Holly Anderson A Piece of Pie Well, goddamn it, I was driving due west across the whole wild fire conflagrated, smoke-choked, low-to-no-visibility war-mongering country to be with you. Really. And so sorry about this voicemail but I was driving out to become a gardening guru and live happily everwhatever with you. Really. My trunk's still full of tools and catalogs and bee boxes. And I only stopped off I-80 looking for a slab of homemade pie because these piles of clouds had me dreaming about meringue riding high on a hefty slice of pie and Lyman, Wy. looked just like 'Lemon, Wy.' when the blank miles stacked up so hypnotically. And Lyman was the next exit so in retrospect all seems uh, preordained, you know? Don't get me wrong — you're going to be fantastically successful giving high colonics to corrupted bodies just waiting for your special acidophilous flush and sorry I couldn't ever let you near me with your little green practice hose but like you always said my body is my temple — so stay the hell away from — I'm digressing, sorry but, there was absolutely no way of knowing this Cowboy Inn Cafe on the sandy edge of nowhere would serve nine kinds of fresh baked pie: coconut custard, chocolate custard, rhubarb, strawberry creme, banana creme, blueberry, gooseberry, lemon and pecan. No way of knowing these pies would be baked six days a week by a rangy, big knuckled bullrider from South Dakota named Owen Slides Off. And I had no way of knowing then that we'd soon spend every spare minute upstairs in a simulated wood-grain paneled room. Way up some crooked stairs devouring each other as these clouds that brought me to Exit 41 in the first place clamber across a herd of bleached blue skies. Mobile breaking up now. Please forgive me all my appetites.

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