Rule Thirty-Nine

For fifteen years I had told people that if you say "crumb" at the Fernhill Fall Supper, everything stops. I had never actually seen it happen. I'd only believed it, the way you believe in fire extinguishers.

It turns out it's true.

Barrett stopped with his arm halfway back. Three hundred and ten people stopped with their mouths open on the word three. Hal stopped chewing. Even Gerald, at the end of table nine, seemed to hold his crooked head a little stiller.

Then Barrett lowered the pie. He did it slowly and carefully, as though it were asleep.

He did not ask why. He did not say one more second. He just stopped, because I'd said the word.

That was the moment I knew I'd been right about him.

---

He looked down at the pie in his hands. He rapped it once with his knuckle. It made a sound like someone politely knocking on a door.

"Mm," said Barrett Vane, into the dead-quiet hall.

He turned around and found Delphine by the kitchen door.

"No," he said.

Delphine lifted her chin. To her credit, she didn't pretend. "It's what the segment needs, Barrett."

"The segment needs a soft pie."

He held the Tarte Vane out at arm's length. "Rule 4. Everybody here knows it. Even the bowling league knows it."

"Especially the bowling league," called somebody from table eleven.

The woman holding Delphine's smaller tablet looked like she wanted to slide under the piano with Gerald's head. Delphine looked at her. Then she looked at the room, all three hundred and ten of them, every face turned her way.

I have seen a lot of people realize they're in the wrong town. Delphine did it faster than most.

"Hal," she said finally. "Are we still rolling?"

Hal nodded.

"Then don't cut," said Delphine. She let out a breath. "Whatever happens next. Don't cut anything."

The production assistant with the smaller tablet came over to the chair. She looked about to cry.

"I swapped it in the kitchen," she told me. "While Mr. Pappas was counting Labradors."

"There were no Labradors," said Nico.

"I know," she said miserably. "You counted very thoroughly."

"It's okay," I told her. "Rule 38. Nobody gets laughed at. That includes you."

---

Nico walked over with the second pie. Graham crust, plain cream, wobbling gently in its tin as though it had been waiting for this its whole life.

"Rule 22," he said. "As my grandmother said in Thessaloniki, always bake two."

Barrett took the backup pie. He looked at Nico for a long moment.

"Nico," he said. "In 1991, you told me your grandmother was from Akron."

The room went still again, in a different way.

Nico considered this. "Akron," he said, with great dignity, "is the Thessaloniki of Ohio."

I have heard a lot of laughter in the Grange Hall. That one shook the banner.

Barrett handed the Tarte Vane to Arlo, who held it up for the room like a championship trophy. Later that night, we cut it with a bread knife and served it with the coffee. It took two people and some leverage. It was, I'm sorry to say, the best thing anyone in Fernhill had ever eaten.

---

I sat back down in the chair.

"Rule 1," I said into the microphone. "Yes. Out loud, on the day. Again."

Barrett stepped up to the blue tape. Six paces. He took one breath. I watched his shoulders come down from around his ears.

"Rule 6," I said.

"One!" said the room. "Two! Three!"

He delivered it underhand, like a present.

I'll be brief, because I always am about this part. It landed exactly the way they're supposed to, soft and certain. I heard the room before I felt anything. Three hundred and ten people make a very particular sound when something goes exactly right.

I was laughing before I had my eyes open. I couldn't stop. I don't think I tried.

A towel found my hand. "Thank you," said Barrett Vane.

When I could see again, he was laughing too. It wasn't the polished, one-second smile from the end of his show. It was a real laugh, a little helpless, with his head tipped back. He looked about sixteen.

Hal got the whole thing. One take.

---

Then Barrett did something I didn't see coming. He took the microphone out of my hand, gently, and turned to face the room.

"Rule 1," he said. "Yes. Out loud, on the day."

There was a pause. Then everybody understood at once, and the noise was enormous.

"I'm taking bids," said Barrett. "For a pie. At me."

Ray Haskins bid five hundred. Dr. Pruitt bid six hundred, "from six paces, I swear it." The bowling league pooled their money and bid seven hundred and forty dollars, plus a coupon for a free game.

Barrett listened to all of them. Then he looked down at the front row.

Hattie Sorensen had not said anything. She did not need to. She simply held up her white envelope.

"Twenty dollars," said Barrett, "and good wishes. Sold."

Hattie stood up. She handed the envelope to Cil, who announced that it was sixty meals. Every other bidder paid anyway, which Cil announced was a little over five thousand more.

Then Hattie Sorensen, aged eighty-four, walked to the blue tape for the first time in her life. Nico handed her a fresh pie from the kitchen. She weighed it in one hand. She nodded.

"Where did you practice?" Barrett asked her, a little nervously.

"Paper plates," said Hattie. "Against my garage door. Since the first one."

The room counted to three. Hattie's throw was perfect. She didn't even look surprised.

Then she handed Barrett a towel herself. "Thank you, dear," she said. "That was overdue."

---

The segment aired three weeks later. The working title was gone.

The network called it The Pie Rules, and it became the most-watched episode in nine seasons of Vane Glory. In it, Barrett Vane does not say "Mm, no" once. The last shot is Hattie at the blue tape.

After the hall emptied that night, I found Barrett in the Grange kitchen with his sleeves pushed up. He was washing the dessert plates, all three hundred and ten of them. He didn't break a single one. Nico stood behind him the whole time, counting.

Delphine sent the pantry a fruit basket and a handwritten card. It said: Next year I'd like to bid. Six paces. I've read the rules.

The new walk-in freezer arrived the second week of November. It was paid for in full, with enough left over for a loading-dock door and fuel for the van until spring. The installers turned it on, and it started to hum.

It hummed in C.

Nico stood in front of it for a full minute with his ear tilted. "I don't trust it," he said. Arlo retuned his guitar anyway and filmed it, vertically, for eleven minutes.

Before Barrett left Fernhill, he asked if he could add something to the green notebook. I let him. It's the only page in another person's handwriting. I've mailed a copy to Doreen at the insurance company, so it's official.

Rule 39. Nobody throws a pie they wouldn't take.

---

This morning, Pie Rights opened for the new year. I came in early. The freezer was humming its healthy C. Arlo was at his desk with his phone in one hand and his laptop in the other.

At 9:01 a.m., the first bid arrived, right on time. Hattie Sorensen. Twenty dollars and her good wishes.

At 9:02, the page refreshed.

Arlo turned the laptop toward me. He didn't say good morning. He didn't tell me not to freak out.

The second bid was twenty-five thousand dollars. The bidder was listed as B. Venczel. There was a note in the little comment box.

Nico will supply the pie.

I read it three times. Then I took the green notebook out of my desk drawer and turned to a fresh page. Some years, a new rule is the only sensible response.

Rule 40, I wrote. Always save him a slice.