Gravel

Frost covered the plastic windows of Sharon's mobile home.  She stepped over sleeping kids and grandkids and out to the trailer’s front porch. Her terrycloth robe was thin and the color of green apples and she pulled it around her spare frame and it did little to hold back the cold.

Another soft knock and she pushed open the storm door. Are you Sharon, a woman asked. We’re from St. Matt’s. 

Sharon gathered the terrycloth at her throat and nodded with something that lived at the crossroad of shyness and gratitude and resignation. 

Sharon stepped to one side as men and women and children filed onto the porch of her trailer, a dozen or more. In boxes and bags, they brought cakes and pies, bread rolls, and covered plates of turkey and stuffing and beans still warm from the kitchen.

Can we put these inside for you, a boy asked. She glanced toward her trailer. I be alright, she said in a voice made hoarse by cancer.  You jes leave them by the door.

Each deposited a bag, deliberately as if a sacrament. As each turned to go, each embraced Sharon as if Sharon was their own mother.  She buried her face in each shoulder. God bless you, she said in a voice filtered through gravel.