How to Plan a Party

Madison shifted from foot to foot as she waited for her boss to get off the phone. That he had called her in just before the end of shift was worrying. That’s when people get fired, she thought.

Her hardhat hung by the strap from her hand, her heavy gloves inside it. Red hair, flattened from the straps of the same safety device, was held back from her pale, freckled face in a single braid that was safely tucked inside her collar. She kept watch on the traffic outside the window with her blue-green eyes.

Finally hanging up the phone, Mr. Johnston looked up the nervous woman. He had taken to shaving his head bald when his hair began thinning and made up for its loss with his full beard of mussy brown shot through with grey.

“Mads, I know you’re itching to get out of here, so I think I have something for you,” he said with a crooked smile.

“Out of here? Your office?”

“No, no. Out of the warehouse. Out of this district.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“In fact, it’s out of the city.”

“It’s what?”

“It’s a promotion. You’ve been in the warehouse too long already, and your talents are wasted.”

“What’s the position?”

“Shipping manager.”

She pointed to the office next to Mr. Johnston’s. “But that’s right there. Is Mabel finally retiring?”

Johnston laughed. “No, she’s too stubborn. Besides, she’s half-elf and still has another thirty or forty good years left.” He slid a paper across his desk.

Madison picked it up with a calloused hand and looked it over. It was spelled out in black and white. “Shipping manager…nice pay bump…satellite office…hmm. It doesn’t say which satellite office.”

“Sure it does,” he said. “Hub 14-A, right there on the letterhead.”

“Where is 14-A?” she asked.

“Dancyville, Tennessee.”

“What’s out there?”

“The hub, satellite office, a couple churches, I think, probably a bar or two, grocery store, hardware store, and lots of farms.” He looked at her. “You said you had family in Nashville; it’s about two and half hours away by car.”

Madison set the paper down and scratched her head.

“If you don’t want to move, it’s not a problem. You can stay here in the ware—”

“I’ll take it.” She turned the paper toward herself and pulled a pen out of her pocket. “How soon do I have to be there?”

“Any time in the next four weeks.”

“In that case, I’d like to drive down next weekend, stay with my family in Nashville and find an apartment in…Darcyville?”

“Dancyville. Ah…you know that most of the farms there are halfling and dwarf, right? That’s not going to be a problem?”

“Not at all. Used to that. I bet most of our drivers and loaders out there are orc, right?”

“Probably not so many as around Nashville, but I’d guess around half.”

#

Madison found the only available apartments in Dancyville were all in the same small complex. It was walking distance to everything the town had to offer, including her new office. When she ran into issues trying to break her lease in the city, Mr. Johnston intervened and “sorted it out” for her.

Since she took only what she could carry in her clapped-out, thirty-year-old Corolla, moving in took all of an hour. Her neighbors were all dwarves, and most of them worked in the businesses in town or at the rail yard.

Without fail, her neighbors found an excuse for a barbecue and party every weekend. One neighbor would put their speakers out the windows, and the rest would show up with beer, meat to grill, beer, side dishes, beer, deserts, and of course, more beer. The official party kick-off would be the lighting of firecrackers as soon as the meat was ready.

After the silence of the weekdays, the noon to midnight parties in the courtyard were jarring at first. Over time, she became immune to the noise. After nearly six months there, she was invited to take part. Her potato salad — from her mother’s recipe — became a requirement every weekend. After the first two, she learned to make it in triple-sized batches. She also brought as many beers as she would drink, thinking it quite fair.

It was at one of the usual parties that Drusilla, the dwarf woman from across the hall, pulled her aside. She pointed at the dwarf running the grill as he did every weekend, and during the week at the diner attached to the bar. “Devon there is turning 100 week after next, and we want to do something special for him. Problem is, we don’t know what to do.”

Madison put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I love to plan parties. Knock on my door next Saturday morning. I’ll have a plan.”

The next morning, she woke early and got online to do some research. She began making calls right away and had almost everything sorted by the end of the week. The final piece fell into place with a call to the sixth gnome workshop she found anywhere drivable, this one just outside Memphis.

