The Apron at the Pantry Table
I walked the six blocks. Maisie stood in the front window in her nightgown and waved at me the whole way to the corner.
There were already cars in the church lot at twenty to eight, people sitting in them with the engines running for the heat. I recognized half the cars. That was the thing. I recognized half of them.
Inside, the basement was cold until the old furnace caught up. Rick had the coffee going in the big sixty-cup percolator that every Lutheran church in Iowa seems to own. Leon was unloading flats of canned goods off a two-wheel dolly, one flat at a time, because he is eighty and knows his back.
Dena was at the end table with her clipboard. She looked up when I came down the stairs.
For one second I thought she might send me home again.
Instead, she reached under the table and pulled out a red apron, the kind with the long ties, and held it out to me.
“You’re on boxes,” she said. “Second table. Rick will show you the count. Big families get the double. Don’t give out the peanut butter until after nine, we only have forty jars.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and I tied on the apron.
Here is how it works, if you have never stood behind one of those tables. The food bank truck comes up from Cedar Rapids on Thursdays. Friday night the volunteers pack the dry boxes: canned vegetables, fruit, pasta, sauce, rice, cereal.
Saturday morning the day-old bread comes over from the Fareway. The families sign in with Dena and wait on folding chairs along the wall for their number. Then they come to the table, and somebody hands them a box.
That is all it is. A table, a box, a loaf of bread, and a person on the other side looking at you.
The first family through my table that morning was Travis and Jen Hoffman and their two boys. Travis ran a forklift at the window plant. He had been there longer than Josh.
He came up to my table and stopped. I watched him see me. I watched him do the arithmetic. Amber Lutz, Josh’s wife, behind the table in an apron.
“Amber,” he said.
“Morning, Travis. How many at your house?”
“Four.”
“Then you get the single, plus bread.” I lifted the box across to him. I had not known how heavy they were. “There’s peanut butter after nine if you want to wait.”
He took the box. Then he let out a breath, a long one, the kind a man lets out when he has been holding it since he left his driveway.
“I didn’t want to come,” he said, very low.
“I know,” I said. “I’m glad you did. Josh is home with our three, or he’d be here too.”
Jen reached across and squeezed my wrist. She did not say anything. She did not have to.
That was the whole morning. Over and over.
One hundred and twelve families came down those stairs that Saturday. Dena kept the count on her clipboard, a hash mark for each. It was the most the pantry had ever served in one day, and thirty-one of those families had somebody from the window plant.
I knew most of them. I sold them coffee five mornings a week. I had sat in the bleachers with their wives at Friday night football, and their kids were in Kaylee’s class and Owen’s Cub Scout den.