Chapter 20

After the run-in with Evan, I abandoned the rest of my walk along main street and went to do my patrol of the rest of the county before it got dark. I tried to stay focused on making notes of anything worth circling back to or checking on later, but my mind kept wandering. After the BBQ, when they’d mentioned trying to buy Rosita’s land, I’d asked her a few times about it, but she’d blown it off as not a big deal. When nothing happened, I’d assumed she was right and it wasn’t a big deal.

Evan’s move tonight, however, was a clear sign that they hadn’t dropped it and they were getting more aggressive about it. Even if Evan still thought I was the same guy he’d gone to high school with, trying to convince me, or worse pay me off, to talk Rosita out of her land was pretty heavy-handed. I was worried that it might be a sign they were trying everything they could before taking more direct action to get her land. And I knew Evan wasn’t against doing something to force her to sell.

I finished my patrol and headed to Rosita’s, since she would be finishing up about now. I was surprised to find her sitting on the front counter, playing with a rag in her hand, to the point it took her a second to recognize the bell on the door had chimed when I came in.

“Hey,” she said, sounding off.

My first thought, of course, was that Evan had come by and threatened her while I was out patrolling.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes ... no. Did you know Elaine closed the food bank this morning?”

She didn’t sound angry or mad, which is what I’d expect if Evan had come by to threaten her. If anything, she sounded incredibly sad. Whatever it was, she was obviously worried about something, so instead of confronting her about what Evan might have said to her over the last few weeks, I rolled with what she wanted to talk about.

“I saw it when I was walking main street. I thought she was still deciding what to do?”

She took a deep breath, and then the words just spilled out of her as the dam broke.

“So did I. She called me this morning and said she’d decided to just shut down. I went by and picked up all the food she hadn’t given out and called the list of people she normally gave food to, to let them know they could come here to get it. Part of me wanted to tell them they could just come eat here for free, when they need to, but there’s enough of them that I’d basically drop to break even if I gave out that much food, which means I wouldn’t be able to build a facility, which means I wouldn’t be eligible for most of the state and federal grants, which means I’d basically be stuck just helping a handful of people and never be able to do better. I know the smart thing is to just wait and stick with my plan, but that means there’s going to be at least several months where people will go hungry. I’m just so torn up about it.”

Tears streaked down her face, as she continued to pull and tug at the rag in her hand. I made my way around to the counter and hopped up next to her, putting my arm around her and pulling her into me so she could rest her head on my shoulder. I’d known she was a good person when we’d first met, but seeing how much she was tearing herself up because she couldn’t help people as fast as she wanted to really drove the point home.

“I know you want to help people, but you’re never going to be able to help everyone. All you can do is make the best decisions you can and try to do as much good as possible, right?”

“Yeah, I know. I just feel kind of helpless.”

I know sometimes women just wanted to have someone to pour their frustrations out to and didn’t always want someone to come in and offer solutions or ideas, but I couldn’t help myself. I hated seeing her so upset and every ounce of me just wanted to make her feel better.

“I know you’re hurting and don’t want to let people down, but beating yourself up won’t help anyone at all. How about we figure out how to get this done as fast as possible? Between the two of us, I’m sure we can do something to make this work.”

She kind of shrugged, but didn’t answer. I took the shrug as a good sign that she wasn’t opposed to coming up with a plan.

“So to get the grants you’ll need, you have to have a facility, correct?”

“Yes. It’s one of the things that made it hard on Elaine. Most of the grants specify a warehouse capable of holding enough food to supply the community, including cold storage.”

“Do they give specific measurements of what’s required?”

“No, it’s not like that. They don’t actually have the limitations in their charters. Most of them say they evaluate each application for comprehensiveness, completeness, and overall quality of the planned operations, but I talked to Elaine and a lot of other people she knows who run food banks, and they said the main things they look for in the proposals are adequate storage facilities and limited operating costs. Other than herself and her rent, Elaine didn’t have any operating costs, but she still got turned down every time she applied. Although they didn’t give her specifics, she spoke to a few people at the state level that flat out told her the reason was because she was operating out of a storefront with only standing refrigerators for cold food. They were also concerned, because she was renting without a long-term lease, that investments into the facilities themselves weren’t possible.”

“So you’re pretty sure if you build a facility that you own, you’ll be able to get a grant?”

“Yes. Well, not that I own. I’ve already gotten all the paperwork for a non-profit for it to operate under. Elaine put me in contact with some people who work for some of the agencies and one guy who works for a charity that gives grants like this, and they looked over my proposals and planned financials, and said that it should be okay if the facility plan is good. They also confirmed that inadequate facilities are a major reason they deny a lot of grants. They said it was because places with inadequate storage had much higher food spoilage, causing a lot of waste, but still, if they didn’t have that stupid policy, Elaine could have stayed open and none of this would have happened.”

