HISTORY A PRIVATE DEVILED EGGS

ASHLEY MEMORY is the author of a novel, Naked and Hungry (Ingalls Publishing Group, 2011), and a poetry collection, Waiting for the Wood Thrush (Finishing Line Press, 2019). This Randolph County resident has published in various venues, including Poets & Writers, WIRED, and Real Simple; has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize; and has won the Doris Betts Fiction Prize twice.

A native of Virginia, KRISTA HARRIS resides in Southwest Colorado. She earned her BFA at ECU. Her works are represented in galleries across the country; in North Carolina, she is represented by Hodges Taylor Contemporary Gallery in Charlotte, NC. She has exhibited her art in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and her work is widely held in private and corporate collections, including Duke Memorial Medical Center in Durham, NC; the historic Westory Building in Washington, DC; the Colorado Governor’s Mansion; the Ritz Carleton Hotel on Grand Cayman Island; and the Ingenious Group based in London. Her art also appeared in NCLR Online in 2019

In the South, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a platter of deviled eggs is the one dish welcome at any gathering, from weddings to funerals. Unlike the soggy remnants of coleslaw or macaroni salad, or that one dry brownie, there are never any leftovers. Who doesn’t have room for just one more golden tsunami of tang in a spongey little white boat?

Every good Southern cook hails their own recipe, and the formula is as hotly debated as the one for sweet tea or hummingbird cake. But what does it mean to “devil” an egg? According to Kristin Donnelly, who wrote “6 Dishes to Devil Other than Eggs” for Food & Wine in May 2017, “[t]o ‘devil’ food means to season it aggressively, perhaps with a bit of chile or black pepper heat.”

My aunt Susan, a retired flight attendant with a fondness for exotic cuisine, concurs. She swears by a teaspoon or two of Dijon mustard. “I love a little kick,” she says. On the other hand, my friend Lenton, a watercolorist, pooh-poohs unnecessary spices. “Call me a traditionalist, but nothing should compete with the texture and taste of the almighty egg.”

When the pandemic hit, my church, Science Hill Friends Meeting in Asheboro, North Carolina, ceased hosting events with food. I missed these gatherings, the fare as much as the fellowship, especially the array of deviled eggs. In the summer of 2021, I frequently prepared them at home, just for my husband J.P. and me. Nothing beats the heat like a cold supper.

I love making these tasty little tidbits as much as I enjoy devouring them, and I find the act of halving and popping out the yolks particularly satisfying. I mash those golden demilunes with two forks, and for some reason that old folk saying – “speak of the devil and he’ll appear at your elbow” – always circles through my head.

“Better be careful,” said the homeless man who turned up on our church porch in July. “Helping someone like me might invite Satan into your life.”

My heart beat a little faster as I handed him a turkey sandwich, uneasy by his inability to look me in the eye. I grasped the rail of the meeting house as I spoke, grateful that J.P. stood beside me. “We’re not worried.”

When we asked, he mumbled his age, twenty-eight, and his name, Gabriel. I wondered if he found irony in the fact that he shared a moniker with one of the seven archangels in the Bible, a messenger known for delivering good news rather than fear.

He didn’t touch the sandwich, although he did pop open the cold Coke. Someone else had dropped off a pair of jeans and two new shirts, but he had left this bundle unopened. He preferred his own attire: ripped canvas pants over long underwear and a sleeveless black hoodie, which he frequently adjusted to cover his hair, already thinning. His nose veered a little to the right, perhaps the sign of an injury or deviated septum. I examined his arms and was relieved to see that they were free of needle marks. Given his discomfort with our presence, I wondered if he was autistic.

J.P. retreated to the safety of the mechanical world, the world of the fixable. “Do you need those to see?” he asked, gesturing toward Gabriel’s glasses. One of the fuzzy and scratched lenses lay at a nearly forty-five-degree angle. He handed them to J.P., who tried unsuccessfully to pop the lens back into position.

Gabriel wouldn’t tell us where he came from, but he brightened when we asked him about where he was headed. “Maine.”

