"Sandwich cart, downtown."
He nodded slow. "You know what to do with a real bird?"
"My grandmother kept chickens. I know."
He gave her wholesale on the second visit. By the third, he was holding aside the best for her.
She set the cart on Quarter Plaza on a Tuesday morning. Wrote the menu in chalk: Pulled pork sandwich, summer succotash, hand pie peach. Lit the grill at 6:00.
Mr. Wilson, a retired postal worker, 72 years old, from three blocks away, was her first paying customer at 8:15. He took one bite of the sandwich, sat down on the folding stool, and looked up.
"You cook like somebody who's been doing this a long time."
"Yes, sir."
"Where are you from, down South?"
"Mississippi."
He nodded as if that confirmed something. "I'll see you tomorrow."
He came back every morning that week. By Friday, the line was eleven people long.
The third week, Tony Walsh found her: 19 years old, three weeks aged out of foster care, sleeping on a cousin's couch, a fresh black eye from somewhere he wouldn't talk about. He asked for work. She handed him a coffee, an apron, and an onion.