Our first stop was a faded trailer with a ramp built from mismatched boards. Mrs. Dobbins opened the door before Noah knocked and called me by my childhood nickname. She had known my father for forty years. While Noah put two dinners in her freezer, she told me Dad had repaired that freezer without charging her. I assumed it had been a favor. She said he did the same for everyone on Noah’s route.

At the next house, Mr. Lee kept oxygen tubing looped over one ear and insisted we dry ourselves with towels warmed in his dryer. He showed me a microwave Dad had rebuilt from three broken machines. The meal program depended on appliances that nobody could afford to replace and on a teenager willing to pedal twelve muddy miles. I had spent a week pricing Dad’s tools without understanding what they had been doing.

The creek had crossed the road by the time we approached the final delivery. I stopped well before the water, but Noah pointed to a footbridge on higher ground. We carried the bag beneath the umbrella, taking turns because the wind kept turning it inside out. On the other side, a woman named Carla was waiting with her porch light on. She had enough supper for that night, she said, but her husband would return from dialysis hungry.

When we reached the van again, the rain had eased. Noah apologized for delaying me and offered to clean the mud from the floor. I asked why no adult made the route. He said adults did when they could, but the program had lost two drivers and its storage freezer rattled like a bucket of bolts. Then he looked at Dad’s cabinets and asked whether I knew how to fix things too. I almost said I had forgotten. Instead, I heard myself answer that I could still diagnose a bad compressor.