“Could you put forward a plan that included details of the facility you’re going to build and the land you’re giving over?”

“No. They allow for some operations budget, but if I put the cost of the facility into it, I’ll be way over operating costs for the first year, which would get me denied. It’s why I was going to pay for it out of pocket. Even getting a loan using the property as collateral, it won’t cover everything, so I need every bit of money out of the restaurant I can get. Once the loan is paid off and there aren’t any liens on the property, I was going to wait until I built the facility and then make it and the land a charitable donation. But none of that can happen if I have to burn up all of my profits trying to feed people out of the restaurant.”

“I’m guessing you wouldn’t consider holding to your original plan? I know it would leave some families in a bind through the summer, but it would also mean long-term help for people in the county. I’m not saying you should do that,” I added, when I saw the expression on her face at the suggestion. “I’m just making sure I understand.”

“No. I’d rather help people now and figure out something later. I’ve seen the people who use the food bank when I’ve helped over there. It’s families. Kids. Older people. They can’t go for days between meals, which is what many people were doing before Elaine started up the food bank. I’ve talked to these people. Heard their stories. Do you know what three months of malnutrition does to a child’s development?”

She was getting worked up again. It tore me up to see her like this. She was a strong woman, but she was also very empathetic. None of this was her problem, but in her own mind at least, she’d taken responsibility for these people.

“It’s okay. Like I said, I wasn’t suggesting we leave them without help. I just wanted to clarify the situation,” I said, and then fell silent, thinking of options.

If we lived in a bigger city, there’d be local organizations we could go to, or even fundraising opportunities to raise cash in the community. That wasn’t really an option in Buxton. Hell, what charitable work people could do, they’d already done for Mr. Cooper. It’s why the churches and the Elks club coordinated their collection campaigns to put enough room between them. There’d been a big deal when I was a kid where there’d been a mix-up and several events had been held nearly on top of each other. The group that had gone last had collected almost nothing, because the community was already tapped out from giving to the two other organizations.

There was one option that came to mind, but I hesitated to suggest it, partly because I thought she’d say no and partly because I was selfish. Not coming up with anything else and seeing her in pain, though, was enough to push me over the edge.

“We have some options,” I said, deciding to start with the least helpful but easiest to suggest options. “The salary Orville pays me is more than I need to live on, especially when combined with my pension from the NYPD. I was going to put everything extra into savings for the end of the summer, in case I decided I still wanted to go be a teacher, but this is a better use for it. It’s not a lot. After my expenses, it’ll probably be like fifteen hundred a month. Probably a lot less than your profit, but it can take up some of the slack and free up that money for construction costs.”

“I can’t let you do that,” she said, almost reflexively.

“Yes, you can. Even your original plan had you giving up every dollar not needed to pay your bills to build this thing. How can I do any less? I’m not talking about going broke or making myself homeless. This is what I make above what my monthly bills are. It means we can’t go on any lavish dates or anything, but as long as we’re together, I don’t need anything like that.”

“Fine,” she said, smiling for the first time since I’d gotten there. “Thank you. That will be a big help.”

“Second, we can talk to the Elks and the churches. They don’t have a lot for charities outside of what they’re already doing, but they might be able to help. Hell, they’ll probably want to help. All three of them hold food drives every year to get canned food and stuff that they’d give to Elaine or the people who ran the food bank before her. You’re stepping in to fill that void, so of course, they’re going to want to help you.”

“I’ve already talked to them.”

“You have?”

“Yes. They agreed to help, but it’s not very much. None of them get a lot and this year’s spending was already mostly allotted back in February. They said they could probably do more next year, but we can’t wait that long.”

“Okay, so they’re factored in.”

“Yes. I really appreciate your offering to help, but this is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not all of that will be upfront, but a lot of it will have to be. Between my savings, what’s left from Tommy’s army benefits and life insurance, and the bank loan I can cover a lot of that, but I’m still going to be about a hundred thousand short by the time everything’s said and done. Even with every dollar the restaurant makes over the summer, it would have been close. With what you’re going to give, I’m still going to have to start begging anyone I can for money to get the project through to the end. Without my profit, I’m not even close.”

“How much would you be able to cover with three months’ profit?”

“Sixty to seventy thousand,” she said.

I was honestly shaken. That was worlds more money than I would have thought she was going to say. I knew her bills were fairly low and she was very busy almost all of the time, but Buxton was a really small town.

“You’re making three-hundred thousand dollars profit a year?” I asked.

“Closer to three seventy-five, but the summer is our slow season. If this was in the middle of the year, we’d have more to work with.”

“Seriously?” I asked, still surprised by the numbers.