One Year After: A Novel (3 page)

“I sorted through 113 of them, John. You know I’m not supposed to discuss other people’s mail. Old post office pledge and all that. But, yup, I’m sticking them in the mailboxes right now. I think it’s okay to tell you that it looks like half the notices are for kids still living up at the college; the rest are from town who are being called into this ANR thing.”

“I’ll be right down,” John replied and hung up without waiting for a reply. Again he glanced toward his daughter. He was supposed to be the arbitrator and leader for the entire community, but at that moment, regardless of his overall responsibilities and long years of training and service in the military, the issue in his heart was about his daughter, his one remaining child, a mother herself. It was about his blood, his child, the way any parent would react.

He rubbed the stubble on his chin. It was Saturday morning. Tonight, his wife, Makala, would shave him with an old-fashioned straight razor, an art he had never mastered. Perhaps it was her years as a senior nurse in a cardiology unit that gave her confidence with a blade. Throw-away safety razors were indeed a thing of the past.

After a long night of watch duty, he felt grubby and unkempt, and beyond that, his jaw ached from the damned tooth that had started troubling him the month before. Makala had at last talked him into enduring a dreaded visit to the town dentist later and then a bath in the creek and a good shave afterward, followed by relaxation on his day off from duty. But all that had to wait as he looked at Elizabeth.

“Come on, kiddo, let’s get going.”

“Can I drive, Daddy?” Elizabeth asked as they left his office, holding out her hand and offering a smile, the sight of which warmed his heart. A touch of the old days of a teenage daughter conning a father with a smile as she requested the family car.

The 1958 Edsel, once the proud possession of his mother-in-law, had become the highly recognizable official car for John Matherson. It was increasingly a source of guilt, as well. Having moved to Montreat after his home was destroyed during the battle with the Posse, he now lived two and a half miles from the town office. At times, especially on beautiful spring and autumn days, he enjoyed the walk. After all, there was a time when for anything less than several miles, everyone walked until the advent of the auto. But more than once while he took his time walking to the town hall, taking an hour each way, something serious that needed his immediate attention had transpired. So after much official wrangling and arguing, the town council insisted he accept a ration of five gallons of gasoline a week, enough for seventy-five miles.

There was still a reserve of a couple thousand gallons in the underground tank for city vehicles, carefully doled out. As for gas taken from abandoned cars, it was increasingly useless, breaking down over time, though the town’s Volkswagen man, Jim Bartlett, claimed he was developing a formula to make that fuel useable.

Having the Edsel strictly for business use was a luxury that still hit his guilt nerve, and whenever he did see someone walking in or out of town, he’d pull over to give a lift to assuage that guilt.

“We’re walking, Elizabeth. It is exactly half a block from here to the post office.” He set off with a long-legged stride befitting his six-foot-five frame, glad to breathe in the morning air after a long night’s watch in the town hall. While heading out, he told Jim where he would be and asked him to tell Reverend Black, who was coming on duty, that the night had passed quietly for once.

There had been rumors that the Mount Mitchell border reivers were again prowling along the northern edge of his community. The Stepp families, who lived up along the edge of the towering mountains, were complaining constantly about missing chickens and hogs … though of course they were mum about their moonshining operations and surreptitious trading with those same reivers that at times degenerated into violence. At times, he didn’t know if he should be blaming the Stepps rather than the outsiders. But at least this night had passed without incident or vendetta raids.

Leaving the parking lot of the town hall complex of administrative offices, fire department, and police station behind, John and Elizabeth crossed State Street, which had once been a main thoroughfare. The ice storm of the winter before had finally taken down the darkened traffic light. The bank across the street, long abandoned, had burned the year before, the once-prosperous building now an empty shell. The chamber of commerce and visitors’ center for tourists on the other corner ironically was still intact, though the thousands of brochures advertising local attractions had of course been looted out for basic fundamental use. A roll of the original material that the brochures had replaced was worth far more than its weight in silver or the standard medium of exchange—ammunition. It was yet another one of those things hardly anyone thought to stockpile before things went down.

