That's silly, Mary thought. We didn't. Not even close. All we did was talk about that stump. To her mother, that stump seemed plenty. And Mary herself wasn't inclined to change her mind. Maybe that was what worried her mother.
They were still wary around each other a few days later, when they had to go into Rosenfeld to shop. Mary remembered checkpoints outside of town, where the Americans would carefully examine wagons and goods for explosives before letting them go on. Not now. The Yanks seemed to think her countrymen weren't dangerous any more. One day, she hoped to show them they were wrong. That too, though, would have to wait for another day.
Many more motorcars were on the road now than had been there when Mary first started going into Rosenfeld. They whizzed past the wagon, one after another. Some of the drivers, angry because they had to slow down to keep from hitting it, honked as they went by.
"I wish I were a man," Mary said. "I'd tell them what I think of them."
Her mother nodded. "Yes, I'm sure you would," she said. It did not sound like praise. Mary muttered to herself, but didn't rise to it.
When they got into Rosenfeld, her mother tied the horse to a lamppost. "Hardly any hitching rails left," Mary said.
"I know." Maude McGregor nodded again. "Automobiles don't need them. You go to the post office and get some stamps. I'll be in Henry Gibbon's store."
"All right." Mary hesitated, then plunged: "Do you want to go to the cinema afterwards? We haven't been in an awfully long time."
"Maybe," her mother answered. "We'll see how much I have to spend at the general store, that's all."
Mary wished she could argue more, but knew she couldn't, not when the argument involved money. Even the half a dollar two tickets would cost was a lot, considering how little the farm brought in.
Wilfred Rokeby stood behind the counter at the post office, as he had for as long as Mary could remember. She noticed with surprise that he'd gone gray. When had that happened? It must have sneaked up when she wasn't looking. He still parted his hair in the middle and slicked it down with some old-fashioned, sweet-smelling oil whose spicy odor she indelibly associated with the post office.
Only one other customer was ahead of her: a young man close to her own age, who had a huge swarm of parcels. The postmaster had to weigh each one individually and calculate the proper postage for it, then stick on stamps and write down the sum so he could get a grand total when he finally finished.
Seeing Mary, the young man waved her forward. "If you want to take care of what you need, go ahead," he told her. "I'll be here for a while any which way."
She shook her head. "It's all right. You were here first. I can wait."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Positive," she said. "Where are you sending all those boxes, anyway?"
"Winnipeg. My brother just moved up there, and he figured out this was the cheapest way to get his stuff up there with him. Of course, that means I have to stand here and go through this, but why should Bob care?" He grinned.
To her surprise, Mary found herself grinning, too. "Brothers and sisters are like that," she said, speaking from experience. "You might as well be a pack mule, as far as they're concerned."
"That's right. That's just right." Bob's brother-Mary still had no better name for him-nodded enthusiastically. "They always say they'll pay you back, and then they never do, or not enough." He paused to stoop and hand Wilfred Rokeby another package.
"Thank you, Mort," the postmaster said.
As if hearing his name reminded him Mary didn't know it, he said, "That's me-Mort Pomeroy, at your service." He touched the brim of his hat.
"Oh!" Mary said. She hadn't seen him before, or at least hadn't noticed him, but now she knew who his family was. "Your father runs the diner down the street from Gibbon's general store." With money so tight, she couldn't recall the last time she'd eaten there.
"That's me," he said again, and handed another package, a big, heavy one, to Rokeby. Then he turned back to her. "That's me, all right, but who are you?" He looked at her as if he were an explorer who'd just sighted a new and unimagined continent.
"I'm Mary McGregor." She waited.
"Oh," Mort Pomeroy said, in a tone very different from hers. He couldn't go on with something bright and chipper, as she had, something on the order of, Your father blew up Yanks. Then he blew himself up, too. He couldn't say anything like that, but his face told her he knew who her father was, sure enough. Who in and around Rosenfeld didn't know who Arthur McGregor was?
Too bad, she thought. Now he won't want to have anything to do with me, and he seems nice.
But, after giving Wilfred Rokeby yet another parcel-the next to last one-he managed to put the smile back on his face and say, "Well, that was a long time ago now, and it certainly didn't have anything to do with you."
He wasn't quite right. The only thing Mary regretted was that her father hadn't had more luck. But Pomeroy wouldn't know that, of course. And a lot of people in Rosenfeld still stared and pointed whenever she went by, and probably would for years to come. Someone trying to treat her kindly made a very pleasant novelty, especially when the someone in question was a good-looking young man. "Thank you," she whispered.
"For what?" He sounded honestly puzzled as he gave the postmaster the last package. That made her like him more, not less.
Rokeby went to work with pencil and paper. "Comes to nine dollars and sixteen cents, all told," he said.
"For postage? Can you imagine that?" Mort Pomeroy said, genially astonished, as he paid Rokeby. "I'll take it out of Bob's hide-if he ever finds a job, I will."
"Times are hard," Mary agreed. "Let me have seventy-five cents' worth of stamps, Mr. Rokeby, if you would."
"I can do that," he said, and gave her twenty-five stamps-postage had recently gone up from two cents to three. He put the three quarters she handed him into his cash box. She sighed. The extra twenty-five cents she had to spend on stamps would have paid her way into the theater. Now the money was gone-and gone into the Americans' pockets. One more reason to hate them, she thought.
"Are you in town by yourself?" Pomeroy sounded hopeful.
"I have to meet my mother at the general store," Mary said with much more regret than she'd expected to feel.
His face fell. "Oh. Too bad." He hesitated, then asked, "If I was to come calling on you one day before too long, would that be all right? Maybe you'd like to see a moving-picture show with me?"
"Maybe I would." Mary realized she ought to say more than that. "Yes, I'm sure I would."
"Swell!" Now the grin came back enormously. "I've got an auto. Can I pick you up Saturday night? We'll go to a film, see what else there is to do after that-a dance at the church, or something."
"All… all right." Mary sounded dazed, even to herself. No one had ever shown this kind of interest in her. Her past left her damaged goods. That had always suited her fine-up till this minute. She was ever so glad Mort Pomeroy didn't seem to care who her father was or what he'd done. "Saturday night," she whispered, and hurried out of the post office. Pomeroy and Wilfred Rokeby both stared after her.
C incinnatus Driver used a hand truck to haul crates of oatmeal boxes from his Ford to the market that had ordered them. "This here's the last load, Mr. Marlowe," he said, panting a little.
Oscar Marlowe nodded. "Yes, I've been keeping track of everything you've brought in," he answered. Cincinnatus believed him: the storekeeper was a thin, fussily precise man with a little hairline mustache so very narrow it might have been drawn on with a mascara pencil. He said, "I do appreciate how hard you've worked bringing it all in."