He had arrived at Science Hill on a kiddie bike, which he had leaned against the rail. A flashlight had been crudely tethered to the handlebars with duct tape. My heart surged with pity.

“On that?” we both cried. Your faith, I wanted to say, is stronger than you know. Still, I bristled at the prospect of what our aid might entail. We were knee-deep in the renovation of a 1969 Airstream with spare parts strewn all over our garage. I didn’t have time for a new project.

“We’ll be back to check on you,” I offered lightly, as we walked away and drove back to the comfort of our to-do list.

People have been spicing eggs since the days of the Romans. Medieval cooks in the fifteenth century added cheese and raisins to the yolks, and, curiously, dusted the egg halves with sugar. Today, the act of “deviling” an egg varies widely, according to individual tastes and traditions. For my friend Ruth, deviled eggs wouldn’t be deviled eggs without the smooth backdrop of mayonnaise. Specifically, Duke’s. None of that Miracle Whip or low-fat stuff.

My childhood pal Sarah Beth adds a tablespoon of hot pickle relish to her eggs. My writing buddy Pat offers the ultimate naughtiness: a dribble of caviar on top.

My late grandmother Wilma abided by the classic method in her dog-eared 1968 edition of Better Homes and Garden’s New Cook Book. With yolks from six hard-boiled eggs, she’d add a quarter cup of mayo, one teaspoon each of white vinegar and prepared mustard, one half-teaspoon of salt, and a dash of pepper. She’d pulverize the final concoction with her handheld mixer and spoon it neatly into the whites.

I am always riffing off this time-worn recipe, often using soy or Worcestershire sauce instead of salt. Sometimes I use pickle juice instead of vinegar and add a sprinkle of red pepper. The devil for me comes with peeling the eggs, a process that invariably results in shredding one or two, enough to make Wilma tsk-tsk in her grave. But the taste is all that matters, that sweet-sour-slightly peppery flavor of the seasoned yolk, and the comforting lump of an egg in my belly.

Membership in the Missions & Outreach Committee didn’t come with a recipe. We aimed to serve as the “hands” and “feet” of God since, according to a prayer by St. Teresa of Avila, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” As Chair, I took the lead and organized our efforts, usually centered around easing sickness, hunger, and death in the community. Last year, we collected funds – what is known as a love offering among Quakers – for a local woman who lost her son in a car accident, and I helped care for her youngest children after school while she finished her nursing degree.

To my knowledge, no one had ever camped out on our porch, an event that flummoxed the entire congregation. Everyone who drove by and spotted the destitute young man sent an email to our listserv. The messages teetered between concern – I have clothes that might fit him. . . . Does he need toiletries? Should someone tell him about the outdoor spigot? – and tongue-clucking – On drugs, I bet . . . Someone should call the sheriff.

Someone did, and a deputy stopped by, callously offering to drop Gabriel off at the Guilford County line, something we had never thought of, but which I suspect is standard practice. Yet another round of emails. Remember last year how someone stole the air conditioning unit at the Fellowship Hall? We can’t be too careful. . . . Spending the night on our porch is not breaking the law. . . . What would Jesus do?

Our new friend didn’t make it easy to help him. Save a mysterious voucher for food stamps from Buncombe County, Gabriel lacked any identification. My fellow committee member Ann, retired from the county records office, convinced a former co-worker to locate a copy of his birth certificate so that he could secure a temporary I.D., which he would need to get a job. That’s how we learned he had been born in Texas. I thought of my own adult son, Dashiel, who had once struggled to find his footing in New York City. If he had fallen on hard times, I hope that someone would have helped him in the same way or, at the very least, reached out to me. On the second day, we swung by the church to check on Gabriel and I asked him if he had any family whom we should contact.

“That would be invoking the Devil,” he said, fixing dark, inscrutable eyes on mine, and then I suddenly understood I had crossed a boundary. As I slid back into the car, telling J.P. to drive on, I suspected we might never see him again. By dawn the next morning he was indeed gone, having peddled away on that kiddie bike with those blurry and rickety glasses.

