Doughboards, Doubleheaders, and Darrow Days

Nadine’s grin arrived quick and bright. “Done.”

At Nadine’s count, they moved.

Nadine knew every bin by habit. Greer knew patterns, labels, and the fierce usefulness of not panicking when a plan went sideways. She grabbed the tape measure, then the hammer, then saw too late that she had hung the gloves where the wrench belonged.

Nadine placed her final trowel, stepped back, and pointed at Greer’s crooked board.

“One point to me.”

“This contest favors people who own the building.”

“This contest favors reading labels.”

Greer corrected the wrench. “What’s your rule?”

“Every station gets a local volunteer, even the sponsored teams.”

Greer looked at the finished pegboards, then at Nadine’s penciled advice waiting inside the borrowed book.

“That could work,” she said.

Nadine picked up the paperback and held it out. “Read through page sixty-four. Then we’ll see what else you think could work.”

Could a borrowed paperback, a rye-roll recipe, and a ridiculous pegboard race make five old years feel shorter?

Festival morning arrived under hard, slanting rain, the sort that made every paved surface look freshly varnished and every plan look foolish. Greer stood at the edge of the ball field in a yellow rain shell, holding her laminated master schedule while water ran from its corners. A pile of doughboards had drifted against second base. Two folding tables had tipped into the mud. A sponsor banner had wrapped around the backstop and plainly lost the contest.

At seven-twelve, one portable generator sputtered out. At seven-fourteen, the second one quit too.

Nadine crossed the infield in turnout pants beneath a navy rain jacket, a coil of rope over one shoulder. Her radio snapped with chatter from the volunteer crew.

“Nobody touches a cord till we’ve checked every connection,” she said.

“Can we dry them?” Greer asked.

“Not fast enough, and not by wishing.”

Dr. Eudora appeared beneath a red umbrella, medical bag held high. “I’ve already treated one twisted ankle caused by optimism. That’s my daily limit.”

Veda planted both hands on her hips. “My bread dough is sulking, my scorecards are floating, and I refuse to let rain win a fundraiser.”

Greer opened her binder. Backup plans filled three orderly pages: delay, shortened rounds, rain checks, partial refunds. Each one made the day smaller. Each one left people standing in bad weather with nowhere useful to put their energy.

Nadine crouched to lift a chalkboard from a puddle. ROUND THREE blurred beneath wet chalk. “Field’s done. Even if the power came back, we can’t run adults through this mess.”

“How much floor space do you have at Kroll?” Greer asked.

Nadine looked up, rain beading along the pale curve at her chin. “You want to move Darrow Days into a hardware store?”

“I want to keep Darrow Days.”

A quick laugh escaped Nadine. “That’ll need more than a color code.”

“Good thing I brought six colors.”

Twenty minutes later, Greer had put her binder beneath Veda’s dry cake carrier and joined Nadine’s crew. Together, they hauled the soggy chalkboards, bat rack, folding tables, and flour tubs toward Main Street. The bakehouse delivery cart groaned across the wet grass, its broad wheels collecting mud like a souvenir.

“Loop the rope under there,” Nadine said, pointing to the cart handle.

Greer adjusted it. “You know, I do own several practical shoes.”

“Then they’re earning their keep today.”

Before leaving her motel that morning, Greer had reread Nadine’s pencil note in Cleats and Crumbs: Give people room to do their job. At first, she had thought it a fine sentence for a memoir. In the rain, it became useful instruction.

By eight-thirty, Kroll Hardware had become a fundraiser with shelves.

Greer marked a doughboard square in the plumbing aisle with blue painter’s tape. Nadine rolled rubber mats down the loading bay for hose coiling. Veda claimed a scrubbed table near the seed packets and set out her hand-cranked mixer, flour bowls, and dough tubs.

“Arms only,” Veda announced. “If a person wants fluffy rolls, she can earn them.”

The former seasonal display became a base-running lane, with soft foam balls and taped bases arranged well clear of paint cans. Greer clipped sponsor signs to coat hooks above eye level, where they could pay their way without directing traffic.

