Supper for Fifty Two Boys

At nine Glen Sutter’s flatbed backed up our driveway with twelve folding tables and forty-eight chairs from the Legion hall. Glen is seventy-three, a retired lineman who still looks like he could carry a transformer on his back, and he never says more than four words at a time.

“Where?” he said. “Along the fence. Two rows.” “Fine.”

Three other men showed up behind him without being asked: Wes from the feed store, a man named Wendell who used to drive the milk truck, and the bus driver, Mr. Nash, who parked the big yellow school bus at our curb a good six hours early because he said he did not want to risk the schedule.

By ten the driveway was full of men in canvas coats carrying tables and not talking, and I stood at the kitchen counter making coleslaw for fifty with tears running down my face that I was too tired to wipe.

Women came too. Bev had her beans. A girl from the church two blocks over brought six dozen buns, still in the bakery boxes.

Somebody’s grandmother dropped off a tray of pickles and went home without giving her name. Dr. Peterson’s wife brought eight gallons of sweet tea in her husband’s cooler.

I did not ask for any of it. People just kept turning up with something in their hands. By eleven I had eight shoulders to pull.

I put on gloves and tore into the first one at the long table Glen set up beside the smoker, and the bone slid out clean.

Steam rolled off the meat into the air. A bark as dark as a boot, a pink smoke ring under it, the meat falling apart in long wet strands.

Cole came home from school at noon, early release, because Burkett lets out for a playoff game. He walked up the drive with his duffel on his shoulder and saw the tables, the smoke, the bus at the curb, his father in a seed cap slicing the first shoulder into the foil pans.

He stopped on the gravel and stood there a minute. “Mom,” he said. “Is this all for us?” “It’s for the team.” “All of this?”

“Go put your jersey on, honey. They’ll be here at one.” I will remember the next hour for the rest of my life.

They came up our street in twos and threes, and then in a long maroon line. Fifty-two boys in their game jerseys, the way Coach Hanson makes them dress for the pregame meal, the big ones and the small ones.

Sophomores who looked about twelve. Seniors with beards. A kid named Rollie Weiss, our left guard, who was six feet four and shy as a deer.

They stopped at the edge of the driveway. For a moment nobody moved. The smell of the smoke hung over our yard, and I saw the whole line of them breathe it in at the same time.

Then Mr. Nash laughed out loud from the bus door and said, “Well, go on, boys. She didn’t do it for the view.” And they came.

I stood at the smoker with the lid up in my red flannel and my apron, and I could feel the heat of the smoker on my face. Lavern stood at the folding table slicing and pulling.