I admit to feeling a tiny wave of relief. We had indeed done all we could. More than enough, I thought, as I folded mailers advertising Bible School. I must, I noted, pick up some new labels – thirty labels per page rather than just fourteen. Next, I assembled a notebook with photos of the various designs of meat, cheese, and fruit we could use as a reference when creating food trays for receptions. These preoccupations steered away any thoughts of Gabriel.

The work of our committee was celebrated at every turn, and I felt a tickle of gloat after hearing someone say: What would we do without Ashley? Then I remembered a former boss who made it a practice to publicly commend the lowest performers at staff meetings in an effort to shore them up, and my smugness evaporated immediately.

The next morning, I woke up thinking about Gabriel. I remembered all those times when I couldn’t reach Dashiel. Just a quick text, I would beg him, just to let me know you’re okay. Gabriel had left Science Hill on a kiddie bike, and if he planned to go to Maine, he would traverse major highways with blurry glasses and only a backpack. And of course, that demon. He had been charging a smartphone on our porch, although he claimed to lack the app for calls or texts and could accept only emails. Where did you go? I wrote and was relieved to hear back by lunch: I rode out, a week’s a little long to be on your porch. I wouldn’t recommend you help that much. Satan has it out for people, humans here on earth or anything that’s considerably beneficial towards God’s will.

His words – that odd mix of prophecy and pessimism – led me to believe that he must have come from a fundamental Christian background, the kind that spoke more of evil than goodness. His diction also confirmed his intelligence. He had resisted our charity, but he lingered under our roof for two nights, feeling safe enough to sleep on a bedroll someone brought him. Helping him wasn’t going to be easy. It would take something I didn’t know if I had – not a tool or a recipe or a to-do list.

I breathed and offered up an old Schwinn, a twenty-one-speed green and white touring bicycle donated by my friend Tammy. Much more suitable for a trip to Maine, I wrote, not knowing where he was or how we would get it to him. Let us know if we can help. But this time he didn’t respond. So I just prayed –for him and for me.

I recently streamed a televised adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale starring Elisabeth Moss and Joseph Fiennes. The handmaids, forced to submit to the male hierarchy for the purposes of bearing children in this totalitarian state, are encouraged to eat eggs for fertility. On Episode Three of Season Four, “The Crossing,” the Commander allows the girls to eat from a buffet usually reserved for the elite, not young “maids” with sinful pasts. “The deviled eggs,” he says, with a malicious glint in his eye, “are delicious.”

“What’s the one ingredient you must have in your deviled eggs?” I asked a woman in purple tie-dyed overalls, young enough to be a handmaid herself. We were both pumping gas, and I imagined that anyone in such a whimsical outfit wouldn’t mind an odd question from a stranger.

“Humm. . . .” she said, before suddenly uttering “Paprika!”

Of course, I thought, trying to quash the little comparison with my father’s wife, Vickie, who always added an extra syllable to the middle of the world, making it sound like “pap-per-ica.” My angst at my parents’ divorce and Dad’s decision to marry a woman just three years older than me had long passed, but minor vestiges popped up occasionally, such as when my educated father began mispronouncing words the same way Vickie did. Such as the word “balsamic,” which he now utters as “balslamic,” a veritable vinegar to my ears.

The last time I made deviled eggs for them, I boiled more than I needed, setting aside four extra egg white halves. That way I ended up with a generous wave of filling in each one, and as a final flourish, I topped it with an olive slice. “There you go again,” J.P. whispered, “trying to show up Vickie.”

While I believed in the Devil, I wasn’t afraid of him. At fifty-four, I knew I had far more to fear from the evil that brewed in my own heart, those insidious snarky thoughts I had fought all my life. Deep down, I knew my irritation at Dad’s mispronunciations stemmed from envy at his closeness with Vickie, when I should have been grateful for the happiness she gave him. Then there was my neverending annoyance at J.P.’s clutter and my own – old books, old typewriters, old clocks – yet how privileged we were to suffer from an abundance of prosperity! And how I regretted my own prattle in the stream of church gossip – who pulled their weight and who didn’t. My judgment of others, no doubt, flowed from my own insecurities.

