Sid Sideways

First tray out

Sid Sideways comes in before the Juniper Flat pie shop's door looks open from the freight siding. He checks the ovens, then gives the cold pastry room a chance to warm around his elbows. The proprietor once left him in charge of a bake for a market order that grew between the call and the collection. He rushed his first tray, counted cousins who could carry boxes and worked out that he still had time to do the next one right. His aunt Rosa carried the first undamaged tarts to the counter with the two scorched ones tucked under the cloth for herself. Sid wanted to make her a separate tray. Rosa told him what his work for the next hour was and took the cloth back from him.

These days Sid leads the early shift and has reached the point where he can spot the minute somebody goes quiet before putting a tray into the oven. He can also turn that minute into a loud joke if the person looks as though they might laugh. Occasionally he guesses back to front.

The start people saw

The Volkswagen SP2 was going off to the left from a stop on his first closed practice visits. Sid laughed the first time somebody along the rail said Sideways. For a while he kept giving that person more to laugh about. Then Rosa came down and watched from the other side, where she could see his hands ahead of his face. He was steering a hair before the car had moved, as if he could get an early corner in and make the start look quick. She asked him to put something on the end wall he'd want to look at after the release.

Sid used a bright patch of the rail to keep his eyes fixed until he felt the car take its weight. He found that it ran straighter and gave him time to commit deliberately to his first turn. The quiet improvement left him scrambling for some other thing to say when he climbed out. Rosa mentioned that he had spent the whole drive looking at a place he hadn't told her to watch. He went round to stand beside her and let her show him the line she could see.

A test with refreshments

Finn Flatout and Cam Berr compare weather notes for closed practice, and Sid has been asking to get his SP2 into the next test. He started bringing jam tarts to these discussions so they might go on long enough to get a day agreed. Finn had already taken one before Sid finished describing what he could see when they walked the damp side of the lane. Sid brought a second box and found Cam had left him a bit of room on the sheet. He meant to ask whether that space was for an observation or for a whole car. There was a laugh coming from Finn's bay by then. Sid laughed along, but he made Cam give him a straight answer.

Two that match

Rosa told Sid she'd have a seat at the very next test if he could put two starts down the same strip while they practiced alone. He wants to come back afterward and teach a couple of the newer bakers how to use the closed practice lane on a calm day. Back at the pie shop there is a small new box on the ledge beside his tray, with the place for a fourth tart still open.