The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [63]
"Probably."
When my sisters and cousins had all gathered around the old station wagon later that night, I brought up the possibility of using the bags.
"They're just sitting out at the supermarket. Why don't we just get some there? They don't charge you for them," said Amy.
"But we would need hundreds. Don't you think they'd care?" I asked.
"Can't hurt to try and see how many we could get," said Amy. "Someone should go with one of our moms the next time they go to town."
"Okay, who?" I asked.
Amy looked around. "Michael, because he wouldn't be afraid of anyone working there."
Michael didn't disagree, and it was decided he would go with my aunt the next time she went grocery shopping. When my aunt heard the plan, she thought it was funny and even agreed to make a special trip the next day. She mentioned something about paying Safeway back for their high prices and agreed to give Michael time to collect bags by staying extra long.
***
After school on Tuesday, the two of them left for town, and the rest of us started picking and selling. Michael returned about two and a half hours later and ran out into the orchard with plastic bags clenched in his fists.
"I got 'em!" he yelled as he ran up to us. "Look!"
"How many did you get?" asked Amy.
"I don't know," said Michael, "a lot, though. At first I thought of just taking a couple of rolls, you know still rolled up. But I didn't think they would let me out of the store that way."
"So what did you do?" I asked.
"I just started tearing them off the roll one at a time. I figured once they were torn off, no one else would want to use 'em, so they wouldn't stop me."
"So you just stood there tearing off bags? Didn't anyone say anything?" asked Amy.
"Whenever anyone came close to me, I would move so they couldn't see what I was doing," Michael said very proudly.
"And you went through the checkout line with all the bags?" I asked.
"Yeah, with my mom."
"Did the checker say anything?" I asked.
"She asked what all the bags were for, and I told her I needed them for a project and said, 'They're free, right?' She didn't seem to care."
"Wow, I can't believe you did it," I said. "Take them up to Lisa and tell her to see how many bags you can fill from a box."
Michael ran up to the road and then came back about half an hour later. "She says about fourteen or fifteen bags for a box," he said when he returned.
I looked at Amy. "If we sold them for a dollar a bag, that's $14 a box, and we get the box back," I said.
"Sounds good to me," she replied. "Michael, go tell Lisa to try and sell them for a dollar."
"And tell her to really push the bags," I said as he turned to leave.
***
Over the next few days, the bags proved to be a hit. Lisa reported that she sold about two bags for every box. She had also counted all of the bags Michael had taken from Safeway and came up with 715. Soon Sam was bringing empty boxes back to the orchard after they had been used to fill up bags. I hadn't figured out things exactly, but I suddenly was confident that if we could just fill all the bags and boxes, we could at least get past the $8,000 hurdle. Filling them all was going to be a problem, though. I felt like I was picking faster and faster all the time, but there were just not enough hours in the day. With Lisa and Jennifer selling and Sam hauling boxes around, picking came down mostly to Amy, Michael, and me.
I became so obsessed with picking apples that I hardly noticed anything else once I got home from school. This included Mrs. Nelson's house. I had stopped glancing in the windows to see if she was watching us and just raced by on my way home. I could hardly remember the last time I had seen her. I was lost in picking one afternoon during the second week of apple harvesting when her son, Tommy, sneaked up on me. I was concentrating on stems so hard that I didn't hear him until he was standing next to my ladder.
"Hey, Jackson! How's business?" he called to me.
I twisted around to find him staring up at me with a big grin. I hadn't seen him for a while either, so