The lunch lady of hollow ridge playthrough

Turn 16 of 32

Cook supper with the other Tammys and eat together. the dinner is turkey and grave with green beans and mashed potatos. the roles are assigned, you and three tammys cook the food, 4 tammys serve the food and 4 tammys grab the stuff.

Supper tonight is the full spread: turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans. The walk-in has a whole frozen turkey breast waiting, and the twelve of you divide the work without a word passing about it. You and three Tammys take the line — turkey into the roaster, potatoes peeling under broad soft hands, green beans snapped into the big pot. Four more set up the serving counter, laying out the trays, the gravy boat, the little paper turkeys somebody found in the decoration closet from some Thanksgiving long ago. The last four run the walk-in and the storeroom, hauling cases, keeping everything coming, and the whole kitchen turns like a wheel with twelve spokes.

'Turkey's near done, hon,' you call across the steam, and the Tammy at the roaster checks it and says 'right as rain,' and it is. The gravy comes together smooth in the big pot, flour and drippings, salted by feel, and the mashed potatoes come out fluffy and buttered, and the whole building smells like the fourth Thursday of November.

The line opens and the four servers plate it out, and every plate comes out the same — one scoop of potatoes, one ladle of gravy, a spoon of beans, a fair slice of turkey, twelve times over, no more and no less. You carry yours to the long table and sit with the others, and the food tastes like every family Thanksgiving you can remember, warm and honest and plenty.

The talk over supper is small and good. The paper turkeys were a fine touch, somebody says. The fourth-graders will love them come the real holiday. Tammy with the blonde bob says her boy always went back for seconds on the potatoes, and three or four of you nod along like you were there, because in a way you all were, all of you, every one.

You clean your plate, every bite, and set your fork down contented, and the kitchen hums behind you with dishes being run, and the clock ticks on at 8:30, and Tammy is content.