She drew the collar of her coat closer to her throat as she walked the few blocks to the post office, passing dozens of businesses along Broad Street: department stores, barbershops, drugstores, a hardware store, a grocery store, a filling station, a bank. The street bustled with people. The town was not as quiet as she’d first thought, and every single person she passed—every single one of them, man, woman, and child—nodded a greeting to her as she walked by, which made her forget about the unappealing waterfront and lifted her mood. That would not happen if a stranger walked down Front Street in Plainfield, she thought.
She took a picture of the local theater as she passed it. The theater’s name stood out in huge letters above the roof: TAYLOR. The marquee announced that Dancing Co-ed with Lana Turner was playing. Her mother would have loved to see that film. Why, Mom? she thought, biting her lip. Why did you do it when there were still things you were looking forward to? Turning her back on the theater, she continued her walk.
The post office stood across the street from an Episcopal church and graveyard. The small brick building looked quite new. Its four front windows were topped by smart striped awnings, and slender pillars flanked the front doors. A flag flew from a pole on the roof. Inside, Anna felt a jolt of excitement when she spotted the wall where her mural would be installed. The bare space was above the door to the postmaster’s office and she instantly realized that she could divide one large canvas into three images if she chose to. Three images connected to one another by style, but reflecting three different elements of the town—whatever they might turn out to be. She stood there for several minutes, snapping pictures of the space, oblivious to anything else going on behind her in the small post office.
“Can I help you?”
She turned at the sound of a male voice and spotted the clerk behind the counter eyeing her curiously. Two customers, both women, were also gazing at her, and she wondered if she looked quite silly standing there in the middle of the room, taking pictures of a blank wall. She felt very much the stranger, then, but she smiled and they smiled back.
“I’m looking for the postmaster,” she said. “Is he in?”
“Just knock on that door.” The clerk gestured to the door in front of her. She knocked and was immediately invited inside.
The man behind the desk was almost exactly what she’d imagined. He was a string bean of a man—middle-aged and very tall. He had a graying brown mustache that matched his graying brown hair. He had on metal-rimmed glasses and he smoked a pipe, a fragrant curlicue of smoke rising toward the ceiling. The only surprise was his remarkably bushy eyebrows. On his desk was a nameplate: Clayton Arndt.
“Mr. Arndt?” Anna inquired. “I’m Anna Dale. I’m here to do a little research into the—”
“Why, you’re the artist!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet. It took her a moment to understand what he’d said. It sounded like Wah, yaw tha ahtis! He looked slightly stunned. “I must say, you are not at all what I expected,” he said, motioning to the chair in front of his desk. “Sit, young lady. Sit.”
She lowered herself into the chair. “What did you expect?” she asked.
He took his own seat again. “Well, when we learned we were getting a mural, of course we expected a male artist. That’s understandable, isn’t it?” He looked apologetic, his big eyebrows rising halfway up his forehead. “Most artists are men. Women have little time for those pursuits, what with taking care of the home, right?”
“Well, I don’t yet have a home to take care of,” Anna said, blocking the memory of the small house she and her mother had shared for all of Anna’s life. She thought about adding that she hoped to always be an artist, domestic responsibilities or not, but figured it was best to keep her mouth shut on that matter. She didn’t yet know who she was dealing with.
“But then we got word that the artist’s name is Anna Dale … right?” He tapped his pipe on the ashtray on his desk, then set it aside.
“Yes.” She smiled. “That’s me.”
“So, we got over the surprise of you being a female, but now I see you’re barely out of grammar school! You’re just a girl.” There was unabashed disappointment in his voice. “I’m sure you’re up to all the work this will entail, though, right?” He liked to end his sentences with the word “right.” Or raht. That much was clear.
She would not let this man cow her. She remembered Mrs. Van Emburgh’s whispered words to her at her graduation. “I’m twenty-two,” she said, holding her head high. “And I recently graduated from the Van Emburgh School of Art in Plainfield, New Jersey.”
“And there’s another thing.” Mr. Arndt folded his slender hands on his desk and looked perturbed. “When the Section of Fine Arts let us know our artist was from New Jersey, I wrote to them and said, ‘I believe this might be a mistake.’ I was afraid they were throwin’ you to the wolves. I’m sure those boys up in Washington, D.C., think you’re a talented artist who will do a fine job on a mural, but I’m concerned you’ll have a hard time gettin’ a real feel for Edenton and the folks here, what with you being from New Jersey, right?”
She wasn’t at all sure what he was asking or if he was asking her anything at all. “I plan to do my best,” she said gamely.
“Well, they said you were selected fair and square, so we’ll make it work, right?”
“Of course.” She shifted in the chair, hoping to take some control over this meeting. “And who is ‘we’?” she asked.
“The folks who run this town,” he said. “The movers and shakers. Our Mayor Sykes. Then there’s the editor of our paper, the Chowan Herald. Our various business leaders and myself, of course.”
“I see.” She realized she’d been mispronouncing “Chowan,” the county Edenton was in, if only in her head. It was Cho-WAN. She would have to remember that. What else was she getting wrong? “Well,” she said. “I’m going to do my best to give Edenton a mural it can be proud of.”
“I’d like to see your sketch,” he said. He looked toward her hands where they rested in her lap as though she might have the thirty-six-by-eighteen-inch sketch hidden away inside her coat. “Do you have it with you?”
“I don’t have a sketch yet,” she admitted, then told him about winning the competition based on her sketch of Bordentown, New Jersey.
“So you have no sketch at all for an Edenton mural?” He sounded aghast, his eyebrows crawling up his forehead toward his hairline again. “Do you have an idea, at least?”
“That’s why I’m here,” she said, trying to reassure him with a calm voice, although her stomach tightened with anxiety. “I want to learn about Edenton to get a subject—or subjects—for the mural. Perhaps I could meet with … the movers and shakers, as you call them? I need to learn what’s near and dear to an Edentonian’s heart.”
“A fine idea.” He nodded, finally looking a bit more relaxed. “I can set somethin’ up for next week.”
“I’m afraid I’m only here for two more nights,” she said. “Is it possible to get together with them sooner?”