The Pennies That Fed A Grade

When a child’s lunch account runs out of money, a lot of schools will not let him go hungry, which is a mercy. But they also will not give him the hot tray the other kids get. They give him a cold cheese sandwich. Every table in that cafeteria knows what the cold cheese sandwich means. It means your family is behind.

My boy got the behind sandwich because I had let his account run down to nothing, because the raise never came, because I was giving Mr. Hale my Saturdays for free and still coming up short at the end of the month.

I sat at my kitchen table that night and I felt a kind of shame I did not know how to carry. I had worked every day. I had done everything the way you are supposed to, and my son still got the sandwich that tells the whole third grade his mama cannot keep up.

Jeff called from a truck stop in Nebraska. I told him. He was quiet a long time on the line.

“Put thirty on his account tonight,” he said. “We’ll figure the rest. And honey. You don’t owe that man your Saturdays.”

I gave my notice the next morning.

Two weeks

I gave two weeks, because that is what a decent person does, and I worked them hard. I trained the kid Mr. Hale hired to replace me, a nice enough boy who did not know a lug nut from a lugnut, and I left my drawer balanced to the penny on my last Friday.

Mr. Hale did not say much that whole two weeks. He signed my timesheet. He watched me show the new kid the warehouse system. Once, near the end, he said, “You’re making a mistake,” and I said, “Maybe so,” and that was the closest we came to a fight.

On my last day I asked him about my check. He said the office would mail it.

“The office” was him. There was no office. There was Mr. Hale and a filing cabinet and a woman who came in Thursdays to do the books. But I said, “Thank you,” because I was raised to, and I drove home, and for nine days there was no check.

I called twice. The first time he said it was coming. The second time he did not pick up.

And on the tenth day I woke to the sound of gravel going into a truck bed, except it was not gravel.