Washcloth People

by Angela Townsend

I am picking up acorns again, but I am too early. I know I should wait until they are sturdy, nutmeg nuggets in tweed berets.

But this year I want them in August, green promises I can roll between my fingers. They are soft and unstable, liable to cave in on themselves. Still, I pick them up.

I pick them up on the walk from my car to the food pantry, tucking them in the pocket made for keys. I am on time for my shift, but the washcloth people wait for no one.

“Rach. There you are.” Patti has dealt with hundreds of volunteers. But ten years ago, she chose me like the last apple. She waits until I arrive. Murmurations of kind people rise around her. No, thank you, they cannot help her. She clenches her fingers around her black garbage bag.

“Patti! Our beacon! It’s always a joy to see you.” I am a shaken can of excess. It has been like this since I was nine. I have given up trying to change.

Lloyd puts his hand on Patti’s shoulder. “We’ve got goodies for you.”

Of course, they do. For a decade, Patti and Lloyd have been the bringers of laundered linens. We are a food pantry, and we do not request non-food items. Never mind. We accept what we are given.

They have never delivered a single can of Dinty Moore stew. No Cheerio has come in their mulberry Chevy. They are the washcloth people.

Patti would turn soggy on me if she knew this nickname. She raises her contractor bag like a consecrated host. “Thirteen fingertip towels, two sets of sheets, and twenty washcloths.”

“You are endlessly kind.” I look Patti in the eyes, and she pulls a smile from storage.

I don’t ask where all the linens come from, and I don’t tell her the stories she stirs. I could spew novellas, speculating on the secrets of Patti and Lloyd. How do two retirees obtain infinite fingertip towels? Do the washcloth people don Richard Nixon masks, making raids on Ramadas?

Patti taught second grade, and Lloyd still farms, “albeit at a ploddin’ pace.” Lloyd gives me peace, even when Patti gives Robbie dirty looks.

I want to press a green acorn into Robbie’s palm as he walks by. As usual, he is too fast.

“Patti and Lloyd, purveyors of joy!” Robbie is on his way to Robbie business, but he sheds song whenever humanity happens.

Patti winces at me. Robbie knows and grins. He looks like Emmanuel Macron in buttercup yellow. He knows where he stands with everyone.

“Where will today take you, my loves?” I am exhausted of my own effusiveness. I wish I could find a cap that fits this container, but it’s not looking promising.

“The Golden Nugget.” Patti flickers pleasure but cannot conjure an exclamation point. “Lookin’ for gourds.”

If a food pantry can re-home washcloths, the flea market may have jaunty squash.

“That’s cool. I love gourds.” I can’t help myself. “My favorites are the freaky ones covered in warts.”

“You can keep those.” Patti reaches into her purse, and I wonder if she might pull out cash.

It has been my job to coax forth donations for ten years. I write the pantry’s newsletters, whispering, “we are bountifully blessed with peanut butter, grateful for every spoonful! But did you know your monetary donation is packed with a different kind of ‘protein?’ Through our local partnerships, your dollars go further than you might dream, feeding our neighbors…and reminding them that they are beloved.”

Patti pulls out a Chapstick and applies it violently. “Alright, Rach. We’ll see you again.” Lloyd’s eyes kiss my cheek, and they are off to the Nugget.

I find Robbie at his desk, a figurine factory missing only a Siamese cat and a green acorn.

“A love offering, my liege.” I give him my best one.

Robbie’s ears lift three inches when he smiles. “God Almighty sent you. How did you know what I need?”

“I know things, Bojangles.”

I have been stupid with Robbie for half my adult life now. Nicknames fall from trees when we zipline into each other. He pets my exuberance and feeds it calorie-dense affection.

“Good visit with the washcloth people?”

“Always.” I fall into his guest chair.

“They make me feel unclean.” Robbie can’t finish his sentence without laughing. Executive Director of this outpost since he was twenty-six, he is underestimated hourly.

“How are we looking this month?”

