Juliet Nordeen is an ex-mechanical engineer and was blessed with the chance to change her career to writing in the middle of 2003. She recently moved to SW Washington State and is still attending The Wordos Professional Writers Workshop in Eugene, Oregon - just not every week like she used to. She lives with a wonderful husband, two dogs and four cats who help her work her story details out. "Stone Pizza" was the first short story she ever wrote, and has been revised again and again, until it also became her first sale!

We hated visitors, and I hated working the gate. The best days guarding the gate were boring. Those days my big brother, Charley, and I sat at the picnic table in the gatehouse –- our old school bus stop, expanded and fortified -- played card games, and watched the leaves skitter along the road. On those good, boring days we didn’t see anyone we knew, and we didn’t see anyone we didn’t know. The morning started out like that, but just past noon the cool breeze brought along an old black woman. She was dressed for the road; her layered coats and hoods flapped in the breeze. A banged-up aluminum cane supported her left side.

It was the second autumn since we’d built the twelve-foot tall, wood-and-concrete wall around the neighborhood and orchard, and we still had dirty, stinky survivors like her who wanted to get in. Charley readied his rifle, and stepped forward to stand behind our Unwelcome Sign on the four-foot-tall metal fence surrounding the gatehouse. He waved me out of sight to the back of the gatehouse, behind the table. Pistol ready, hands shaking, I waited for her to come past the wall of the gatehouse, back into my line of sight.

“State your business,” Charley said, and pointed his rifle at her. The woman stopped right in front of the gate.

“I am a minstrel,” she said. She lifted a blanket and revealed a salvaged karaoke machine strapped to her back. “I sing and tell stories, and bring news ‘round to the settlements.”

“We got radios, we don’t need you.”

“I come from places east of the mountains,” she said, “places your radios don’t reach. And I cook.” I knew she would say anything to be allowed in to the safety of our Hold. It was already past noon, and she’d never make it the twelve miles down the road to Boone’s Hold before it got dark. Not good to be out after dark. She stood very still. Her left hand was planted on her cane, and her right she kept out in front of her, palm facing up.

“Don’t need a cook,” Charley said.

“I’ll make pizza.”

Pizza, just the sound of the word as she dropped it brought memories of pepperoni and strings of hot cheese. I swallowed. Twice. I could barely remember my last pizza; it was back before The Fall. Apparently, the word had power over Charley too. He never let strange visitors inside the gatehouse fence to wait while the adults made up their minds about inviting them in or sending them down the road. But he opened the gate for her.

“Charley, no.” I said it too quietly. “Charley.”

“It’s okay,” he said and waved me out of my hiding spot.

“Step inside, but stay at the fence,” he said to the woman. “Mind Sis, she always hits what she’s aiming at.” He nodded at me. I brought my gun up from my side. He nodded again and stepped out the back of the gatehouse. I heard his steps on the gravel fade. I hated this part. It wasn’t fair to make a little girl stand alone at the gate. Not a good feeling to hold a gun on a stranger.

Through the open gate, I looked Pizza Lady dead in the eye. What part of “east of the mountains” did she come from, and how did she get all the way to northwest Oregon with a bad leg? Why was her face not dirty? Nails clean? Hair brushed? Mine was always brushed because Momma insisted, said we still lived in civilization where good girls didn’t run around with tangles in their hair. And, how come this old lady didn’t smile to see a little girl with a gun instead of a doll? Most strangers did.

She came inside, closed the wide aluminum gate, and leaned against a fence post. With a grunt, she hefted the karaoke machine onto the post-top and then dropped the heavy bag from her right shoulder.

“Pretty day, don’t you think?” she asked.

It was a pretty day, but I didn’t answer her.

“I’ll bet you’re about fourteen, right?” she asked.

I was twelve, but it was none of her business.

“That’d make your brother about sixteen?”

What was it with the questions? I wasn’t supposed to entertain her. I just was supposed to stand there with my gun pointed at her. She was supposed to stand there and be scared.

“Do you like pizza?”

“Sure,“ I finally said.

“Does your brother like pizza?”

“Of course he likes pizza,” I said. “Why else would he have let you in?” I did my best to glare at her.

“Anything else you need to know?”

