The Orientation
Flash Fiction
NOTE: This story is a piece of flash fiction, written in a limited time with a limited wordcount.
This piece is closer to an exercise than my usual, but I felt perhaps it might be fun to read! I hope you enjoy!
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Hey there. I’m Hank, one of the assistant managers. Nick couldn’t be here, so you get me, instead. This ain’t my usual, uh…well, I don’t normally do this. So. We’re learning together. Alright?
Put your coat anywhere up there on the wall, grab an apron. They’re clean, don’t worry, just kinda old and worn out. Like me.
That’s a joke, it’s okay to laugh. If you can’t laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at? That’s what I figure.
Oh, and always make sure you take your apron off at the end of the day and throw it in the laundry bin, over there. You wouldn’t believe how many aprons go walking out the door, and they do take that out of your paycheck.
Anyway, well, this here is your official Hoodman’s Grocery Store orientation, so, you know…pay attention. Not gonna be a quiz or anything, but…still. Pays to learn fast, around here.
I’ve got a checklist that Nick left for me. Let’s see...
Oh, yes. Quick history lesson. Hoodman’s is the oldest grocery store on Ferris Island. See there, on the sign? Established 1905. That’s true, we’ve been here that long. I mean, I haven’t. I’m not that old. But it all started back in the day, when Port Salish was still called Port George and the only ferry to and from Ferris was a little boat that barely held two wagons side by side.
Oh. I mean…you should probably save your questions until the end, but uh…the logo? Sure, makes sense you’d ask about that. Most folks do. It’s a bit odd for a grocery store. The “wolf paw”, everyone calls it. Only it ain’t really a wolf paw, but…I mean, there’s a story to that, I dunno if we have time.
Well.
I’ll be quick. Here’s how I heard it…
This was back in the thirties. Times were tough around here, like they were in most places. Old Richard Hoodman ran the store, then, with his daughter, Flighting. Flighting Hoodman, the grocer’s daughter. Strange name, no one really knew why Richard picked a name like that for his girl, but everyone called her Fly.
Fly was a “handsome woman”, they say. You know what that means when people say that, don’t ya? Means she was ‘bout as plain as a slice of unbuttered bread. They call that damning with faint praise. But she had a good head on her shoulders, that Fly. Tall for a woman and stringbean skinny, with her long skinny brown braids and her big brown eyes that soaked up everything, every damn thing, didn’t miss a thing.
Anyway, around 1935 Fly was twenty and working at the store and engaged to the tailor’s boy down the road, and neither of them really cared for the other too much, but that didn’t really matter back then. It was just what you did. And around that time, a string of strange nighttime robberies started to happen all over town. Shopkeepers would come back to their stores in the morning to find windows shattered, doors kicked in, goods swiped and cash stolen from the cash registers, but never any sign of the thief. Most they ever got was clumps of dark fur stuck to broken window glass, or a dog’s big footprints in the mud.
And then, finally, one night someone spotted it, slinking down an alleyway: the biggest dog anyone around these parts had ever seen, a massive thing, with grinning jaws and too-smart eyes and a shaggy coat. Eyewitnesses all mentioned a smell of apples whenever the thing was around. Back then, they didn’t know what that meant, but they sure as hell noticed it.
They say small towns give birth to more rumors than they do babies, and soon the tales grew and grew. That the dog had started taking kids out of their cribs (never happened), and had started setting fires in barns (bullhonkey), and destroying whole fields of crops (would have been quite the feat, if it was true). The dog-thief’s reputation grew and grew, and the more and more monstrous it became. Hunters from all over the area assembled to find and kill it, and wolf traps were laid in the woods all around the town.
But Fly heard all the stories, too. And she wasn’t convinced.
Every night, Fly would dust the shop floor with flour—this was back when Hoodman’s was just a little mercantile no bigger than a house, as you might imagine—and every morning she would sweep it back up. Richard Hoodman never questioned it. Trusted his girl knew what she was doing.
Then, one morning, Fly and her daddy arrived at the store to find the windows broken in, black fur stuck to the glass. The dog-thief had been and gone to Hoodman’s, cash missing from the register and goods swiped from the shelves, like had happened at other shops around town.
But Fly checked the flour.
And wouldn’t you know? There were bootprints in the dust. A man’s bootprints.
So this got Fly to thinking: something strange going on with this thief. Dog fur, but a man’s shoes. Not much got past Flighting Hoodman, that much was for sure.
That night, after dark, Fly left her daddy to the inventory and went walking home through the woods, carefully counting the wolf traps on her way to make sure she didn’t step in one by accident, when she realized that one had moved from its place. And not just moved, but it had been triggered…and there was a dog’s bloody right front paw in it, chewed clean off.
And then, as if this weren’t enough to make you wanna turn and run, out from behind a tree stepped a man with flour-covered boots, missing his right hand.
The thief, caught one-handed, as they say.
Now, now, here’s where it all gets a bit fuzzy, see. There’s folks around these parts who’ll swear to you that Fly Hoodman was murdered by that thief to keep her quiet, but don’t you believe a word of that. I certainly don’t. Fly was no fool. She was too smart to stay a grocer’s daughter forever, that’s for sure.
No, here’s what I think.
I bet Fly brought that paw back to town, paraded it around real good to make sure everyone knew that the dog-thief was well and truly dead, no more to worry about. They even got it stuffed and mounted it on the wall of the store, above the till; it was up there for years, until someone finally pointed out what a grisly trophy that made for a wholesome family grocery store.
Still in the logo, though. The dog-paw.
But I think that all the while, Fly Hoodman was hiding that thief somewhere, letting him heal up from chewing his own hand off. And somewhere in that time—days? weeks?—our Fly found a taste for freedom. Maybe they talked it over, hammered out a mutually beneficial plan. Maybe they fell in love; it’s been known to happen. Maybe she was just that desperate to get away from the tailor’s son and the grocery store and the town that was too small for her.
Aw, hell, who knows. I’m just an old man full of whimsy and wild ideas.
But one day, Flighting Hoodman was just…gone. Lost to time and a trainwhistle. And that’s all anyone ever knew, or knew to write down. One story among a bundle.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, now, you got me talking. I’ve got a checklist, see?
Here, let me show you how to use this here cash register…
"They say small towns give birth to more rumors than they do babies," Lord have mercy, that's truth right there
Fun approach, from the perspective of someone leading an orientation. And fun lore 😊