At the very moment that Winifred Poore was wiping her drippy nose on her sleeve, her father, Ben Poore, was sound asleep in southeast Alaska. It was four hours earlier there.
The afternoon before, he had been to the local post office in Whitehorse to mail a gift to his daughter.
“How’s it goin’?” the postal clerk had asked.
Ben Poore had sighed. “Not very well,” he told the clerk. “The soles of my shoes are wearing thin. I’m having zero luck selling encyclopedias. And my samples are heavy to carry around. I don’t suppose you’d be interested? I could give you a special price . . .”
The clerk gave an impatient sigh. “I meant: How’s it goin’? Priority? Overnight? Parcel Post?” She picked up the clumsily wrapped package he had placed on the counter. “Yikes. That weighs a ton. What’ve you got in there—rocks?”
Ben Poore was startled. “How did you know that? Are you a mind reader or what?”
“Just a guess.”
“Well,” he said, “good guess. I’m sending Alaskan rocks to my daughter. She loves— Whaddya call it? Geology, that’s it. She wants to be a geologist. So I’m sending her a bunch of rocks.”
The clerk weighed the package. “Well, it’s gonna cost you thirty-two dollars to send it the cheapest way. And it’ll take a while to get there.”
He winced. “No rush. But thirty-two dollars? I’m running low on cash,” he confided. “If I don’t sell a set of encyclopedias soon . . .” He interrupted himself. “Hey! I bet the M volume has a lot of information about mind reading! How about—”
“Nope. Sorry.” She held out her hand for the money.
Reluctantly he took two twenty-dollar bills from the thin roll of cash he had left and gave them to her. She counted out his change.
“I was going to stop in that café down the street for supper,” Ben Poore said, pocketing the bills. “But now I can’t afford it. I guess I’ll just get myself a candy bar.”
The clerk. “No, you won’t. Haven’t you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Candy’s illegal now. New law.”
“Illegal?”
“Jail time.”
“I can’t even buy a Milky Way? Or a Nestlé Crunch bar?”
“White-collar crime.”
“Even M&M’s?”
“All candy,” she said.
“What if someone gives me a really expensive box of Godiva chocolates?”
She stared at him, with his unkempt beard and coffee-stained plaid shirt. Briefly she glanced over at the post office wall, to the Most Wanted posters tacked there, and decided he wasn’t a match. But she chose not to comment on the Godiva chocolates.1 Instead, she beckoned to the person behind him in line. “Next?” she called.
“Jeez. Well,” he said, turning to leave the post office, “I’ll make do with an apple, I guess.”
“Good for your teeth!” she called after him.