2021
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
HONORABLE MENTION, 2020 ALEX ALBRIGHT CREATIVE NONFICTION PRIZE
m
r e d u s ea
Fried pies. A Southern staple for dessert or maybe breakfast. Portable and single serve, unless you want to share. I am here to learn to make the pies, to record the recipe. Quantities to measure and actions to take to make a perfect pie. Just come watch. It really isn’t hard. My grandmother has always made them; I’ve had no need to know. I’ve had no desire to learn. I’ve always been certain she’ll be around to make them. The answer I always took comfort in, until I realized it was a lie. Her flour lives in an open bowl in the cabinet to the left of the sink. It is always there waiting for a pinch of salt, a portion of shortening, a pour of buttermilk, her long sharply boned fingers. “How much shortening do you use?” My pencil willing and ready. She shows me the glob of lard. “Buttermilk?” I ask as she pours from the carton. “Until it feels right,” A home that she says while kneading the holds little dough, gently and quickly folding it within itself. My and is always pencil remains quite still. “How do you know the overflowing. right amounts?” Where few “Too sticky? More flour. Too crumbly? More milk.” things are ever Her hands pull flour measured. from the side of the bowl, deciding what to take and what to leave, never using it all. The bowl remains lined with flour while the dough rests rounded in its belly. My grandmother grabs my hand and plunges it into the bowl. The pencil rolls silently off the counter. “Here, feel it, this is just right.” The dough is rolled, the fruit folded within. They will bake in the oven – until they are done.
SUSAN WILSON is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill. Her work has appeared in Flying South, Barely South Review, and multiple anthologies.
COURTESY OF THE HILL FAMILY
60
by Susan Wilson
It is a shotgun style house, a clear run, front door to back, an open line of sight, everything there to be seen, nothing there to see. A home that holds little and is always overflowing. Where few things are ever measured. Poured concrete steps lead to an empty, always just swept, front porch. Warmed if needed by wood laid burning in the hearth, built in the early morning by my grandfather. A day’s supply of split wood stacked by the back door. Crocheted rugs cover bare floors. Beneath the giant oak are webbed lawn chairs and galvanized buckets waiting for shelled peas. The pump house roof, outside the reach of oak tree limbs, is draped with old sheets spread wide and covered with slices of apple set to dry before they are turned into fried pies, with pastry that will turn out crusted but tender. Bees swarm over the sheets landing for a taste of fruit, then move on heavier and lazier than when they arrived. They linger undisturbed as we walk past to pull laundry off the clothesline while the pies brown and bubble. My grandmother asks me to dip water from the metal barrel beneath the kitchen window to fill a dish for the feral cats. The barrel, almost as tall as me, is always full. Its depth both finite as I stand beside it and infinite as I look within. My grandmother died on a Friday in May. I don’t remember the date. I don’t remember exactly how old she was. Her hedgerow rose was full of tiny clustered bouquets. My grandfather was putting out food and water for the cats. The day was cool, and I saw the smoke drifting from the chimney. I saw his ax handle rising from an old tree stump, but no wood stacked by the door. A measure I finally saw for what it was.
ABOVE Susan Wilson and her grandmother, Jenny Hill,
Asheboro, NC, 1986