The Great Peach Experiment 1

by Erin Soderberg Downing

  “Let’s swing past the grocery store on the way back to the campground,” Lucy suggested. “Then Dad and I can get started mixing up some dough while you two do the gross jobs.”

  “Gross jobs!” Herb chanted. “Gross! Gross! Gross! Gross!”

  Freddy felt relaxed, happy, and hopeful. The Peach Pie Truck was running smoothly, the past week had been filled with plenty of adventure and fun, the whole family was enjoying doing something together, and—according to Herb’s calculations—they were finally making money. Real money.

  But the best part was, Freddy was starting to discover his true calling: he was great at running a business. He couldn’t ace a math test, but he excelled at customer service. He knew how to deal with all the weird customers, and his family had begun to rely on him to run the front window. For the first time in his life, Freddy was actually better than anyone else—even Lucy—at something.

  In a moment of sudden pride and solidarity, Freddy thrust his hand, palm down, into the center of the food truck. “Pile up!” he told the rest of his family. “Peach power!”

  Lucy solemnly placed her hand on top of Freddy’s. Herb stuffed his own sweaty hand into the stack, and then Dad piled on his hand, too.

  “Peach power!” the three kids cried, flinging their hands high.

  “Peach power,” Dad repeated a second later, wiggling his hands slowly in midair.

  “Yeah, that cheer’s gonna need some more work,” Freddy said with a laugh. “But you know what? It’s a start.” He winked. “We’ll get there.”

  From the Sketchbook of Freddy Peach:

  BEARDS!

  In two days at the Madison Blues Music Festival, I witnessed some truly amazing facial hair. Beard labels © Freddy Peach.

  15

  EATING PROFITS

  Lucy sat in the back corner of the food truck on Monday morning, counting bills from their weekend haul for the twentieth time. She reported the total number to Herb, who did some quick calculations on the back of a napkin.

  “We finally made a profit,” he announced. A huge smile lit up his face, and Lucy leaned forward to give her little brother a hug.

  “Music festivals are our scene!” Freddy cheered.

  “Yes, indeed!” Dad hollered from the truck’s big front sales window. Then he adjusted his hat, popped open the fridge to grab a fresh pie, and made an OK sign with his fingers. “Music festivals are da bomb!”

  Freddy groaned. “No, Dad. Just…no.”

  Dad kicked the refrigerator closed and balanced a pie on his palm. He boomed, “Madison Blues Fest for the win. We be jammin’!”

  Lucy snorted a laugh. Herb giggled and raced over to offer his dad a high five. It had been a great weekend—they’d had solid sales, the family had gotten along and cooperated really well, and that morning they’d eaten the yummiest cinnamon buns ever at a farmer’s market in downtown Madison.

  Feeling light and cheerful, Lucy stuffed all the pie cash into a big zippered envelope and stored it inside the small safe that was bolted into one of the food truck’s cabinets. “I’m glad we decided to stay here one extra day,” she said. That morning, the Peaches had set up shop on a busy street near the University of Wisconsin–Madison, hoping to sell some fresh-baked slices of pie to college students. They’d had a steady stream of customers from the moment they’d opened. “Madison is obviously our lucky city!”

  “Hello,” Freddy said to someone outside the window a moment later. “Welcome to the Peach Pie Truck. What can I get for you?”

  “I want a slice of pie,” the woman’s friendly voice said. “But what I need is a peek at your permit.”

  Lucy stilled. She scooted a few feet to the left, until she could see the person outside the window. A cop!

  Dad dropped the pie he was holding on the counter, and gooey whipped cream splattered everywhere. “Our, ah, permit?” he said, obviously flustered. “Yes, of course.”

  The police officer nodded somberly, then lowered the kickstand on her police bike. “Your pies look quite tasty, but you can’t sell here without the right paperwork.”

  Based on Dad’s worried expression, Lucy had a sinking suspicion they didn’t have the right paperwork. This stop had been unplanned and not part of Dad’s original schedule, after all. For a moment, Lucy considered stepping forward to try to charm the officer into letting them go with nothing more than a warning. But she wasn’t a fool, and she knew that wasn’t going to work. Stuff like that only worked in movies.

