“I’d send you down with some drinks from the cafe, but, we need those for sales here, and we don’t have extras — our shipment doesn’t come in for three days,” admitted Patricia. “I’ll make sure that the other gals get down to the river ASAP to help you out with the booth — or the table — or whatever we end up having. I’m gonna haul ass and get this shizz figured out.”
“All we can do is all we can do,” said Katrina, nodding. “I need to make a call.”
“Of course,” said Patricia.
Patricia drove off in her car. Katrina picked up her cell phone and called Quentin.
“Quentin?” asked Katrina, as someone answered.
“Nope — Alex, but Quentin is here too,” said Alex. “Are you okay? You weren’t answering your phone.”
“I was fine, just busy, but I should’ve picked up,” said Katrina. “I heard about the blockage. Are you two okay?”
“Yeah — but right now, we’re working on a solution to the problem,” said Quentin. “We just have to get the guys to work together on it.” Katrina heard some shouting in the background, and then, she heard a roar and some growling.
“We have to go and wrangle them before they tear each other apart,” said Alex. “Can you trust us?”
“Go, go — and don’t do anything reckless,” said Katrina.
“Well…we can’t really promise that,” admitted Quentin, and before Katrina could answer, the call cut out.
Katrina closed her eyes and took in a breath. She just had to trust Quentin and Alex.
Katrina finished loading the truck up with some help from the other bakers, fitting in some folding chairs and some folding tables. She drove the truck down and met with the other bakers down by the river, where various booths were already set up. The three spots allotted to the bakery and the two lumber camps were empty. Katrina and her crew carried their stuff to the spaces and set up a table with a card-reading tablet, a money box, and a basic menu. On the table behind her, they set up the pastries, which didn’t need refrigeration — stuff like cookies, muffins, croissants. They had gone with a basic menu because they weren’t sure about how they’d be able to refrigerate the pastries at the festival.
The tables did not look great, but, they didn’t scare customers away. They didn’t lure them in either. Every other booth looked better than Katrina’s booth. Even the entrance booth, where people could get wristbands proving they were over twenty-one so they could buy alcohol, looked better.
“Where’s your booth?” asked a woman, approaching Katrina, who was repositioning the muffins. Katrina looked over her. She wasn’t a customer. She was a woman from another bakery in town — Toad in the Hole Cafe. Katrina had tussled with her kind before.
“It’s on its way,” said Katrina, going back to counting her muffins.
“If I were you, I’d just go home,” said the woman, filing her nails.
“Why?” asked Katrina, turning to face the woman, arms crossed over her chest.
“Because with Toad in the Hole Cafe working the festival, it’s not like Bear Claw Bakery is going to make any sales anyway,” said the woman, whose nametag read ‘Tella.’
“And what would you know about that?” asked Katrina.
“Toad in the Hole Cafe has a secret project in the works,” said Tella. “I’d watch out if I were you.”
“Okay,” said Katrina.
“I said…we have a secret weapon,” said Tella, raising her brow.
“You actually said ‘secret project,’” said Katrina.
“Well, I meant weapon!” said Tella, crossing her arms.
“Okay,” said Katrina.
“And aren’t you curious about what it is?” asked Tella.
“No,” said Katrina. “Not particularly.”
“You should be!” said Tella, opening her mouth, and flexing her two incisors. She made them move in and out.
“Is the secret weapon needing dental work?” asked Katrina.
“Wh-what?” asked Tella. “No! I’m a tarantula shifter! Like a vampire! And I’m a witch! Bleh!”
“Hon, I’m glad you’re involved in community theater, but I didn’t buy a ticket to your drama,” said Katrina. “Enjoy your secret weapon. I’m not scared of spiders.”
That was a lie. Katrina was terrified of creepy-crawlies. She did not like spiders, not one bit, and she had a personal dislike of Tella. Tella frowned at her and stomped off. Apparently, scaring a spider away was not that hard. In a way, it was a pity — something was appealing about grabbing a broom to smush a spider, or at the very least, sweep it away.
