“Hey you! Yes, you old boy.” A voice calls as I sit along the pier. Across the path, the voice sounds again. It emanates near a handwritten sign advertising pie from a man in a wheelchair waving at me. He begins to walk with his left foot inching his squeaking wheelchair across the hobbled wood, seesawing his way with a prying left foot. The right held limp, scuffing only the toe as it dragged across the wood.

“You there. You old boy – can I interest you in some pie?”

The man made his way to my position and from the effort exerted, I could not abandon him now. Besides, where could I go but through him and back towards the sand? Closing in on a yard, the man scrapes to a halt with his left foot planted firm on the wood.

The moving shoe colored sludge brown, sundried and ripped, with burnt tomato shoe laces spending their dying days holding together an otherwise expired container for a foot. His other shoe, pristine save for the flattened toe, made him look ready for a lopsided ballet were it able to hold weight. Black pants hung over the tops of the shoes, the holes near the bottom waiving SOS - send relief - send new pants. His charcoal gray shirt tucked into the pants underneath a dusty wool jacket. The right sleeve had worn down from the jerking of his walk. With every sway the left foot rubbed a microscopic amount of fabric from the patch, tearing closer and closer until bare skin met the wheelchair pad. The wheelchair itself looked stolen off an old movie set, the kind that film horror stories involving ghosts and abandoned wheelchairs. This pathetic vehicle held a weighted phantom and he sat coughing to prove his existence in the natural world.

The wheelchair shook as he continued to wheeze into it. “Pardon me – any interest in pie at all, old boy?”

The hands that held onto the edges of the ancient chariot had also clutched onto the edges of too many burning cigarettes. Each of his fingers had permanent ash stains; the tips dipped in the gray substance muted his otherwise rose pink flesh. Pinkest at his cheeks and forehead, the skin there hung pure fuchsia, untainted by smoldering deathsticks. The pudgy lips pursed together under a sunburnt nose that gradated from rose red at the bottom to raw chicken pink at the top. His eyebrows, bushy and bristled with long hairs, were well acquainted with each other and decided after years of living apart to cohabitate in the middle of his brow. Underneath the brow rested the main reason people, including me, continued conversing with him: yellow eyes.

The yellowness started in the center, just after the black pupil, and then radiated into an outer rim of green. The spiral of natural colors drew people in, enchanting them like the changing of the season. It forced them to stare and while he spoke people wondered if what they were seeing were actually real. Strange eyes have that magnetism and everyone is impervious to it. Still his mouth did its best to drive the admirers away.

“Are you hungry for some pie?” The persistent lips said with gummy rebound. Checking my watch, I eye the approaching boat.

“Are you hungry for some pie, old boy?” Drifting closer the foot paddles over the sea of wooden boards.

“Pie? I’m fine, thanks.” Behind him the handwritten sign propped against the edge of the pier wooden guardrail. The sign held its place alone against a backdrop of ocean, a container of pie neither floating out in the tide nor near the sign itself.

“Are you sure? It may not look like it, but I’ve got access to the greatest kinds of pie you ever saw. Right here on this very dock. Why, it’s the pie place. Don’t you see the sign?” He whips his arm in a violent twist that almost clotheslined a running child. Indeed the handwritten sign corroborated his story. Greatest Pies You Ever Saw – 10.99 in bold print. Underneath it read Flavors be seasons, changin’ by the day.

“You see there? That there’s a sign. A sign for pie and I’m in the business. We call it the biz for short, us pie salesmen. Some days I got rhubarb, some days I hold the moistest apple, others I got that hot pecan – a fan favorite- outsold only to Momma’s blueberra.”

“Blueberra?”

“Yes old boy, blueberra. Just like the fruit. Baked into the pie and sealed in like a fart in a warm car.”

“I probably won’t order the Blueberra.”
“Aw no matter. I got red truffle cake pie and seaweed sherbert pie and Uncle Tony’s surprise tart pie. Whipped cream is extra, but you look nice so I might include it for free if you know the password. You don’t? I’ll tell ya. It’s Sea Snake Pie.”

I let the man ramble, declining to buy each type of pie the man pitched to me. At the end of the dock the boat’s passengers had disembarked, corralling in a jumbled army on march towards the shore. Pepe’s signature red beanie flamed above the herd.

“I should get going. I’ve got to meet my friend down at the end of the dock.”

“Well old boy that’s alright. If ya change your mind I’ll be here slinging pies. I tell ya what – I’ll keep my eye on you.” I left him pulling down his right cheek to reveal more of his strange eye.

Pepe and I shook hands like brothers do, clasping onto the palms before pulling in for a free arm hug. I carry his bag as we walk back towards the sand.  Near the man in the wheelchair I nod to him. Pepe doing the same before motioning for me to drop the bag.

“What’s up?”

“I have something for this guy. I never get to do this.” Pepe said, digging through the sack, victorious with a Styrofoam treasure. Pepe walked the Styrofoam to the man in the wheelchair. I couldn’t catch the sentence he told Pepe and winked at me, nodding before pointing at his sign with a shrug in a last silent attempt to sell me pie. Pepe returned chuckling and we continued walking.

"What’s so funny? What’d you give that guy in the wheelchair?”

“Oh. I had a full lunch on the island, came back with dessert. Figured the guy could use a slice of lemon meringue pie.”

“You gave him pie?”

“Ya. He asked if I wanted to trade. Said something about the ‘biz.’ His mind is as crazy as his eyes. Did you see ‘em? Wonder what that guy does all day.”

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Fun fact: I wrote this story after hearing the chorus from DNCE's song "Cake by the Ocean." I combined it with an encounter I had with a homeless man in my city. Here's another, more true (but not completely true), story.