The first narrow-route collection proved how much easier a business looked from a kitchen table than it did on a wet road. One driver missed a turn, another arrived thirty minutes before a pit crew had finished packaging its trimmings, and a loading supervisor insisted he had never heard of the new instructions. Marlene spent the better part of the morning on the phone while Eli stood beside the cooler checking containers and looking at the clock. When the load finally arrived, it was acceptable, but the day had burned through fuel, wages, and patience before they began processing.
Rather than treating the chaos as proof that the plan was doomed, Marlene rode the entire route with Wallace the following Monday. She spoke with the people who actually worked the docks, not only the managers who signed agreements. She learned who held the keys to cold storage, where a truck could park without blocking meat deliveries, and which doors remained locked until the opening crew arrived. The resulting schedule was less elegant on paper and far more reliable in practice.
At the fourth location, a pit cook named Terrence offered her a cup of coffee while she waited for a barrel. He asked what she did with the fat and listened with the curiosity of someone who had spent years making food without thinking much about what happened after the slicing table. Marlene described the finished tallow and how she kept it separated by batch. Terrence said he could always tell which pit had held its heat best because the briskets came out with a different finish, and she asked him what he watched during the final hours of a cook.
The conversation lasted only ten minutes, but it explained several details that had puzzled her in the records. A pit's smoke profile was shaped not just by the type of wood named on a form, but by the rhythm of the cook, the timing of added fuel, and how the meat had been positioned. Marlene did not change the pit crews' work. She added the observations to her own understanding of why one lot produced exactly the aroma customers liked and another tasted flatter despite carrying the same label.
That afternoon she called June to ask whether she could afford the new pickup route through December. June came over with her own calculator, a habit she had carried from years of balancing her family's budget, and they sat at the table until long after dinner. They examined the cost of raw fat, fuel, wages, utilities, containers, outside tests, labels, market fees, and interest. They treated the remaining inventory as inventory, not as cash, and wrote a pessimistic price next to each possible wholesale sale.
"You can make it through the year if the little customers keep paying and nothing big breaks," June said. Marlene asked whether that counted as advice. "That counts as a warning," June answered. She offered to loan Marlene money if the cooler failed, but Marlene declined for the moment. She had already learned that borrowing from a friend could cost more than interest if repayment became uncertain.