Pizza Lady was quiet for a while, then she asked, “How many?” and nodded at my gun.

“Two,” I answered and then wondered if I should’ve. It wasn’t a secret, everybody knew about the armed strangers I had shot. The two unmarked graves were just out of sight over the hill with the others. But it felt like a bad thing to tell about myself.

“You got a name?” It was Momma’s voice from the back door. Mr. Cooper and Charley followed Momma into the gatehouse.

“Jifunza,” she answered. Somehow, Pizza Lady was easier.

“Set your bags on the table and step away,” Momma said.

Pizza Lady lumbered over to the table. She set the bag down heavily and then turned around to lift down the karaoke machine. Mr. Cooper stepped over to help her and she gave him a kind smile. She stepped back to the fence.

“Your cane, too.” Momma said.

Pizza Lady handed her cane over to Mr. Cooper.

While Momma checked the cane and karaoke machine for hidden dangers, Mr. Cooper instructed the Pizza Lady to turn around for a search. He found two large knives and a small sprayer that was either mace or pepper spray and pocketed them.

“You’ll get them back when you go,” Mr. Cooper said.

Momma opened the Pizza Lady’s shoulder bag and set the contents, one at a time, onto the table: silverware, a frying pan, a comb, a tiny bar of soap, two paperback novels, a loaf of bread, three apples, a big paper bag and finally a big, old mayonnaise jar wrapped with pink house insulation and duct-tape. Momma rolled it from hand to hand.

“Is this yeast?” Momma asked.

“Sourdough starter,” Pizza Lady answered.

Momma opened the jar and took a short sniff. It must have been okay because she put the lid back on.

“Sugar?” Momma asked as she hefted the paper sack. Pizza Lady nodded. I’m not good with these things, but it looked like about half of one of the ten-pound bags Momma used to get at the supermarket. Momma must have been satisfied so she packed all of the Pizza Lady’s things back into her bag.

“Two nights, electricity for that karaoke machine, and an introduction to Boone’s Hold in exchange for your news. You’ll do chores like everyone else, and you make dinner for the three of us.” Pizza Lady smiled, took her cane back from Mr. Cooper and stepped over to pick up her shoulder bag. Momma must’ve been happy about the idea of pizza too, because she ordered Charley and me to carry her bags. Charley picked up the karaoke machine.

“That bag looks heavy,“ I said as I tried to lift the shoulder bag from the table.

“You sure you’ve got that?” Pizza Lady asked. She stepped toward me.

“I got it!” I said, and she stepped back. I wrestled it off the table and the strap dug into my shoulder.

“You got it, honey?” Momma asked.

“Uh-huh.” I thought about that big sack of sugar inside the bag and wondered if I might get a chance to nick some of it before I had to give the bag back.

Probably not, Pizza Lady kept a close eye on me.

As we walked through the Hold, Charley led, I walked next to Pizza Lady, and Momma followed us holding my pistol. Pizza Lady gawked and I tried to see the Hold through her eyes. Everything looked so different than it had before The Fall, when it had been just another neighborhood. The streets and driveways had been busted up and cleared away to make garden space. Except for the sidewalks, all of the yards had also been turned into gardens. All of the fences were gone; their boards had been taken, along with the broken slabs of concrete, to build the Hold’s outer wall. It was hard to pick out the individual houses since the gaps between them had been filled-in to make more living space.

Charley stopped at our house to get flour, cheese and tomatoes. Momma and I walked Pizza Lady to the kitchen-common at the end of the block.

Mr. and Mrs. Cooper still lived in the upstairs of the kitchen-common house, but their big kitchen, dining room and family room had been changed into one big kitchen with ovens along all the walls and a lot of mis-matched cabinets above them. We ate breakfast and dinner at the tables that filled the rest of their living room and dining room.

“Fifteen ranges, all of them gas.” Pizza Lady looked around the Cooper’s old dining room. “Y’all are doing well,” she said, as she took off the top two layers of her traveling coats and hung them over a chair.

“When the gas lines started to leak,” Momma said, “we put in a reservoir and moved all the gas ovens here. It was safer to re-run everything here to our Pipefitter’s place. Keeps him doing his best soldering.” Momma was too humble. She was the one who thought of combining the kitchen spaces in the Cooper’s big house so that people would have more room and be more comfortable in the other houses. It amazed me to think how nice it had been when only four people lived in our house -- compared to the four families living there now.

