Good People Feed the Poor

Ever since The Starving everyone’s been making a big fuss about gardening. One day in class Johnny bragged about growing an apple and donating it to a victim. That smug idiot, pulling his donation ticket from his suit for the whole class to see. “Why’d you do it?” I asked, looking down at my watch so he wouldn’t think I cared. “Because I’m a good person.” He sneered. Sue me, I can damn well be a good person too. I nudged my friends, and we knew what to do.

The next day at my penthouse we planted a tree, already heavy with bright swells of ochreous fruit. Oranges, much better than Johnny’s stupid apples. We plucked them, packed them into a crate, and ventured past the neighborhood gates and into the slums. Several people laid by the roads, raggedy clothing hanging loose on their withered frames. I kept my vision straight, careful to avoid eye contact. We hurried to exchange the crate at the donation center for a ‘thank you’ ticket. 

Later at school our classmates noticed our kindness. They waved our ticket around like a flag, awestruck at our generosity towards The Starving victims. It was great. Then Johnny walked through the door. “Hello, class.” He drawled, adjusting his cravat. “You’ll be pleased to know I’ve done my part as an upstanding citizen and donated fifty apples to the poor.” The class erupted in cheers. I lurched, enraged. “Come on goons,” I muttered to my friends. “We’ve got oranges to grow.”

The next months were a flurry of tickets and battle, the oscillation between our kindness being recognized and Johnny’s. But as days grew shorter and the air tinged with frost, Johnny’s tickets dwindled while ours boomed. The orange, a hardy fruit made for the cold, is superior to the fragile apple. Eventually, Johnny came to class empty-handed. We, however, had a full bouquet of ‘thank you’ tickets and the boisterous praise of the class. Johnny dropped his head in defeat, eating his caviar and crackers in a sullen silence that made my heart beam.

That night we decided to celebrate our success at being better than Johnny. En-route to the penthouse, the air assaulted our noses. The Starving had worsened in the past months, the slum acrid with the accruement of wasting bodies alongside the streets. We covered our noses and hurried to our neighborhood gate, but a man grabbed my wingtips. Agonized and gaunt, he looked up at me and wailed, reaching, grasping, heaving, his skin the shade of mildew. I gasped and jerked back. His sparse hair scratched my ankle and I shuddered.

At the party that night, as we sang praises to our godly generosity over wine and meat, I noticed a smudge on my wingtips. That mucky old man. I sighed and made a note to scour my shoes of the filth, but only after we finished our filet mignon. I deserved this meal, after all. Good people feed the poor.