In the Wild

A One-Sentence Story

Photo from Wikimedia in the Public Domain

One Sunday afternoon last the summer, when the skies were clear and the air was scented with roses and hops from a nearby brewery, an older, tall, thin white man wearing jeans and a black t-shirt was walking back home on a street he had walked down many times before, and as he was passing a neighborhood church—one of those newer, very plain buildings that you wouldn’t think was a church unless you noticed its name on the front—he realized that the services must have just ended because a large group of well-dressed Black people were congregating outside on the sidewalk in front of the church, when suddenly a middle-aged, full-figured Black woman, dressed in a flattering flowered dress, with coordinating heels and a hat, came up to him and said, “Help!” and, when he paused to see what was wrong, she held out a chocolate cupcake and asked, “Would you take this cupcake?” and he said, “Sure,” and she explained, “I’m trying not to eat these things,” and he said, “I’d be happy to eat it for you,” and she smiled, and said, “Thank you!” and he thanked her, too, and after that, on his way back home, he slowly ate the cupcake as he strode down the sidewalk, trying to decide what was more delicious: the cupcake or the story of how he got the cupcake.