Right in the middle at half-court, four long folding tables make a square. Their lacy tablecloths blow in the breeze from the big fans that have been wheeled in to keep out the heat and the flies.

“Oh, honey, nice to see a little baker out today!” It’s Evelyn. She’s standing inside the square of tables in a bright orange sleeveless dress and hat. She looks like a traffic cone.

“Here you go.” She hands me a green sticker and a marker. “Put your name on this and stick it right to the bottom of your pie plate. This’s so it stays anonymous.”

She leans in. “We’ve had some incidents in the past,” she says, then drops her voice to a whisper. “You know, of cheating.” Her eyes go wide. “People were submitting more than one pie. We even had one of the judges try to sneak one in once.”

I don’t say anything, because what do you say to all that? And then she winks at me, so I’m not sure if she was kidding. But I write my name and stick it on the bottom of the pie dish anyway, just in case. I leave the pie cover on. I’m waiting for the big reveal—not even Mom knows what’s under there.

It feels good to have the pie out of my hands. Now there’s nothing to do but wait and see. I pray real quick and then cross my fingers, too, just to cover all my bases.

More folding tables have been set up all along the walls for the silent auction, and Bert and Coralee and I move down the line, weaving in and around the bidders to pass the time.

There are gift certificates to Church’s Chicken and handmade dollhouses that open and close with a hinge. Quilts with sunflowers and pinwheels and grapevines hang from racks on the walls. There’s even one made from old T-shirts.

Bert picks up a vintage camera, but the man in charge of monitoring the tables takes it away from him when he almost drops it. In one corner somebody’s actually parked a canoe, complete with paddles and life jackets.

There are iPads and flat-screens and laptops, too.

Methodists do not mess around with their auctions.

Coralee is holding up an old-fashioned house phone in the shape of a piano when we hear the dinner bell clang. It’s an actual bell as big as a beach ball that they roll in once a year for the fish fry. I bet you can hear it all the way across the lake.

The line for catfish spills out into the parking lot. People at the back have to wave off the councilmen and councilwomen holding up signs and handing out stickers with their names printed on them.