Page 11 of Possibly Texas

“Okay. Fine. Where are they? I’ll go get them. I’ll go out to the mailbox, too.”

Jack shook his head. Then he was looking down at his phone and tapping away at the screen once again. A moment later, he was holding the phone out to me.

Post office doesn’t deliver mail. Can you go get it? You can stop at Grandy’s for cigarettes.

“I mean,” I said, re-reading the screen, “I can go get the mail. I know where the post office is. Not that it’d be hard to find in this town. But I’m only sixteen, Jack. I can’t buy cigarettes. Okay, I’ve bought cigarettes before. Lifted some beers once in Memphis. But…something about this town tells me that it won’t be so easy to lie about my age or steal.”

Jack frowned disapprovingly. I shrugged.

Another round of tapping and the phone was in my face once more.

Don’t steal. I’ll text Grandy to let him know you’re coming and you’re my stepson. He’ll let you have the cigarettes.

“Okay,” I said.

Jack typed away on the phone again.

Tell Sofia who you are. She’ll give you the mail.

“Who’s Sofia?”

A few moments later: Postmaster.

“All right,” I said. “Uh, I don’t have any money. For the cigarettes?”

Jack laid his phone on the table and reached into his back pocket. I expected him to yank out a wallet and fish out a few bills. Instead, his hand simply reappeared with a twenty. So, Jack kept cash loose in his pocket. We all have our quirks. Jack eyed me warily as I leaned across the table and took it from his hand, as though I’d get far on twenty bucks. I slipped the bill into my front hip pocket and Jack picked up his tool once more.

“Uh, I’ll be back soon? Town doesn’t seem that big. From what I saw yesterday, I mean. So…I’ll be back soon?”

Jack didn’t even look up at me as he started working on the table once more. A slight nod of his head was his only response. I had made it to the corner of the house when an idea struck me.

“Hey,” I hollered over my shoulder to Jack.

He looked up at me.

“Mind if I, like, buy a soda?” I asked. “Just a twenty ounce or whatever. Nothing major. Mom didn’t give me any cash when she dumped me.”

A jerky nod of Jack’s head, even though he was already looking away, let me know that I had the all-clear to purchase a drink for my troubles. Jack was a tacit guy—if not by choice—but he wasn’t half bad.

The walk back into town wasn’t as horrible as the day before since it was a bit cooler. I was still dealing with Texas in summer, but the temperature was bearable. Of course, it was mid-morning, so by the time noon came around, it was possible I’d be a puddle of sweat. As I sauntered down the road towards the graveyard, a gunshot rang in the distance. Instinctively, I jerked and ducked, wanting to avoid gunfire, before I realized that the weird guy who looked like Yosemite Sam was probably being crazy again.

What was his name? Wyatt?

When I hung a right at the graveyard, towards the center of town, and AMOR and the other buildings alongside it came into view, I heard an odd mechanical scraping sound. At the corner of the street AMOR sat upon, and where I’d seen the guy digging up the concrete, I realized I had missed the street sign on my way out to Jack’s the day before.

Liberty Lane.

Apparently, the radio station sat on a street whose concrete was slowly being dug up and replaced with rainbow-colored bricks, and it was called “Liberty Lane.” Fair enough. Not important information, but information either way. When I turned right onto Liberty Lane, headed towards the creek, where I could see the teal clapboard house that was actually a post office, I realized where the mechanical scraping sound was coming from.

The tram was inching along the tracks and the conductor was holding the steering lever, looking ahead officiously as the tram rolled down the tracks towards me. My feet slowed and I came to stand at the end of Liberty Lane so that I could watch the conductor and his tiny little tram. It took less than a minute, but finally, the tram reached the other end of the tracks and stopped to my right. The conductor slid the gear shift into place, turned off the tram, kicked his feet up, then grabbed his book. A few flicks of his finger, which he moistened with his tongue, and the conductor had found where he’d left off. He went about reading his book, pretending he hadn’t just seriously driven the tram forty yards before calling it a day.

Of course, the tram only ran the length of Liberty Lane. Unless he wanted to throw the thing in reverse and go the other way, he was out of track.

Why in the world is there a tram that just goes up and down one street that takes less than a minute to walk at a leisurely pace?

With the sight of the conductor reading his book without a care in the world, I knew there was no point in trying to figure things out. Between Levi Lee, the guy who jumped off the bridge, and Wyatt with his gun—I already knew everyone in town was crazy. The tram conductor just cemented that theory in my mind.

It dawned on me that I had been so caught up in watching the tram that the rest of the world had seemed to melt away and fade into the background. Who Do You Love? by Bo Diddley was playing on the speakers the radio station had staked up around town. In fact, I was close enough to AMOR that I could see its storefront. It looked pretty innocuous—not at all like a lunatic was in charge of the place. Then again, most lunatics do all they can to avoid detection, including living and working in “normal” places.