Finding Miranda

CHAPTER 12: THE LETTER

At dawn, Miranda sat in her front porch rocker and sipped her coffee as usual. She ignored the daily crossword puzzle. The other Magnolia Street ladies chatted together, but Miranda did not join in.

She stared at nothing, preoccupied with the confusing images in her mind: Shep and Pietro strolling arm-in-arm; Shep teasing her as she hid under a plant; Annabelle bleating about homosexuals; Shep lifting Miranda off the ground for a kiss.

Shep carrying a pink-flowered purse.

Shep landing a second kiss.

Shep's mother referring to his "disability," but not to his sexual orientation.

A third kiss.

A muscular, shirtless man jogging away from her front gate.

Miranda shook her head to sling her thoughts in a new direction. Why was she fixated on this man who was obviously unavailable, unsuitable, unfathomable, and, well, late. Where was he? He should be turning the corner by now. She stood and began walking to the front gate for a better view of the road.

"Thar she blows!" shouted Martha, looking through her binoculars. The Magnolia Street ladies leaned forward and focused on the object of their mutual obsession. Shep and Dave jogged toward them.

A change had occurred in the jogging procedure since the Day of the Snake, as it was called in Magnolia Street annals. Since that day, Shep and Dave ran along the right-hand road shoulder, no longer the left. It was a trade-off: chance another left-side rattler or give up the safety of facing oncoming traffic. Yet a third consideration clinched the left-right decision: Miranda's front gate was on the right-hand side of the road.

In fact, Miranda's house was the first house on Magnolia Street, for Shep and Dave. The other Magnolia Street ladies had come to expect that the muscle man and wonder dog would pause to exchange greetings with Miranda before resuming their run with shouts of greeting for each subsequent front porch they would pass.

The Magnolia Street ladies might have been surprised, amazed, delighted, or jealous if they had known how different Miranda's daily salutation was from their own.

"Good morning, Miz Martha! Good morning, Miz Bernice! Good morning, Miz Wyneen! Good morning, Miz Charlotte!" Shep always boomed, and waved toward each lady in turn.

Those venerable ladies did not hear the soft words Shep spoke to Miranda every morning, because Miranda left her porch and waited for the duo at her front gate.

The first time he said it, the morning after the Day of the Snake, Miranda was stunned to silence. Every day thereafter he said it.

"Good morning, Bean. Will you marry me?"

And every day, Miranda would answer, "Good morning, Mr. Krausse. No, but thank you for asking." Then she would add, "Good morning, Dave."

Dave would "whuff" and lick her fingers where they rested atop her low iron gate.

....

One morning, Miranda put aside her confusion, anxiety, misgivings, and daydreams, and waited faithfully at the gate while dawn eased upward from the unseen horizon to the moss-hung treetops.

Shep and Dave stopped at her gate.

She had come to realize Dave stopped them there. Shep might have guessed approximately where she stood, but he navigated by sound and scent. Dave could see exactly where she was. Dave's cues were so subtle, and Shepard's response so automatic, it was no wonder she at first had not discerned that Shep was blind.