Paper Bag Lunch

Paper Bag Lunch by David Holcombe 20 Daniel tried to look around the classroom without moving his head. No one seemed to be watching. He eased his hands into the open shelf under his scarred desk top, felt the dreaded arithmetic book, the worn and nearly memorized reader, the too-easy speller, the thinning tablet of pulpy writing paper, and finally his fingers touched that brown paper bag lunch. He flinched from its raspy texture. Again he looked around. There were only fifteen or so other third graders in the room and none were looking. They were grouped in threes or fours, their lunches spread on smooth wax paper or an occasional cloth napkin on their desks in front of them. Miss Schenck was working at her desk on some official-looking blue papers. Daniel saw frown lines on her face as she started erasing. He noticed that a curl had escaped from the light brown hair piled high on her head. After PTA last fall, Daddy had kidded Daniel about this pretty young teacher, and, at the thought, the boy felt a pang of longing for his daddy and mother. Maybe they'd be back from Philadelphia soon. Slowly, silently, he pulled the creased and recreased brown paper bag into his lap, tried to open it without letting it show, put his hand into its oversized brownness, and felt through its contents. The steam radiator near the window hissed. His hand groped to the bottom for the apple wrapped in newspaper. He tried to ease the newspaper off without taking it out of the bag, but there wasn't room. It kept getting snagged in something else. Hoping against hope that the paper would not rattle, he slid his hand under the apple and slowly extricated it from similar bulky wrappings, held the bag between his knees, and pulled the apple into his lap. He had to look down to find where the paper overlapped around the apple, and that was his downfall. It was the drawing that caught his eye. A map with angry arrows was right there in smeared print, and Daniel carefully unwrapped the apple so that he could smooth the paper on his desk. The apple he placed in the inkwell hole at the top left corner. They had only used ink twice the whole year, so there was no bottle in it. It was a whole front page about the Normandy invasion, and Daniel's brow furrowed as he started reading. Daddy often said, "That boy will read the back of the cereal box if there isn't anything else around," but Daniel knew his daddy was really bragging when he said it. Soon lost in the account of General Eisenhower's joining the Allied troops in the invasion of France, Daniel so forgot his surroundings that he thoughtlessly pulled out the big biscuit with the heavy wedge of lean meat in it and crunched away. The big brick school's third grade was located in the first floor, right wing, backside classroom, but that didn't start to explain the divisions inside the third grade. Daniel could have explained some of it, if anyone had wanted to ask the right questions and listen to what he was really saying. The students were divided into two large groups-townies and countries. The townies walked to school, sometimes even were driven if World War II rationing allowed enough gas. The countries rode in on the creaking , smoking vellow busses. The kids who really counted, mostly townies, walked with the fourth and fifth graders and a few seventh grade monitors down to the high school in the next block to eat lunch in the cafeteria. A favored few lived close enough to the school to walk home to lunches fixed by mothers or housekeepers. Harriet Arness, who made Daniel s mouth get a little dry and even made him stammer, was one of those. The other kind, mostly countries, had to bring lunches from home. Now and then a student would refuse to eat the cafeteria food, even if there was money for it, and that kid would plop his lunch out on his desk to...