Katrina went back to waiting for customers at the table. She couldn’t help but pull out her phone and check for texts and missed calls. She didn’t have any. She checked and, ironically, she was sad that she had cell phone reception, because it meant she really hadn’t missed any contact from the bears. She was worried about them. She’d heard the roars and growls in the background. They said they’d meet her at the river, but she hadn’t seen them. Katrina knew it was unprofessional to be checking her phone while she was on register duty, but she couldn’t help it. She was very, very worried about the bears, and she was sure they were doing something reckless.
“Hey!” called a voice. “You look thirsty!”
Katrina looked up. Another woman from Toad in the Hole had come over. This one had a cup of purple liquid. Katrina stood up and backed away. She was worried the woman had come over to splash her with the ‘secret weapon’ — purple food dye to make Katrina look ridiculous.
“Here to gloat?” asked Katrina.
“Nah,” said the woman, whose nametag read ‘Brittany.’ “It’s hot out. I thought you could use a drink. A flower like you shouldn’t be wilting under the sun!”
“What’s in it?” asked Katrina. “Poison from that tarantula lady? She talked about some ‘secret weapon.’”
“No — marionberries,” said Brittany. “Did Tella really say she had a secret weapon? She’s always talking about plots, but I have yet to see her follow-through with any. Look —I’m down for an evil scheme, but a gal’s got to go through with it, or else it’s an empty threat. This is just marionberry lemonade, made with lemons, sugar, water, and marionberries. I actually got the tip from a Bear Claw Bakery gal — Jennifer.”
“The one with two bears?” asked Katrina, taking the beverage and sipping. It was sweet and tart and really did make her feel a little better.
“The one that robbed me of first at the Port Jameson Bake-Off,” said Brittany, raising a brow. “Of course, I have to love my muffins best, but…I can admit, her stud muffins are tasty.”
“Wait,” said Katrina, turning back to the table and grabbing an empty box. She looked at the Toad in the Hole Cafe booth and counted how many people were there. She put seven muffins in the box and passed it to Brittany.
“What’s this for?” asked Brittany, taking the box.
“Her muffins are tasty — and so is your lemonade,” said Katrina.
“You mean Jennifer’s?” asked Brittany.
“Well, Jennifer didn’t mix it up for me, so I think it’s your lemonade, Brittany,” said Katrina. “I want you to have these. Consider it a peace offering from us to y’all. I’ll have to stop by sometime to try your brunch. What should I order?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Brittany with a smirk, motioning over her shirt. “You have to try our famous toad-in-the-hole!” Brittany went back to her booth, but what she saw nearly made her drop the dang box of muffins.
The Dixon River was by no means the Mississippi, but it wasn’t some backyard creek neither. Its waters ran surprisingly deep and flowed rather fast. The fact salmon could fight their way up that beast and chose to do so, was proof that animals were often frikkin’ weird.
What Brittany saw was not a school of salmon slapping their way up the river. What she saw was a group of bears, on flat-topped boats covered in lumber.
Katrina looked up from the table, and when she saw the bears,
she couldn’t help but shout with delight as her hands went to her mouth to stifle her sounds of joy. They’d really found a way to get the wood to the festival!
First, she saw two bears — two familiar bears. Brown and furry, she wasn’t sure if they were her bears or just two wild bears that were on the hunt for salmon or berries or some freshly baked muffins. She swore she knew those bears, but maybe Brittany was right — maybe she did need that beverage, and maybe the heat was getting to her head, and maybe she was seeing things. Maybe that spider was right — maybe there weren’t any bears coming to make her festival day special.
Then, she saw two more, and another two, and another two. Then, there were two men — and at first, it looked as if they were in a frikkin’ log flume ride, but then, it was obvious this was almost a version of the real thing.
There were eight bears, in full shift, tied up with ropes, romping through the water. The cables attached the bears and made them form a team. The two teams of bears were hitched to the two sides of the front of a log raft, which was fastened to another log raft. On those log rafts, which were made of logs bound with rope, there were large parcels in tarpaulin. On top of those parcels, there were two familiar men.
