Being here is like walking through the archives. The mill, school, and library are where they are in the old photos. The Old Post Office is new and grand. There’s one postbox, painted yellow, around the side.
“Y’all get mail here?”
“Of course we do.”
I imagine letters from places like New York City, LA, Philadelphia, talking about life in big cities with big cars and big problems. Letters filled with news about lynchings and Jim Crow and towns burning. But also catalogues. Thick, plump ones filled with pictures of things you don’t really need but which would make you the envy of the whole town if you had them. Like iceboxes for indoors and lounge chairs for outdoors.
“The Council reads all the mail coming into and going out of Curdle Creek before the Post Office delivers it. That’s just to make sure it’s all right.”
Temptation comes in the unlikeliest of forms. One of Mother Opal’s sayings.
“Let’s see if it’s changed now you’re here,” Opal says.
She’s already sprinting, and because she’s a good twenty-five years younger than I am, she wins. I’m out of breath, puffing and holding on to the big, wooden sign that’s smack-dab in the middle of a half-finished one-way street.
Welcome to Curdle Creek, Population 119.
“It must be stuck. It said that yesterday. With you here, it’s 120.”
There’s no counter that I can see. No whirring to speak of that I can hear. “How does the sign change? What does it count?”
“Signs can’t count, silly,” Constance says. “The carpenter comes out to paint it once a month like the tides. He comes in, scrapes off the numbers that need replacing, sands it down, blows that away, traces the outline of the new number, then paints it in red. Seems fitting, don’t it?”
Opal shakes her head. “That’s a shame really. He seems nice enough. But it can’t be helped.”
“Opal, you wouldn’t.”
“His name is as good as called, you wait and see.”
“We need a better system than grudges.”
“It was good enough last year when that hairdresser put that hot press on your hair and it all fell out. Why isn’t it good enough this year? Because it’s Osiris’s daddy?”
“You’re just being petty, that’s all. You know he won’t marry me if his daddy’s Moved On.”
“When, Constance. When his daddy’s Moved On.” Opal folds her arms. “Maybe there’s a way he can make it up to me.” She smiles. There’s no joy in it. No friendliness either.