Now, Aunt Mary Louise’s mama was Miss Ida’s nurse when Miss Ida was a baby, and Miss Ida and Aunt Mary Louise slept in the same crib, and grew up side by side, and they’ve always been best friends, so Miss Ida sets a lot of store by what Aunt Mary Louise thinks. She still looked worried, though, and I believe she was wondering how we’d get it built, and how we’d pay for lumber and nails and all. But before you could say boo to a goose, some of the big Byrd boys had built that stand, and we were in business. They’d also made and set up two wooden picnic tables and benches in the shade near the stand. They’d even painted a green sign
with gold letters: Slocumb Corners Produce and Baked Goods.
One of Aunt Mary Louise’s connections—nobody can keep straight who’s a niece and who’s a cousin in the Byrd family, so when we don’t know ‘zackly what the relationship is, we say “connection”—Sarah Ann, was out of college for the summer and waitressin’ at the beach. Sarah Ann hated waitressin’—she’s too brainy to want to spend her time serving hamburgers and clearing tables—so Aunt Mary Louise called her home. and Sarah Ann took over the stand—pricing, pasting labels on the canned food, asking friends and relatives what they had to sell, foraging all over Slocumb County. She had everything organized lickety-split. I do believe Sarah Ann could organize the entire state of North Carolina, and people say she’s goin’ to get even better at it ‘cause Sarah Ann is going to business school and get her MBA after she graduates from East Carolina. Goodness knows what she’ll organize then. (Maybe she’ll go to Washington and help the Congress. Aunt Polly says they need all the help they can get.)
We’ll sell lots of vegetables and fruit. Everybody has too many tomatoes or squash or butter beans or whatever when they’re in season, and we can’t can or freeze ‘em fast enough before some spoil. We can’t give ‘em away either, because everybody else has too many, too.
We decided to sell home-canned food to make life easy for the beach people: spaghetti sauce and soup mix and chili, and jars of strawberry preserves and cucumber pickles and pickled peaches. The Herb Lady brought over candles—there’s lots of power failures at the beach—and lotions for sunburn and skeeter bites. Sarah Ann’s beekeeping sister brought little glass pots of honey, and a Byrd cousin who’d learned grass-weaving in Charleston brought a bunch of baskets she’d made.
For the opening, Miss Ida and I made cookies and cakes and fruit pies and cupcakes and sandwiches. We made lemonade, too, and iced tea. We didn’t have a grand opening; we just filled the stand and waited. Every car full of hot, thirsty people stoppin’ to buy spring onions and lettuce and peas and new potatoes had to have some of that lemonade or tea, and cookies to go with it, and some to take with ‘em. Lots of folks bought sandwiches and cake and drinks and had a picnic at one of the shady tables.
Coleman’s face was one big smile at the end of the day, and so was mine. I asked her how she thought up the produce stand, and she said she saw ‘em by the road on the way up from New Orleans, and she’d wondered why there weren’t any around here. And when she learned how Miss Ida and everybody in Slocumb Corners could cook and make delicious preserves and such, seemed like travelers would want ‘em, too. But the big reason she thought of it was she’d prayed to the Lord to show her the way to help save Peter from the owl, and He’d put the stand in her mind.
Nobody said anything more about Peter, and he moved in. Miss Ida fixed a bed for him in the kitchen, but he howled all night and nobody could sleep, and after that, he slept in the bed with Coleman and me.
Sometimes in the night, I reach out to pet him; his tummy is warm and round and fat, and his fur is so soft, he feels better to hold and to snuggle up to than the cuddliest stuffed animal. He’s good company, and he never lets Coleman out of his sight if he can help it. He doesn’t bark except to announce a visitor, and we all like that. He earns his keep. Every day and night I thank the Lord for bringin’ Coleman home, and for how she’s made our lives so much better, and for the produce stand, and for Peter.
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