Summer at Fraser’s Mill

Cardboard and Paper and Fringe, Oh My!

G race had the next morning and afternoon off to work on the parade float. Before ten A.M., she was at the Martin farm, sitting on the big flat trailer that would be used for the float and explaining her decoration plans to Alex. She had brought a cooler with drinks and sandwiches for the helpers.

Doc had done his recruiting well. By ten o’clock, eight people were there to help with the float. Doc had invited even more, but a few—such as Hannah—had been busy. Not all of the helpers had experience building things, but Grace had been thinking about the project over the last few days and reading instructions for making floats. It couldn’t be too bad if they followed the instructions she had saved on her phone. It was hard to read the screen in the sunlight, though. Somebody ought to make phones that were easier to read in bright glare.

“I thought of doing that tissue paper pomping you see on a lot of big floats,” Grace told the helpers. “But it looked like it would take weeks, and we don’t have weeks, so we’re not doing it.”

“Thank goodness,” Alex said. “My mom said they did that when she was in college, and it took forever. She never wanted to see another piece of tissue paper when they were done.”

Their first step was to build a platform on the trailer itself. It was a low-boy trailer with rails, and Grace wanted to make the platform flush with the top of the rails. She had gotten a number of wood pallets from the grocery store, and Alex’s dad had provided some large sheets of plywood on the condition that they be returned after the Fourth of July. Charlie Keller and Sam Martin started right away building the platform, using long screws and a cordless drill.

The main other thing for this float was making the big food boxes for display. Doc had gotten two 55-gallon barrels—borrowed from Ed at the garage—and some helpers would put paper on them and make them look like soup cans. Others were going to decorate large boxes to look like cereal and other boxed foods.

Grace undertook the design and painting of the banner for the float. She had a white vinyl shower curtain, which was going to read: “Murray’s Grocery Store: Support your Local Grocers!” She just needed to enlarge the text from the small version she had designed to replicate it on the shower curtain.

“I can help with that,” Doc said, when Grace explained about resizing the banner image. “You just need to figure out the proportions. Anybody have a yardstick or a tape measure?”

“I’ve got a tape measure in the house,” Alex said, and ran off.

When Alex returned, Grace measured the dimensions and spacing of the letters on her small banner mock-up and read them out to Doc. He converted the numbers to scale for the larger banner.

“Why can’t you just eyeball it?” Charlie asked, taking a break from his platform-building to see what Grace and Doc were doing. They had spread out the banner in the Martins’ pole barn.

“Eyeball it!” Grace exclaimed. “Charlie Keller, have you ever tried to eyeball something this big? Especially on a floppy shower curtain liner? If we don’t measure the letters, they’ll look horrible.”

Doc was on his hands and knees marking the placement of the letters on the vinyl. His doctor’s hands were steady.

“This’ll be ready to paint in a few minutes,” he told Grace.

So much was going on, Grace didn’t know what to do next. The guys building the platform were almost done. The floral sheeting needed to go on the platform. The fringe needed to be stapled around the edge of the platform.

Where was the staple gun? Also, where was the paint for the banner? She and Doc had bought poster paint in Cadillac. At last she triumphantly fished the paints from the miscellaneous bags and boxes near the trailer.

When she got back in the barn, Doc was finishing his markings on the vinyl. “Just in time,” he said. “Why don’t you take one side and I’ll take the other?”

“All right,” Grace said. “Don’t forget to paint the part farthest away from you first, so you don’t drag your arm through it afterward.”

Doc laughed. “I thought the whole point of making a banner was to smear the paint everywhere.”

The letters for the sign were outlined in pencil. It wasn’t too difficult painting and staying in the lines. It was more difficult trying to stay out of each other’s way. With each of them on one side of the vinyl, starting in the middle, there was barely room to work without bonking heads.

Grace was strangely aware of how close Doc was. If she moved her hand a couple inches, she would touch his tanned, muscular arm. Now why had that popped into her head?

“I feel like I’m doing a school project,” Doc said. His head was bent over his painting, but there was a grin in his voice. “Do you make your school kids do stuff like this in class?”

“I leave that for the art teacher,” Grace said. “My school kids are too busy reading Tom Sawyer and Anne of Green Gables. ”

“You didn’t take a day off during your Tom Sawyer lessons to whitewash a fence?”

Grace laughed. “Does anybody whitewash fences anymore?”

“We could bring it back.” Doc looked up, a twinkle in his eye. “You could get your parents to put in a line of whitewash at the store.”

“For a lot of nonexistent fences? Who’s going to build all those fences?”

“Hey, Grace,” Alex said, appearing again in the barn doorway. “We’ve got a problem.”

Grace sat back on her heels. “What?”

“The staple gun is out of staples and we don’t have any more.”

