Gold Standard

The apple record

The clerk on the Marrow Creek fruit cooperative's early desk keeps a second pencil in a tin mug. If the first one snaps while Ada Baines is taking in apples, she can reach the spare without losing her place. This proved useful when the cooperative went to a copying system. She'd marked a batch destined for the pie room on the underlying sheet by mistake. By noon a busy cook was wondering if they meant her to turn two crates of pickling cucumbers into a dessert. Ada took the cooperative truck to collect the crates she'd sent to cold storage and stayed until closing to help cart the returned ones back to the proper shelves.

After that she made the duplicate harder to sign by accident. The floor supervisor thought the system looked fussy until another clerk explained how much time it saved. Ada says the two best hours of her week are when she signs off the intake, stops hearing compressors and drives the Dodge 1970 Challenger home with the window down.

Kit's view

Ada's niece Kit spends three Sundays a month with her. On the fourth, Ada is supposed to give Kit her key back and go do something of her own. That's how the arrangement was described on a rainy drive from the county fair. Ada got herself entered at the next introductory closed-course session and packed no lunch. She discovered she was willing to miss a meal to find out what it felt like to put the Dodge through three corners without a box of anything strapped into the back. She came home happy and could tell Kit almost nothing about how the car had behaved.

Her niece started recording practice from the return gate because Ada's answers seemed a little unbelievable. Ada thought she was turning earlier on each pass. Kit had a video that showed her doing almost the opposite. Now they both put down what they saw before they look at the clip. If they disagree, they have something to work with.

Favors on intake

When Rafi Calder took the Firebird out of storage, Ada brought a tray from the spare supplies, clean enough that neither of them had to dig for a washer in old muck. Rafi thanked her for the tray and assumed she'd come over to work on his car. She wished him luck, went back to the Dodge and asked Kit to open the driver's door from inside. The new latch was so stiff it had made an observer wince. She reserves a little pride for sorting out small things before they grow teeth. She is considerably less willing to let other people do that work for her.

Jan Haze, who's seen the overflow area at the county fair, knows exactly how long an unlabelled box can sit before someone declares it a fixture. Ada marked the tray as loaned when she got home.

The Sunday she wants

Ada hopes to do a sustained string of practice runs where Kit can take the view at the outer fence and Ada can hold her own account until they compare notes. Repeating the same entry feels easy with tomorrow's crate count out of her head. At DGM she's started looking up at the course while the pencils are still in the case. This Sunday she bought an extra pie and set it right in the middle of the table. Kit remains unsure who's meant to take it home.