“Like a canon?” She nodded as the voice on the other end continued. “Ah, right. And if I come down there to pick it up, can you show me how to...oh, yeah, that’s even better. The more the merrier!”

She hung up the phone as her neighbor knocked on her door. “Drusilla, come on in.”

“Morning, Madison. Sorry I’m by so early, but I’ve got to do some laundry before we get started on the ’cue again.”

“No problem.” Madison talked Drusilla through her plans.

“No need to rent the genny,” Drusilla said, “I can borrow it from work for free.”

“Your boss won’t mind?”

“Nah. Free equipment rental is one of the perks of working there.”

“Well, the rest of this is a fair bit of cash, but I haven’t had anything to spend mine on, so….”

“Hush, you. We’ll divvy up the cost between all of us.”

#

The day dawned bright and clear, and everyone in the complex kept Devon away from the courtyard while the party plans were put into motion. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t keep the smell of the pit-roasted pig from wafting through the buildings, making every mouth water.

With everything in place, Madison gave the gnome from Memphis the nod. He lit off a small string of fireworks to officially start the party, and Devon stepped into the courtyard. As he did so, Drusilla fired up the generator, and the gnome set off a prepared string of mortars. Each of the five, forty-millimeter mortars contained twenty salute charges, resulting in a hundred ground-shaking booms.

As the residents were cheering, the stone-core band she’d hired from Nashville cranked into their first song. Crunching guitars, thundering bass, and booming drums ramped up the party atmosphere.

At the other end of the courtyard, the barbecue pit trailer offered a whole pig, four full briskets, and enough sausages to feed an army. In front of the trailer, a long table held every side imaginable, along with a crew of four to serve. At the end of the table, six kegs of top-quality dwarven ale sat alongside a stack of cups.

A large banner flew above the table, wishing Devon a happy 100th birthday. As everyone in Dancyville knew everyone else, the rest of the town shut down as neighbors and acquaintances filed in to celebrate with the short-order cook on a keystone birthday.

Those who hadn’t heard about the party before-hand were alerted by the fireworks and the music. Before long, the courtyard was packed with the population of the town, and most of the surrounding farmers. Humans, orcs, halflings, dwarves, three elves she didn’t realize lived in the area, and the gnome from Memphis.

In the late evening, after the band had long since finished and headed back to Nashville, and the young orc man who normally deejayed in the bar had taken over, Drusilla called Madison inside to talk to her.

“You said some fireworks, a few kegs, and a band but…wow. That band…I’ve never seen him dance that hard. How did you know he’d love them so much?”

“Whenever he chooses the music, it’s always stone-core. I did some listening online and found a local group that sounded decent and was hungry for gigs.”

“And those insane fireworks?”

“I called around. Found a gnome that makes his own mortars. Told him what it was for, and he was happy to do it for less than the cost of the fireworks, as long as he could party with us.”

“Where is he now? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He passed out under the stage, so I moved him over by the big oak tree where he wouldn’t get stepped on.”

“I recognized the barbecue catering company; they do the county fair every year.”

“Yeah, I just went with the highest rated one online that was within thirty miles.”

“Okay, last question, I swear. How the hell did you get six kegs of Horsehead Dark ale? Devon’s always complaining they can’t get it for the diner and bar.”

“I’ve heard that complaint plenty of times. I called around to the other shipping hubs, and found out that Hub 9, the Chicago hub, had some that were about to go past date. Between myself and Greg over at the diner, we talked ’em into selling them at twenty percent off wholesale, and I arranged to have them shipped. Starting next week, we’ll have four kegs shipped through our hub to Greg every Wednesday.”

“That’ll probably be the best part of his birthday,” Drusilla said. She stopped and looked at Madison. “I know I said last question, but you always bail when the party gets too loud. How did you stand it out there all day?”

Madison reached in her pocket and pulled out the pair of white foam earplugs. “Same way I dealt with the warehouse and the city back in New Amsterdam.”