“I’ll go to the hardware store,” Doc said, straightening up. “What size staples?”

“Thanks, Doc, you’re a gem,” Alex said. “I don’t know what size. I’ll ask Charlie.”

Doc and Alex hustled off, and Grace went back to her painting. It was going to take a long time to fill in those letters.

Grace heard footsteps. “He likes you,” Alex’s voice said somewhere above her head.

Grace looked up. Alex’s hands were on her hips, a smirk on her face.

“Huh?” Grace said. Oh boy, here it came.

“It’s obvious,” Alex said. “You think he would spend his whole Saturday afternoon running around doing arts and crafts if he didn’t like you?”

“Alex, he’s a nice guy,” Grace said. “He goes out of his way for people. That doesn’t mean he likes me.”

“A nice guy?” Alex exclaimed. “You didn’t think he was a nice guy before. You couldn’t stand him! Now you’re both painting banners and joking around. What happened?”

“Well, it’s a long story,” Grace began.

“Enough stuff has happened to be a long story, and I haven’t heard a word about it?” Alex sat down cross-legged on the barn floor. “What’s going on here?”

“Well, it all started when the van broke down on Thursday,” Grace said. “Hey. If I’m gonna tell you a whole long story, you’d better help paint.”

“Fine, give me a brush.”

They started painting again, and Grace told Alex about the van breakdown, Doc’s sudden appearance, and their evening of shopping and dinner on the water.

“Which wasn’t a date,” Grace told Alex. “I paid for myself. It was just because it was getting late and we were both hungry.”

“Uh-huh.” Alex didn’t sound convinced.

“Then last night I invited him over for dinner with me and my dad, but it was because he had been up all night helping a lady have a baby, and he was going to have canned soup and potato chips for dinner. You’d have done the same thing.”

“Wait. You invited him over? To your house? For dinner?” Alex sat up on her heels. “And you still say you’re not interested in him?”

“I was just trying to be nice,” Grace said. “He drove me all around and took me to get food on Thursday. I owed him one.”

Alex shook her head. “I think you like him.”

“Nonsense! Besides, he likes Hannah, remember?”

“He likes you,” Alex said. “I’m positive.”

“Hey, Grace! Alex!” A shout came from outside. “Need some advice!”

Alex got to her feet. “That’s Sam. I bet they’re done building the platform.”

With teamwork, the rest of the float-building went quickly. Doc returned with staples for the staple gun, and after everyone took a lunch break he and Grace finished painting the banner.

Grace’s conversation with Alex had heightened her awareness of Doc’s behavior. He was certainly in a good mood, joking and teasing as they painted, his eyes twinkling. But that could just be his normal behavior towards anyone. It didn’t necessarily mean what Alex thought it meant.

They let the banner dry while everyone arranged the imitation foods around the sides of the float and fastened them down.

“Well, that’s not going anywhere,” Sam said, slapping a 55-gallon barrel dressed up as a can of soup. “Grace, you wanna hang the banner from the edge of the float or rig it up above the float somehow?”

Grace considered, her head on one side. “I guess we’d better hang it from the edge of the float. I can’t imagine how we would rig it up above.”

The banner in place, everyone stood back to look at their float.

“Hooray!” Alex bounced on her toes. “It looks terrific!”

The fringe waved in the breeze, and the big food boxes on the float looked great. The girls who had been putting them together had done a nice job on the food packaging and the fruit and vegetable details. The banner clearly showed the float’s sponsor.

“Wow,” Grace said. “This is perfect.” She turned to her helpers. “Thank you all so, so much. I think this is gonna be really good for the store’s business.”

“It was fun!” Charlie dusted off his hands. “Do we get to ride on the float?”

“Sure, why not?” Grace said. “We can all throw candy and hand out flyers. Unless we’re over the weight limit. Alex, do you think this float can hold nine people?”

“Sure, no problem,” Alex said.

“Great. Speaking of which, I’d better get some candy and print up some flyers. I think we’re done here, unless you think it’s going to rain—maybe we’d better get tarps or something to cover the float just in case.”

“It’s not going to rain,” Sam said. “Look at that sky. Not a cloud.”

“Just the same, I’d feel better if we had tarps over it,” Grace said.

“I’ll take care of it, Grace,” Alex said. “You better go print those flyers.”

Grace went off, leaving the helpers to cover the float. It was great to have a team of people that had your back.

It was going to be hard, leaving all these Fraser’s Mill people behind when she went back to California. She’d gotten to know them so much better over the past few weeks. Maybe from now on she could visit here more frequently, if she could save the money for the plane flights. Her parents would always be glad to have her come. And maybe she could keep in better contact with everybody when she was in California, too. Alex…Dorothy…Doc…especially Doc. Now what was that fluttering feeling in Grace’s stomach? No, it couldn’t be butterflies.