Page 8 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

She almost smiles, and I head back to the tank before I can watch that smile do anything further to my afternoon.

The technicality lasts exactly forty minutes.

I'm crouched by the grain pallets doing a stock count when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye, small and low to the ground and headed directly for my office door. I straighten up in time to watch Josie Walsh march past me with the focused determination of a woman on a mission, disappear through my door, and reappear a few seconds later clutching a fistful of crayons like she's recovered them from enemy territory.

"The crayons rolled in there," she informs me, in the tone of someone providing testimony. "Under the door. I had to get them."

"Had to, did you?"

"They're the good ones. The ones that still have points."

I look at the crayons, then at her, then at the door that separates my office from Jenna's, a door that apparently does nothing to stop rogue art supplies from crossing enemy lines. "Next time you lose one under there, come get me. I'll get it."

"Okay." She says it agreeably, already walking away, already forgetting the entire exchange happened, and I stand there for a second feeling like I just lost a skirmish I didn't know I was fighting.

Eli's next. He wanders out of the office twenty minutes later holding one of Jenna's spreadsheets like a hall pass, squints at the brewhouse floor with the calculating expression of a kid assessing new territory, and lands on me.

"What are you doing?"

"Counting grain sacks."

"Why?"

"Because if I don't know how much I have, I can't know how much I need to order, and if I order wrong, we run out mid-batch, and running out mid-batch costs money." I say it the way I'd brief a new hire, mostly out of habit, and watch interest land on him, immediate and total, the exact same look I get from adults twice his age when I explain the same math.

"Can I count?"

I should say no. I have a whole system for reasons like this, a list in my head with clean tactical lines around who does what and why, and an eight-year-old with no safety training is not supposed to be anywhere near inventory. But he's looking at me like I've just offered him command of something, and some old, stupid part of me that used to hand out real assignments to real people can't quite bring itself to say no to that look.

"You can count. You don't touch anything above your head, and you don't move anything, you just count and report the number back to me."

"Like a job."

"Exactly like a job."

He straightens up about four inches and marches toward the pallets with a seriousness that would be funny if it weren't so completely sincere. "What do I call them? The sacks?"

"Grain sacks."

"That's boring. I'm calling them supplies."

"Fine. Supplies."

"Sir, yes, sir." He salutes me, badly, and gets to work, and I stand there with my clipboard forgetting for a solid ten seconds that I'm supposed to be supervising instead of watching an eight-year-old conduct a supply count with the gravity of a man defusing a bomb.

"Twenty-two," he reports back some time later, breathless. "Supplies. Twenty-two."

"Confirmed. Good count."

"Is that a lot?"

"It's enough for three more batches if the schedule holds."

"What happens after three batches?"

"We order more supplies."

"This is the best job I've ever had." He says it with total conviction, like he's held several, and marches off to recount them anyway, apparently unsatisfied with getting the right answer only once.