“Where does the gas come from?” Pizza Lady asked.

“A ballsy delivery guy still makes rounds in his truck. We have to provide security for him sometimes, but mostly we trade reworked electronics.” Momma said. It was a bald-faced lie, but Pizza Lady didn’t have to know that.

“Do you get many traders?” Pizza Lady asked.

Momma answered, “We’re big enough that we still attract about one a month.”

“You still have goods to trade?” she asked.

“Daddy talked everyone into buying out all the hardware stores and grocery marts for fifty miles around with their credit cards before...” Whoops, I wasn’t supposed to tell about that.

Momma looked mad, but it looked like Pizza Lady didn’t hear me because she began to rummage through the cupboards for the things she needed. She pulled out plastic bowls, wooden spoons, and a cutting board. She opened five more doors, but closed them without taking anything out. I watched her wrinkled, black face and it went slack. Did she finally realize that we didn’t keep food in the kitchen-common? What’d she take us for –- idiots?

Momma took me aside and in a loud voice told me to stay and make sure Pizza Lady could find everything, and help get the ovens warmed up. Then she handed back my pistol. I was a well-armed babysitter. It was better than working the gate; at worst I’d only get my count to three by the end of the day.

As Pizza Lady stirred a few cups of gluey-looking dough, water and sugar together with more flour in old plastic bowls, she told me about growing up in St. Louis and working at her uncle’s Pizza Shop. She had waited tables. How that qualified her to make our dinner, I didn’t know.

“Could you help me here?” Pizza Lady asked. “I only have about half as much olive oil as I need. Could you go and get me some from home?”

“We have some bacon fat from this morning,” I said.

“Oh, that’s not quite what I need. Would you be a dear and see if one of the neighbors will loan us a half-cup of olive oil?”

Be a dear? Sure, I’ll just walk over to the neighbor’s house and ask to borrow some olive oil. What, was she crazy? Didn’t she understand?

I didn’t move; didn’t know what to say. Pizza Lady kept staring.

“What’s wrong?” Pizza Lady asked.

“We don’t do that here,” I said.

“Don’t do what, honey?” Pizza Lady said.

“We don’t borrow food from the neighbors. It causes too much trouble,” I said.

“What do you do then?” she asked.

“We make do with what we’ve got.”

“Don’t you sometimes trade?”

“Sure,” I said. But I didn’t have anything to trade, and Momma wouldn’t like me rummaging through her cupboards trading contents at random.

“Okay.” Pizza Lady smiled. “Be a dear and go trade for some olive oil.”

“Trade for what?” I asked.

“Pizza. Invite them to come to dinner and share the pizza we’ll be making with their olive oil,” Pizza Lady said.

“Okay.” I doubted anyone would believe me. “But you have to come with me,” I said and lead her out of the Cooper’s house.

Maggie Pintzopoulos’s folks had always grown olives in their sun-porch and pressed the fruit, so I started at their house. After I introduced her to the Pizza Lady and explained about the dinner, Mrs. Pintzopoulos agreed to trade a cup of olive oil for dinner. Said Maggie would be down in a while to see when dinner would be ready. I hoped Momma wouldn’t mind there were going to be four more at dinner. On the way back to the kitchen-common, Pizza Lady asked for garlic. We collected two “no’s” and some suspicious glares for the Pizza Lady before Mrs. Nichols said she had some left over from the summer harvest. She contributed a couple of bulbs after I invited her and Mr. Nichols to dinner.

After garlic, it was onions. Then it was tomatoes. By the time we got those, she wanted more cheese, bacon, and sausage. When we got back to the kitchen-common there was a crowd of kids gathered on the front porch waiting to see the Pizza Lady.

“Yummy,” Pizza Lady sang to herself as she washed her hands. “This is gonna be some mighty-fine pizza pie.”

“I hope you got enough for about thirty,” I said.

“There’ll be plenty,” she said and smiled.

An hour later, I looked at the twelve pizza crusts waiting on the kitchen counters and realized that the Pizza Lady had always been planning for more than four. And there was plenty. How long since that happened last?

