Gone (Michael Bennett)

finally taking a seat.
    “Funny you ask that question, Brian,” Seamus said, raising his bacon fork. “I just got a call from my priest friend in town. Father Walter needs help in accomplishing a corporal work of mercy this morning, and I think I’ve found just the people for the job.”
    I knew it , Brian thought, rubbing his tired eyes. All aboard. Next stop, Chore City. He wasn’t sure what the word corporal meant, but work was something he had become infinitely familiar with in the family’s rural exile.
    “Now,” Seamus said jovially, “who can tell me what the corporal works of mercy are?”
    “Visit imprisoned people like us,” Brian mumbled.
    “Very good, Brian. Visit the imprisoned. Anyone else?”
    “Um, clothe the naked?” Eddie said, trying to keep a straight, pious face, and failing.
    “Yes, Eddie. Clothe the naked. Why did I think you of all people would remember that one? Anyone else?”
    “Feed the hungry,” Jane said, eyeing the bacon.
    “Bingo, Jane. Feed the hungry. That’s the one Father Walter needs our help with. Father just received a large shipment of donated canned goods and needs help with distribution. We have to go to the rectory and run the supplies over to a remote food bank in a tiny, poor part of the county and dole them out. I thought it would be a nice opportunity for the three of you. I know you’ve been complaining about not getting out.”
    “But what about Dad?” Eddie said. “Didn’t he say we have to stay on the farm? No exceptions?”
    “I’m in charge, Eddie,” Seamus said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “People need our help, and we’re going to help them. Evil wins when good men do nothing.”
    “We’re not men, though, Gramps. We’re kids,” Brian complained. “And I thought you said we weren’t in trouble.”
    Seamus smiled as he lifted a pan off the stove and brought it over.
    “Thanks for volunteering to help, Brian,” he said as he piled some bacon onto Brian’s plate.
    “There’s a special place in heaven for young saints like yourself.”

CHAPTER 36
     
    THE FOOD BANK WAS in a little town called Sunnyville, a few miles south of Susanville.
    Getting out of the van with Seamus, Jane wondered if the town’s name was supposed to be ironic. Because there wasn’t anything sunny about it. It wasn’t even a town, really. Just a collection of ramshackle houses, a barnlike building that looked like a bar of some kind, and a place that sold snowmobiles and dirt bikes.
    What it looked like was something from a serial killer movie, she thought. Right down to the creepy, weird sound of an unseen wind chime tinkling as they got out of the station wagon. Even the shedlike building they used for the food bank looked weird, she thought as she grabbed a case of Chef Boyardee. It looked like a caboose.
    The caboose of a train that was smart enough to cut out of this godforsaken place a long, long time ago , Jane thought.
    They were going up the stairs with the heavy boxes when she saw that there was another collection of buildings, to the rear of the food bank. It was a trailer park. A huge, excessively run-down one. As she watched, there was a sudden roar, and a heavy woman riding a motorcycle shot out from between two of the decrepit structures.
    If they got out of this alive, she’d never complain about the farm again, she decided as she dropped off the cans and went back for more.
    It took them about half an hour just to get the boxes inside the food bank caboose and unpacked. The food was mostly divided between canned stuff—Campbell’s soups, SpaghettiOs, Del Monte fruit—and dry goods: macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, hot cocoa. When they were done arranging the shelves, it looked like a grocery store.
    A line of people from the trailer park formed quickly. It was obvious they were in bad straits. Whites, blacks, Hispanics. All of them poor. All of them about as desperate as migrant workers out of work got.
    Jane and Eddie ran around behind the counter, putting together the orders, while Seamus and Brian worked clipboards, checking IDs of people who were on the church’s food bank giving list.
    They were just about all out of food when the gang of trailer-park kids came around. There were about seven of them, ranging in age from eight to thirteen, as desperate-looking as their parents. They wore filthy T-shirts and jeans, filthy sneakers. One of them, a dopey-looking white kid with an Afro puff of curly brown hair, didn’t