The Americans Are Coming Read Online Free PDF Page A

took the money, she would not be able to pay for the stamps. Her supply would run out and people would want to know why they couldn’t mail a letter. They’d report her. The head post master from Blackville would pay her a visit and there’d be nothing for Shirley to do but tell the truth.
    “Something came over me. I don’t know what it was. I stole the money.”
    She’d be taken off to jail and maybe fined, the children trotted off to orphanages.
    But the money was there. Handy. Accessible. Twelve dollars maybe, if she took the change, too. And nobody would know unless she ran out of stamps. If nobody mailed any parcels or letters for a couple of weeks, until she got her cheque, nobody would ever know. She fought back the temptation. “What’s happenin’ to me?” she asked herself. “Why am I settin’ here thinkin’ of stealin’, when I should be on my knees prayin’?”
    Then, as if to answer her questions, she heard the lonesome, distant whistle of the train. It was not the train they called the Whooper. The Whooper had been replaced by a diesel years before. This was only the Express, the train that brought the mail every morning; the train that picked up and dropped off a few passengers going to and from villages and towns; thetrain whose whistle now seemed like a mournful cry from the forest, causing a chill to course its way down Shirley’s back. The whistle seemed too timely, as if it had heard her, as if it was showing its approval or disapproval of her thoughts of stealing, its voice enhanced and amplified by the wind.
    Shirley stood. “It’s no time to be settin’ around,” she thought. “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop, Daddy use to say.” She went to the post office, retrieved the mailbag with the two letters locked inside, donned her coat once again and headed for the siding, the weight of poverty heavy on her shoulders, the winds no less haunting, no less cold.
    When she arrived at the kempt little red building with the veranda that stood no more than a couple of feet from the tracks, she found she was right on time. The Express – a diesel engine, one passenger car and a caboose – pulled to a squeaking, grinding ten-second halt.
    There were several people aboard, some of whom gazed down at her as though with pity; sad, unsmiling eyes, staring at her as if she was an animal in a zoo.
    Shirley drew back her shoulders a bit, feigning dignity. But the attempt was feeble; she was too aware of herself; her ragged old coat; her fear. She looked away.
    “Ya’d think they never saw a poor woman before in their lives,” she thought. “Am I the only one? Why am I the only poor woman in the world?”
    A tall, thin man dismounted from the train.
    Shirley experienced a twinge of fear at the sight of him. She couldn’t believe that so many things could be haunting her on the same morning. “What’s goin’ on here?” she thought, and “speak of the devil.” The man was wearing a parka with an oversized hood. The hood was furry and hung low enough to hide his face, but she knew it was Nutbeam. She had never seen him before, but she knew.
    “Lovely day,” she said.
    Nutbeam did not speak to her, did not nod his hooded head, did not even look at her. He strode swiftly away, carrying a black case under his arm.
    Shirley traded mailbags with the porter and the train moved on toward its destination, Boiestown.
    When she got back to the house, Bert Todder, John Kaston, Lindon Tucker and Dan Brennen were waiting for her. They stood in the sun, on the south side of the house away from the wind.
    Shirley led them inside and unlocked the mailbag. The men waited. Dan Brennen eyed the untidiness of Shirley’s house with disgust.
    John Kaston got a copy of
Decision Magazine
, Bert Todder a letter from Linda who lived in Fredericton. Lindon Tucker, as usual, got no mail at all. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, no mail’s good mail, yeah, yes sir, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Dan Brennen got a bill from