Free Three Cans of Soup by Don Childers

not.”
    Robby remembered that his father and mother often would set aside twenty or so one-dollar bills to hand out to the homeless on the plaza or at other public areas. Once, after they had handed out all their money, another homeless person approached them.
    His father had said: “Sorry, all we can give you is a blessing. We’ve given all of our money to others.”
    The man had looked at them. “So you are the ones. I heard about you guys. Look, you don’t have to give me anything, but let me give you something.” The man looked at them and said, “Bless you all!” Robby remembered that at that moment he had felt more pride than at any other time.
    Lisa remembered how proud she was to see her father standing at the pulpit preaching away. She had always loved his sermons. Unlike Robby, she still went to church. She had even thought about maybe, just maybe, going into ministry. However, those ideas were now on hold, because of Central and what they had done to her father.
    Sharon talked and remembered the tender moments. For some reason it was the times that Bill stood up for others that made her so proud. In many ways she was proud that he had destroyed that damn wreath, but she would never tell anyone.
    For the three of them, Thanksgiving was a time of remembering and of hoping that somehow, somewhere, Bill would find himself and would once again find God or at least a reason to be.
    For Bill, Thanksgiving was the loneliest time he could remember. He vacillated between despair and anger and sadness. He was gruff with Jerry and then playful. As he sat in his underwear through the morning, he also thought long and hard. Maybe Sharon was right; maybe this was all for the best. He had to admit that over the last few years he had lost his sense of joy with the church. All the fighting, all the administration, all the competition, and all the hate seemed such a contradiction. Jesus had been about love, welcoming all people, forgiving all people, loving everyone. The church seemed to be about success, welcoming only some people, and definitely not loving everyone, especially, it seemed to Bill, the people who served the church.
    Sometime around noon Bill decided that he had to do something. He got up, went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and took a long look at himself in the mirror. He quickly shed his underwear and stepped into the shower. The warm water felt refreshing. Emerging from the shower, he actually felt a lot better. Going to the closet, he again felt waves of anger as he looked at the closet, stuffed full of clothes, some in boxes. There had been plenty of room in their other house, he thought. No, he was going to change things, he thought again. He reached into the closet and pulled out a pair of jeans, a bright green shirt, and western leather belt. He pulled on his tennis shoes and in that moment came to another decision. He would clean out the closet in the hall and put up the decorations for Christmas!
    Opening the door to the closet, he was for a moment taken aback by the mess. How could something so small have so much stuff in it? Jerry, sensing that his master was having mood changes, bounded around the room, excited.
    “Well, Jerry,” Bill said, slowly lowering himself down, “we have one hell of a lot of work to do even finding the decorations!”
    With that, Bill began to pull boxes out of the closet. They should have been more organized, he thought to himself. They had lights crammed in with keepsakes, ornaments with financial records, and, he wondered, where is the star? Jerry was in dog heaven as he poked his head into one box and then another. In one box he discovered one of his long lost toys that somehow had gotten packed and forgotten.
    Bill worked for some two hours with the result being a bigger mess than before. Toward the end he was just dumping the contents out and sorting through them. Something in one of the boxes caught Jerry’s attention. While Bill was poring through the