Small Business Marketing: 20 Foundations Every Owner Should Know

The Lone Oak's stove had burned all winter, and by the first week of real spring there were eleven sacks of ash in the lean-to behind the kitchen, and Mrs. Owl-Willow had said the word "eleven" twice at breakfast without otherwise commenting, and so on Thursday Doctor Owl sent for Dani.

He did not have to send far. Her flyer was on the Lone Oak's own gate. It was on the library door, under the workshop flyer, and on the bank, and on the lamppost by Louie's, and on the side of the lamppost by Louie's that faced the other way. He had seen one on a tree halfway to the creek, where there were no doors at all. WE HAUL ANYTHING FOR ANYONE. ANY TIME. ANY PLACE. Under it, smaller: DUMPSTER DANI'S HAULING AND DISPOSAL. IF IT FITS, WE'LL HAUL IT! And a drawing of the truck, piled impossibly high.

The truck arrived at ten, and parked across the gate and part of the hedge.

"Doc!" Dani swung down from the cab. Behind her, Rufus and Roy climbed down from the other side in their matching caps and stood, in turn, waiting. "Ash, right? Eleven sacks? Say no more. We'll have it gone by lunch. Boys, the lean-to." The boys went. Dani did not. She leaned on the gate and looked at her own flyer on it, with real affection. "You saw it, right? Six hundred. Every door in the forest. Printed them in the winter when the zones freed up the mornings." She tapped it. "Anything for anyone. Can't miss."

"Does it include ash?"

"Doc. It includes everything. That's the whole point." She looked at the truck, which was empty, and which had been empty when it arrived. "That's why I don't get it. Six hundred flyers. Six hundred. And the phone's..." She waved a paw at the cab. "I mean, you called."

"You were already on my gate."

"See? Works."

Rufus came round the corner with two sacks and set them in the truck. Roy came round with two more. They did this in silence, in turns, and the truck began to fill, and Dani watched it fill with the expression of a raccoon who would rather have been doing it herself and had been told, more than once, not to.

"How many jobs this week?" asked Doctor Owl.

"Plenty. Lots. A piano, Tuesday." She said it before she could stop herself, and then looked at him, and he did not say anything, and she went on more quietly. "Different piano. Across the forest. Guy haggled me down two coins because it was 'just a piano.' Took the boys all afternoon. And a shed roof, and some fence posts for a hedgehog out past the mill, who paid half and said he'd mail the rest." She counted on her claws. "And three of the regulars. The ones who don't call. They just have the standing Tuesday."

"Which regulars?"

"The stationer at number four. Frankie's, for the boxes and the ash. Alton's, for the metal." She shrugged. "Shop stuff. Weekly. They don't call because they don't have to. They're the boring ones."

Doctor Owl, who had been straightening the ash sacks in the truck so that their labels faced the same way, stopped, and looked at her over his spectacles.

"Say the last part again," he said.