Summer at Fraser’s Mill

The Chicken Situation

G race got back to the house to find her parents in a state of excitement.

“Your father’s got a knee scooter!” Mom announced the moment Grace came in the door. “He won’t stay still for a minute. He’s been scooting all around the house. I’m trying to convince him to put the thing away and get ready for bed. He can’t take it up the stairs, which is a mercy.”

“Gracie, come look at this,” Dad called from the living room.

Grace came in to find her father with a contraption that looked like a cross between a scooter and a tricycle. The seat of the scooter supported his injured leg, and he pushed himself around the room with his other foot.

“This is great,” he said. “It’s a hundred times better than crutches. I can get around the house, and I can put things in this basket on the front.”

“That’s great, Dad,” Grace said. “Where did it come from? Did Doc buy it? Did you?”

“It’s rented,” Dad said. “It’s expensive to buy one if you’re just using it for a few weeks. Doc found a place to rent one pretty cheaply. The insurance covers part of it.”

“I hope the insurance covers the rest of the medical bills you’ll have if you get injured using that thing,” Mom said. “Aren’t you going to put that away for the night? You’re acting like Thomas, the time we got him the bike for Christmas.”

Dad chuckled. “As I recall, Thomas fell asleep that night hugging the bike wheel.”

“Well, you’re not doing any such thing. Leave the scooter with Grace—it’s not going anywhere—and come upstairs. Here are your crutches.”

“All right, all right,” Dad said, hauling himself off the scooter and struggling to get balanced with the crutches. “That thing’s gonna make a world of difference.”

Grace had the early shift, so it was time for her to get ready for bed. Showering with her bandaged hand was tough. So far she had used a large rubber glove with rubber bands around the wrist to keep the water out of the bandage, but some water had found its way inside. She couldn’t wait until she got the bandage off.

Grace had said her night prayers and was ready for bed when an email from Lucas popped up on her phone. Why was Lucas emailing her at this hour? Well, California was three hours behind.

Lucas wondered how things were going for her at the grocery store. So much had happened since Grace got to Michigan that she wasn’t sure how to begin. She told Lucas about how she had hit a small snag burning her hand while cooking, but that her dad’s injury was healing all right and the store work was going okay. She asked how things were going for him.

Lucas emailing her must be a sign that he was still interested. She’d wondered if her trip to Michigan would make him forget about a second date. But he must at least be interested in corresponding and getting to know each other better.

And his email writing was excellent. Grace’s English teacher self appreciated that. It was one sign of compatibility between her and Lucas. She dozed off, thinking of how she just needed to get to know him better to figure out whether they would really work together.

In the morning she read Lucas’s reply. He was sorry to hear about her burned hand. His own summer was going well—he was taking the summer off and using the time to travel around. Most recently he had been to Santa Barbara and played ultimate frisbee with some friends from college. He was going to San Diego next week. He was also re-reading War and Peace and had a lot of insights on Napoleon.

Grace replied that that sounded like a good summer. Privately, she was glad she wasn’t stuck in L.A. this summer shopping for Shipt and poring over National Board materials. In that case she might have envied Lucas’s travels.

But she wasn’t envious of him now. For such a small town, Fraser’s Mill had more going on than Grace had remembered.

§

During Grace’s shift that morning, the bell over the door jingled, and there was Dad in the doorway with his knee scooter.

“Dad, what are you doing here?” Grace kept her voice low. Mom was around somewhere. She wouldn’t be happy if she came along and found Dad there with his injured foot.

“Move over, young lady.” Dad rolled toward the cash register on his scooter. “I’m gonna work the register. You can tell your mother to take a break and work on her book.”

“She won’t want to do that.” Grace moved over to let Dad through. “She’ll just be mad you’re in here. She would never agree to take a break in the middle of the morning just to work on her book.”

“You just do as I say, and we’ll see how your mom takes it.”

Grace sighed. Well, this wasn’t her idea. Mom could decide how to react to it.

Mom was in the back, unpacking boxes.

“Mom,” Grace said, “Dad just came in on his scooter, and he’s taking over the cash register. He says to tell you you should take a break and work on your novel.”

“What?” Mom shook her head as though she’d heard wrong. “Take a break? And let him run the register? He would just wear himself out and probably reinjure his foot. Take a break, indeed! I just got on a roll with this unpacking. That man’s gonna drive me crazy. I’ll talk to him.”

She hurried into the store. Grace followed behind.

“Benjamin Murray,” Mom exclaimed, “if you think I’m gonna write my book and let you slave away in the store with a broken foot, you’ve got another thing coming. If you really want to work, can’t you do paperwork in the house?”

“I finished all the paperwork already,” Dad said, his demeanor unruffled. “Besides, if you don’t work on that novel, you’ll never get it written. You haven’t touched it all week. I hate to see your story-writing get sidelined. There ought to be a way for you to spend more time on it.”

“Since when does my story-writing come before your welfare? I won’t allow it, Ben.”

“It won’t hurt me to mind the cash register while Grace takes over for you in the back. You go work on that story, and when you’ve written five hundred words you can come back and I’ll let you take over.”

Mom put her hands on her hips. “Five hundred words?”

“Five hundred, and not one word less. I’m gonna ask to see it later, so don’t you cheat.”

“Fine.” Mom shook hands with her husband over the counter. “It’s a deal. I bet I can get that done in half an hour and get you back in the house where you belong.”

Shaking her head, she went out the door, still wearing her grocery apron.

Dad chuckled. “Did you see that? I reckon she’ll get more done on that story today than she has in weeks.”

Grace shook her head. “Well, I’m impressed. But are you sure you’re not going to hurt your foot or over-exert yourself?”