  As Lucy picked at her thumbnail and tried to figure out how she was going to fix yet another problem, Freddy stepped in front of Dad and said, “You’re looking for our permit, Officer? Perhaps I can interest you in a slice of apple crumb pie instead?”

  “Apple crumb is my favorite.” The policewoman gave Freddy a curt smile. “But that’s not gonna do the trick. I’m sure you all know there’s a hefty fine for selling without a license. If I can just take a peek at your paperwork, we should be able to work this out.” Freddy nodded, but Lucy knew even Freddy’s sweet-talking wasn’t going to make the officer go away without a good, solid look at a permit.

  Dad shuffled through the stuff under the counter and pulled out the printed piece of paper that gave them permission to sell pies at the weekend music festival. Lucy sidled up beside her dad, her eyes quickly scanning the paperwork. The permit said nothing about State Street, or anywhere else in Madison, for that matter. Nevertheless, Dad passed the paper to the officer, who shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This was only good at the blues festival this weekend. Doesn’t work here in town.” Then she reached into her fanny pack and pulled out a little machine to type up a ticket.

  As the officer tapped away on her machine, Freddy passed the policewoman a massive slab of apple pie. “This is thanks for all you do,” he said in a friendly, carefree voice. “If we can’t sell it, this yummy pie ought to go to a good cause.”

  Lucy watched, impressed, as her brother and the police officer shared a smile. Over the past week, she had begun to notice that Freddy had a special way with people. She’d always thought of herself as the fixer, but on this trip, Freddy had swept in to solve most of their problems. Something deep inside her chest loosened when she realized she didn’t need to manage this one; Freddy had it covered. She could just sit back and watch while someone else took charge for a change.

  “The pie’s not a bribe,” Freddy told the police officer, holding his hands up like he was under arrest. “I just wanna make that clear.”

  The officer laughed. “Good to know.” Then she took a big bite, heaved a contented sigh, and nodded happily. “That’s good stuff.” Then she printed a ticket and passed it across the counter to Dad. “I really am sorry. I kept the fine as low as I possibly could. But law is law, and if we let people run their food trucks wherever they wanted, well…we just can’t. Have a nice day now.”

  As soon as the officer biked away, Lucy took the ticket from her dad’s shaking hands. She read it aloud, her eyes widening at the size of the fine. “Guess Madison’s not so lucky anymore. This weekend’s profits?” she said, closing her eyes. “To pay this ticket, we’re about to spend every last penny we just made.”

  Freddy plucked the ticket out of her hand and hid it behind his back. “It’s just a hiccup.”

  “That’s one expensive hiccup,” Lucy muttered.

  Dad rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes. “What was I thinking?” he groaned quietly. “We’re out of our league. I don’t know why I thought this was—” he stammered. “If your mother were here—”

  Lucy waited for him to say more. To say that it was time to quit. When the going got tough, Walter Peach got going.

  “It’s a tiny, itty-bitty hiccup,” Freddy said again. Lucy spun to face her brother, who was grinning from ear to ear. “Our first ticket. We’ll make the money back tomorrow, if we do things right. We just have
to learn from this and move on.”

  “Move on? How?” Lucy whispered, so quietly she wasn’t even sure anyone heard her. But then Herb wrapped his spindly little arms around her waist, and she had a feeling she’d said it louder than she’d meant to. She turned to face their dad, to see what he would say.

  “Freddy’s right. We have to learn from this and move on,” Dad said with a resigned shrug. “That’s exactly what your mother would want us to do. It’s what we need to do.”

  “No experiment runs smoothly at every stage, right?” Freddy said. “Sometimes stuff fails miserably. But we just gotta move forward and do things differently next time.”

  “Do things differently…,” Dad muttered.

  “To Chicago?” Herb asked hopefully.

  Freddy glanced over at Lucy. She shrugged. Why not? Their experiment was a mess, but maybe Freddy was right: it didn’t mean they had to give up and back away. Maybe they could turn this mess into something?

