Back in the days of the old man's long ponytail, most people would have taken him for an aging hippie. But Oren knew the judge's favorite poet was Ferlinghetti, and there was more evidence to date his father back to the Beatnik generation-medals of the Korean War stored in the pacifist's attic. The judge must sometimes wonder if joining the Army had been Oren's idea of teenage revolt-or revenge. The question would never be asked by this quintessential gentleman.
The judge picked through a pile of unmatched socks. "So what's this about Mavis Hardy? You think the press is going to dredge up that old business again?"
Oren rolled another pair. "You mean her murder case?"
The judge did not rise to this old bait. He placidly hunted the sock pile for a match to the one he held in his hand.
"Premeditated murder." Oren smiled.
And the judge countered with, "Justifiable homicide."
Murder.
Oren leaned closer to his father. "How long do you think it took Mrs. Hardy to lay her plans? I'd say a year at least."
The judge turned his full attention on a hole found in the toe of one sock. "I came down here to tell you that your trunk arrived. I had the deliveryman haul it up to your room. Did you pack a good suit in there?"
"Yes, sir. I packed everything I own."
"Good. Sarah Winston's birthday ball is only a few days away."
"I'm not going," said Oren. And this should have ended the conversation by the old man's own rules of debate. His father would never resort to the obvious question. It would diminish the twin arts of conversation and manners to ask, Why not?
"Why not?" Hannah stepped between them as the judge's foil. "What is it with you and Isabelle Winston? The pharmacist told me that girl kicked you all the way down the sidewalk yesterday. Now why would she do that?"
Oren shrugged to tell her that he didn't know and "she didn't say."
Why ruin a perfectly good rumor by trimming it back to a single act of minor violence? In the next telling of this story, it was predictable that Isabelle would have shot him once and stabbed him twice.
Collecting gossip was sometimes a trial of endurance. Ferris Monty pretended to take notes on the postmaster's lecture, which-if there was a God in heaven-was winding to a close.
"I bought these three pictures from Josh and framed them with my own money-not one dime from the taxpayers' pockets," said Jim Web. "I intend to leave them behind when I retire next year. My gift to the town.
Ferris nodded absently as he studied Joshua Hobbs's triptych. The boy had taken shots of postal patrons in a waiting line. The people appeared to move as the viewer's eye made the jump from one frame to the next. He stepped closer, the better to study the primary subject, the one at the center who posed with a silver-handled cane. Though Ferris had seen this person around town, he had only registered the scar and a peculiar limp in memory. But Joshua had focused upon the undamaged, unmemorable side of the man, and that was curious. A view of the wrack-and-ruin side would have been a more worthy angle.
Pointing to this image, he said, "I don't recall this man's name. He's lived in Coventry for a long time, hasn't he?"
"Yeah, but not as long as I have. I started as a clerk thirty-five years ago," said the postmaster in the mistaken belief that his interviewer might care. "That's Mr. Swahn. I can't say I actually know him. He's a hermit. Hasn't been in here since we started rural delivery, but he does show up for all the birthday balls. Will I see you at the Winston lodge this year?"
"I think you might."
The author followed the postmaster into a small office, where he endured Web's version of high tea: a fig bar and a cup of Earl Grey dosed with honey. The man looked out a window that faced the narrow street and watched cars crawl by. Ferris imagined this as the prime activity of Jim Web's day-watching. "So you knew Oren Hobbs as a boy."
"Oh, yeah. And by nine o'clock yesterday morning I knew he'd come back to town. That's a perk of the job. I get the gossip earlier than most."
Ah, gold.
"I understand that Oren Hobbs had a thing for older women-married women."
"Is that what you heard?" Postmaster Web pretended to find a spot of dirt on one lens of his perfectly clean eyeglasses, and he polished it with a tissue. For the first time in the past half-hour, the man seemed oddly reticent to gossip. Spectacles restored to the bridge of his nose, he smiled at his visitor. "If there's any truth to that rumor, I'd have to say it was the other way around. Older women had a thing for Oren. Understandable. You've seen him?"
"Yes, a very handsome young man."
"When he was a teenager, my wife described him as beautiful-and inadvertently charming. Or did she say accidentally? Something about his smile. No, I'm wrong. She said it was his eyes. When my wife spoke to Oren, he made her feel like the center of the universe. She said I didn't come off well by comparison."
"So it wouldn't surprise your wife… those rumors of an accidentally charming boy accidentally falling into strange beds when school was out- but the husbands were still at work."
"I can't say what's true or not." Jim Web turned to the window. "All I ever saw with my own eyes was a bad case of twisted puppy love."
Ferris leaned forward. "You mean the Winston girl?" This was another bit of Coventry lore that he had collected two decades ago, just the snatch of a story that had no beginning and no end.
The postmaster removed his bifocals and turned to the window, his watery eyes in soft focus, looking at some middle ground of memory. "Isabelle and Oren, they made me feel young again at least three times a week. You see, the judge's boys used to switch off on picking up the mail. This was before we had rural delivery. Back then, I knew the faces of everyone in this town, even the ones that lived out in the woods. Everybody picked up their mail at the post office-except for Mrs. Underwood, the old lady who used to live in Mr. Swahn's house. The boys would pick up her mail, too-not that there was much.
"Anyway, it's not like Josh and Oren had a schedule. I never knew which boy it would be or when he'd show up. But little Belle Winston always knew, and she always beat Oren Hobbs into town. Now this only happened in the summer. The rest of the year she went to a boarding school in the East. Belle was about eleven, I'd say. On fine summer days, she'd come flying into town, little legs churning up dust, long hair flying. She'd run in the door and ask for her mail like it was a matter of life or death- and couldn't my clerk understand that speed was everything to her? And then she'd just stand by the lobby window, watching the street. Sometimes ten, fifteen minutes would go by. Such a patient little girl."
"She was waiting for Oren Hobbs."
The postmaster nodded, never taking his eyes from the window. "The minute she saw him coming, she'd slowly open the front door like she had all the time in the world." Smiling, he tapped the window glass, as though he might be watching this story play out. "She'd saunter down the stairs and pass him on the sidewalk out there-like she didn't notice that boy was alive."
"Did Oren notice her?"
"You bet. The second he saw Belle, the boy's eyes were glued to the sidewalk, or sometimes he'd find something fascinating to look at on the other side of the street-until she passed him by. The boy always took a deep breath before he turned around to watch her walk away. This went on all summer long for years and years. It was the greatest little love affair that almost happened."
Done with old memories, the postmaster donned his glasses again, prepared to see the world as it was today. "You can hear rumors anywhere- and from people who tell them better than me." He jerked one thumb back at the windowpane. "But that's the only secret Oren Hobbs ever had that I ever knew about-me and the rest of the town."