They weren’t Alex and Quentin.
They were Darius and Terrence.
It had been a heck of a day, so Katrina didn’t care much which bear gave her a load of wood.
“Hey, can you watch the register?” Katrina asked one of her coworkers who was working the festival.
“Sure thing,” said the other baker.
Katrina passed the other baker the sales tablet and then she ran over to the side of the river, where the eight bears were standing, soaking wet.
Darius and Terrence got off the rafts, each toting four giant duffels.
“Alright, guys — listen up,” called Darius. “We need to land the rafts so they don’t float further down the river. Keep dragging them onto the beach.”
“We need room, people,” called Terrence, shooing people away from the side of the river. “There’ll be plenty of time to watch these bears later.”
The bears pulled the log rafts onto the hard cobbles of the riverbank.
Then, without warning, they shifted — and they were abso-frikkin’-lutely naked.
Katrina wasn’t sure what she expected, or why she was surprised. She knew enough about shifters to know that, if they wore clothes when shifting, those clothes would just burst into smithereens. Of course, they’d be naked when they turned back into their human forms.
Of course, there was a difference between theory and praxis. Seeing eight hot-as-heck naked men, standing in a river, untangling themselves from rope harnesses, was another eight beasts altogether.
Terrence had promised the crowd a show, and they were getting it.
“Alright, clothing’s in here,” said Darius, throwing four bags down to the ground. Terrence followed suit. As six of the bears made their way over to the bags, two of the bears made their way over to Katrina. They were the two bears that had been leading the herd of bears down the river. They were the two shifters she’d seen naked before — but whose nakedness still made her blush.
“Alex?” asked Katrina. “Quentin?”
“Of course, it’s us, babe,” said Quentin with a wink.
“Were you expecting some other bears? Maybe a harem?” joked Alex, thumbing at the bears that were getting changed into their usual jeans and flannels.
“I wasn’t expecting any bears at all,” said Katrina. “I certainly wasn’t expecting a frikkin’ log raft pulled by bears! How did you two pull it off?”
“Well, I called Quentin — and he mentioned that Hemlock Lodge was right near the Dixon River,” explained Alex. “If we could send the lumber downstream and pick it up here, we could build the structures in time for the festival.”
“But, it was Darius who had the idea of making log rafts and Terrence who had the foresight to cover the actual lumber in plastic, to protect it from the water,” said Quentin.
“Who the heck made the rafts?” asked Katrina.
“Oliver and Marvin — two carpenters on staff, who cannot get along to save their lives,” said Quentin. “I don’t think there’s any hope for them…but at least the rest of us ended up working…well, not well together, but…”
“We get along a lot better in our shifts than in our human forms, and that’s probably because we can’t ruin shizz by talking,” said Alex.
“It’s too bad you have to ruin shizz by getting into some pants,” said Katrina, looking over Alex and Quentin. “You know…if you two ever get tired of being lumberjacks, you could be adult dancers at one of those clubs like Bear Buns.”
“Speaking of things that had to get stripped…” started Quentin.
“The thing is, we had to make some last-minute changes to the booth,” said Alex. “We brought down plain wood and a bucket of purple stain. Is that okay?”
“You know what? It’s fine,” said Katrina. “If I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s that sometimes, life throws you curveballs, and you can either try and dodge them…or you can swing, batter, batter, swing.”
Chapter Thirteen
It took a few hours, but the gazebo and the booth were put together by the two crews, who managed to keep their drama to themselves — except for the head carpenters of each squad, Oliver and Marvin. One of them even threatened to quit over having to work with their rival!
The gazebo was made in a vibrant shade of green that would’ve blended into the forest that stopped before the beach began. Navy blue wood nearly blended into that green wood. Navy, light green, yellow, and white shingles swirled in a Van Gogh inspired pattern on the top of the gazebo. The sides of the gazebo had light green railings, and they were decorated with fresh wildflowers from the Hemlock Crew’s garden.
