One Year After: A Novel Read Free Page B

stood up, and went out the door to the next room where the town’s telephone operator was on duty.
    “Jim, would you patch me in to Mabel?” he asked, and then he returned to his office and picked up his old-style phone.
    A retro 1930s telephone switchboard, taken from the local museum down on State Street, had been rigged up in the town hall. “Long distance,” as it was once called, now meant a call to Asheville to the west and Old Fort to the east, though there was talk that Morganton, forty miles off, had managed to pull together enough copper wire to run a line to them. His phone jangled a ring familiar from his childhood, and he picked it up.
    “United States Post Office. Mabel Parsons speaking.”
    He smiled. She held to the old rituals even though she was the only one who ever worked at the post office, which, beyond its old traditional service, had become something of the town center for news and gossip.
    “John Matherson here. How you doing, Mabel? Your husband feeling better?”
    “He stabilized out yesterday afternoon, John; thanks for pushing through that request for antibiotics. We really owe you one.”
    “Sure, Mabel. The kids at the college are starting to turn out a surplus in their chemistry lab, so no problem.”
    “So why are you calling, John? Certainly not to check on George’s health.”
    He could sense the challenge in her voice. Mabel was not someone to mince words with.
    “Okay, Mabel. My daughter Elizabeth just walked up here from your office with this draft notice thing. Said a whole bunch of them came in with the Asheville mail delivery. What the hell is going on?”
    “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,