At the water table

An original first-person fictional account of helping at an invented community run.

When I volunteered to hand out water, I thought I had chosen the easiest job. The cups stood in tidy rows across the table, each one filled to exactly the same level. All I had to do was hold them out while the runners passed. It looked less like work than waiting.

The first few runners arrived separately. They took their cups carefully and thanked me. I began to wonder why we had prepared so many. Then the main group appeared around the corner.

Suddenly, there were reaching hands everywhere. Cups tipped over. Water ran across the table and soaked my shoes. I pushed one cup forward too late and poured it down a runner's sleeve. He laughed and called, “I needed cooling down anyway,” but my face felt hotter than the morning.

“Half-fill them,” said the volunteer beside me. “Hold each cup near the bottom and look for the next person before they reach us.”

I copied her. Gradually, the confusion became a pattern: fill, lift, offer, replace. I stopped seeing the runners as a wall moving towards me. Instead, I noticed one tired face at a time. Some nodded. Some managed a breathless “thanks”. Each empty space on the table meant that somebody had received what they needed.

Much later, one final runner came slowly along the road. The other volunteers began packing boxes, but I kept the last cup ready. When the runner reached me, she accepted it with both hands and smiled before continuing.

By then, the table was untidy, my arms ached and my shoes made a wet sound whenever I moved. The job had not been easy after all. It had not been small, either.

How does the writer make the changes in the narrator's attitude towards the task clear?

In your answer, refer to:

• the narrator's expectations before the runners arrive;
• the narrator's response when the water station becomes busy;
• words and phrases that reveal the narrator's feelings near the end.