I know Robbie is scanning spreadsheets, and he knows that I know. “Could be better, but we’ll survive.” He juts his chin at the bag in my hand. “Think we could hock washcloths? Tell people they came from Taylor Swift? Say they are anointed with holy oil? If anyone could make them beautiful, it’s you, Word-Bird.”

I pull out more acorns. The fat one has already smushed like asparagus. “What if we paint these gold and glue them to plaques? ‘The Oaken Awards.’ We’ll charge $50 entry fees. People can submit poetry, prose, or peanut butter. An eminent panel of judges will choose winners.”

“You, me, and Boris.” Robbie’s essence scrunches back to childhood. Boris is ninety and farts trumpet solos through the food pantry. He has volunteered since before Robbie and I were born.

Boris is as baffled by Robbie as Patti, but sometime in the sixties he had his cynicism surgically removed. Five years ago, Boris brought us Golden Delicious apples the size of walnuts and spoke what he knew. “Rob, ya like fellas, don’t you?”

Robbie was not embarrassed. “You’re insightful, Boris.”

“Well, I wantcha to know it doesn’t bother me one whit. You’re our captain, and I love ya.”

Robbie knows I love him, and he’s spoken what he knows. “It’s because I’m safe, Rach. I’m gorgeous, and incandescent, and iridescent—”

“—and you’re the first person I’ve ever met who talks like me—”

“—I’m safe. You’ll be ready for danger again someday, Buttercup.”

I tell him he’s wrong, tell him all I want is to write and hide and pick up artifacts. I am so thoroughly divorced, Robbie and Boris are the extent of my men. Meeting Robbie was finding the last speaker of my dead language. It is enough.

I do my own danger these days, writing thinly veiled stories about volunteers and sending them to literary journals that reject me. I melt thin layers of cheese over my own past. I massage the washcloth people into creased prophets. I describe our food pantry as the sun sprinting the sky. My metaphors implode, and the whole thing feels like online dating all over again.

When a rare acceptance comes, like a square of tin foil catching the light, I bring it to Robbie. “A freaky little journal took my freaky little story.”

Robbie bursts into “Purple Rain” for no reason, knowing somehow that it’s the correct answer. “Congrats, my queen!” We dance badly between the jars and unbidden towels.

The acceptances scrub my inbox of cigarette smoke and contempt. I wait for them like the damned wait for morning. I know I am still yoked to “yes” all these years after men.

Robbie tells me what he knows, but never too early for me to receive it. He doesn’t edit my newsletters, and I don’t ask about his personal life.

I drive home and dream about grants for food pantries. I stagger into the weekend, planning to write in my cocoon. I come out on Sunday to play the piano for Presbyterians, but my doxology is all doughy and undone.

I want to bring Robbie with me, to remind me I am resplendent. The world is careful with adjectives, not wanting to pick up anything that may rot. I tell the pastor her homily was “incandescent and iridescent.” I am dangerous in my lonely adverbs.

Robbie tells me that God is a food pantry. “I do this because there’s a fat mercy somewhere.” He goes up to his elbows in metaphors. I love him for this, and it is not safe. “We’re breaking into hunger. We’re smashing windows. We’re jam-smeared angels. This is a raid.”

“Can I use that in the next newsletter?”

“Only if you draw a picture of me as the Hamburglar.”

Robbie knows when to dial back the intensity, but I do not. “You are my favorite person to write about. Some days you’re my favorite person in the world. If God has a favorite, he looks a lot like you.”

“I look like Emmanuel Macron.” Robbie knows it all.

I know I’m out of acorns, so I find a streaky flat rock in the parking lot. It would fit between the FDR bobblehead and pen holder on Robbie’s desk, but I want it. I finger its strata. I ponder terrible poems about ketchup rocks. I contemplate asking Robbie if we can form a Neil Young tribute band called Ketchup Rocks.

I come home to cats who know me and a nearly empty inbox. No acceptances, no declines, just Patti: “Can we bring a friend to tour the pantry tomorrow? Might be a good donor.”

I wanted a day of free writing, but I come in for the washcloth people. Their friend Ted presses three crisp hundreds into my hand. “Feed some people, alright?”

