Chapter Text
Nobody spoke, in so many words, of the miracles that took place on Eastgate Street.
The street itself was improbable: less than half a mile of asphalt that didn’t even merit painted lines, whose sole purpose was to lead off of 6th Avenue to the only-slightly-longer-than-half-a-mile Hamann Drive, passing a church, a farming equipment store, and some prefabricated homes along its incredibly short way. The fact that Eastgate rated not one but two street signs (one at either end) was somewhat ludicrous—or it would be somewhat ludicrous, if anyone paused to consider it. They didn’t, however, so perhaps it wasn’t ludicrous at all.
There were no gates on Eastgate Street, and while on a micro scale the road might be considered to be East of the small town of Stillwater, Oklahoma, on whose outskirts it sat, on a grander scale it could be considered West of a great many things, including—if one had the patience and ability to travel far enough—the small town of Stillwater, Oklahoma.[i]
There was no Westgate, at least for a good thousand miles or so. Almost nobody who knew of this particular Eastgate knew of that particular Westgate. The likelihood, then, that these were both gates to the same mysterious Something must be deemed to be quite small.[ii]
And yet, despite the myriad factors which cried out that Eastgate Street was as unworthy as could be of any special significance, miracles did seem to happen there, even if nobody spoke of them. Ambulances always showed up in the very nick of time. Buses never came by the stop too early and were in fact reliably exactly as late as the person running up to the stop in an attempt to make it in time. On more than one occasion, a desperate parent walking home and trying to plan out sentences to tell their family about a lost job received a phone call explaining it had all been due to a clerical error and would they ever so kindly be able to report in for work the next day as scheduled? Older teenagers getting out of bad situations would chance upon an envelope with enough cash to get into a proper city—labeled with their name, no less. Lost animal flyers posted on the signs for Eastgate street resulted in the pet being found and returned. Nobody’s hair got stuck in their lipgloss while they were trying to look fancy for their romantic partner.
This is not to say that life for those in the small homes that clustered around the southern end of Eastgate Street, where it ended in a T-junction at Hamman Drive, was miraculously perfect. The residents all had the normal amount (or more) of problems and concerns; they had just benefitted from a slightly higher chance, over the past fifteen years or so, of everything working out for the best. They were all oblivious to this statistical trend, due to the observable negativity bias in humans, a healthy dose of self-deceptive rationalization, and the fact that nobody was really likely to ask their neighbour if they had also happened to notice that whenever they were sure they were short an egg or a cup of flour, they managed to have just as much as they needed for the thing they were making.
So whatever beliefs the human residents of the area may have harbored in private, they said nothing to their friends and neighbours—but if they had, each and every one of them would have been able to point to a moment in their life that they had felt, for lack of a more mundane term, blessed by the miraculous occurrences of Eastgate Street.
None of them, naturally, would have thought to connect those blessings to the long, quiet operation of A. Z. Fell’s Oddities & Whatnots right at the southern end of the street.
Mr. Fell may have done better business if he had called it an Antiques Shop or Hardware Store; Oddities & Whatnots were not greatly in demand by the residents of Stillwater, Oklahoma, who were a rather straightforward people. As it was, customers passed through his shop only in drips and drabs and did more window-shopping than actual shopping when they came by at all.
Mr. Fell did not mind overmuch.
He was, in point of fact, the principality Aziraphale. Having resided on this Earth since the Very Beginning, Aziraphale had had plenty of time to make a handful of wise (if somewhat unsporting, all things considered) investments and was currently living, totally non-miraculously, off the dividends. He cared not a whit as to the income this business made him—indeed, the vast majority of the goods for sale were things he was just as happy to keep close by, thank you very much. Restocking was a laborious process, and it had taken him quite some time to get everything arranged so prettily. Effort wasted, really, if his inventory moved too quickly. Besides, it felt cozier the longer any given item stayed in its place.[iii]
For fifteen years, he and the Oddities & Whatnots settled into a drowsy routine, marked chiefly by long sessions of dusting and neatening (little more than an excuse to delight in the arrangement of his various wares), endless hours of reading (largely from his own stock), and frequent picnics on the lawn of the nearby church, which he attended most Sundays.
The church did love Aziraphale—or rather, Mr. Fell. They would have tried very hard to love Aziraphale himself had they really known who (and what manner of being) he was, but in all likelihood it would have ended rather awkwardly. Of late Aziraphale had not, in quite a number of beings’ estimation, been all that great of an angel.
So here he was in Stillwater, Oklahoma, providing miracles to people whose deeds would almost certainly never change the course of human history, would not advance the Great Plan in any significant sense, would not ripple out to win tenfold as many souls as he directly touched for a reservation Up There. This suited him just fine. He loved the quiet. He loved staying put. He loved, he reminded himself on occasion, the absolute dearth of demonic activity.[iv]