The Women Who Moved the Feast

How it begins

Ruth Daniels moved the first table before anyone could tell her it was too heavy.

Estelle Green took the other end. Between them they carried it through the hall's double doors and set it on the grass beneath the chestnut tree.

Inside, the chairman continued practicing his speech. He had reached the part about a united town.

'He'll notice when the plates go,' Estelle said.

'Then we'd better move those next.'

For eleven years the harvest feast had required forty pies, six enormous pots of potatoes and women who did not mind eating after everyone else. Ruth had supplied the pies. Estelle had supplied flowers and, increasingly, onions, because somebody always forgot that decorations could not feed people.

That morning the seating plan had arrived. The official guests sat in the hall. The cooks were assigned a smaller table in the passage, beside the door through which everyone would carry dirty dishes.

Ruth had asked whether the passage table could join the others. The secretary said the arrangement honored tradition.

Now tradition stood under a tree with one uneven leg. Estelle wedged a folded program beneath it.

The butcher's wife came out holding a stack of plates. She looked at the table, then at Ruth.

'Are we allowed?'

'It's ours,' Ruth said. 'My brother built it.'

A second woman appeared with bread. Then a third carried a jug of flowers she had arranged before dawn. The table began to look less like a protest than a meal somebody might enjoy.

From the doorway, the chairman called for Ruth.

'The guests will be hungry.'

She put the first pie in the center of the table. Steam rose through the cut in its lid.

'So are we.'

Estelle drew up two chairs. For once, they sat down while the food was still hot.