The pizzas came out of the oven just about the time the sun went down and the parents came out of the workshops and in from the fields and the orchard. Most of the kids had been around for an hour, drooling at the yummy smells that bubbled out of the ovens. With the arrival of the adults, it was finally time. Twelve identical pizza pies came out of the ovens. The first piece cut went to Momma, which she gave to me with orders to deliver it to Charley at the gate, crumbs and all. I grabbed a canteen of water and a napkin and double-timed it out to the road.

I got back to the kitchen-common in time to jump in line ahead of the adults going for seconds. Pizza Lady handed me a big piece with lots of sausage, and scooted me on my way. I joined the rest of the under-fifteen crowd at the kid’s table and we did what we used to do at the pizza parlor –- we ate pizza, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Pizza Lady took the last two slices and sat down with the adults. Some ate pizza in exchange for the food they gave, and some had brought their own dinners along to hear Pizza Lady’s news. I peeked at Momma from time to time; she mostly frowned in between bites. It made me angry to see her sad. I wished she could’ve just enjoyed her pizza. It was her and Daddy’s favorite food. Or maybe it was mine and Charley’s, and they just ate it because that’s what we had always wanted on eatin’-out nights.

While the adults talked, we kids made pretend pizza out of our sauce-smeared plates and anything we could find to resemble toppings.

When the bell tolled for the night shift, we older kids collected the dishes and washed them in the sinks. The little kids gathered the napkins, then washed and hung them in the Cooper’s garage. Two of the dads had gone out to relieve Charley at the gate, and he dropped his plate and canteen in the kitchen sink on the way back in. We kissed Momma, and Charley carried me piggy-back all the way home.

“Climb in there.” Charley tossed me up into the upper bunk.

“But I want Momma to tell me a story,” I whined.

“One piece of pizza and you’re a spoiled brat again –- that’s some good pizza,” Charley said. “Anyway, didn’t you see they were just brewing coffee when we left? Momma won’t be home for hours. Just tuck in there and get some sleep. We’re on the gate again tomorrow.”

“Who’s watching the Pizza Lady?”

“She’s working with Momma tomorrow,” he said.

“I wish I didn’t have to work the gate.”

Charley’s smile dropped away and he shrugged his shoulders. I knew he’d asked Momma to pull me from gate duty, but all the adults had heavy work to finish during the day. She said we couldn’t afford to pull one of them to take my place guarding the gate just so I could go back to pulling weeds in the garden with the little kids. I flipped over and tried to sleep.

Momma kissed me goodnight about the time the sun was coming up. She woke me up from another nightmare. My nightmares were always the same, about Daddy and that day. The hot smell of gun powder. Daddy lying on the floor of the gatehouse with blood streaming from his neck. The man and woman dead in the road. The emptiness of pulling my pistol’s trigger again and again after all my bullets were gone. My screams mixed with Charley’s.

I hugged Momma tight and told her how much I loved her and missed Daddy. She hugged back tight, too. She told me how sorry she was that it all happened the way it did. I heard her kiss Charley and watched her fall into her lonely twin bed in the other corner of the room. Charley and I would need to be sneaky-quiet getting up and ready for the gate. Momma worked so hard.

All day kids dropped by the gatehouse to place their orders for the next scraggly wanderer they wanted us to conjure through the gate. Ronald McDonald was everyone else’s first choice, but I wanted to get a Throwing Man like the one that used to toss your food at the baseball park. I missed hot dogs with celery salt.

“Hey, Charley,” I asked in my sweetest little sister voice, “If things had gone better that day, what kind of food do you think that couple could’ve made for us?”

Charley looked at me cross, he didn’t like it when I wanted to talk about that day. I didn’t bring it up all that often, only when the nightmares got really scary. Momma couldn’t talk about it with me. Besides Daddy, Charley was the only other person who had been there. I waited quietly and listened to the generator in the distance.

“I don’t know. What do you think?” It was his favorite stall-tactic; answer a question with another question.

“Well they had that southern drawl, maybe they would have cooked up a pot of jambalaya,” I said.

“Yeah, jambalaya with crawfish and frog’s legs.” Charley made a gross face. I made one back.

“Daddy hated spicy food,” I said, and Charley didn’t say anything. I didn’t feel like talking anymore either.

