Catch As Cat Can

18

A series of thunderstorms crackled across Crozet for twenty-four hours. A few minutes of calm would ensue, and occasionally the skies lightened, but within a half hour clouds darkened again, the rains came down, and the roar of deep thunder reverberated throughout the mountains and valleys.

Harry sorted mail amid peals of thunder. Tucker crouched under the small table in the back of the post office. Mrs. Murphy sat on the dividing counter between the public side of the room and the working side. The broad and smooth old wooden counter with a flip-up section so the postmistress could walk in and out had seen generations of Crozetians call for their mail.

The advent of the railroad, built by the engineering genius of the New World, Claudius Crozet, brought the mail and news faster to the hamlet named for him. Residents no longer waited for the stage. They could stand at the station to watch the mail sacks being tossed off the train. The mail from Crozet would be picked up as it hung from a yardarm, the sack hooked so it could be grabbed from the moving train. Trains had cars outfitted as post stations and often money would be in the post station car, the postal employee taking the precaution of wearing a pistol.

The town had built its latest post office at the turn of the nineteenth century, altering it only to make more room for parking, since cars take up more room than horses. The pleasant structure had been rewired three more times in one hundred years, the last rewiring occurring in 1998. Small though the station was, it was hooked into the national postal computer system. Miranda resisted using the computer. Harry, much younger, mastered it rapidly. Wisely, she never instructed Miranda in its use. She waited for Miranda to ask—which, finally, she did.

Technology, so beguiling in its promises, often only delivers a new set of problems. The postal computers coughed, sputtered, and took to bed quite often with virus infections. While they could weigh packages, give an instant answer on postage at home and abroad, anyone handy with a scale, an instrument thousands of years old, could give the information in about the same amount of time. And wonderful though the blinking screen may have been, letters still needed to be hand-canceled at times, postage-due markings in maroon ink required human hands, and the process of sorting the mail once it arrived at the local postal offices was done the way it had always been done—one letter at a time.

In short, the tasks of the postal worker had changed little over the last century. And the advent of the twenty-first century still hadn't altered those tasks.

Harry owned a computer from which she sent e-mail or occasionally logged on to the Internet to look up something. She spent an evening once reading about Hereford cattle on the Internet. Then she switched to the Angus site and compared notes. But mostly she thought the information revolution was more hype than reality.

And nothing could substitute for a love letter. The sensuality of the paper, the color, the ink, the contents, the privacy of it, were inviolate and perfect.

As she sorted that Monday's mail she thought about writing Diego a letter. Maybe she'd mention their kiss in the rain or how wonderful it was to dance with him on a cool spring night. Then again she could talk about grass crops. She hummed to herself as Miranda carefully pulled the striped dish towel off the orange-glazed cinnamon buns she brought to work. The fragrance of Miranda's best creation mingled with the pot of coffee brewing in the back.

“Heaven.”

Miranda glanced at the old railroad wall clock. “Heaven at seven-thirty in the morning.” A clap of thunder made her laugh. “I don't remember so many storms. One after the other. I'll get over there in a minute to help you. Oh, tea?”

“Yes, thanks. Don't rush. There's not that much mail, which is surprising. Enjoy the lull. The summer postcards will fire up soon enough. Before that we'll have the graduation notices. Never ends.” She sorted postcards as though shuffling playing cards.

Miranda brought her tea. She herself poured a bracing cup of coffee. Miranda had let Mim talk her into joining a coffee club, so each month she received another type of pricey coffee from France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland. This delicious coffee was from a famous café in Vienna.

A light rap on the door, next to the animal door, brought forth a “come in” from both women.

“Hi.” Susan quickly stepped in, for the rain had intensified. “Have you ever?”

“No,” they said in unison again.

“What are you two, a duet?” Susan laughed, shaking the raindrops from her auburn hair, cut in a sleek pageboy.

“Hogendobber and Haristeen. Has a ring to it. How about H and H?” Harry laughed.

“That sounds like a candy.” Susan breathed in the moist aroma.

“Vienna.” Miranda poured her a cup.

“You'll be our expert. Next thing we know, Miranda, you'll open one of those upscale coffee shops where a cup costs three bucks.”

“It is outrageous but a good cup of coffee is special, especially that first cup.” A louder boom lifted all eyes to heaven. Miranda cast hers down first. “Oh, Tucker, poor baby, it's all right.” She knelt down to pet the shivering corgi.

Pewter, deep in the mail cart, said in a high-pitched voice, “I don't like it either.”

