“Well, you would know,” Trap said airily. “What with your daddy being on the library board and all.”
“Exactly.”
Trap scanned the crowd beyond Jessa, sure there was someone more interesting to talk to. She was a nice enough woman, but Colt had said it best when he described her as shallow.
“And I don’t mean that rudely,” he’d said. And Trap didn’t either— just that Jessa wasn’t that smart. Not everyone was. Heck, Trap had never been to college, and he fought imposter syndrome as much as the next person.
“It looks like they’re getting ready to say the prayer,” he said. “Should we make our way back that way?”
Jessa threw one last look at Colt, and Trap was so going to cash in on a major favor from the man one day in the very near future.
“Sure,” Jessa said, and she turned and started back across the lawn.
Trap prayed with everything he had that someone would call his name and need to talk to him about something extremely important, so he could ditch Jessa and be closer to the food at the same time.
That didn’t happen, and he found himself standing with her, as well as Finn and Edith Ackerman and Alex and Nikki Baxter, while the prayer was said. It always amazed Trap that a fairly sizable crowd could calm and quiet enough to say a prayer, and the very moment the “Amen” got spoken, the noise and chatter swelled and resumed once more.
He didn’t immediately surge forward like the teenagers and tweens, but he found his feet moving along with the crowd. He picked up a heavy-duty paper plate and deviated to the other side of the table as his friends filed across from him. He got behind a couple of people moving much slower than the other side, but Trap actually found himself smiling down to the elderly woman only a few people in front of him.
He knew Olive Braithwaite, and he wondered where her grandson was. He glanced around, looking for the seventeen-year-old, and didn’t see him. His heart pounded in his chest, because he didn’t want to overstep. His stomach growled at him and told him he should just keep his place, get his food, and mind his own business.
But a louder, more demanding voice said,Go help her.
Trap had only had this voice bellow at him as loudly as it currently did a couple of other times in his life. Usually, God spoke to him in a calm, quiet voice that Trap had to work really hard to hear. But apparently not today.
He took a step back and moved around the couple of people between them. “Howdy, Olive,” he said. “Can I help you with that?”
Her plate shook in her weathered, wrinkled, veined hand, and Trap put his palm underneath it right as she dropped it.
“Oh, yes, please,” she said.
Trap gave her a smile. “Where’s Joel today, ma’am?”
“He’s at a summer government camp,” Olive said, her voice shaking.
“You hold right onto my arm, ma’am,” he said. “Let me get rid of my plate.”
He looked up and found Finn watching him. He reached for the plate, and Trap passed it across the table to him. “Just give it to one of your kids,” he said. “I’ll go through the line again.”
Finn nodded, and Trap looked at Olive. “All right, Mrs. Braithwaite, you gotta tell me what you want, because I can’t read your mind.” He grinned at her, and she linked her arm through his.
“I got in line quickly,” she said, her voice also a little bit shaky. “Because it’s the July linger-longer, and that fried-chicken salad is here.”
“Oh, if they run out of that stuff, I think they know they’ll have a coup on their hands.” Trap laughed, his heartier voice joining the wheezy one of Mrs. Braithwaite. “And they put it way down on the end, hoping you’ll fill your plate before you get to it.”
“No, they’ve got bowls by it,” someone said, and that made Trap’s heart happy. He could carry a plate for Mrs. Braithwaiteanda bowl of the fried-chicken salad for himself, and he wouldn’t need to go through the line again.
“Oh, is the pimento all gone?” Mrs. Braithwaite asked when they reached a bowl that looked pretty scraped clean.
“They’ll bring out more,” another woman said from somewhere. Trap’s wide-brimmed cowboy hat kept him from looking around and seeing who’d spoken.
“Coming through,” a voice said, and Trap once again stepped back from the table, moving a little bit right and in to Mrs. Braithwaite as he thought he’d heard the voice on his left. He bumped into another soft body, his back also registering a hard rim. He flinched away from it, still trying to balance the plate and keep his arm tight against his side for Mrs. Braithwaite to hold.
He automatically moved left and glanced over his shoulder, only to find none other than Lila Mae Dixon standing there, a bowl of fresh pimento cheese in one hand and a platter of pita-bread triangles in the other.
She sucked in a breath, and Trap realized the tray of pita was slipping. He couldn’t just whip Mrs. Braithwaite around and use his right hand.
Brains worked fast, but not fast enough, because Trap’s first reaction was to use his left hand and help balance the tray. Unfortunately, he carried Mrs. Braithwaite’s plate of food in that hand, and as he arced it up, he actually let go of it.
