"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."
"From the sound of it-chicken thieves." Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pewter valiantly struggling to haul the half-chicken to the truck. Mrs. Murphy tugged on the other side of the carcass.
"Let me help." Tucker gleefully leapt toward them.
"No, you don't," Mrs. Murphy spat, then saw Market. "Pewter, quick, into the crepe myrtle!"
The two cats dragged the chicken under the pinkish-purple crepe myrtle.
"Here." Harry dug into her pocket, handing Market a ten-dollar bill.
"It's not a gold-plated chicken." He fished in his pocket for change.
"Forget it, Market. You do plenty for me and I'm sorry Pewter behaved so badly."
"Breathed her last?" He turned his attention to the truck.
"No, just the battery."
"You've got cables, don't you?" Miranda smiled at Market, who was getting a little thick around the middle.
"I do."
"Well, if you don't mind, I'll let you two recharge Old Paint here. I am determined to dust for Japanese beetles. And I'm enduring a grub attack, too. Maybe I should get some chickens. That would take care of that." Then she saw the two cats crouched under the crepe myrtle, passionately guarding the plucked corpse. "Then again, I think not."
Harry laughed. "Go on, Miranda. Market and I will fix this."
As Miranda walked back to her lawn, Market hopped in his Subaru, next to a large new dumpster, backed out, maneuvering his car so that its nose was at a right angle to the blue truck. This saved Harry from attempting to coast backwards.
"The cables will reach." He clipped the tiny copper jaws onto the battery nodes. "Off?"
"Yep."
He switched on his ignition. "Just give it two minutes. Did you check for a loose connection?"
"I did."
Market slid out from behind the wheel and came over to lean on the truck. "Harry, it's time to bite the bullet. You'll never get through another winter with this baby."
"I know," Harry mournfully agreed.
"Call Art."
"I can't afford a new truck."
"Who said you had to buy a new one? Buy a used one."
"Market, the bank won't give me a loan on a used truck."
"They will if it's a recent one, like two or three years old."
"Yeah, but then the price will be way up. It's damned if I do and damned if I don't."
Market, hearing the distress level in Harry's voice, put his arm around her shoulder. "Chill out, honey. Art is one of our buddies. He'll help. He makes enough money off everyone else. Go talk to the man."
"Well . . ." Her voice weakened. "I don't want to be disappointed."
"There are worse disappointments than that and we've both had them," Market genially encouraged her.
He was right, too. They'd both had a few hard knocks along the way-his divorce being more acrimonious than hers, but no divorce is happy. He had one beloved daughter, now in college. Poor Market had married the day he graduated from high school. His senior superlative was Friendliest and that friendliness meant his daughter was born seven months after the wedding.
"You know, time forges bonds of steel, doesn't it?" Harry said.
"What do you mean?"
"You, me, Miranda, Herbie, the gang. We know everything about one another-almost." She smiled.
"Yep. I can't believe we're having our twentieth. I'm"-he hummed a minute, a habit-"half-excited and half-apprehensive. How about you?"
"Same."
"Well, let's see if this baby is fired up." He walked back and cut his motor. "Crank her up."
Harry hopped in. The engine turned over, then rumbled. "I think I'd better let her run for a few more minutes."
"Good idea. How are you coming along with ideas for the reunion?"
"Okay. We had our first meeting yesterday. I've gotten everything written out for the calendars of local newspapers for all the major towns in the state. And I've written up ads to run the week before the reunion-ads with photos. I'll have to fight BoomBoom for the money. The publicity part I can do with no problem. It's coming up with some special moniker for everyone that's driving me crazy."
"Speak of the devil," he said under his breath as BoomBoom, in a new 7-series BMW-to replace one wrecked during a theft attempt-rolled down the alleyway. She pulled over. The electrical windows purred as she lowered them.
"Hi." BoomBoom's voice purred like her windows.
Marcy Wiggins, Chris Sharpton, and Bitsy Valenzuela said "Hi" along with her.
Harry returned the hellos of the trio, all neighbors in theDeepValley subdivision. Bitsy had married E.R. Valenzuela, a classmate who'd worked inSilicon Valley and moved back home last year to establish a cellular phone business. Since E.R. worked all the time no one ever saw much of him, including his wife. Marcy, a somewhat withdrawn woman, had married Bill Wiggins, who'd gone to medical school in upstateNew York , returning to the University of Virginia Hospital for his residency in oncology. No one saw much of Bill either, but he was conge-nial when they did.