  Lucy nodded. “Let’s head to Chicago.”

  Dad didn’t say anything; he was blinking like he had something in his eye.

  “To Chicago,” Freddy agreed.

  MADISON MONEY:

  (BY HERB)

  ∗ Cost of Pie Supplies: $743

  ∗ Sales: $1,945!

  ∗ Total Profit: $1,202

  ∗ Ticket Cost: $1,200

  ∗ Total Profit AFTER ticket: $2

  Dear Great Aunt Lucinda,

  Big news from the Peach Pie Truck: We finally made a profit! But THEN…we had to use all that money to pay off a ticket we got for selling pie without a permit in downtown Madison. You know what’s crazy, though? Even though things haven’t been going perfectly, I’m actually having a pretty good time. Dad even let us stop at a mini-golf course yesterday! I really, really hope we make enough money so Dad will decide that this summer was worth it. I don’t think I can go back to the way things were before, not now that I’ve seen what life is like when our family is kind of a family again….

  Miss you and the pups SO MUCH!

  Love,

  Lucy

  From the Sketchbook of Freddy Peach:

  HOW TO SPEND A MILLION DOLLARS

  When I have a million bucks, I’m going to golf 18 holes at every single PGA golf course, and use the snack cart as my cart so I can get soda and candy whenever I want. With a million bucks, there’d probably be enough money left over to pay all the guys with green Masters jackets to come out and cheer for me.

  16

  RESTLESS HERB

  Herb was hot, sticky, and sad. His dad had promised him that he would get to go swimming every day during their trip. But he hadn’t even gotten to pop his toes in a lake, river, or pool the whole time they were in Madison.

  The previous day, he’d splashed and waded for a few seconds in a little fountain in the middle of hole thirteen at a mini-golf course. But before he’d even begun to cool off and enjoy himself, Lucy had yelled at him to “GET OUT! THERE ARE PROBABLY DISGUSTING, GERMY THINGS GROWING IN THERE!” (As if he hadn’t checked first!) So he’d only gotten his sandals and knees wet, which meant it really didn’t count as swimming. Then, Lucy had forced him to take a shower and scrub his body extra hard with gross-smelling soap to wash away the fountain water, and showers were icky.

  To make matters worse, the campground the Peaches had settled into just outside Chicago had no pool, no sprinklers, no waterslides, no lake, and no stream—which meant Herb was, once again, dry and miserable. This was an outrage. He was trapped inside a stuffy tent every night, squeezed into a stinky food truck every day (but given no tasks or trust at all), and the only thing he truly needed to make him happy—water—was impossible to find. They were in the Midwest, not the desert, and his dad had promised. Swimming every day had been Herb’s goal for their trip, and it was starting to seem like no one was taking his goal seriously. Just like they never took him seriously. They made fun of his empty toilet paper roll collection, they’d laughed at his dog-walking business, no one ever wanted to play with his mice, and now this.

  Lucky Lucy was making progress on her goal of finishing every book on the seventh-grade summer reading list. It was sort of annoying how focused she was on her goal, actually. Every time Herb wanted to play cards at the campground, or do the license plate game while they were driving, or play tic-tac-toe on the chalkboard menu outside their pie truck, Lucy said no because she wanted to sneak in a few minutes of reading time. Well, la-di-da.

  And no one had forgotten about Freddy’s goal of stopping at weird roadside attractions. They’d even gone out of their way to see that giant, creepy fish!

  Dad was also well on his way to succeeding at his goal of getting the Peach Pie Truck ready to compete in the Ohio Food Truck Festival—no one had forgotten about that part of their experiment. Dad didn’t actually seem to care about much of anything, except making sure they were ready to win.

  But when it came time to focus on Herb’s simple, easy-peasy plan to swim every day? He was starting to get the sense that his goals didn’t matter.

  Herb was feeling restless, especially after Freddy had told him he couldn’t “waste expensive ingredients” making Herb’s Cinnaballs anymore. This made Herb grumpy; his cinnaballs were the only way he’d been able to be a part of the family business. No one ever let him try to make real crusts anymore, and he wasn’t even allowed to mix up the peach mush for their pies. So now, in the evenings when the other three members of his family were baking and preparing stuff to sell the next day, Herb had nothing to do.

