This week at the YA Indie Carnival, our posts are about Thanksgiving. Some of us will post excerpts set at Thanksgiving, others might contain a pie or two, or turkeys. Some of us will post Thanksgiving memories or stories. Take a ride with us and share your favorite Thanksgiving stories. This Friday we givie thanks for you, for running away to the carnival with us every Friday! Thank you 🙂
Here’s is my Thanksgiving excerpt from Winnemucca, a small-town fairy tale. Ginny’s on an enchanted road trip and her ride breaks down at a Red Cross Evacuation Center in Happy Jack, AZ. Just outside of Happy Jack, a wildfire blazes. Ginny does the only thing she can think of to try and help out:
“I decided to do what Momma did when things got bad. So after we organized how to handle all the donated food that started trickling in, I rode the still-sputtering van to the Safeway and bought up every apple, stick of butter and bag of flour that would fit into four grocery bags. I spent every cent of mariachi money I conned out of Carlos. The van had just enough left in her to get us to the Safeway and back, but only just. I had a hell of a time lugging the sixteen pounds of apples and all the eggs, butter and spices I needed to bake the sixteen apple pies at the YMCA kitchen.
Sixteen was my new favorite number. Seventeen would always be unlucky for me.
I walked into the kitchen like I owned the place and went to work coring and peeling, slicing and stirring. Annabelle helped by adding the spices. The scent of cinnamon and cloves erased a lot of the badness that had crept inside me. I peeled apple after apple and imagined what would happen when I’d die. God would greet me at the Pearly Gates and, had the smell of my apple pies reached him, He might, if I made enough, forgive me. Maybe. But that would require baking a lot of pies. Maybe my apple pies would be like the story about the loaves and fishes. I’d teach girls to bake pies. Make enough to feed all those that hungered.
It wasn’t long before the smells that drifted out of the kitchen brought folks around the stainless steel counter where Angela, Sarah and I had our apple-pie-assembly line. Curious folks. Ones that asked me my name and where I was headed. But, I stuck to my Fugitive Code. The folks that asked for Momma’s recipe I never disappointed.
Because God, if he was watching, would have wanted it that way.”
I am thankful for readers like you. And of course I’m thankful for pies. I do love making them. I am not a pie wizard, but one day, I hope to be. It’s one of my goals. I’m also so thankful for organizations like The Red Cross who help us when we need it most. And, I’ve never really thanked her before, but I will now. Thank you to my muse. She is a lot of fun and I do enjoy the places we’ve gone together. Happy Thanksgiving!
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