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When I reached where he was serving, the immensity of the operation hit me. “Sure.”
“Gloves are on the table.”
I donned a pair and realized I’d been wrong about Dennis. He wasn’t just donating the food, he was donating his time as well. I’d always thought the rich massaged their guilty consciences by writing checks at the end of the year to a charity here and a charity there. This was a different level of giving. I hadn’t suspected this aspect of Dennis Benson at all.
“White or dark?” he asked the next woman in line.
“A little of both,” she answered.
He cut the last of the useful meat off the carcass he was working.
I retrieved another for him from the stack on the counter, and one for myself.
He slipped the finished one into the garbage. “Thanks.”
“White or dark?” I asked the man in front of me.
“White. I like breasts.”
There was no hint of an insinuating smirk. He just preferred chicken breast meat to drumsticks or thighs.
The hall had filled with people at tables, eating away.
The two servers to my right, a man and a woman, both in suits, were also doling out chicken.
Farther down the line, ladies offered mashed potatoes, green beans, and peas. At the very last station, a lady was serving brownies and reminding each guest that the limit was one, which she enforced, regardless of the diner’s protests. By and large, the group was better mannered than the clientele at some restaurants.
To my left, it sounded like the peas weren’t faring as well as the green beans.
Several times Dennis’s shoulder brushed mine, and each time I succeeded in controlling the gasp that threatened to overcome me. I was going all high school just working next to the man, even without conversation or emotion-filled glances. Just a guy and a girl standing next to each other serving food.
It should have been easy. The touches were innocent enough, but his touch transferred electricity each time.
I looked up and decided his profile would have been one a Greek sculptor might have chosen.
“White, please,” the slight old lady in front of me said, jerking me back to reality.
“Sure. I’ve got extra dark meat, if you’d like some of that as well.”
“Extra?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She nodded vigorously as I added more to her plate.
The exchange brought out what we were doing here. This wasn’t bonus food, or a social outing, this was food they wouldn’t otherwise get to eat. Food they probably couldn’t afford.
The group ranged from the obviously homeless to those who seemed merely down on their luck. They were young and old, a few with young children, but not many.
“Thanks,” she said as she moved down the line.
My next customer asked for dark meat, preferably a drumstick. He was in luck. All the people here today were in luck, thanks to Cindy.
If she hadn’t decided on the extra ten chickens, we would have run out before serving the final person in a line, a middle-aged man in an old army jacket.
Dennis helped him. “Joe, have a little extra, if you want it.”
He knew the man’s name.