As soon as they crossed the street, he regretted the decision to come down here. About 150 years earlier, the village post office was the community gathering place, fitting a Norman Rockwellish image of the potbellied stove, the local village philosophers and rubes gathered within trading gossip and news, waiting for the morning mail and news from afar over a game of checkers.

Mabel had taken her job to heart; she had been assistant postmistress. For a year, she had little if anything to do, but once the army had for a short time set up headquarters in Asheville, a trickle of mail had indeed started to come in, increasing in flow until, thrice weekly, an actual courier had come from the “big city.”

Delighted to be back to work, Mabel—with the help of her husband, George—had installed a woodstove in the foyer, set out a couple of checkerboards and a chess set, and did a thriving entrepreneurial business on the side with her fresh-baked corn bread that she brought in every morning, as well as herbal teas from various roots and sprouts. John decided to just turn a blind eye to the fact that her special medicinal corn bread for those who needed medication for pain management had been illegal in most states, except Colorado, prior to the Day.

And so the post office was again a community gathering place for the local rubes, philosophers, and more than a few community wags, especially on cold winter days and rainy spring days when there was little work to be done in the fields.

Before he was even across State Street, John was spotted by the ever-increasing crowd milling about the post office, most obviously in an angry mood, and—like any crowd in a democracy—they were looking for someone to vent their anger on, and John was the obvious target. He took a deep breath and pressed on.

Several tried to waylay him, and he turned on his most disarming smile.

“Hey, whatever it is, my daughter is caught up in it too. Let me talk to Mabel, and I’ll be right back out,” he announced while trying to slip his way through the crowd.

Even as he spoke, he saw Ernie of the infamous Franklin clan clattering up in his battered four-wheel-drive off-road vehicle. Word of the draft notices was spreading like wildfire, and he wished Mabel had called him the moment the morning mail delivery from Asheville had come in so he could’ve prepared a response. He spotted his old neighbor and friend Lee Robinson in the crowd and hurried over to him.

“Lee, if you could ask folks to just wait outside,” he implored.

Lee’s ancestors had settled the valley over two hundred years earlier, and four of them had fought in, as Lee said, “the War of Southern Independence.” For John, Lee was the embodiment of this precious valley, representative of all that was best of its traditional, down-to-earth character, a man of moral strength and a cherished neighbor. His son Seth, who was a couple of years older than Elizabeth, had kept a watchful eye on her like an older brother and had passed along his approval of Ben, the boy Elizabeth had fallen for who became the father of her son, while Lee’s youngest daughter had been Jennifer’s best friend. Both he and Lee harbored the hope that perhaps someday the two would notice each other in a different way.

Lee nodded and John motioned for Elizabeth to stay with his friend as he went into the back of the post office.

Mabel held the place down on her own. There was no more door-to-door rural mail delivery service, of course; folks had to come into town to pick up the occasional letter or notice that came from the outside world. There had actually been something of a celebration at the office a month earlier when a letter had arrived all the way from Indiana. It was a mystery how it had even gotten through, addressed to Abe and Myra Cohen from their daughter, a student up at Purdue. She had survived the Day, married, and Abe and Myra were now grandparents of twins.

On the Day, so many families had been cut off from children attending distant colleges, husbands and wives on business trips, elderly parents off on vacation. Only a handful had made it back in the days and weeks afterward. To have been down in Raleigh or Atlanta on the afternoon of the attack had placed so many beyond the pale, never to be heard from again. So on any day when word spread that a delivery had come in from Asheville, the post office filled up with those still holding hope of news from the distant outside world.

Beyond being the postmistress, Mabel had learned to be a professional counselor, as well as a shoulder to cry on when the mail slot was again empty. Word from distant loved ones, news of the outside world, a place to gather and share local news and gossip—this was Mabel’s domain; she offered a place to share moments of happiness, to console in sorrow, to offer encouragement, and to hope that at least some of the old traditions still worked … and she cherished it all. But not today.

