The Freezer
G race’s parents loved the fundraiser idea, and Doc started recruiting volunteers to help cook, serve the food, and spread the word. Spreading the word was important so they could serve the maximum number of people and make the most money for the freezer. The food could be eaten there or taken as a carry-out. Privately, Grace didn’t understand why anyone would want take-out spaghetti—it was so rubbery left over.
When inquiring about the fire hall, they met with a piece of unexpected charity Grace couldn’t refuse: the firefighters insisted on renting them the hall at half-price.
“The sooner you’ve got your ice cream freezer back, the happier I’ll be,” the fire chief told Grace. “Good luck with your fundraiser!”
There was no lack of volunteers for the dinner. Alex and Charlie, Dorothy and Walt, Elaine, Ed and Janet, Natalie and her sisters, and a few friends of Doc’s all said they would help.
The day of the dinner arrived. In the afternoon, Grace went over to the hall with a van full of supplies. A number of cars sat in the parking lot already—those must be the volunteers.
Grace grabbed a large box full of dry pasta packages, both regular and gluten free, from the van and went into the hall. The place was set up with round tables. Natalie and her sisters were putting tablecloths on them.
She found Doc, Alex, and Charlie in the kitchen, looking at the available pots and pans.
“Grace!” Doc hurried over and took the pasta box from her. “Now we can get cooking. Is there more stuff in the car? Charlie, come help bring stuff in.”
He set the box on the counter and hurried off.
Grace followed after Doc and Charlie to bring in more boxes, Alex at her heels. Grace had brought enough pasta for several hundred people. She didn’t know how many would come to the dinner, but after all the advertising, she had prepared for a crowd. The van was jammed with supplies. The volunteers were going to make homemade spaghetti sauce with sausage and peppers according to Dorothy’s family recipe, which was famous in Fraser’s Mill. Besides the pasta and sauce, Grace had brought bread and butter, supplies for Italian salad, and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. She and Mom had made the cookies themselves.
A few more volunteers were coming in. Time to start cooking.
“Listen up,” Doc announced, over the noise. He rolled up his sleeves. “Grace is gonna tell you guys what to do, and you’re gonna do it. She’s your chef for the evening. I’m the sous chef—hey, Charlie, toss me an apron—and the rest of you are the kitchen crew. Everybody wash your hands and get ready to cook.”
He caught the red apron Charlie tossed him and tied it on. It was too short for him.
“Well, chef,” he said, coming over to Grace, “you’re in charge—what do you want us to do?”
She wanted to be businesslike, but she couldn’t help smiling. “I feel like a chef at a Michelin 3-star restaurant. Thank you, Jim.”
His eyes twinkled down at her. “Here’s to making Michelin 3-star restaurant profits!”
The next few hours were chaos. Some people cooked pasta and sauce, others put together salad, others plated food and sent it out to the line of waiting people. Doc in his red apron was here, there, and everywhere, carrying heavy pots, telling people what to do, and making sure nobody got burned draining the pasta. Grace didn’t think she had ever seen anything so attractive before in her whole life.
The kitchen was hot—it was a sweltering day, and the air conditioning didn’t do much for the crowded space with so many stove burners going. People kept taking breaks to splash cold water on their faces and necks before returning to work.
Grace took a moment to breathe and peek into the hall. It was crowded.
“I think our advertising worked,” Doc’s voice said behind Grace.
She jumped.
Doc chuckled. “Sorry.”
She turned around. “Are you ever gonna stop creeping up on me?”
He grinned. “I could start wearing squeaky shoes so you’d hear me coming up. Or a bell around my neck, like in the story about the mice who wanted to put a bell on the cat.”
Grace laughed. “So I’m a mouse and you’re a cat?”
He raised an eyebrow. “If the shoe fits…”
Something crashed to the floor on the other side of the kitchen, and Grace jumped again.
“Hey, Doc!” Charlie called. “Little help?”
It had been an open can of crushed tomatoes, the large size. Tomatoes and juice flowed in a huge puddle over the kitchen floor.
“Oh, no!” Grace exclaimed. “What a mess!”
Doc put a hand on her arm. “It’s okay,” he said. “At least there isn’t broken glass like last time.”
It was going to be okay. Grace took a deep breath and addressed the kitchen volunteers. “Hey, guys,” she said. “You keep going, and I’ll get some things to clean up the mess.”
