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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.

CHAPTER 10

    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 swing-set, 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