Five Loaves of Bread

Boot is a kind of philosopher. I say kind, because the more beers he
drinks the more philosophical he becomes. He is also a very hard
working man. At the end of a working day (Boot is a cement finisher) he
isn't likely to sit down and read a book, nor, for that matter, are the
people he works with.

No, after a hard day's work what's on order are a few beers and couple
of hours shooting the bull. Boot would never say he "shoots the bull,"
of course, but for argument sake let's say that's what much of it
amounts to. What Boot would say, as matter of fact, is that he's
getting heads straight, the heads belonging to the people he cares
about.
I must say here, one of Boot's favourite themes is black advancement,
or the seeming lack thereof, either due to obstacles put in the way of
black people by white people, or obstacles created by black people and
put in the way of other black people.

At any rate, after a few beers, Boot is pretty much in the zone, at
which time you have the option of either not listening, pretending to
listen, or listening very carefully. I personally choose to listen very
carefully, because of the ninety per cent of what he has to say that
may well be forgettable, the remaining ten per cent is usually a
gem.
It's the ten per cent that I always listen for. You may never know from
whence it comes, or how exactly he got you there, but what you do know,
when it happens, is that he's genuinely on to something.

Not long ago, for instance, the subject was waste. And the objects of
his discourse were the five young guys who had worked with him that
particular day.
Apparently he had been going on about it for some time when I came into
the yard, where he was sitting in the truck with the door open. His
foot was on the running board, and he had just popped open another cold
one.

He had never seen anything like it in his life, Boot was saying. But
the worse thing about it, what made it so bad, he said, was that they
were the best of friends. They'd swear on a stack of bibles that there
was nothing in the world they wouldn't do for each other. Yet and
still, if their lives depended on it, they couldn't get their heads
together just that much to do something that made sense.

What he was talking about had happened at lunchtime. They had all piled
into the truck and he had driven them to a nearby store. He remained in
the truck until they came out, one behind the other. And to his
amazement, in addition to everything else they bought, each one to a
man had also bought a loaf of bread. Five guys, and five loaves of
bread.

"Now I ask you," said Boot, "what kinda sense that make? Not one of 'em
bought enough meat for one whole loaf of bread, let alone a loaf of
bread a piece."

He shook his head despairingly, took a good swill of beer, and
swallowed hard to get it down.

"And you know what else?" He continued. "These same guys tomorrow won't
have a dime in their pockets between them, and they won't know why.
They'll be back the day after pay day asking you for a loan."

But no, he wasn't angry, if that's what you're thinking. Far from it.
He loved these guys, otherwise they wouldn't be there in yard. But it
just went to show how much they had to learn, that bread did. That said
everything. They were like pulps falling all over themselves, not
knowing much of anything, and as is always the case, believe there was
nothing they did not know.

I suppose, finally, if the miscreants were not within earshot, Boot
wouldn't have continued to go on about it, because then he really would
have been shooting the bull. But no matter. He was in the zone, and he
was pretty much delivering a sermon. Oh, they were going to do silly
things again, of course. Young guys always do. But bread, wasted bread,
wouldn't have much to do with it. Boot was making sure of that.