Free Apple Pie Angel by Lynn Cooper Page A

begrudged her being away all last month during the lunch rush.  He wouldn’t hold her job open indefinitely for her to keep doing charity work. But he couldn’t stop her from feeding those in need at night.  True, the soup kitchen wasn’t open at this hour, but Lacey figured she could bring food to the less fortunate herself. 
    On her final day at Eva’s, she followed a few of the regulars, finding out where the majority of them were staying.  It was one week ago today that she saw them congregating under an old train trestle.  It broke her heart.  The area was beyond rundown, surrounded by deserted streets on a block that wouldn’t meet the standards of a slum. 
    By comparison, she thought about how nice it was to be inside her tiny, sparse yet comfortable, safe apartment, having a piece of warm apple pie before bedtime.  And how sad it was that the poor people she had been serving lunch to for the past month didn’t have the same luxury.
    That’s when it hit her. If she went to the annual fall apple festival, she could buy bushels and bushels at a great price.  It took her the entire week to peel, freeze and dehydrate them, but now she had enough apples to bake pies all winter.  She had started tonight and was ever so anxious to get to the trestle and share them.  The dirt-streaked, worry-creased, down-trodden faces she had gazed upon at the soup kitchen would break into smiles when she brought them a bedtime snack.  A simple pleasure she had spent her entire life taking for granted.  Lacey was certain they would welcome her with open arms.
     
    CHANCE TAGGERT PULLED HIS threadbare jacket a little tighter around his neck.  It was only early October in Stanton, South Carolina, but the evening air had a definite bite to it.  Before he became an inhabitant of the streets, he was hot-blooded and had never truly felt cold.  Having slept on concrete with little shelter from the elements for the last five winters had wreaked havoc on his internal thermostat.  Now, the least bit of cool air left him chilled to the bone.  He was only thirty-two years old but felt ninety-two.  A few more years of living like this, and he would look it, too.
    When Chance became a street urchin, he was shocked to discover the various reasons people had for living out of cardboard boxes.  Having come from an upper-middle class home, he just assumed it was from loss of a job or home foreclosure.  Now he realized homelessness was born out of anything from addiction to mental illness to unemployment and everything in between.  He was most surprised to find that, like him, many were here because they didn’t believe they deserved to be anywhere else.
    The group he hung with under the trestle was made up of a runaway called Skip because he had skipped out on his family; a former college professor nicknamed Shakespeare as he was always quoting the famous writer; an ex-football player everyone called Jock for obvious reasons; and a mentally challenged man who went by the name of Loopy.
    The rest of the clan remained nameless by choice and never talked at all.  Chance was really Chance.  There was no use in trying to hide his identity.  His name and face had been splashed across all the papers a few years ago.  And contrary to popular belief, most homeless folks were literate and managed to get their hands on a daily newspaper, first to read, then to cover up with.  When he fell in with the trestle troop, they already knew who he was.
    Flipping the collar up around his ears, he sank even lower against a brick wall.  Until a month ago, he had accepted his station in life.  Hell, he had chosen it, never planned on changing it and hoped—sooner rather than later—he would die right here listening to Loopy’s repetitious mumbling.
    “Chance got grumpy.  Chance got grumpy.  Pigs can’t fly.  Monkeys won’t cry.  Chance got grumpy.”
    Even the insane could detect the change in Chance’s normally even-keeled demeanor.