I also lacked patience, a fact borne by my failure to peel cooked eggs cleanly. Did my friend Pat understand how much her recommendation rubbed against my nature? I wanted an easy fix.

“Cover the cooked eggs with cold water,” she said. “Change it out again. Crack the eggs against the bottom of the pan. Let them sit for a while.”

But I did it. I made myself wait after boiling a batch of eggs, and not only did I not burn my fingers, for the first time in my life, each egg slipped as easily from its shell as a tangerine from its skin. “Would you look at this – ” I marveled to J.P., holding up a glossy white oval. A new frontier for me.

“Guess what?” J.P. shouted to me from the living room, not having heard me. “They say that William Shatner is going into space.”

“Good for him,” I said. “Good for him.”

Sensitive to our current tribulation, our pastor, John Porter, preached a sermon that seemed made to order.

“A certain Samaritan,” John said, quoting Luke 10:33, “as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on

“Why do you think Gabriel keeps warning us of the Devil?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” admitted our bespectacled pastor. “But in my experience, some people use the Devil as an excuse.”

Aha. I hadn’t thought of this. A defense mechanism. Maybe Gabriel was afraid of us. He very well may have sensed my irritation at how his presence interrupted the easy pace of my life. Throwing up the Devil might save him from rejection.

Retired after a long career in the Quaker ministry, John served Science Hill in an interim capacity. His gentility and good humor had helped heal our church after the chasm created by the departure of our last pastor. After counseling our community on deep matters such as forgiveness and grief, he was caught off guard, I’m sure, by my next question.

“What do you make of the connection between churches and our fondness for deviled eggs?”

He tilted his head for a moment, letting the query sink in. “You’ve stumped me. To be honest, I’ve never thought about it.” He shrugged guiltily. “But I do love them.”

Of course I asked him. I had to. “Vinegar,” he said. “You have to use vinegar.” But ever the peacemaker, John grinned and quickly added: “And a little bit of sugar.” him.” He then related the parable I had heard long ago, but the words resonated more deeply. This Samaritan not only bound up a stranger’s wounds, he set him on his very own donkey, brought him to an inn, and paid the keeper in advance for future expenses.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” I told John afterwards. And my face burnt with shame. A true Good Samaritan didn’t just do what was convenient.

Just one week after Gabriel’s flight, I received a rambling email. My bicycle broke, the right pedal has been having some problems for a while now. I could’ve been hurt really bad, the bike and most parts are just really old and rusted too bad.

I was glad to hear from him, but again, a little flustered at the timing. Today we planned to break down the bathroom area of the Airstream and tear out the damaged subfloor. With my hair, pinned messily on the top of my head, my holey T-shirt and lack of makeup, I looked like a demon myself.

I thought of John’s sermon, and the words of Jesus in Luke 9:23. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.” Could I give up a sunny day we’d devoted to our own project? The weather was indeed perfect, albeit hot. There wasn’t a chance of storms anywhere. It was also the ideal day to pack up the bike in the truck and carry it to Gabriel. A Schwinn for a donkey. I just prayed he wasn’t too far away.

Where are you? I wrote back. As it turned out, he had made it only as far as Graham, less than fifty miles away. And he told me that he’d been sleeping under the porch of a Presbyterian church.

“He’s in Graham!” I announced to J.P. “Let’s take the bike to him!”

“Not before I make a little platform for the cargo rack,” J.P. replied. We’d kept Tammy’s bike in our garage, hopeful that we’d hear back. “The front basket is too wobbly. A little piece of plywood would be a much better rack for his backpack.”

I emailed to say we’d be there as soon as we could. For once, there was no talk of the Devil. There was also a glimmer of gratitude in Gabriel’s final reply. I really would appreciate the help.