“Positive. Go on, young lady, you’ve got a job to do. I can’t let my employees stand around talking when they oughtta be working.”

Grace gave up.

After lunch that day, Natalie discovered a problem.

“I was just checking dates on food,” Natalie told Grace, “and all that chicken in the fridge is gonna be past-date tomorrow!”

“Oof.” The last Grace had seen, the fridge was full of chicken. She hurried over to the meat section.

There lay packages upon packages of chicken, all marked with the same date. They must have gotten in a large shipment the last time. Why hadn’t more customers bought it? If somebody didn’t buy it by tomorrow, they’d have to see how much they could freeze for their own use. But their family could never use so much chicken. Maybe they could sell it quickly to avoid wasting too much.

What was the best way to get people to buy things? Have a sale? There had to be some way to get the customers’ attention.

“I’ve got an idea,” Grace said. “Somebody can stand out at the edge of the road with a sign that says there’s a big sale on chicken.”

“That’s a great idea,” Natalie said. “We oughtta get a lot of customers that way.”

“Yeah, maybe we’ll even attract some people who are just passing through,” Grace said. “I’m gonna go ask my mom about it.”

“Who’s gonna stand out there with the sign?” Natalie asked.

“That’s a good question.” Grace and Natalie were the only employees up front in the store.

“Don’t look at me.” Natalie shook her head so hard her braid swung back and forth. “I’m not gonna do it. I would die of embarrassment.”

That left one person.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” Grace said. “I better ask my mom about marking down the chicken.”

Mom sighed when Grace told her about the situation. “Yes, we’ve got to sell the chicken if we possibly can,” she said. “You should mark it down. And maybe advertising by the road will bring in more sales.” She mopped her brow. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I’m at my wits’ end trying to manage things in this store today.”

If she was going to be a sign twirler for a day, Grace needed a sign. She found a broken-down white cardboard box in the back room. One side of the box would work for a sign. Grace found some markers and wrote in eye-catching letters, “Huge Sale on Chicken! Today Only!”

Now she had to stand by the road and let the sign work its magic. She’d better get a baseball cap, or she’d get a sunburn.

As she went to find the baseball cap, a thought struck her. Hadn’t Dorothy mentioned a town social media page? Grace pulled out her phone. She could advertise on the page about the sale.

It took some time to find the town’s page, because she didn’t know the page’s name, but she eventually found it. The top post was by Dorothy, telling people about an upcoming fireman’s supper and dance at the fire hall, and the second was by Hank Liddell, the town sheriff, warning people to be careful while driving through town because there were chickens kept in some of the front yards.

Grace smiled. A town had to have a low crime rate if the only message from the sheriff was about chickens.

The town social media page was public, so Grace composed a message about the chicken sale. She grabbed her hat and went out by the road with the sign.

A job as a sign twirler might not be so bad, if the pay was reasonable. At least today was nice weather, and to be fair, Grace wasn’t twirling the sign. She’d probably drop it if she tried anything too fancy.

The chicken-selling business wasn’t brisk, even with the sign. Grace saw a couple customers look at the sign on their way in, but when she came in for a drink an hour later (it felt like several hours later) the supply of chicken hadn’t diminished much.

Well, the store always got busier right before dinnertime. Grace hoped some people coming to shop for dinner would decide to buy chicken. She splashed cold water on her face, readjusted her baseball cap, and returned to the side of the road.

Did this kind of thing happen a lot? Did her parents often end up with large quantities of food they couldn’t sell? Grace didn’t remember it from when she was growing up. Maybe this was random. Maybe they hadn’t had as many customers this week. Or maybe the townspeople had all bought beef and pork instead.

Five o’clock came around. With it came Doc, heading toward the grocery store from next door. He stopped to look at Grace’s sign, his mouth pursed in an expression Grace couldn’t read.

“Did your parents hire you as a sign twirler?” he said. “You oughtta get one of those Chick-fil-A signs with the cows on it that say ‘Eat Mor Chikin.’”

“We don’t have any Chick-fil-As out here,” Grace said. “And we could probably get sued for copyright infringement.”

Doc grinned. “You see any Chick-fil-A lawyers out here?”

Maybe he thought this whole thing was funny, but he hadn’t spent half the afternoon standing in the sun holding a sign.

“Nope.” Grace waved the sign back and forth. “But I do see someone that ought to take advantage of this marvelous sale on chicken. Unless the townspeople pay you for your doctor visits with chickens and bags of apples.”

Doc laughed. “Not quite. But sometimes people do try to pay with gift cards they don’t want.”

He disappeared into the store. A few cars rumbled down the road. Grace held her sign at the best angle for the people in the cars to read.

When Doc emerged from the store five minutes later, he carried a full shopping bag. Grace hoped there was chicken somewhere in that bag. She wasn’t going to ask.

Not long after, Charlie drove up and parked in the store’s small gravel parking lot. “I heard you were having a sale on chicken,” he called to Grace. “We could use some at the diner.”

The diner! That was wonderful. Whenever the diner needed food, they bought a lot of it. Grace followed Charlie into the store in case he wanted help carrying the chicken out to his car. She wasn’t disappointed. Charlie bought nearly all the remaining stock.

Three packages remained. If they didn’t sell by closing time, the Murrays could eat them. Grace hoped Dad had ordered more chicken with a newer expiration date, because there wasn’t any fresh chicken left for tomorrow. It was already an embarrassment that the store didn’t always have what the townspeople wanted, like Hannah’s coconut water. It was worse to be out of common items like chicken. There ought to be some way to organize these things better so the store’s supply matched up with the customer’s demand.

Running a grocery store was a lot more complicated than Grace had realized when she was younger. How did Grace’s parents do it all, even when Dad wasn’t injured?