The Apron at the Pantry Table
The pantry at Grace Lutheran serves anyone in the county who signs the sheet. You write your name and how many are in your house, and once a year you sign a form that says your income is under the line. Dena knew that and I knew that.
I could have called Pastor Mike that afternoon. He would have driven a box to my house himself.
But Dena would have known within the hour who told, and so would half the church. I would have made my cousin choose, in front of everyone, between being right and being family. I was not doing that to her over a box of canned green beans.
I could have gone to the next town’s pantry too. It is eighteen miles. It is open Saturday mornings, the same hours as ours, and on Saturday mornings Josh had our only truck in Cedar Rapids.
So I prayed about it. I am not a woman who prays out loud, but I sat on the edge of the tub that night with the bathroom fan going so nobody would hear, and I asked what I was supposed to do.
Sunday morning, I found out.
At Grace Lutheran, the bulletin board hangs between the coffee urns and the coat rack. It has the prayer list, the quilting schedule and a sign-up sheet for pantry volunteers. That sheet had been up there nine years, and I had walked past it every Sunday.
That Sunday there was a note at the top in Pastor Mike’s handwriting. “With the layoffs, we expect more families than ever. We need hands. Saturdays, 8 to 1.”
There were three names under it. Two of them were Dena’s husband Rick and Leon Brandt, who is eighty and still farms his home place with his grandson.
I took the pen off its string and wrote my name on the fourth line. Amber Lutz. In my best church handwriting, so there would be no mistaking it.
Josh was behind me with Maisie on his hip. He read it over my shoulder.
“You sure?” he said quietly.
“I’m sure.”
He looked at me the way he does when he is working something out on a machine. Then he nodded. “I’ll keep the kids Saturdays,” he said. “Most of those places want you to apply online anyway.”
On the way out, Pastor Mike shook my hand at the door like he does with everybody. He glanced at the sheet, then at me.
“Amber,” he said. “We’re glad to have you.”
He did not ask me why. I have always been grateful for that.
Dena saw the sheet. Of course she did. She takes it down every Saturday to count her volunteers.
She called me Tuesday night while I was folding towels on the bed.
“I saw you signed up,” she said.
“I did.”
There was a long quiet on the line. I could hear her television in the background, a weatherman talking about a cold front out of the Dakotas.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“I know I don’t.”
“If this is about Saturday…”
“It’s not about anything, Dena. You need hands. I’ve got two. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”
Another long quiet.
“Wear shoes you can stand in,” she said finally. “The floor’s concrete.” And she hung up.
That next Saturday was the second one in November. It was nineteen degrees when I left the house, and the wind was coming hard across the bean stubble at the edge of town.