“It will be our honor. You’re loving the world towards the light. This world needs more people like you.” I can’t stop.

“Nobody talks like Rach.” Patti is exasperated and almost smiling. “She’s a gushy goo girl.”

“She is a space cat,” Robbie announces as he glides by in the invisible roller skates that only I can see.

“Strange folks at this pantry,” Lloyd winks at me. “Our kinda folks.”

Patti makes her usual customs declaration. “Ten finger tip towels. Five washcloths.”

“You are as reliable as an oak tree,” I tell her.

“I’m a mean old cougar.”

“I love ya, Patti.” I can’t stop.

“Yep. Back atcha.”

It’s the end of the month, and Robbie says we’re in the black. “It will never not be close,” he reassures the volunteers who worried. “We’ll always be okay.”

The acorns are speckled with allspice now, and I check my inbox twelve times a day. The elite literary journals all open in September. I wonder if the Paris Review will publish my stream-of-consciousness minestrone, chunks of trauma drama floating like tiny taters. I keep track of my declines in a spreadsheet, assigning funny fonts to the ones I wanted most.

Boris finds a kitten screaming in the parking lot and brings it to Robbie. “What do we do?”

Robbie knows what to do. “We give him to the washcloth people. And if they won’t take him, we give him to Rachel.”

I volunteer at the food pantry, write terrible prose, play piano for Presbyterians, and work for the town councilman. I already have a cat with expectations. But Robbie knows what to do.

“You got any pets?” Patti and Lloyd are as regular as good bowels. Boris is impatient.

“Two Cocker spaniels, Snazzy and Jazzy!” Lloyd begins pulling out his phone.

“Wanna kitten?”

“Oh, we couldn’t—”

“—what kind of kitten?” Patti is stern, voice scoured of emotion.

Boris toots off to retrieve our urchin. “This one.”

“That’s a Siamese kitten.” Patti pets the baby’s head with one finger and radioactive caution.

“Looks white to me.” Boris doesn’t mind not knowing things.

“He’s Siamese.” Robbie emerges. He’s wearing yellow again, his best color. He leans against the door jamb. “Siamese kittens start out white, from the heat of the mother’s womb. Their little cinnamon points come in over the first few months of life.”

Patti’s face is washed of color. “How do you know that?”

“I used to volunteer at a shelter, my lady.”

“This is kind of an animal shelter,” Lloyd chuckles.

“I’m an orangutan,” Boris remarks as he toots back to the shelves.

Patti is holding the kitten, who has begun mewing the entire score to Les Miserables. “What do we owe you for him?”

“You’re angels! This is a miracle! He’s yours!” I’m so grateful in so many directions, my voice is unpleasantly loud.

“One thousand dollars.” Robbie is as gold as autumn. He is kidding, but he knows to pause.

Lloyd chuckles. Patti puts the screaming kitten in Lloyd’s hand and pulls out her wallet. “This is a good day.”

Robbie’s skates appear to slip out from beneath him. “Oh Patti, I was—”

“—I know you were. This is a good day.” She crumples the check into Robbie’s hand.

Lloyd knows this is a time for all mortal flesh to keep silent. I can’t stop. “This is a holiday, in the original sense, a holy day!”

Boris is leaning over the soup rack and taking pictures with his phone. “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”

Robbie flashes a peace sign and kisses me on the cheek.

Patti has returned to Patti. The kitten in her hand may as well be a rutabaga. “Alright then. We’ll be back soon.”

“We’ve got goodies,” Lloyd promises, disoriented but glad.

“Name him Nugget!” I erupt.

“Name him Acorn,” Boris bleats.

“His name is Razzy,” Patti doesn’t even look back as the bells on the door tinkle their departure.

I extract a washcloth from the closet. Robbie gives me permission to take this souvenir, then wraps a finger tip towel around my head like a babushka. I don’t plan to submit stories to literary magazines tonight. My inbox is clean but not safe.

BIO: Angela Townsend is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, Five Points, Peatsmoke Journal, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College and works for a cat sanctuary.