Marked

Men traveled the road looking for work. Sometimes they knocked at the old woman’s door and asked for food. She gave what she had. One day, a hungry man let slip that her fencepost had the hobo’s mark. Her house was ‘good for a handout.’ She went right along feeding the men. Some days she baked extra bread, maybe pie and always soup with a little meat in it. Some days, the old woman went out to the fencepost with a little lampblack and made the mark nice and dark so the men could see it plainly from the road.