Before he could even get one word in, Mabel authoritatively held up her hand. “Yes, John, I know—perhaps it was a mistake letting those letters out before tipping you off. Maybe I should have called you first before sorting and sticking the letters in mailboxes. It wasn’t until your daughter opened it here that I even knew what it was, but by then, it was too late; word was out.”

John sighed, looking at the hundreds of small postal boxes from Mabel’s side of the world inside the mail sorting room, morning sunlight filtering through the tiny glass windows, illuminating the darkness within. The blue-tinted envelopes were in more than a hundred slots.

“Pull them out,” John said. “I need time to deal with this.”

Mabel shook her head firmly, a withering glance telling him he had overstepped when it came to her august employer, the USPS.

“John, you might run this town even after you’ve resigned from that martial law routine, and in general, folks agree with nearly everything you’ve done. But not in here.” She braced herself up to all of her five-foot-two-inch frame and looked up at him towering over her. “I used to be an official employee of the United States Postal Service, and by heaven, I was proud of that. Remember that book some years back and the wretched movie made afterwards about how the postal service reunites America after a disaster like the one we had for real? That stupid movie was something of a cult favorite with us postal workers … Folks used to joke about us and our job—‘going postal’ and stuff like that. But we did make things run, and damn it, John, don’t get between me and my work now, or you’ll have the United States Postal Service to answer to!”

She nearly shouted the last words.

“Okay, Mabel, I’m backing up.”

“And remember this for good measure: I am required by the law that used to exist to ensure the proper posting of mail without censorship, and please don’t try to stop me.”

John gazed at her, ready for a frustrated retort when she pushed that final point in, but she defused the moment by exhaling nosily and then offering the flicker of a friendly smile.

“Sorry, John. Now that I know what is in those envelopes I’m as upset as anyone. One of them is addressed to my son-in-law. Just like you, there are times I hate the job I have to do, but I do it anyhow, the same as you.”

John made the gesture of stepping forward again, leaning over to offer a friendly kiss to her forehead and she gave him a hug, the situation defused.

Even as he stood there, he saw one of the glass doors opening. It was Ernie Franklin, elbowing his way past Lee Robinson, and sure enough, seconds later, there was an explosion of expletives from the foyer.

“Now I got to deal with it,” John finally replied, wearily shaking his head, looking back down at Mabel.

She sighed, reached out, and took his hand. “Hey, I’m just the messenger, as they used to say, so don’t shoot me.” She hesitated, now a bit embarrassed, because in his former career, which was essentially that of dictator, he had indeed shot more than one person. “Sorry,” she fumbled, red faced.

He smiled. “I know what you mean, and no insult taken, Mabel. It used to be a popular metaphor for the bringer of bad news—and this morning, it is bad news.”

“My God, John. I owe you everything for what you helped to do with George, pushing the town to release some antibiotics for that last bout of pneumonia. But I’m sorry—if things are to one day work out, I have to do my job, the same as you do.” She hesitated, gulped, and stepped back slightly. “I can’t stop you from pulling those envelopes out of the mailboxes, but if you do, you will have lost my respect, John.”

How could he respond to that challenge? And now more and more of the mailboxes were being pulled open. Ernie was continuing his expletive-laden tirade and whipping up a potential explosion, right in the lobby of the post office.

“Well, it’s already out there, Mabel,” he replied, pointing to the boxes.

She stepped back closer and again squeezed his hand. “You’re the leader in this town, John. You’ll manage somehow; you always do.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, shaking his head. He looked at the mailboxes and at the friends and neighbors gathering on the other side. “Damn it, Mabel,” he said, forcing a friendly smile. “At least next time, give me a call first so I can either figure out what to do first, or…” His voice trailed off, and he didn’t add,
Or find a place to hide.

How often, from the very first days, had he wished he could do just that as he opened the door and stepped back out into the foyer.