Рита Браун - Pawing Through The Past

As they passed the front of the barn, Simon, the possum who lived in the hayloft, peered out the open loft door.

The animals greeted him, causing Harry to glance up, too. "Evening, Simon."

Simon blinked. He didn't hurry back to his nest, and that was as close as he got to greeting them.

"You want marshmallows, I know." Harry walked to her screened-in porch and opened the old zinc-lined milk box that her mother had used when Monticello Dairy used to deliver milk bottles. She kept marshmallows and a small bag of sunflower seeds for the finches there. She walked back with four marshmallows and threw them through the hayloft door. "Enjoy yourself, Simon."

He grabbed one, his glittering black eyes merry. "I will."

Harry looked up at Simon, then down at her three friends. "Well, I bet no one else in my class feeds marshmallows to their possum." Spirits somewhat restored, she trotted back into the house to warm up.

3

After sorting everyone else's mail, Harry finally sorted her own. If the morning proved unusually hectic she'd slide her mail into her metal box, hoping she'd remember it before going home.

Sometimes two or three days would pass before she read her own mail.

This morning had been busy. Mrs. Hogendobber, a tower of strength in or out of the post office, ran back and forth to her house because the hot-water heater had stopped working. She finally gave up restarting it, calling a plumber. When he arrived she went home.

Fair stopped by early. He kissed his ex-wife on the cheek and apologized for delivering four hundred and fifty postcards to mail out. Each containing his e-mail address. He had, however, arranged them by zip code.

Susan stopped by, grabbed her mail, and opened it on the counter.

"Bills. Bills. Bills."

"I can take care of that!" Mrs. Murphy swished her tail, crouched and leapt onto the counter. She attacked the offending bills.

"Murphy." Harry reached for the cat, who easily eluded her.

"Murphy, you have the right idea." Susan smiled, then gently pushed the cat off her mail.

Mrs. Hogendobber came through the back door. "Four hundred and twenty dollars plus fifty dollars for a house call. I have to buy a new hot-water heater."

"That's terrible," Susan commiserated.

"I just ordered one and it will be here after lunch. I can't believe what things cost andRoy even gave me a ten-percent discount." She mentioned the appliance-store owner, an old friend.

"Hey." Susan opened a letter.

"What?" both Harry and Mrs. Murphy asked.

"Look at this." She held open a letter edged in Crozet High's colors, blue and gold.

It read, "You'll never get old."

"Let me see that." Harry took the letter and envelope from her. "Postmarked from theBarracks Road post office."

"But there's no name on it," Susan remarked.

"Wonder if I got one?" Harry reached into her mailbox from behind the counter. "Yep."

"Check other boxes," Susan ordered.

"I can check but I can't open the envelopes."

"I know that, Harry. I'm not an idiot."

Miranda, ignoring Susan's testiness, reached into Market Shiflett's mailbox, a member of Harry and Susan's class. "Another."

Harry checked the others, finding the same envelope. "Well, if someone was going to go to all that trouble to compliment us, he ought to sign his name."

"Maybe it's not a compliment," Mrs. Murphy remarked.

Pewter, asleep, opened one eye but didn't move from the small table in the back of the post office. "What?"

"Tell you later," Mrs. Murphy said, noticing that Tucker, on her side under the table, was dreaming.

"Oh, whoever mailed this will 'fess up or show up with a face-lift." Susan shrugged.

"We aren't old enough for face-lifts." Harry shuddered at the thought.

"People are doing stuff like that in their early thirties." Susan read too many popular magazines.

"And they look silly. I can always tell." Miranda, still upset about her hot-water heater bill, waved her hand dismissively.

"How?" both women and Mrs. Murphy asked.

Miranda ran her forefinger from the corner of her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth. "This muscle or ligament, whatever you call it, is always too tight, even in the very, very good ones."

"Like Mim's?" Susan mentioned Crozet's leading citizen.

"She won't admit to it." Harry liked Mim but never underestimated the woman's vanity.

"Cats are beautiful no matter how old we are," Mrs. Murphy smugly noted.

Harry, as if understanding her friend, leaned down. "If I had a furry face I wouldn't care."

Susan tossed the mailing in the trash. "You'll never get old. Ha!"

Ha, indeed.

4

"Now what?" Harry, hands on hips, sourly inspected her truck.

"Battery," Tucker matter-of-factly said.

Harry opened the hood, checked her cables and various wires, kept the hood open, then got back in the driver's seat and turned the ignition. A click, click, click rewarded her efforts.

"Damn! The battery."

"That's what I said." The corgi calmly sat, gazing at the hood of the old blue truck.

The truck, parked in the alleyway behind the post office, nose to the railroad tie used as a curb bumper, presented problems. Many problems. With over two hundred thousand miles on the 1978 V-8 engine, this machine had earned its keep and now had earned its rest. Harry had investigated rebuilding the engine. She might squeeze another thirty thousand miles out of the truck with that. She'd gone through eight sets of tires, three batteries, two clutches, but only one set of brakes. The upholstery, worn full of holes, was covered by a plaid Baker horse blanket Harry had Mrs. Martin, the town seamstress, convert into a bench seat cover. The blue paint on the truck was so old that patches glowed an iridescent purple. The rubber covers on the accelerator and clutch were worn thin, too.

Mrs. Hogendobber, having changed into her gardening clothes, including a wonderful goatskin apron, walked across the alley from her backyard to the post office. Apart from singing in the choir and baking, gardening was her passion. Even now-being the end of a hot summer-her lilies, of all varieties, flourished. She misted them each morning and each evening.

"Miranda, do you have jumper cables?" Harry called to her.

"Dead again?" Miranda shook her head, commiserating. "And this such a beautiful afternoon. I bet you want to get home."

Just then Market Shiflett stuck his head out of the back door of the store. "Harry, Pewter-half a chicken!"

"Uh-oh. I'll pay for it, Market. I'm sorry." Secretly, Harry laughed. The fresh chickens reposed in an old white case with shaved ice and parsley. Pewter must have hooked one when Market opened the case. She was clever and she knew Market's ways, having spent her earlier years as his cat. "Did you see Mrs. Murphy?"

"Oh, yes." Market nodded. "Aiding and abetting a criminal! I often wonder what your human children will turn out to be should you have them."