“The final relay runs from paint to seeds,” Greer said, sketching arrows on a cardboard sheet. “Bread shaping, base run, hose roll, doughboard toss.”

Nadine studied the map. “Soft toss beside the fasteners?”

“Tarps at both ends. Fire crew spotters.”

“That does make sense.”

“Please say that quieter. Veda will put it on a cake.”

The librarians arrived carrying clean towels and two extra scoreboards, still pleased with their old twelve-to-three charity-game victory. The women from the garden club brought folding chairs. Eudora claimed a corner near the registers for first aid and declared the boot tray a public-health triumph. Every team found some part of the store to lend: counter space, sturdy hands, a stack of paper cups, an hour that had not belonged to them until Darrow needed it.

There were firms in Minneapolis devoted to deciding who owned a weather problem. Darrow handled one by handing over a mop.

Nadine returned from the loading bay with a bin of dry bases and found Greer adjusting a tape line with a measuring wheel.

“You moved the blue team,” Nadine said.

“They asked for the loading bay. Better ceiling clearance for their hose coil.”

“They asked?”

“Yes.” Greer looked up from the tape. “I did something wild. I let them know their own needs.”

Nadine’s laugh came easier this time. “Careful, Bell. You might earn a local volunteer badge.”

Greer looked around the hardware store: flour on the counter, rain jackets by the door, five chalkboards propped along a display shelf. The setup was not sleek. It was not on schedule. It was better than either.

Darrow had filled an old hardware store with muddy shoes, useful supplies, and every pair of hands it could spare. Greer could see why people came back and stayed; a town like this did not wait for perfect weather before helping. But would Nadine see that Greer could adapt without treating people like line items?

Nadine did see it, although she made Greer work for the answer.

By ten o’clock, rain still drummed on the front awning, but Kroll Hardware held half of Darrow and showed no sign of surrendering. Veda propped the fifth chalkboard beside stacked bags of potting soil and wrote FINAL RELAY in a clean white line.

Below it, Dr. Sloane had added GREER 2 and NADINE 2.

“There is no official captain score,” Greer said.

“There is now,” Eudora replied. “Medical judgment.”

That was how Darrow handled a harmless rivalry: it supplied chalk, witnesses, and a doctor with far too much influence.

Veda planted a floury hand on the counter. “Each captain gets a team. First woman shapes three rye rolls at the seed table. Next runner takes the wooden-spoon baton around the taped bases. Third woman coils fifty feet of hose in the loading bay. Captain finishes with a doughboard toss.”

“Paint lids stay shut,” Nadine added. “Nobody cuts through the fastener aisle while a team is moving.”

Greer studied the course. Paint cans lined the east wall in tidy towers. Seed packets filled spinning racks near Veda’s table. Blue tape marked the running lanes, looping around shelves of work gloves and folding back toward a taped square beside the registers.

Her sponsor deck had placed the finish beneath a teal foam-board arch, complete with a local bank logo and space for photographs. It was polished, organized, and suddenly impractical. The arch pinched the lane near a row of folding chairs.

Nadine caught her looking. “That thing’s going to make a traffic jam.”

“It was meant to make sponsors visible.”

“They’ll be visible when nobody trips over their advertising.”

Fair point. Greer did not enjoy collecting those, but she had begun to recognize the value.

She chose the librarians and two women from the garden club for her team. Nadine gathered three firefighters, a bakery regular, and the woman who ran Darrow’s post office. Both teams rolled their shoulders, adjusted aprons, and regarded one another with the solemn purpose usually reserved for championship games and pie judging.

Veda raised a rolling pin. “Ready?”

“Ready,” came the answer from every corner.

The rolling pin struck the counter.

Greer’s first baker, a librarian named Colette, shaped three neat knots with swift, capable hands. Nadine’s baker produced plumper rolls, though one leaned sideways like it had chosen a career in politics.

“Points for character,” Veda declared.

“Points for standing upright,” Nadine called back.

The wooden spoon passed to the runners. Rubber soles squeaked across the old floorboards as the women rounded foam bases near the plumbing aisle. Greer shouted encouragement, then caught herself before adding a suggestion about stride efficiency. Darrow did not need a seminar while people were having fun.