Lacey's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

One good roll wasn't a shelf. Lacey needed meat and flour, enough to bake dozens before Saturday. She counted her cash on the porch rail. It wouldn't buy bulk anything. She looked at the sausage she'd used and asked the real question. Where had it come from? The bakery owner pointed down the dirt track. "Pigs," she said. "Past the field." Lacey followed the track to a rough timber homestead. A pen sat behind it. Inside, pigs rooted in the straw. One stood out, small and pink with soft purple patches across its back. It trotted to the fence and snuffled her palm. She laughed. These were the pigs. This was where the sausage began. But the farmer wanted market price she couldn't pay, and the meat still had to be ground, seasoned, cased. One roll was easy. A hundred was a wall. Billy found her at the fence, cap low, the golden dog with the dark muzzle padding at his heels. He'd helped her from the first day, when the flood took her car. He didn't say much, but he showed up. He leaned on the rail beside her and watched the spotted pig. "You've got the meat," he said. "You just need bread to wrap it." He pulled his cap off and turned it in his hands. "The field by the porch. That wheat's mine. My family grows it." He said it quiet, like it cost him. "Take what you need. We split what you make." Lacey stared. "You'd do that?" He looked at the straw, not at her. "I'd do a lot." His ears went red. "I like you, Lacey. Been trying to say it since the water came up." The words came out plain and fast, then he stopped, bracing like he'd dropped something. She let it sit a second. Then she grinned. "Then you're helping me bake." They hauled a bundle of golden wheat to the bakery. The farmer agreed to the splits, and the spotted piglet watched them go. Lacey ground flour while Billy measured. She showed him the dough, how to feel when it was right, how to tuck the sausage so the bun browned even. His big hands fumbled the first roll. The second held together. The third looked like hers. By dark the table was full. Rows of rolls, glossy and warm, waited under cloth. The shelf would have food. Real inventory, enough for market day. Lacey wiped flour on her skirt and looked at Billy. "We did it." He smiled, still shy. Then his face shifted. "The wheat's cut now. My family counts those bundles." He set his cap back on. "I'll have to tell them before Saturday." The shelf was solved. But Lacey had bought it with wheat that wasn't only Billy's to give, and someone would come asking.