Families that volunteer gather as much as they give

There’s this story that surfaces at the Arkansas Rice Depot every so often. It’s about a woman who had five kids by five men, and when one of the men stopped child support, she stopped feeding his kid.

The boy began getting food from weekly depot shipments that arrived at his school - spaghetti in a pull-tab container, fruit cups - food he could take home and eat for dinner. And he did so in the bathroom, away from probing eyes, like some Charles Dickens waif.

She finally sniffed him out, and she beat him, or so the story goes.

At a recent Saturday sort-and-stock at the depot, Katie Mc-Kinney, 5, overhears this story.

“Why did she beat him, daddy ...