Read Online The Calling by Suzanne Woods Fisher - Free Book Online Page B

all the way here and cook all those meals?” How had Bethany never noticed? She’d been working for the sisters, three days a week, for over two months. She had no idea this was where the sisters went on other weekdays. You’d think she would have noticed something. Or asked. She felt ashamed of herself. And yet it was baffling to Bethany too. How could the sisters live in a home of such clutter and chaos, yet have the wherewithal to plan and execute such a purposeful event, once a week, week after week?
    Sylvia read the look on her face and answered her questionas if she had asked it. “We’d rather be out, doing things for others, than fussing with a silly house.”
    “Sometimes, it takes two trips to get the wagons to the Grange Hall kitchen,” Sylvia said. “But it’s good exercise for us. It’s a long day. We usually get here by nine and spend the morning chopping and cutting and cooking. The kitchen opens up from twelve to one, then there’s cleanup.”
    “But why hasn’t anyone been helping you?” It was the Plain way for neighbor to help neighbor. It was what they did best.
    From the look on Sylvia’s face, the thought never crossed her mind. “It started small enough that we could manage ourselves. And then, as it got bigger, we kept finding new ways to manage. Besides, it’s summertime and farming families are busy.”
    “Where do you get the food?” Bethany asked.
    “We get most from the Lancaster County Food Bank,” Sylvia explained. “Some things, like this pork butt, are donated by the butcher on Main Street. The Bent N’ Dent gives us their canned goods that are too bent and dented to sell. The Sweet Tooth Bakery gives us their day-old pastries. Some things are from our own garden.”
    The sisters had a system for getting things in the kitchen from the wagon. They lined up along the stairs like an assembly line and passed items along. Ella had a little canvas chair and put things in the chair, then dragged the chair with her cane across the threshold and into the kitchen. She used her cane to prop open the refrigerator. Remarkably resourceful, these ladies were.
    Today, Bethany took care of the lifting. The Grange Hall kitchen was starkly clean. A whiff of Clorox lingered in the air—Bethany could see the tile floor had been recentlyswabbed. Utensils were neatly hung on hooks. The pots and pans, battered and sturdy, in every imaginable variety, were stacked below the countertop and on the shelves around the room.
    Sylvia had a system for everything. She had gone through a certification process with the Board of Health so she knew what she should serve and how to keep the kitchen sanitary. Bethany realized that she must’ve started this soup kitchen when she was in her late seventies. Amazing! Mammi Vera was only in her mid-sixties and acted like she needed full-time tending.
    Soon, the kitchen was humming. On the stove in big pots were sautéed onions and green peppers. In another pot was the pork butt in a braising liquid. As Bethany chopped onions, she glanced out the window now and then at the girls from the Group Home, sitting in the shade at the picnic table. They seemed so . . . apathetic.
    By noon, they had set tables with plastic spoons and forks and napkins, stirred up the sugary punch the sisters had created and added Dr Pepper to it, and Sylvia opened the doors.
    In walked the girls from next door, the five from the picnic bench and four more. The two knots of girls sat far apart from each other. A handful of old men walked in, a few families, and a single mother with three toddlers. There were the homeless, of course, wearing too many layers of clothes, none too clean, and young drifters and runaways, pierced and tattooed, their eyes hungry.
    Bethany had no idea there were so many down-and-outers in need in Stoney Ridge. How had she not noticed? It wasn’t easy for her to see them or to smell them. The musty scent of unwashed bodies nearly choked her. After a while, she