The booth looked good enough to eat. It was large enough to house two registers — one for Bear Claw Bakery, and one for Grizzlyfir Crew. Hemlock Crew’s canapes weren’t for sale, so that crew did not need a register. The booth was made rich brown shades of wood. A wine purple stain applied to the counters and painted in dots on the top of the enclosure made the booth look like a giant marionberry muffin. It was a simple but practical design.
The sides of the three lots that faced the festival were divided into two parts, overlapping in the center lot. There was a section for the bakery booth, a section for seating, and a section with the gazebo. In the back half of the three lots, there were trucks full of baked foods, grills manned by various cooks from both camps, and a station where Quentin was working on making some basic fancy canapes — sushi.
Local restaurants had lent their equipment out to the two lumber crews for free, given what had happened with the road blockage. The local hardware store lent out some of their tools. That was just how things were in Port Jameson: when a neighbor needed a helping hand, another neighbor was there to offer that hand and lift them to their feet.
The log rafts were deconstructed, the logs used to mark out the boundaries of the lots, and the rest were left on the side of the riverbank, to be sold for firewood at a reduced rate…
Of course, that meant that some lumberjacks had to do their frikkin’ jobs while other people ran the grill.
Oliver, from Grizzlyfir, cleared out a space with the help of some of the other lumberjacks. They cordoned off the area with some yellow caution tape. There was no surer way of drawing the attention of the people of Port Jameson than putting up some yellow tape.
Alex and Quentin put on a pair of safety masks with air filtration systems. They were getting ready for business. Everyone around the space put in earplugs. Luckily, Darius and Terrence had brought all the tools they needed the job, including Alex’s trusty ax.
Quentin revved the engine of his chainsaw. The metal beast came to life, roaring loudly, and Quentin touched it to the surface of the log. It cut through the thick trunk. Quentin sliced off bits of the wood as quickly as he’d carve a turkey…or serve
soft cheese at a fancy party.
He kicked the logs over to Alex, who was a safe distance away, a bit further down. There was a slight incline between Alex and Quentin’s position which meant that the logs could roll down the hill with ease. Alex took the logs, put them on an old stump, and, using his trusty old-fashioned wood and steel ax, he split the logs, one by one.
When the area around the stump was so full of logs that it nearly covered the stump, Alex went and grabbed himself a soda. Meanwhile, the other members of Grizzlyfir and Hemlock quickly bagged up the wood and sold it to the folks watching the spectacle. It was July so the firewood couldn’t be sold for a very good price, but it was better than nothing. Plus, it got people in town interested in Grizzlyfir and Hemlock Crew.
Katrina watched the spectacle for about thirty minutes, during a break Patricia forced Katrina to take. She watched as Quentin and Alex were able to work in sync without even talking. Heck, even if they had been talking, they wouldn’t’ve been able to hear each other over the roar of the chainsaw!
Katrina watched as Quentin sliced through the wood with precision. His smooth, fluid motions reminded her of someone slicing up a ham, spiral-style…or of a samurai, practicing with a katana.
Well, katanas weren’t that loud, and Quentin wasn’t that graceful…but something was mesmerizing about the way he seemed to dance with the spinning blade, the way he was able to make it obey his will. He could use the powerful machine for his own purposes. He’d tamed it…just as he’d tamed his shift.
Katrina looked at Alex. He had his sleeves rolled up and was hacking at the logs. He was reaching down, grabbing logs, slapping them on the stump, and splitting them. Most of them were divided in half evenly — as if Alex was a log-splitting machine. Some of them splintered. Some, well, they came out looking less than perfect — as if they’d been torn apart by a bear. Katrina smiled to herself. Alex wasn’t a predictable man. He was wild, and sometimes, that wildness came out to play. She could see it in the glinting of his eyes in the sunlight, in the way his shirt moistened and stuck to his chest as he brought the ax up and struck it back down, over and over and over again.
Miss Muffet’s Bears: Freshly Baked Furry Tails, Book 2 Page 10