The Artful Trade

 A Hunger for the Sweet copyright@2020 W. Maguire It's been a year since customers began arriving at Donut City before dawn each morning to buy dozens of donuts. One Monday, the shop sold out at 7:30—hours before its usual 2 p.m. closing time.  That week, regular customers had noticed that something was amiss. Every day for the past 28 years, the inseparable husband-and-wife team — Stella and John—Cambodian refugees, stood together behind the counter. But that month for the first time in decades Stella was absent. When customers asked, John quietly said she had suffered an aneurysm and had been hospitalized. John could not afford an employee. He could only see his wife after closing . . . or until that day's donut were sold out. Word spreads fast in a small town and there is still a hunger for sweetness in places where the bitterness is baked in. So soon friends and neighbors and then even strangers began to line up in the predawn dark, each waiting to order dozens of donut. P...