“He needs a new pair of glasses,” I told J.P. on the way.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

This surprised me. I’m far more likely to give to the homeless than my conservative husband, who, the last time we passed a panhandler holding a sign that said “I’ll take anything,” muttered: “How about a lecture in economics?”

Glasses would be a big expenditure, but I didn’t worry about the money. I worried more about whether Gabriel would accept them. Would he cite the Devil again?

The concept of the “Devil” is not limited to JudeoChristian traditions. All major world religions bestow a name on the destructive force that thwarts humanity from a greater purpose. In Islam, he is Iblis and in Zoroastrianism, he is Ahriman, which is traditionally written upside down to underscore his repulsiveness. In Buddhism, the antagonist is Mara and Hinduism offers several classes of demons, including the man-eating rakshasa

In the Old Testament of the Bible, we encounter the title “ha satan,” which in Hebrew means simply “the adversary” or “the accuser.” Ancient texts from the Book of Numbers even refer to God’s helper, the angel who blocked the path of Balaam on his way to curse the Israelites, as “a satan.” In the Book of Job, the figure of Satan shows up with the angels who present themselves to the Lord and dares God to challenge the faith of Job, his most loyal follower. In this role, curiously, Satan functions almost like an associate, consulting with God and dialing up the torture. In fact, the words between the two sound very similar to the conversation among co-workers after a long holiday, were it not for the ominous subtext. “Where have you come from?” asks God. Satan’s reply: “From roving about on the earth, and from walking back and forth across it.”

The “Devil,” sometimes addressed “Satan,” emerges as a consolidated character representing the ultimate evil power only in the New Testament. The word “devil” comes to us from the Greek word diabolos (from dia-bollein) which means to “slander,” “attack,” and “throw across.” I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that this wicked being is personified with particular gusto in the New Testament because here God is also personified, in the figure of Christ. In the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, God actually leads Jesus into the wilderness to face Satan. The adversary offers the fasting Christ food and riches, and does indeed “throw” his words against the power of God.

Gabriel’s appearance in my life seemed to be my own walk through the wilderness. This mumbling young man with the tattered pants and crooked nose gave me the opportunity to do better. To liberate me from complacency and inspire me to keep evolving. “Not quite right,” I pronounced after tasting my latest batch of deviled eggs. It was the dill pickle juice, I decided. “Too sour.”

When we found Gabriel waiting outside the Sheetz station in Graham, he wore a different pair of glasses, lenses that only magnified rather than corrected, something he’d picked up at the local Goodwill. When J.P. brought up the idea of a new pair, he shuffled his feet and looked away.

“That would be most welcome,” he said stiffly. I didn’t fret about the money. The difficult part was finagling an eye exam and a pair of glasses in the same day. We first drove to the local Walmart, where the technician informed us that such a request was out of the question. She suggested another optometrist. This one referred me to another one. Eventually, I found an eyeglass center in the nearby city of Burlington and they had an opening, although they couldn’t see us right away, and now J.P. turned testy.

“I’m going to Harbor Freight,” he said, wheeling into the parking lot of a shopping center. “I need to get a set of numbered drill bits.” Then he stopped. “Do you mind? I’ll just be a minute.”

“Sure,” I said, but as I watched him walk away, I thought of the crumpled backpack in the seat beside Gabriel. What if he carried a knife? What if the Devil told him to use it on me? I gripped the door handle just to be safe, knowing I could open it and scream, if nothing else.

We sat in silence for several minutes, what felt like hours, and sweat greased my hand. How do you make small talk with a man who spoke so often of the Devil? Yet I knew he was smart, which gave me an opening.

“I bet you like to read,” I said. “Who is your favorite author?”

He paused. “Who wrote that book about 1984?”

“George Orwell,” I said, and for the first time I felt a spark of connection rather than pity or fear. The gloom in the truck lifted. 1984 remains one of my most favorite novels. The character of the doomed Winston captivated me, particularly his courage to rebel against his own devil, Big Brother, and his brief union with Julia. A glimmer of hope in a bleak world.