We sat and watched the road up to the gate. Thank God nobody came by all day.

The shift bell rang, and we got to the kitchen-common as the first pizzas were coming out of the ovens. The little kids had decorated the dining room with crayon-drawn red-and-white checkered placemats and cutouts that were supposed to be tomatoes, cheese and sausages. The pizza that night was tastier than the first night. Pizza Lady said it was because she made the dough the night before and that made it nice and chewy. I figured it was because we had lots more toppings. Folks must have gotten over themselves because everyone had kicked in a little something and was eating pizza. I had a slice with smoky ham. No pineapple though.

The adults didn’t talk as long that night, and instead of dishes and laundry the kids sang along with the Pizza Lady and her karaoke machine. We sang Disney songs. I got to sing into the microphone. All the while, Charley and Momma and the adults made plans for taller fences, more lookout points, and a new job for the kids. Somebody must have carried me home because I woke up in my bed not remembering how I got there.

In the morning, the Pintzopoulos’s oldest son Marc went to the gate with Charley. Momma sent me to the Cooper’s place.

“You pay close attention, right?” Momma said. “You have a new job now, working in the kitchen-common.”

“I’m not working the gate with Charley?” Off the gate? No shooting? No strangers? Really?

“Not any more. Charley, Mrs. Pintzopoulos and I think Marcus is good enough with his pistol to work the gate now,” Momma said. “Besides, we need you to take very special care of the gift the Pizza Lady gave us.”

I worked all morning with Pizza Lady, learning to take care of our very own gooey glob of dough she called a “starter.” It was a whole bunch of little yeast critters living in a sticky mixture of flour, water and sugar. If I did my job well it would live for years and years. Pizza Lady showed me how to feed it sugar or honey, keep it just warm enough, and take just a little bit out to use in recipes.

“If I kill it, do I have to go back to working at the gate?” I asked.

“Your mother says you were good at guarding the gate. A real good shot.”

“Daddy taught us to shoot a bow and arrow when I was four and Charley was eight. Then Charley got a pellet rifle for his ninth birthday and learned to shoot. I got mad at Momma when I didn’t get one for my next birthday,” I said. “I got one for Christmas that year.”

Pizza Lady stayed quiet and stirred the bowl of dough with her wooden spoon. “Been a guard for a long time?” she asked.

“About six months, I guess,” I said. “I used to sneak away from weed-duty in the gardens to sit with Daddy and Charley at the gate.”

“So you were there the day your Daddy was killed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Was that the day you shot those two people?”

“I had to,” I said as my eyes filled with tears. “They shot Daddy, and Charley was out of bullets. They were mean strangers, I had to keep them out of the Hold.”

Pizza Lady pulled the ball of dough out of the bowl and gave half of it to me to knead. She showed me how to fold it and stretch it. It was soft and warm, and a little bit sticky. The smell of yeast made my stomach grumble with hunger and dried my tears.

“You’re an amazing little girl,” she said. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but instead I kept kneading my dough.

Once the dough was smooth, we put it into bowls to rise and covered them with damp towels. Pizza Lady sat me down at the dining table to copy down recipes from her book.

Cradling my jar of starter –- I’d decided to name it Louie after the city Pizza Lady had grown up in -– I performed my last job as gatekeeper; I walked Pizza Lady out to the road. I would always carry my pistol for big emergencies, but it would stay in my shoulder bag, tucked away nice and neat.

“Any questions before I go?” Pizza Lady asked as we walked through the back door of the gatehouse. The Pizza Lady looked older to me as she unlatched the gate and swung it open. She stepped through, swung the gate back and checked to make sure the latch was closed. I worried about her going back out there, all by herself. “If you don’t have any questions, it’s time for me to go.”

I found that I did have a question.

“Do you do this everywhere you go?” I asked.

“Do what?” she asked.

“Fix everyone.”

“I didn’t fix anyone.”

“Because of you, everyone in the Hold shared dinner last night. And they’re happier,” I said. “And because of you, I don’t have to work the gate.”

“I guess that’s my job,” she said and smiled.

With her karaoke machine under wraps, a letter from Momma introducing her to the Boone’s Hold in her pocket, and six pounds of sugar in her shoulder bag she started down the road.