My Boys Worked the Food Bank Line

I watched Jackson watch them. You could see it in him, the way he looked at each one and then looked at the box and then looked at them again.

Around ten o’clock, a woman about my age came up with a girl in a purple coat. The girl saw Jackson and stopped walking.

Jackson saw her and stopped with a can of green beans in each hand, and for a second nobody at that table moved.

“Hey,” the girl said, and Jackson said, “Hey,” back to her. Her mother gave me their number.

She had on scrubs under her coat, like she was on her way to a shift, and she did not look at me much. I did not look at her much either.

Jackson packed their box. He did it carefully, the cereal on top, the eggs in their own little sack.

When it was done I handed it across, and the mother said thank you, and the girl looked back at Jackson one more time.

Then she waved. A small wave, just at her hip, where her mother would not see. Jackson waved back the same way.

After they went out the glass door into the cold, Jackson stood there for a minute with nothing in his hands.

“That’s Kaylee,” he said finally. “She sits in front of me in science. She got the highest score on the cell test.”

I told him okay. That was all I said. He went back to packing. But he packed different after that. He stopped slamming the cans.

He started looking up when each family came to the table and saying, “Hi.” Just hi. I never told him to.

It was Wyatt I almost missed. I had my head down checking numbers, and I kept seeing him reach into the pocket of his winter coat and then reach into a box, quick, like he was stealing something instead of the other way around.

The third time, I put my good hand on his wrist. He froze. He had a granola bar in his fingers.

The peanut butter chocolate chip kind I bought for his lunches, because they were on sale at Aldi and he liked them better than anything.

“What are you doing, bud?” I asked him. His ears went red, and he said, “Nothing.”

“I had some left,” he said. “In my coat. From the box you get. I’m putting them in the ones for kids.

“When the paper says there’s kids.” The intake sheet listed how many children were in each house. He had been reading it upside down off my clipboard.

I asked him why. My voice did not come out right when I did.

“For a kid like me,” he said, and he shrugged the way his brother shrugs. “So they get something good. Not just beans and stuff.”

I let go of his wrist. I had to look at the shelves for a while.

There was a whole row of canned pears, and I read the labels on every one of them, front and back, until I could see straight again.

Deb walked by and saw my face, and saw Wyatt, and did not say a thing. She just put her hand on his head for a second as she went past.

A few minutes later she came back with a whole case of granola bars from the back and set it on our table.

“Those go in the kid boxes,” she told Wyatt. “You’re in charge of it.” He nodded like she had made him a sergeant.