Читать книгу The Family Gathering - Робин Карр, Robyn Carr - Страница 17

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DAKOTA FELT AS though he’d been tricked again, but this time in a good way. It took him about five minutes to get into the idea of serving free food. The clientele was as varied as the human race. There were a few grizzled old men—or maybe they were only grizzled and not so much old as worn down. A pair of elderly women came in together and passed through the line with their trays. He served a family of six, the oldest child no more than ten. There were several families, not always with both parents. A young man was there with his toddler son, who sat on his lap the whole time. He spotted a young couple, maybe twenty years old, followed by a few kids being led by what could only have been a big sister. A couple of boys around twelve came in with no adult. Then a vet, wearing a purple heart on his denim vest. To him, Dakota said, “Greetings, brother. Thank you for your service.” More old men and women arrived and he wondered which were street people and which were merely poor. A few people came in over the course of a couple of hours who Dakota realized were not in reality and he thought this was what his father would have become without the anchor of his wife and family.

While a few looked as though they could benefit from some drug or another there were also those who appeared to have benefited too much. They were of every race and ethnic group—black, white, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, even a man with a strong Australian accent who said, “Thank ya, mate.”

They had only one obvious thing in common. They were hungry.

Once the food had all been served, the next step was the inevitable cleanup. That was when Dakota became acquainted with some of the volunteers. Sid introduced him to a sixty-eight-year-old woman in jeans and a flannel shirt. “Dakota, meet Sister Mary Jacob,” she said.