The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [53]
"I hear you want to buy a truckload of apples," the manager said as he walked up. He was trying his best to be funny, but he sounded more like a bad actor in a school play.
Amy looked at him and frowned. "Actually, we thought we'd sell you a truckload of them," she said.
The manager stared at her, wearing a creepy grin. He moved his eyes up and down her until she looked away.
I decided I should speak up. "Do you ever buy locally grown fruit and vegetables to sell here?"
"Nope!" he said, still looking at Amy. "All of it comes from our central distributor. Can't be sure that anything else would be safe or high quality."
"We've got a lot of apples that are really high quality, and we've been spraying for worms and bugs regularly."
The manager finally turned and looked at me. "Look, this isn't some kind of flea market. We can't just go buying any old thing off the street. And where are your parents? Shouldn't they be worrying about selling the family crops?" He giggled to himself.
"Then can we talk to the distributor or something? Maybe call him?" I asked hopefully.
"Go ahead if you can find the number. Now, I've got to get back to some real work," he said. He took one last long look at Amy and turned and slumped off slowly, as if he were hoping we would beg him to come back.
When he left, the young potato guy turned to us. "Sorry about that. He wasn't much help."
"Not really," I agreed. "You don't happen to have that distributor's number, do you?"
"No, but maybe you could look in the phone book or something or call the main line to the store and ask."
"We'll try it," I said. "Do you think we can have a couple of those extra boxes?" I asked, pointing to some boxes he had finished unloading.
"Sure, go ahead," said the potato guy.
We collected as many empty boxes as we could, including a few apple boxes. We also wrote down what Safeway was charging per pound for apples: fifty cents. The side of the apple box said there were forty pounds per bushel, so we had a pretty good idea of what a bushel of apples would cost at Safeway. It was close to the $25 Mrs. Nelson had mentioned when she was talking me into the orchard idea.
All of our collected boxes plus Mom's groceries wouldn't fit in the trunk of the car, so we had to ride home with a few of them crammed under our feet and on top of our laps. It was depressing to think about not having a place to sell our apples, and everyone was quiet in the car, staring out the windows.
It's funny how sometimes you can see a thing hundreds of times and never notice it. Then one day you really look at it, and it becomes the only thing you can see. That happened to me just as we were leaving Farmington. On the side of the road, people were selling something out of the back of their car. They had a little sign that said BEANS AND MELONS. All of a sudden, I remembered seeing that car almost every time we went to town.
"Hey, Mom," I asked, "would you ever buy fruit from someone selling it on the side of the road?"
She thought for a few seconds. "Well, maybe. It would probably depend on who was selling it, what it looked like."
"Would you pay the same price that you would in the supermarket?" I asked.
"No, because it would require an extra stop. So it would have to cost less. Why?"
"Just kind thinking," I replied.
I noticed several more cars selling fruit before we got to Fruitland. I saw someone with a WATERMELONS sign in the distance and asked my mom if we could stop.
"I don't want any watermelons," she said.
"I just want to talk to them a little bit."
She pulled off and said she would wait for five minutes. I had Amy do most of the talking. We found out that the watermelon sellers were a mother and young daughter. They were selling watermelons now but would sell all kinds of fruits and vegetables during the summer and fall. They raised some of it themselves and would drive out of state to buy things like oranges.
"Do you sell things by