"She'll find a way."
"Tucker. You've been busy. You're getting lamb bits in gravy." Pewter sniffed the distinctive mutton aroma.
"Yeah!"
As the three ate, Harry popped a pasta dish in the microwave. She wasn't very hungry but she ate it anyway since she had a tendency to lose weight in the summers.
Afterward they all sat on the sofa while Harry tried to read the newspaper but she kept rattling it, then putting it down. Finally, she got up, threw on her jacket, and walked outside.
"What's she up to?" Pewter, quite comfortable, wondered.
"I'll go." Tucker roused herself and followed.
"Me, too." Murphy shook herself.
"Damn," Pewter grumbled. She flicked her tail over her gray nose, finally got up to stretch, and tagged along.
Harry walked to the paddocks behind the barn, where she leaned against the black three-board fence to watch her horses, Gin Fizz, Tomahawk, and Poptart, enjoying the refreshing air.
They looked up, said hello, and returned to grazing.
Overhead the evening star appeared unreal, it was so big and clear. The Big Dipper rolled toward the horizon andYellowMountain was outlined in a thin band of blue, lighter than the deep skies.
"Kids, I couldn't live anywhere else. I know I work fourteen to sixteen hours a day between the post office and the farm, but I couldn't work in an office. I don't know. . . ." Her voice trailed off. Pewter climbed up one fence post, Mrs. Murphy climbed up on another one while Tucker patiently sat on Harry's foot. "I kind of dread this reunion. I went to the fifteenth-still married then. It's a lot easier when you're married-socially, I mean. The ones from far away will look at me, then look at BoomBoom. I guess it's pretty easy to see why Fair hopped on her in a hurry. Wonder if he'll come? He was in the class ahead. But of course he will, he knows everybody. He's a good man, guys. He went through a bad patch, that's all, but I couldn't endure it. I just couldn't do it."
"He's over that now," Tucker stoutly replied. The corgi loved Fair Haristeen, DVM, with all her heart and soul. "He's admitted he was wrong. He still loves you."
"But she doesn't love him." Pewter licked her paw and rapidly passed it over her whiskers.
"She does love him," Mrs. Murphy countered, "but she doesn't know how much or in what way. Like she wouldn't want to marry him again but she loves him as a person."
"It's awfully confusing." Tucker's pretty ears drooped.
"Humans make such a mess," Pewter airily announced.
"They think too much and feel too little," Murphy noted. "Even Mom and I love her, we all love her. It's the curse of the species. Then again I sometimes reverse that and believe they feel too much and don't think enough. Now I'm confused." She laughed at herself.
"You all have so much to say tonight." Harry smiled at her family, then continued her musings. "I watch television sometimes. You know, the sitcoms. Apart from being the same age, I have nothing in common with those people. They live in beautiful apartments in big cities. They have great clothes and no one worries about money. They're witty and cool. A drought means nothing to them. Overseeding is a foreign word. They drive sexy cars while I drive a 1978 Ford half-ton truck. My generation is all those things that I am not." She frowned. "Not too many of us live in the country anymore. The old ways are being lost and I suppose I'll be lost with them but-I can't live any other way." She kicked the dewy grass. "Damn, why did I get so involved in this reunion? I am such a sucker!" She turned on her heel to go back to the house.
Mrs. Murphy gracefully leapt off the post while Pewter turned around to back down. No need to jar her bones if it wasn't absolutely necessary. Tucker stayed at her mother's left heel.
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.