  To make matters worse, Herb’s pet mice had also begun to outgrow the small, no-fun space inside their little tank. The three mouse babies looked miserable. Because Herb himself was squished and trapped much of the time, he knew exactly how his little friends felt. It was no fun at all to be stuck inside such cramped quarters every day, with no freedom to roam or choose what they wanted to do.

  Herb knew he should probably release his mice when they got a little older—it was the kind and right thing to do, Lucy had told him. Herb understood that. They were born in the wild, so they deserved to return to the wild—they just weren’t quite ready to be on their own yet. And to tell the truth, Herb wasn’t ready to let them go. They needed him. But still, he wished they could explore a bit of the world outside their tank now. How boring, to spend every day inside a glass tank or a cardboard box. They could see the rest of the world, but they couldn’t get out and explore it. Herb knew what that was like.

  That’s when Herb realized, even if he couldn’t control his own fate, he could improve life for his mice!

  So while the rest of his family worked on baking the pies they would sell in downtown Chicago the next day, Herb got to work on a fun task of his own. First, he filled his arms with a pile of stiff cardboard he found at the campground’s recycling station. Then, slowly and quietly, he dragged his supplies into the tent he was now sharing with Lucy. (The four Peaches had begun trading off tent partners each night, since Dad snored—bad. Lucy and Freddy had protested when Herb first brought up the idea of swapping tent-buddies, but after a lot of discussion about it, Lucy had announced that it was only fair that they take turns sleeping next to the snoring machine. Herb felt pretty sure Lucy just wanted a chance to sleep in the same tent as him and his mice and his stuffed pig.)

  That evening, no one paid any attention to Herb coming or going out of the family’s campsite, which was probably for the best. Herb knew his sister and brother would probably try to take over his project and boss him around if they knew what he was planning (because it was a good and fun idea), and he wanted to do something nice for his pets all on his own.

  The first thing Herb did after he dragged all that cardboard inside the tent was to stuff Lucy’s pillow under his own pillow for safekeeping—right next to his stuffed pig. Next, he pushed all the books and sleeping bags to the outside
edges of the tent, creating a big open space in the center. Then, he covered the floor of the tent with cardboard. After, he tucked and folded more pieces of cardboard along the edges of the sleeping bags to create four upright walls in the middle of the tent.

  As soon as that was done, he placed his entire collection of empty toilet paper rolls into the big open space. They made perfect tunnels and hills for the mice to play in and chew! Herb knew his new collection would come in handy for something.

  Last, he spread little globs of peanut butter all over the play area, to make it even more enticing. “Voila!” he whispered, admiring his masterpiece. Finally, he plucked each of his mice out of their container and gently lowered them into their very own, Herb-created, cardboard play zone. “Isn’t this fun?” he asked the mice, peering over the edge of his homemade mouse run. “Freddy and Lucy built something like this for me in the backyard once.”

  The mice went wild in their new space. They scrambled through the tunnels, scurried up cardboard ramps, and gobbled up the peanut butter. Best of all, they couldn’t escape, because of Herb’s cleverly mounted sidewalls. It was like a giant playpen! Herb perched on his knees, peering over the wall of his mouse village. Then, feeling left out, he clambered over the wall and sat inside the pen with his mouse friends.

  The smallest, lightest-brown mouse (the one Herb had named Fuzzy) loved hiding inside the little cardboard tunnels, and often poked his nose out to squeak at his pals as they passed. The medium-brown, chubby mouse (that Herb had named Lump) galloped in great circles around the wide-open space, climbing over Herb’s leg and sometimes trying to sneak up inside his pants! And Hound (the biggest, friendliest mouse, who had been named after the sweet dog in the Penderwicks series) seemed to enjoy it when Herb picked him up and placed him in new corners that he could explore. “I’m a mousy tour guide,” he said, giggling. Then he sang, “Hound goes here, Hound goes there, Hound goes every-everywhere.”