Fair shoved the six-pack across the counter.
Pewter hollered, “Mrs. Murphy, where are you?”
Tucker walked over and touched noses with Pewter, who liked dogs very much.
“I’m counting rubber bands. What do you want?” Mrs. Murphy replied.
Harry grabbed the Cokes off the counter. “Mrs. Murphy, what have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything,” the cat protested.
Harry appealed to Fair. “You’re a veterinarian. You explain this.” She pointed to the rubber bands tossed about the floor.
Maude leaned over the counter. “Isn’t that cute? They get into everything. My mother once had a calico that played with toilet paper. She’d grab the end of the roll and run through the house with it.”
“That’s nothing.” Pewter one-upped her: “Cazenovia, the cat at Saint Paul’s Church, eats communion wafers.”
“Pewter wants on the counter.” Fair thought the meow meant that. He lifted her onto the counter, where she rolled on her back and also rolled her eyes.
The humans thought this was adorable and fussed over her. Mrs. Murphy, boiling with disgust, jumped onto the counter and spat in Pewter’s face.
“Jealousy’s the same in any language.” Fair laughed and continued to pet Pewter, who had no intention of relinquishing center stage.
Tucker moaned on the floor. “I can’t see anything down here.”
Mrs. Murphy walked to the edge of the counter. “What are you good for, Tee Tucker, with those short stubby legs?”
“I can dig up anything, even a badger.” Tucker smiled.
“We don’t have any badgers.” Pewter now rolled from side to side and purred so loudly the deaf could appreciate her vocal abilities. The humans were further enchanted.
“Don’t push your luck, Pewter,” Tucker warned. “Just because you’ve got the big head over knowing what happened before we did doesn’t mean you can come in here and make fun of me.”
“This is the most affectionate cat I’ve ever seen.” Maude tickled Pewter’s chin.
“She’s also the fattest cat you’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Murphy growled.
“Don’t be ugly,” Harry warned the tiger.
“Don’t be ugly.” Pewter mocked the human voice.
Mrs. Murphy paced the counter. A mail bin on casters rested seven feet from the counter top. She gathered herself and arched off the counter, smack into the middle of the mail bin, sending it rolling across the floor.
Maude squealed with delight and Fair clapped his hands together like a boy.
“She does that all the time. Watch.” Harry trotted up behind the now-slowing cart and pushed Mrs. Murphy around the back of the post office. She made choo-choo sounds when she did it. Mrs. Murphy popped her head over the side, eyes big as eight balls, tail swishing.
“Now this is fun!” the cat declared.
Pewter, still being petted by Maude, was soured by Mrs. Murphy’s audacious behavior. She put her head on the counter and closed her eyes. Mrs. Murphy might be bold as brass but at least Pewter behaved like a lady.
Maude leafed through her mail as she rubbed Pewter’s ears. “I hate that!”
“Another bill? Or how about those appeals for money in envelopes that look like old Western Union telegrams? I really hate that.” Harry continued to push Mrs. Murphy around.
“No.” Maude shoved the postcard over to Fair, who read it and shrugged his shoulders. “What I hate is people who send postcards or letters and don’t sign their names. For instance, I must know fourteen Carols and when I get a letter from one of them, if the return address isn’t on the outside I haven’t a clue. Not a clue. Every Carol I know has two-point-two children, drives a station wagon, and sends out Christmas cards with pictures of the family. The message usually reads ‘Season’s Greetings’ in computer script, and little holly berries are entwined around the message. What’s bizarre is that their families all look the same. Maybe there’s one Carol married to fourteen men.” She laughed.
Harry laughed with her and pretended to look at the postcard for the first time while she rocked Mrs. Murphy back and forth in the mail bin and the cat flopped on her back to play with her tail. Mrs. Murphy was putting on quite a show, doing what she accused Pewter of doing: wanting to be the center of attention.
Harry said, “Maybe they were in a hurry.”
“Who do you know going to North Carolina?” Fair asked the logical question.
“Does anyone want to go to North Carolina?” Maude’s voice dropped on “want.”
“No,” Harry said.
“Oh, North Carolina’s all right.” Fair finished his Coke. “It’s just that they’ve got one foot in the nineteenth century and one in the twenty-first and nothing in between.”
“You do have to give them credit for the way they’ve attracted clean industry.” Maude thought about it. “The state of Virginia had that chance. You blew it about ten years ago, you know?”
“We know.” Fair and Harry spoke in unison.
“I was reading about Claudius Crozet’s struggle with the state of Virginia to finance railroads. He foresaw this at the end of the 1820’s, before anything was happening with rail travel. He said Virginians should commit everything they had to this new form of travel. Instead they batted his ideas down and rewarded him with a pay cut. Naturally, he left, and you know what else? The state didn’t do a thing about it until 1850! By that time New York State, which had thrown its weight behind railroads, had become the commercial center of the East Coast. If you think where Virginia is placed on the East Coast, we’re the state that should have become the powerful one.”
“I never knew that.” Harry liked history.
“If there’re any progressive projects, whether commercial or intellectual, you can depend on Virginia’s legislature to vote ’em down.” Maude shook her head. “It’s as if the legislature doesn’t want to take any chances at all. Vanilla pudding.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Fair agreed with her. “But on the other hand, we don’t have the problems of those places that are progressive. Our crime rate is low except for Richmond. We’ve got full employment here in the country and we live a good life. We don’t get rich quick but we keep what we’ve got. Maybe it isn’t so bad. Anyway, you moved here, didn’t you?”
Maude considered this. “Touché. But sometimes, Fair, it gets to me that this state is so backward. When North Carolina outsmarts us and enjoys the cornucopia, what can you think?”
“Where’d you learn about railroads?”
“Library. There’s a book, a long monograph really, on Crozet’s life. Not having the benefit of being educated in Crozet, I figured I’d better catch up, so to speak. Pity the railroad doesn’t stop here anymore. Passenger service stopped in 1975.”
“Occasionally it does. If you call up the president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and request a special stop—as a passenger and descendent of Claudius Crozet—they’re supposed to stop for you right next to the post office here at the old depot.”
“Has anyone tried it lately?” Maude was incredulous.
“Mim Sanburne last year. They stopped.” Fair smiled.
“Think I’ll try it,” Maude said. “I’d better get back to my shop. Keep thy shop and thy shop keeps thee. ’Bye.”
Pewter lolled on the counter as Harry put the Cokes in the small refrigerator in the back. Mrs. Murphy stayed in the mail bin hoping for another ride.
“Are these a peace offering?” Harry shut the refrigerator door.
“I don’t know.” And Fair didn’t. He’d gotten in the habit, over the years, of picking up Cokes for Harry. “Look, Harry, can’t we have a civil divorce?”