heater, a small writing desk stocked with hempen paper and her favorite fountain pens in a fair trade coffee can, a teapot and a hot plate, and over there behind the miniature refrigerator, a stash of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes. She procured the Zebra Cakes via an online vendor known mainly for selling books, and most importantly, that shipped everything in plain brown boxes. Carolyn felt she couldnât be seen buying the Zebra Cakes in public, as their preservative-laced sugar-bomb goodness was inconsistent with her public image as a cultural thought leader. Better that people think she was adding to her library.
When St. Judeâs electronic bells rang, Carolyn looked up from her book. She hoped this day would be all her dear friend Meg prayed for, but as for herself, Christmas was rooted in a patriarchal mythology from which she had emancipated herself somewhere around her second year of grad school and she would be having none of it.
It seemed improbable that the two women would have become close, and yet when Meg posted a homemade sign on the Kwik Pump bulletin board asking for volunteers to help her establish a local food pantry, the only person to show up at the planning meeting had been Carolyn Sawchuck. Together they cleaned up the abandoned pool hall kitty-corner from the Buck Rub Bar, together they completed and submitted the paperwork to establish tax-exempt charitable status, together they solicited donations, and together they met every other Tuesday to sort and stack the donated canned and boxed goods. Every other Saturday they sacked up the food and handed it out to anyone who showed up, no questions asked.
They didnât have a lot to talk about at first. Early on, Carolyn had tried to jazz things up a bit, suggesting that they offer poetry workshops and yoga for the âunderprivileged.â Meg paused, a can of tuna in each hand, looked Carolyn square in the eye, and said, âWe are here to feed the hungry.â
âBut man cannot live on bread aloneââ
ââand thus the Lord gave us mac and cheese,â said Meg, and turned back to the shelves. Carolyn spent the next twenty minutes stacking cans and trying to figure out if she had been the object of a threat or the butt of a joke.
From that moment forward the two women worked in a mostlywordless tandem, meeting for the sorting and distribution, and responding to emergency requests when needed, like when a house fire put someone out and the chief called.
In fact, they grew into an effective team: Meg in the service of the Lord, Carolyn in the service of humanism, both in service to their neighbors. But still, they didnât talk much, until the day Carolyn revealed that she had lost her longtime partner to cancer fifteen years previously.
âIâm so sorry,â said Meg, and tears leaped to her eyes. Then Meg told Carolyn about Dougie, and after that, they had more to talk about.
RISING FROM THE papasan, Carolyn set her teapot to boil again and crackled open a packet of ramen noodles. When she received her severance package, an acquaintance who ran a small mutual funds shop in Clearwater had helped invest it in a real estate trust. Early returns had been robust, allowing her to accumulate savings even while withdrawing a modest monthly stipend. Then, after taking umbrage at the rank typos peppering the Weekly Dealio , she fired off a grammatically airtight and punctilious e-mail to the editor and was to her surprise hired as a freelance copyeditor. Thanks to these twin sources of income and her modest lifestyle, Carolyn was able to afford both her apartment rent and the water tower lease.
But then she had gotten into the oil-recycling business.
The way things were going, it was bound to break her.
The whole idea had sprung from the burn barrel incident, after which Carolyn discovered that the burning of used motor oil was perhaps the least environmentally offensive means of disposal.It was also being
When St. Judeâs electronic bells rang, Carolyn looked up from her book. She hoped this day would be all her dear friend Meg prayed for, but as for herself, Christmas was rooted in a patriarchal mythology from which she had emancipated herself somewhere around her second year of grad school and she would be having none of it.
It seemed improbable that the two women would have become close, and yet when Meg posted a homemade sign on the Kwik Pump bulletin board asking for volunteers to help her establish a local food pantry, the only person to show up at the planning meeting had been Carolyn Sawchuck. Together they cleaned up the abandoned pool hall kitty-corner from the Buck Rub Bar, together they completed and submitted the paperwork to establish tax-exempt charitable status, together they solicited donations, and together they met every other Tuesday to sort and stack the donated canned and boxed goods. Every other Saturday they sacked up the food and handed it out to anyone who showed up, no questions asked.
They didnât have a lot to talk about at first. Early on, Carolyn had tried to jazz things up a bit, suggesting that they offer poetry workshops and yoga for the âunderprivileged.â Meg paused, a can of tuna in each hand, looked Carolyn square in the eye, and said, âWe are here to feed the hungry.â
âBut man cannot live on bread aloneââ
ââand thus the Lord gave us mac and cheese,â said Meg, and turned back to the shelves. Carolyn spent the next twenty minutes stacking cans and trying to figure out if she had been the object of a threat or the butt of a joke.
From that moment forward the two women worked in a mostlywordless tandem, meeting for the sorting and distribution, and responding to emergency requests when needed, like when a house fire put someone out and the chief called.
In fact, they grew into an effective team: Meg in the service of the Lord, Carolyn in the service of humanism, both in service to their neighbors. But still, they didnât talk much, until the day Carolyn revealed that she had lost her longtime partner to cancer fifteen years previously.
âIâm so sorry,â said Meg, and tears leaped to her eyes. Then Meg told Carolyn about Dougie, and after that, they had more to talk about.
RISING FROM THE papasan, Carolyn set her teapot to boil again and crackled open a packet of ramen noodles. When she received her severance package, an acquaintance who ran a small mutual funds shop in Clearwater had helped invest it in a real estate trust. Early returns had been robust, allowing her to accumulate savings even while withdrawing a modest monthly stipend. Then, after taking umbrage at the rank typos peppering the Weekly Dealio , she fired off a grammatically airtight and punctilious e-mail to the editor and was to her surprise hired as a freelance copyeditor. Thanks to these twin sources of income and her modest lifestyle, Carolyn was able to afford both her apartment rent and the water tower lease.
But then she had gotten into the oil-recycling business.
The way things were going, it was bound to break her.
The whole idea had sprung from the burn barrel incident, after which Carolyn discovered that the burning of used motor oil was perhaps the least environmentally offensive means of disposal.It was also being
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