On Tuesday she packed him another sack. Bologna and cheese, an orange, Fritos she rang up on her own tab. On Wednesday it was ham salad. On Thursday Coy, without a word, set a roast beef sandwich wrapped in wax paper on the prep table at a quarter to seven and went back to his grill.
Every morning the boy said he already ate, and every morning she said she knew he did, and slid the sack into his satchel on top of the library book, Where the Red Fern Grows that week. He said thank you, ma'am, every time, to the strap. On Wednesday she saw him check inside the sack before he closed the satchel, just a quick look, the way you'd check a wallet, and on Thursday when he climbed off the stool he put his hand on the satchel flap and kept it there all the way out to the car.
Hiram didn't say anything. That was the part that made her nervous. He watched her do it every morning from under the brim of his hat with those faded blue eyes and his big steady hands around his coffee cup, and he didn't say anything, and he didn't nod again either. On Wednesday he left fifty cents instead of forty. She found it under his saucer, two quarters, stacked. She put the extra dime back in the Galaxie's front seat through the open window while they were getting settled, and said he'd overpaid, and he looked at the dime on the seat and then at her, and his jaw worked, and he said, "That's for the boy's dinner."
"His lunch is leftovers, Mr. Gilstrap. It doesn't cost anything."
"Ain't nothing don't cost anything," Hiram said, and put the car in reverse.
It was Velma who spoke to her about it, on Friday. Hiram had gone to the restroom and Troy out to the car, and when Neva came down with the pot the old woman put her hand out on the counter, palm down, and waited until Neva's hand was near enough, and then covered it.
"You're the one with the red hair," Velma said.
"Yes ma'am. It's more brown now than it was."
"I can still see red. I can't see much. I can see red and I can see shapes and I can see if a light's on. Doctor in Oklahoma City says it's two different things. One of them they can operate on and one of them they can't, and they want to do the one they can before the one they can't gets any worse. I'm on a list." Her hand was dry and light and very cold. "I know what you're putting in his bag."