The Pantry Door Nobody Voted To Close

Thurman preached on Zacchaeus, the little man who climbed the tree, for twenty minutes and no more. It had nothing to do with any of us, and I was glad of it. When the plates came down the pews I put in my own envelope. Around me I heard the small scratching of the pencils from the pew racks, a few of them, and I took it for people writing out their checks.

Wally stood at the back of the sanctuary, where the treasurer waits with the offering bag until the plates come around. I did not turn to look at him. I did not need to.

Then the benediction. Then we went down the stairs to the fellowship hall, and it was ham.

I do not know how to tell the next hour except to say it was ordinary, which was what I had hoped for and not what I expected. Velma Tate, who had looked at me so hard in the pew, stood at the head of the serving line and put a plate in Jolene Marsh’s hand and said, “The scalloped potatoes are Opal’s, and they’re better than they look.” Shelly Halvorsen had brought a green bean casserole made out of cans off my Tuesday shelf. It went around the table and came back scraped clean, and three women asked her for the recipe, and Shelly told them, with her chin up.

Hattie’s rolls disappeared in four minutes. Somebody’s husband asked who made them, and Pearl Brandt said, “Hattie Ruble,” and he said, “Well, I’ll be,” and took two more.

The folding chair across from Teddy Halvorsen was the only one open at his table, and Delbert Wheeler took it. I did not see him choose it and I did not see him avoid it. He asked Teddy what he had done at the implement plant. Teddy said he ran a hydraulic press line. Delbert said his nephew had run the same line until the spring. They were off into fittings and tonnage and a foreman named Mackey they both disliked, and for twenty minutes neither of them said a word that had anything to do with the pantry, and I sat two tables over with a plate I could not eat from and watched two men talk about a machine.

Wally came into the hall last.

He had stayed upstairs until the room was full, I think. He filled a plate at the end of the line and stood holding it, looking over the room for somewhere to sit. There was one empty chair left in the whole hall, at the end of the long table by the windows, next to Hattie Ruble.

I saw him see it. I saw him think about the kitchen, where he could eat standing at the counter. Then he walked over and sat down.

Hattie did not look at him. She picked up the basket with the last four rolls in it and held it out sideways.

“Roll, Walter?”

“Mrs. Ruble.”

“I made them myself. I’m told we’re the wrong crowd, so I thought I would bring something.”

Wally’s ears went red, exactly like Teddy’s. He took a roll. He tore it open and looked at it, and then he ate it, and then he took another one, with his eyes on his plate, and Hattie went back to her ham as though she had passed the salt.

She said nothing else to him the whole meal. And he did not leave.