Nine Grandparents and a Four Dollar Lunch

“Austin Overby,” he said when I finished. “That’s the boy who waves at my truck. They threw out his dinner?”

“In the trash, Lloyd. In front of everybody.”

Norman Lacey, who has not cursed in front of women since his own wedding, said something under his breath that I will not repeat.

Alice Yost, the widowed Methodist, put her hand flat on the table. “Who do we call?”

“Nobody,” I said. “I’d get a lot of sympathy and a promise to look into it. And next Thursday some other child would be standing at that register.”

“So what’s your plan?” Lloyd said.

I turned my hand over and showed them the ink, which had faded some but you could still read it.

“There are forty-one accounts below zero across the three schools,” I said. “$1,382.15 as of yesterday. That’s the number. I want to pay it. All of it. Every child in the district, not just Austin. In cash, on Monday morning, at the front office, so that when the hot trays go out at 11:15 not one account in this town has a balance below zero.”

The table went very quiet.

“Nine of us,” the man who sold insurance said, quick with a figure. “A hundred fifty-four each.”

“Some of you can do more and some less,” I said. “Nobody counts. The point is that the number is gone.”

“They’ll just run up again by Christmas,” Alice said.

“They will. Which is why the second half matters more.” I took a breath. “The school board meets Tuesday night. I’ll ask for five minutes. I won’t name a single person. I’ll put one piece of paper in front of those five people, and I want all of you in the front row while I do it. Just sitting there.”

“Nine grandparents in the front row of the board room,” Lloyd said, and a slow grin came across his face. “I know exactly what that does in this town.”

Wilma Aldridge had said nothing the whole time. She is the quiet one of the two bake sale women, a small woman in a quilted vest who knits at the table without looking at her needles. She put them down now.

“There’s a girl in the second grade,” she said. “I’ll leave her name out of it. It isn’t mine to hand around, and her mother said I could say this much and no more. She’s been getting the cold sandwich every day since the end of September.”

I thought of the silent girl at the end of Austin’s table, and I kept the thought to myself.

“The sack comes home with the apple still in it,” Wilma said. Her voice was perfectly level. She was looking at her hands. “She says it’s for later. Somebody found a whole drawer of them.”

“I think she is saving them. I think she is afraid there won’t be one tomorrow.” She picked her needles up again, and I saw that her hands were shaking. “I’d have paid it the first week, if anyone had told us the rule.”

Alice Yost reached over and put her hand on top of Wilma’s, and left it there.