At this point things were winding down. The steady line of customers had thinned out to a trickle. Alex and a few others were able to keep the food supply going while Grace, Doc, and Charlie cleaned up the spilled tomatoes.
When no more customers came through, the volunteers got to eat. They picked out a long table in the corner of the hall and crowded around it, fitting in more chairs than were supposed to fit. Grace was at one corner of the table with Alex squeezed in on one side of her and Doc on the other.
Natalie, who had been in the hallway selling tickets to the people coming in, came in with the cashbox. “Here’s all the money we took in,” she said. “I haven’t counted it. A bunch of people kept paying with larger bills and saying to keep the change.”
“I’ll count it tonight,” Grace said. “The bank’s closed, so we’ll have to put it in a safe somewhere.”
“I’ve got a safe,” Doc said, “unless you’d rather not keep it there. I could be a thief who’s been playing the long game with you all summer.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I know where you live.”
Everyone helped clean up, and Charlie fired up the dishwasher. It was old-fashioned, but so was the one in the diner, and he was used to it. He kept the dish drying crew supplied with steaming plates that were nearly dry already and almost too hot to touch.
“Do enough dishes, and you won’t have any nerves in your hands,” he said.
It was all over. Grace thanked the volunteers nearly a dozen times each, and she, Doc, Charlie, and Alex put the empty boxes and other things she had brought with her in Dad’s van.
The dusky outdoors felt pleasantly cool after the steamy kitchen. Grace hadn’t realized how much her feet hurt. She leaned back against the side of the van, not caring how dirty the back of her shirt was getting, and sighed. “Ah, that’s better.”
“Want me to come over and help count the money?” Doc asked.
“Hey, what about me?” Alex asked, coming around the van. “I want to help count.”
“Fine, we’ll have a counting party at my house,” Grace said. “Charlie can come too, if he wants. Just don’t invite any burglars.”
§
They sat around the Murrays’ kitchen table with Grace’s parents, pen and paper ready to keep track of the totals as they counted.
“Wow, this looks like a lot,” Mom said, surveying the full cashbox.
Dad cleared his throat. “Don’t get too excited, Liz—we’ve gotta subtract the money for the hall rental and the cost of the groceries. Do we know how many meals we sold?”
Grace didn’t know. Unless Natalie had counted the people, there was no record of how many meals they sold.
“We could count the money and divide by the cost of the meals to figure out how many meals we sold,” Alex suggested.
Grace shook her head. “No, that won’t give us the right number. Natalie said some people paid with larger bills and said to keep the change.”
“That’s probably only a few dollars here or there,” Dad said. “It won’t affect the total much.”
“Look at this!” Doc pulled a bill out of the cash box, Ben Franklin’s face prominent on it.
“Somebody broke a hundred?” Grace asked. “You sure that thing isn’t counterfeit?”
Doc put his head on one side. “In this town? Wanna test it?”
“No, you’re right. I doubt any of those people would do that. Besides, the counterfeit pen’s all the way down in the store.”
Doc rummaged in the cash box. Natalie hadn’t sorted the money, and all the denominations of bills were mixed together.
“That’s not the only hundred,” Doc said. “I’ve seen at least four or five more so far.”
“Really?” Dad scooted his chair closer.
“Come on, let’s count it,” Alex said, bouncing in her chair. “I want to see how we did!”
“I’ll make some tea,” Mom said. “Unless you’d rather have coffee.”
“You don’t want to keep these poor young people up all night, Liz,” Dad said. “Better stick with the tea.”
Mom bustled around with the tea kettle and stacks of teacups, and the others counted the money.
A while in they were still only halfway through the cash box, and they kept finding more hundred-dollar bills. “I’ll tell you what,” Dad said. “There’s no way you made all this money just selling dinner tickets.”
“You mean people were just donating money?” Grace asked.
Doc held up another Benjamin Franklin. “I told you the people around here cared about the store. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was enough money here to pay for the freezer.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Dad said. “I’d be surprised if we made over a couple thousand. We’ll still need to raise money some other way.”
“Guys, you’re making me lose count,” Charlie said. “I’ve gotta start over again on this stack. Let’s talk when we’re done.”
“Sorry, Charlie,” Grace said. “Come on, let’s finish up.”
