onto his shirt. Arlo laughed through the whole thing. He reached out blindly for a towel, and Barrett, after a moment, put one in his hand.
"Rule 17," I told Barrett. "You say thank you."
Barrett looked at Arlo. He looked at the towel. He looked as if the words were in a language he'd studied in school but never spoken aloud.
"Thank you," he said finally.
"Anytime," said Arlo, wiping his eyes. "Seriously. Anytime."
While they were cleaning up, Delphine asked me to hold her tablet so she could help Hal with the tripod. I'm not a snoop. But I am a reader, and the screen was on, and it was facing me.
It was a storyboard. Twelve little boxes, like a comic strip, for the Fernhill segment.
The first box showed the Grange Hall. Under it was a working title in bold. SMALL TOWN, BIG SPLAT.
The fifth box showed a sketch of a woman with a notebook. The caption said: The Pie Lady. Fifteen years of homemade rules. Tonight she meets a professional.
The tenth box showed the same woman a half second after the splat. The caption under it said: She had it coming.
The eleventh box just said: SLO-MO. HOLD ON FACE. LET THEM LAUGH.
I read the whole thing twice. Then I turned to Rule 38 in my head, because the notebook was in my bag and I didn't need it. Nobody gets laughed at. Everybody gets laughed with.
Now I remembered why I'd written it.
Delphine came back for her tablet. She saw my face, then she saw the screen, and she sighed. It was the patient sigh of someone who has explained television to a great many people.
"It's a working title," she said.
"It's a joke," I said. "And the joke is me."
"Hon, that's the format. Barrett's audience doesn't want a bake sale. They want a moment."
Across the hall, Barrett was holding Gerald's crooked head and listening. He didn't come over.
"Then the deal is off," I said. "I'm not saying yes. Rule 1."
Delphine took the tablet from my hands. She tapped it twice, scrolled, and turned it around to show me a signature at the bottom of a long document.
"I'd read the agreement before you say that, hon," she said. "Your board chair signed it this morning."
Up next: Barry
Continue to Part 4 →