Page 34 of Possibly Texas

“Couple of years?” Auguste shrugged. “He can only do it on days that it’s nice and dry, and some days he has to rest his arms and shoulders. It’s hard work.”

I just nodded. Auguste nudged me again and pointed at the tram at the other end of the track.

“That’s Jasper,” he said. “He’s the tram conductor. He runs the tram up and down the street hourly.”

“But why?” I groaned, though I wasn’t unamused. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Why?” Auguste turned to me.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously.” He nudged me again with a smile.

I laughed.

“I mean,” I began, “it’s quicker to walk down the street on foot. You can get to the other end in seconds. The tram is slow. Also, it really doesn’t take you anywhere, does it? Just up and down a street. And not all the time, either. On the hour. That just—it doesn’t make sense.”

Auguste stared at me for a long moment, then smiled.

“You’re not a very whimsical person, are you?” he asked.

“What does that mean?”

He grinned. “Come on.”

Auguste was dashing down the street before I could respond, so the only thing I could do was chase after him. We raced along Liberty Lane until we were almost to the creek, then hooked a right. The back of the post office building, tall, teal, and quaint, came into view. Auguste slammed on the brakes again, but I was ready for it.

“The post office,” he said simply.

“Sofia Salazar is the postmaster,” I added. “Yeah. We met.”

“Did she tell you about the letters to Shirlene?”

“It might have been discussed.”

“Well,” Auguste said, “everyone goes crazy trying to figure out that mystery. Some people say that it’s some guy who just has a wrong address. Or even some woman, I suppose. Other people say that Sofia is writing the letters herself. I mean, she doesn’t have any envelopes or postmarks to show where they came from, right?”

“Right?”

“Other people say it’s someone in town, writing letters to get over a lost love—or an unrequited love,” he said. “Like, maybe there’s not even a ‘Shirlene’ at all, you know? Maybe it’s a pseudonym for someone else entirely.”

“That’s weird, too,” I said, then realized what I’d said. “I mean, how odd.”

Auguste looked over at me and shook his head with a grin.

“We all hope that one day we’ll find out who Shirlene is and why she’s so important to get so many letters,” he said.

“Okay.”

Auguste didn’t run away from the post office so much as power walk towards Starbuck’s, and I fell in behind him. When the old pirate ship came into view, I could see that Levi Lee was outside the front door, doing his brand of performance art. He was standing on one leg, a silver platter balanced on his head and two platters held aloft by his hands. A look of stern concentration was on his face.

“That’s Starbuck’s,” Auguste said, stopping a few yards away. “Coffee shop. Starbuck is a nice guy. Always dresses as a pirate. Hence the pirate theme, I guess? But is this a chicken or the egg scenario? Who knows?”

“Like,” I asked, “does he dress like a pirate because his coffee shop is in a pirate ship, or did he get a pirate ship as a coffee shop because he likes eye patches?”

Auguste chuckled. “Exactly. No one knows. But he’s a nice guy. Just eccentric.”

“Okay.”