The money was counted. Grace held her breath as Alex subtracted the hall rental and the food costs from the total.
Alex looked up, her face bright. “After you take away the hall rental and the food costs,” she said, “you made a total of $3,564!”
“Hooray!” Grace jumped up from the table. “That’s wonderful! That’s most of the money we need for the freezer!”
“Wahoo!” Charlie pumped his fists in the air.
Dad cleared his throat. “Wow,” he said. “This is a lot more than I thought you were going to make. There must have been multiple people just donating money.”
“You’re right,” Doc said. “There’s no way we sold anywhere near that number of dinners.”
“And we don’t know who any of the people are,” Mom said. “We don’t know who to thank.”
“They’re our friends and neighbors here in Fraser’s Mill,” Grace said. “Maybe there’s a way we can thank them all together.”
“So what are you going to do about the freezer?” Charlie asked. “How much money is it gonna be?”
“The best listing I found so far was $4,500 if you pick it up yourself,” Grace said.
“Raising that last thousand might not be too hard,” Dad said.
“Wait a minute.” Grace pulled out her phone. “Let me look at something.”
She pulled up her bank account balance. That account had been drained pretty low when she moved back to Fraser’s Mill—she had to pay extra rent money because her lease wasn’t up, and the gas and hotels for the trip had set her back even farther—but there was still some money there: $1,056. Her paycheck was a week away.
“I’ll give the last thousand,” Grace said.
Everyone looked at her.
“Are you sure?” Mom asked. “I’m not going to ask how much money is in your account, but can you afford that?”
Grace nodded. “I want to do it,” she said. “After all, I’m the one who’s going to take over the store. All our friends and neighbors have contributed. I’m going to give something too.”
“I seem to remember you saying you had barely enough money to get back to Michigan,” Dad said, his forehead creased.
“Dad, I get my paycheck in a week,” Grace said. “And I have barely any expenses right now. I’ll be fine.”
Doc nudged her. “I know a guy who wouldn’t mind saving you some grocery money by taking you out to dinner.”
Grace grinned. “I’ll bet you do.” She turned to her parents. “It’s settled. I’m going to give the rest of the money for the freezer.”
“You’re a good girl, Gracie,” Dad said. “Thank you.”
“Yay!” Alex clapped her hands. “Let’s go get the freezer.”
Everyone laughed. “Not tonight!” Grace said. “Let’s all get some sleep, and we can figure that out later.”
§
The next day, after a lot of research, the Murrays settled on a freezer for the store. It was on eBay, and after Dad had talked to the seller, he was satisfied. The hard part would be getting the freezer on a truck and bringing it to the store. The Martins’ trailer was too small to haul a 3-door freezer. Grace posted on the town social media page about it.
She got a reply almost right away from someone she hadn’t expected: Hannah Fraser. Hannah said the sawmill had a truck they could use. She called her dad to get permission to lend it to the Murrays.
A triumphant group went out to Cadillac, where the used freezer was. They had brought a lot of people, which was good, because it took seven men to get the freezer onto the truck. Grace had the envelope with the money for the freezer. She had never held so much cash in her hand before. She felt like a real businesswoman, doing big—and scary—transactions, as she handed it to the seller.
Back at Murray’s Grocery, they could hardly get into the store because so many people were standing around to watch the freezer installation. Grace slipped in ahead of the freezer and parked herself by the baked goods display, where she’d be out of the way.
“Hey, I gave money toward that freezer,” Ed Hoffman said, when one of the guys suggested everybody ought to clear the area. “I wanna see that it gets put in in one piece.”
When the freezer was in place, Dad plugged it in. The lights went on, and a cheer arose.
“All right, Ben,” a man’s voice called from the doorway. It was Sheriff Hank Liddell. “You better go fill that thing up now. It’s been two weeks since I had a decent bowl of ice cream!”
“Hank!” The sheriff’s wife, standing near Grace, protested with a smile.
“I’ll make an ice cream run today,” Grace said. “Don’t worry, Sheriff, you won’t have to wait much longer.”
The sheriff smiled. “I’ll depend on that,” he said, and tipped his hat to Grace. “We can always count on the Murrays to keep this town fed. It wouldn’t be the same place without you.”
Grace couldn’t have smiled more broadly. “Thanks, Sheriff!”