“That was a great book,” he said, before mumbling a few words about the relevance of a totalitarian state. Yes, we shared an appreciation of dystopia, but then I realized that this free spirit must have felt oppressed.

“You could write a book!” I exclaimed. “Think of the adventure ahead of you.”

“Mumm,” said Gabriel thoughtfully, and we were both quiet. I let go of the door handle, and exhaled, no longer anxious. But I was grateful to see J.P., who bounded back to the truck, practically sprinting. At some point I suspected he had worried about me, all alone with a virtual stranger.

“Found my drill bits!” he announced, dangling a bag in his hand, and then we drove to our appointment.

After Gabriel’s exam, a technician led us to a rack of discount frames with a pair by Armani that seemed to suit his rectangular-shaped face. Because his prescription was fairly basic, his glasses were ready within the hour. And there was a certain cosmic justice to a homeless man in threadbare pants and a hoodie wearing Armani. Walking out into the sunshine with his new glasses, he almost danced.

“The world looks so different now,” he said, turning in a circle. “This is great!”

When we took him and his new bike back to Sheetz, J.P. spent a few minutes showing him how to adjust the gears. They worked together to fasten the flashlight on the Schwinn, and with a gasp, I saw Gabriel remove a pocketknife from his bag and use it to cut a new piece of duct tape. He could have indeed used that knife on me, I realized, had the Devil told him to. But no one had heard from his demon today.

“Do you know how to get to Maine?” J.P. asked.

He nodded. “I have GPS on my phone.”

Gabriel then pedaled away from us, simultaneously cruising and braking as he mastered his new wheels.

He was indeed a free spirit. He might never hold down a regular job, and for whatever reason he preferred to be alone. I took comfort knowing that however circuitous his path to Maine, he knew he would be safe sleeping under the eaves of a church. He also knew that the Devil wouldn’t frighten people from helping him.

Was this goodbye? I wondered, watching him get smaller and smaller. But no, he circled back for one final lap, slowing by us to hold two fingers in a peace sign. My heart lurched, and tears stung my eyes. The world felt different to me now, too.

“Goodbye!” we shouted. “Take care of yourself!”

“If the Missions Committee doesn’t pay you back,” said J.P. on the way home, “I will. I just won’t tithe this month.”

I didn’t stress about it. Science Hill didn’t lack for money. What we lacked was the willingness to give our time, to help a lost soul find his way again. Today I felt something far better than pride; for the first time in weeks, I felt content.

“You old softie,” I said to J.P.

“Share your blessings,” he said, repeating the words on the marquee board of a church we drove by.

When Jesus says to his followers “You are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), he wasn’t comparing them to salt only because of the flavor. He praised them for the value they brought to the world, for in ancient times, salt was highly prized, as both a seasoning and preservative. So valuable that Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, hence the word “salary.”

As an epicure, I’ve always sought the best variety of flavors – Vietnamese cinnamon, Madagascar vanilla, Hungarian paprika – but no recipe for any dish, including deviled eggs, would ever completely satisfy me. How can it be better? I would perpetually wonder. What should I add next time? Such is the piquancy of being human. We’re always questing for ambrosia on earth. I may strive to emulate Christ and to be better, kinder, humbler, but the Devil will forever rove through the earth, sometimes as close as my elbow.

“Deviled eggs are intended to be eaten with the fingers . . . using the three-finger rule, ladies – the thumb, the index finger, and the middle finger,” writes Miss Janice, a self-described prissy Southerner, in a post on her etiquette blog. “If some of the stuffing falls onto your plate, you would use a fork to eat that part.”

Miss Janice would definitely raise an eyebrow at J.P., who pops the whole egg half into his mouth all at once. Instead, I just nibble, savoring those fleeting moments of bliss. Such as watching Gabriel cycle away from us with confidence and grace. The memory of his delight in a new view of the world. And the budding hope that along his journey to Maine he would let other people help him. I would think of Gabriel for a long time after that summer, especially on the last bite of a deviled egg: the silky yolk, a perfect balance of sweet and sour, followed by the yield of that tender pillow. n