Angels of Detroit by Christopher Hebert Read Free Book Online Page B

other.
    “Remember those?” Darius said. “Every post office had them.”
    The Hispanic guy gave him a quick glance.
    “When was the last time you saw one?”
    “It’s been a while.”
    “Now it’s just pictures of stamps,” Darius said. “Warnings not to mail explosives.” He pointed at a bright orange sign on the wall. “Is there anyone that doesn’t know that?” he said. “Are there people walking into post offices, saying, ‘Yeah, I’d like to mail this hand grenade’?”
    The guy shifted the package again, his arms sinking lower under the weight.
    “I miss the posters,” Darius said. “I liked to look at the faces. You wonder about their stories—why people do the things they do.”
    The guy seemed to nod. Or maybe he was just stretching his neck.
    It was hot in there, the boiler swamping the windows along the street, turning April into August. There was nothing to see outside but the boarded-up courthouse across the street.
    “I remember when mine were that small.” Darius nodded at the diaper box, the little white baby blindfolded by a strip of brown packing tape.
    The Hispanic guy was already turning back toward the front of the line.
    “How old’s yours?” Darius said.
    “My what?” the guy said sideways.
    “Your baby.”
    “I don’t have a baby.”
    “The box,” Darius said. “I thought—”
    “It’s just a box.”
    The line still hadn’t moved. Everyone ahead of them, it was like they’d never been in a post office before, had no idea what one was for. The two clerks looked as though they’d been startled awake from some deep, traumatic dream.
    Through the condensation on the glass, the old courthouse across the street was a glistening ruin. Darius and Sylvia had gotten theirmarriage license there. By the looks of the place, that must have been a century ago. Really sixteen years, Sylvia just pregnant with Nina. But in that time there’d been what the city called a “streamlining of services,” by which they seemed to mean injecting an atmosphere of punishment into every department of the government, the post office included. The old courthouse was beautiful but too expensive to maintain. Or so they said. A vine had climbed halfway up the flagpole.
    “I was listening to the radio the other day,” Darius said, drifting a bit closer to the Hispanic guy. “I heard them talking about turning it all into farmland.”
    One of the post office clerks had wandered off, leaving a confused old woman at the counter clutching what looked like a sock full of coins. The Hispanic guy dropped his heavy package to the floor.
    “All of it,” Darius said. “The whole city. Tear it all down.”
    Every couple of months it was something new, some grand plan to bring the city back from the brink. Artists were going to save it, filling empty warehouses with ceramics and easels. Or urban hipsters would come, spawning microbreweries and coffee shops. Or all the empty factories would be converted to make solar panels. Or engines that ran on cow manure. Or the entire city would become a post-apocalyptic film set, permanently on loan to Hollywood. Or maybe a Saudi prince would turn the place into his personal amusement park.
    But a farm! Steam-shovel up the courthouse, till the lawn around the flagpole. And plant what, exactly? Acres of corn just off the interstate?
    The line shuffled forward. The Hispanic guy toed the diaper box a few inches ahead. “Fuck it,” he said, gesturing toward the courthouse. He’d seen where Darius was looking after all. “Why not?”
    From up front came the shriek of a tape gun.
    “ Are you going to become a farmer?” Darius said.
    “It’s just going to waste.”
    So what, put the city in a time machine and pretend the whole last century never happened? Even the people on the radio hadn’t been entirely serious, pointing out all of kinds of obstacles. “For one thing,” Darius said, “they’d have to tear everything down first.”
    The Hispanic guy