stop here.’
‘It didn’t stop today,’ he admitted. ‘Only two things got off: me and my suitcase.’
‘You travel lightly.’
‘I’m just here overnight. When the next train runs through, not stopping, I’ll grab on.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘That’s not how it’s supposed to be.’
‘I’ve got to go home and finish my story,’ he insisted.
‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘And what will you say about this town that no one can find?’
A cloud crossed the sky and the dining room windows darkened, and a shadow fell across his face. There were two truths to tell, but he could tell only one.
‘That it’s a lovely town,’ he said, lamely. ‘The kind that doesn’t exist anymore. That people should remember and celebrate. But how did you know I was coming?’
‘I woke at dawn,’ she said. ‘I heard your train from a long way off. By noon the train was just beyond the mountains, and I heard its whistle.’
‘And did you expect someone named Cardiff?’
‘Cardiff?’ she wondered. ‘There was a giant, once—’
‘In all the newspapers. A fraud.’
‘And,’ she said. ‘Are you a fraud?’
He could not meet her gaze.
When he looked up, Nef’s chair was empty. The other diners, too, had all left the table, gone back to their rocking chairs or, perhaps, to summer afternoon naps.
‘Lord,’ he murmured. ‘That woman, young, but how young? Old, but how old?’
Suddenly Elias Culpepper touched his elbow.
‘You want a real tour of our town? Claude needs to deliver some more fresh-baked bread. On your feet!’
The wagon was loaded with a redolent harvest. The warm loaves had been neatly stacked row on row within the oven-smelling wagon, thirty or forty loaves in all, with names lettered on the wax-paper wrappings. Beside these were waxed boxes of muffins and cakes, carefully tied with string.
Cardiff took three immense inhalations and almost fell with the overconsumption.
Culpepper handed him a small packet and a knife.
‘What’s this?’ said Cardiff.
‘You won’t be a block away before the bread overcomes you. This is a butter knife. This here is a full loaf. Don’t bring it back.’
‘It’ll ruin my supper.’
‘No. Enhance. Summer outside. Summer inside.’
He handed over a pad with names and addresses.
‘Just in case,’ said Culpepper.
‘You’re sending me out on my own? How do I know where to go?’
‘Don’t you worry. Claude knows the way. Never got lost yet. Right, Claude?’
Claude looked back, neither amused nor serious, just ready.
‘Just go easy on the reins. Claude’s got his own system. You just tag along. It’s the only way to see the town without any jabber from me. Giddap.’
Cardiff jumped aboard. Claude tugged, the wagon lurched forward.
‘Hell.’ He fumbled with the notebook, scanning the names and addresses. ‘What’s the first stop?’
‘Git!’
The bread wagon drifted away, warming the air with the heady scents of yeast and grain.
Claude trotted as if he could hardly wait to be right.
Claude jogged at a goodly pace for two blocks and turned sweetly to the right.
His eyes twitched toward a front yard mailbox: Abercrombie.
Cardiff checked his list.
Abercrombie!
‘Damn!’
He jumped from the wagon, loaf in hand, when a woman’s voice called, ‘Thank you, Claude.’
A woman of some forty years stood at the gate to take the bread. ‘You, too, of course,’ she said. ‘Mister …?’
‘Cardiff, ma’m.’
‘Claude,’ she called, ‘take good care of Mr Cardiff. And Mr Cardiff, you take good care of Claude. Morning!’
And the wagon jounced along the bricks under a congress of trees that laced themselves to lattice out the sun.
‘Fillmore’s next.’ Cardiff eyed the list, ready to pull on the reins when the horse stopped at a second gate.
Cardiff popped the bread in the Fillmore mailbox and raced to catch up with Claude, who had resumed his route without waiting for his driver.
So it went. Bramble. Jones. Williams. Isaacson. Meredith. Bread. Cake. Bread. Muffins. Bread. Cake. Bread.
Claude turned a final corner.
And there was a school.
‘Hold up, Claude!’
Cardiff alighted and walked into the schoolyard to find a teeter-totter, its old blue paint flaking, next to an old swingset, its splintery wooden seats suspended from rusted iron chains.
‘Well, now,’ whispered Cardiff.
The school was two stories high. Its double doors were shut, and all eight of its windows were crusted with dust.
Cardiff rattled the front doors. Locked tight.
‘It’s only May,’ Cardiff said to himself. ‘School’s not out yet.’
Claude whinnied irritably, and perhaps out of pique, began a slow glide away from the school.
‘Claude!’ Cardiff put iron in it. ‘Stay!’
Claude stayed, drumming the bricks with both forefeet.
Cardiff turned back to the building. Carved in the lintel, above the main door were the words: SUMMERTON GRAMMAR SCHOOL, DEDICATED JANUARY 1ST, 1888.
‘Eighteen eighty-eight,’ Cardiff muttered. ‘Well, now.’
He gave one last look at the dust-caked windows and the rusted swing chains and said, ‘One last go-round, Claude.’
Claude did not move.
‘We’re all out of bread and names, is that it? You only take bakery orders, nothing else?’
Even Claude’s shadow did not move.
‘Well, we’ll just stand here until you do me a favor. Your new star boarder wants to cross-section the whole blasted town. What’s it to be? No water, no oats, without a full trot.’
Water and oats did it.
Full trot.
They sailed down Clover Avenue and up Hibiscus Way and over on to Rosewood Place and right on Juneglade and left again on Sandalwood then Ravine, which ran off the edge of a shallow ravine cut by ancient rains. He stared at lawn after lawn after lawn, all of them lush, green, perfect. No baseball bats. No baseballs. No basketball hoops. No basketballs. No tennis rackets. No croquet mallets. No hopscotch chalk marks on