Harry walked over to give love to the rotund gray kitty.

“Chicken,” Mrs. Murphy tersely criticized them.

“Hateful bitch,” Pewter promptly replied.

“I'm glad I don't know what they're saying.” Harry laughed. “Hey, we all went coon hunting last night with Jack and Joyce Ragland. Got soaked. Hunted until the storm really hit, but it was a great night anyway. The voices on those Ragland hounds are something special. Goose bumps. I didn't get home until one this morning.”

“You didn't shoot any, did you?” Miranda hated the thought of shooting animals.

“No.”

“Well, while you were coon hunting, I took my two cherubs to see their grandparents. Danny”—Susan mentioned her son—“wanted to see the new Audi sports car that Mamaw bought for herself. He told her she looked like a teenager in her TT. I think that's what it's called. Anyway, it's a fabulous design and drives nicely. There's my mother, seventy-one, driving a high-tech sports car. I love it! What'd you do, Miranda?” Susan asked.

“Sewed curtains for Tracy's apartment. He fixed my washing machine. Romantic. Actually, it was. We'd spent the weekend doing all the Dogwood Festival things. It was kind of nice to be home doing chores. You girls will have to see his apartment, right over the old pharmacy. He's got the entire floor for three fifty a month. It needs a lot of work but Eddie Griswald couldn't give it away. Everyone in Crozet wants their own house. Tracy's very happy for now.”

“I can paint,” Harry offered.

“He'd like that.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Look what I found last night.” Harry walked over to her bag, an old Danish schoolbag, worn through in spots. She fished around in the bottom, retrieving the Mercedes star.

Susan took it from her. “Remember there was a fad in the eighties and early nineties? City kids would snap these off and wear them.”

“Before my time,” Harry joked.

“Oh, puh-lease.” Susan's eyebrow shot upward as she dragged out the syllables.

“Where'd you find it?” Susan asked.

“Near Durant Creek, where we were hunting.”

“That's what that boy had around his neck.” Miranda reached for her first and only orange-glazed cinnamon bun, an act of discipline. Last year she would have had three eaten by this time but she'd cut back dramatically on sweets and had lost over thirty-five pounds in the past year. She could have worn her high-school clothes if she'd kept them.

“It might not be his,” Susan volunteered. “Then again, how many disembodied Mercedes stars are there?”

“Here comes another one,” Mrs. Murphy warned Tucker and Pewter as a bright flash of lightning presaged a mighty rumble.

“So,” Susan's voice rose merrily, “when do you see Diego again?”

“Uh—I don't know. If not next weekend maybe the weekend after. I like him.”

“That's obvious.” Susan smiled. “And he likes you.”

“Seems to.”

“What man wouldn't?” Miranda thought of Harry as her own daughter in ways.

“What a nice thing to say.” Harry blushed.

“Was Fair at the coon hunt?” Susan's curiosity bubbled over.

“He was.”

“And?”

“Pretty much as you'd expect,” Harry said, tossing a package onto the A–B section of the package shelf.

Miranda and Susan looked at one another, then back to Harry.

“Jealous.” Mrs. Murphy stated the obvious, something she usually didn't do but among humans it was often a necessity.

Little Mim drove up to the front of the post office. The rain poured. She sat in her $83,000 Mercedes waiting for the rain to lighten, but it didn't. It only rained harder.

Murphy, eyes sharp, noticed the star was missing from Little Mim's exquisite car. “Aha.”

“What are you aha-ing about?” Pewter grumbled from the bottom of the mail cart.

“The star is missing from Little Mim's silver-mist Mercedes.”

“Really?” Pewter clambered out of the mail cart, sending it rolling about a foot in the opposite direction of her progress. She jumped up next to Murphy. “It is.”

The humans noticed the cats staring out at Little Mim so they looked, too.

“Oh, my gosh, the star is missing from her car!” Miranda noticed first.

“You're right.” Susan giggled.

“Boy, Wesley Partlow will be sliced and diced.” Harry sighed. “Guess I'd better give her this when she comes in.”

“Well, what would you do with it?” Susan wondered.

“Mount it on a block of wood and put it on my bookcase. It's the closest I'll ever come to a Mercedes.” Harry reached for an umbrella in the stand by the front door. “I'll go out and walk her in. You know, that kid must be dumber than snot.”

“Harry, what a vulgar thing to say.”

“Sorry, Miranda.” She opened the door a crack. “I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.”

Truer words were never spoken.