Little Town, Great Big Life. Curtiss Matlock Ann

drawl, “Keep your shirt on. This ain’t New York City.”

      “Was Fayrene hurt bad?” asked Iris MacCoy, who was waiting on an order of half a dozen barbecue sandwiches and the same number of fountain drinks to take back to MacCoy Feed and Grain.

      “No, ma’am,” said Arlo, passing over two sizable cardboard carry containers. “I put in extra bags of potato chips.”

      Arlo’s gaze lingered on Iris’s chest, which was where most men’s eyes lingered. Iris was a stunning woman. Belinda knew that Iris was over fifty years of age, and had more refurbishment on her than a 1960 Corvette.

      “Well, I saw the whole thing,” said Julia Jenkins-Tinsley, scooting her small frame up on a stool, sitting half on and half off. Julia was postmistress and a woman who lived life in perpetual motion.

      “I had just come out of the P.O. on my way down here. The car didn’t hit her—Fayrene hit it. She ran right out in the street. She had her hood up to protect her hairdo—you know how she is about her hair. She was no more lookin’ where she was goin’ than the man in the moon. She never is, and is always crossin’ in the middle of the block. Maybe this will teach her a lesson. We have crosswalks for a reason. Here’s your mail.”

      Julia passed a wad of mail held by a rubber band across the counter to Belinda. “I saw you hadn’t come by your box yet today. I know you are just swamped here with your mother on vacation. Thought you might want to see you got another postcard from her, but she didn’t really say anything. Just that she’s havin’ a good time, and what she writes every time—Love to Valentine.”

      Iris said, “That pavement is really slick from the rain. We haven’t had any all winter, and now it’s just dangerous out there. I about slipped comin’ in here. And, Belinda, I just love your reports from your mother. Please tell her I’m missin’ her.”

      At this, Belinda gave a polite nod.

      Iris gave her and then everyone else at the soda fountain a feminine little wave as she left. The eyes of the three men followed her, and old Norman Cooper, of all people, jumped up and ran after her, saying, “Let me help you get all that to your car, Iris.”

      Belinda found the postcard. It was an aerial photograph of Paris, France. She took it over and stuck it on the bulletin board, below the previous two, one from New York City, another from London.

      Julia, looking up at the menu on the wall as if she had not seen it every day of her adult life, finally said, “I guess I’ll have a chicken salad on lettuce, no bread, and a sweet tea with lemon—two slices. I can do the sugar. I jogged an extra mile this mornin’. Make it to go. I need to get back. Norris didn’t come in today.”

      As Belinda turned to get the order, she noted that Julia’s gaze dropped to her hips with a distinctive disapproving look. Julia went at keeping in shape as if it would give her a ticket to heaven.

      Belinda knew that she had something Julia would never have: six years of youth, womanly breasts and total guilt-free eating of anything she wanted.

      “Did you see that guy who picked up Fayrene and carried her back to the café?” Julia asked.

      “I saw him, but I haven’t heard who he is. Jaydee said he thought maybe the guy missed the bus to Dallas…that he saw him earlier in the café. Lucky for Fayrene.” She glanced over to the pharmacy, where Oran was waiting on Imperia Brown, who had all three of her children down with the flu.

      Julia said, “No…he’s some guy Woody brought into the café this mornin’. Where Woody met him, nobody seems to know, and Woody won’t say. You know how he can be—that inscrutable old wise black man routine.”

      Belinda, closing the plastic container of chicken salad and resisting licking her finger, asked if the stranger had a name.

      Julia eagerly filled in with all she knew. The man’s name was Andy Smith, and he had a very cool British-type accent but was from Australia. Bingo Yardell had asked him. Bingo had also asked what had brought him to town, but he had been distracted working the counter and had not answered. “He knows how to brew a proper cup of tea. Bingo Yardell was in there havin’ breakfast this mornin’, when this woman came in off the Dallas bus and ordered a cup of hot tea. She made a big deal out of the café needin’ to have china teapots, not those little metal deals. I have thought that, too, ever since Juice and I went to New York for his grocers’ convention and stayed on the concierge floor. Every mornin’ the hotel served a layout, and they had tea in china pots. It really does make all the difference. And this Andy fella was able to make the woman a proper cup of tea.”

      Belinda set the woman’s foam cup of cold tea on the counter. “I doubt there’s a large call for hot tea over at the café.”

      “That’s what Fayrene said, but Carly said she serves it right often to customers over there in the cold months—mornin’s like this one was, a cup of hot tea is nice. Tea has a lot of anti-oxidants.” The postmistress put her mouth to the straw and sucked deeply, as if eager to get antioxidants that very moment.

      “It’s got somethin’ everyone likes.” Belinda cast an eye to the cold-tea pitcher. All the talk was making her want some.

      “Well…” Julia laid the exact change on the counter and picked up her lunch. “I gotta get back. I’ll be listenin’ to your report this afternoon. I like to hear about your mother’s trip. Be sure to tell her to keep writin’ home…and tell her to write somethin’ interestin’ on the postcards.”

      “Wait a minute, and I’ll give you her e-mail address so you can write her yourself.”

      “Oh, Lordy, I don’t mess with that e-mail. I work for the U.S. Postal Service. You just tell her for me, ’kay?” The woman went out the door.

      Belinda said under her breath, “I don’t have another blessed thing better to do than send messages from ever’body and their cousin to my mother.”

      Nadine called with an excuse again. Her voice, as usual, came so faintly over the telephone that Belinda strained to hear.

      “I’m sorry I missed the lunch hour, Miz Belinda. I had a flat tire.”

      “I really need you tomorrow, Nadine,” Belinda said with a sternness that she hoped would motivate. She could fire the young woman, but a replacement was likely to be worse.

      As she wiped up the counters and appliances, she heard in memory her mother’s voice: I am so tired of this store, you can just shoot me now.

      Belinda had never believed her mother when she said this. It had always seemed that the store was her mother’s life. Both her parents had seemed happier at the store than anywhere else. It had been at home with family that all the problems went on.

      Belinda, too, loved the store, and had for the past couple of years wanted her mother to turn over the full running of it to her. Be careful what you ask for.

      She would have bitten her tongue off before admitting it, but after ten days of running it alone, she was thinking, I am so tired of this store, you can just shoot me now.

      Belinda tossed her apron on the stool and headed for the storage room, where she found Arlo sitting, as she had known he would be, on a box, reading a comic book. He didn’t bother to jump up, simply cast her a questioning expression. She told him to go take care of the soda fountain and that he needed to slice another lemon. Then she called him back and gave him the comic book he had laid aside.

      Following him out of the storage room, she went to her office, which was nothing more than a partitioned area sandwiched between the back door and the restrooms. She had it fixed up nicely, though, framed art on the walls, and the most stylish in desks and computer setups—although the very day her mother had left for Europe, she’d had Arlo exchange her modern desk for her mother’s old heavy one. This was the desk that had belonged to Belinda’s father, and, before that, the two uncles who had founded the drugstore.

      Now the desk belonged to her, Belinda thought, sitting