by Pamela Morsi
“James, would you like to hold one end of this?” she asked as she attempted to measure the length of the shelving range.
He made no response. She could hear him moving about and the explosive sound of book closing continued to go off at intervals, but he chose not to answer.
D.J. shrugged it off. She managed to hook the tape measure on her own and get the accurate length.
Definitely she wanted to institute the change in the stack area first, she decided. It was the space most desperate. What she wished she could do was take every volume, shelf and stick of furniture out of the room and then lay it out all at one time. Begin again. Clean slate. That was not possible or realistic. She would work around the constraints that she had. She would have to rearrange the sections of the building separately and utilize the other areas for staging. The stacks would be the most onerous task. It might be perfect to get that done during harvest, while the library was basically empty. If she could move really quickly, if she could get James to help her, if they worked day and night, it all seemed like a very good, very possible idea.
Once D.J. found some graph paper to model the room and its furnishings, she noticed a growing increase in book slamming within the dark confines of the stack shelving. On a routine day, she would hear James slam a book closed two or three times. They weren’t even open for business yet and he’d done many times that number of loud, rifle-shot closures.
Also, uncharacteristically, James was making his presence felt. Typically, he moved about like a ghost. Not so this morning. D.J. could hear him pacing up and back among the shelves. He was muttering to himself and only stopped for another book slam.
“James, are you all right?” she called out.
There was no answer.
She went to the stacks to confront him directly, but he avoided her. As soon as she was in the same aisle, he rushed around the corner. And when she went to that corner, he was around the next. She would never succeed in chasing him down. So she attempted to reason with him.
“If we turn the book shelves to run east and west, then the light from the windows can illuminate the space between them. It’s how it was meant to be, I’m sure. Somebody simply messed up when they first laid out the interior. It’ll be better. You’ll be able to see without a flashlight. The biographies won’t get all sun-damaged and faded.”
Her explanation was no help. If anything, it seemed to make it worse.
Maybe he needed to get used to the idea, she thought. He needed to think it through himself and come up with the same conclusion that she had.
She went back to her seat at the circulation desk and her graph-paper planning. But it was impossible to get anything done with all the tension emanating from the far side of the room.
“It’s going to be fine, James. It’s all going to be fine.”
Muttering stopped. POW! Book slammed.
D.J. tried to ignore it, but she was concerned. He was very agitated and her attempts at reassurance weren’t working. What would he be like when she actually attempted the move?
“James? Talk to me, James.”
Pacing. Muttering. No reply.
Maybe he was now as angry with her as he had been with Stevie. But at least with Stevie, he had been quietly silent. His uncharacteristic behavior was a little bit scary.
D.J. wished Suzy were there. Or Amos. Someone who knew James better. Who knew what to do. Who to call. Surely James had parents or people who were responsible for him. How come she didn’t know those people? Who could she ask?
At that moment the phone rang. She picked it up.
“Verdant Public Library.”
There was a moment of hesitation on the other end of the line.
“Hello,” she said, more sharply. The last thing she needed was a crank call from a heavy breather.
“Hi.” She recognized Scott’s voice.
“Oh, hi.”
“I don’t want to bother you,” he began. “But I saw how you rushed out of here this morning and I thought... well, I worried that... Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” she answered optimistically as almost force of habit. “Except that it’s not. James is...” She lowered her voice and shaded the phone’s mouthpiece with her hand. “James is acting weird. Who should I call? Who takes care of him? His parents?”
“His parents are dead,” Scott told her. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s pacing in the stacks, muttering to himself and slamming books closed.”
“Let me ask my mom,” he said. “I’ll call you right back.”
D.J. was amazed at how comforting she found that reassurance. She remembered how he’d held her last night. How she’d been able to trust him with her fear. She trusted him now.
He did not call back, however. He showed up. Fewer than five minutes after she’d hung up the phone. Scott and Viv came walking in through the library’s front door. Both were dressed in respectful black.
D.J. felt her heart leap at the sight of Scott in a suit. She was right the first moment she’d seen him. The man was totally gorgeous.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot about the funeral,” D.J. said.
She had definitely caught them on their way to the service.
“It’s okay,” Viv reassured her. “We’ve got time.”
At that instant the muttering momentarily ceased, followed by a book slam. Both Viv and Scott startled. D.J. had grown accustomed to it already.
“What happened to set him off like this?” she asked. “I realized that I needed to change the library around,” D.J. said, not wanting to delve deep into detail. “He told me not to. And I guess that my ignoring him made him quit talking to me. He started muttered and pacing.”
“He’s stimming,” Viv said.
“Stimming?”
“It’s a slang term for self-stimulation. Lots of people with different kinds of brain challenges do it. They focus on some repetitive behavior when they get anxious. It’s a way to comfort themselves.”
“I don’t want to upset him,” D.J. said. “I just want to make the library better.”
“I know,” Viv told her. “Let me try to talk to him.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Scott asked.
She shook her head. “He’s not dangerous. He’s stressed.”
D.J. watched Viv enter the stack area without the least trepidation. The muttering became louder and the pacing was hurried enough to be running. There were three loud book closings before things began to level off.
D.J. couldn’t hear what Viv was saying, but the tone of her voice was quiet, unruffled. Finally she heard the rough baritone of James. He was now conversing rather than muttering.
“Don’t worry,” Scott told her. “James will be fine.”
D.J. nodded. “Viv will be, too.”
He smiled at her. “So what brought this on? Did you wake up this morning and say, ‘I think I’ll change the library around.’”
“Pretty much,” she answered. “I realized that if the shelving wasn’t perpendicular to the windows, we’d get a lot more light in here.”
Scott surveyed the building in one visual sweep.
“I think it’s always been this way,” he pointed out.
She nodded. “And it’s always been wrong. The day they installed the stacks, somebody made a mistake. Nobody questioned it. Everybody got used to it. Now, all these years later, it takes somebody from the outside to notice the error.”
“Somebody from the outside?” he asked, facetiously. “No, that can’t be right, D.J. You’re one of our hometown girls. Only a genuine Verdanter would sit out in a wheat field on a summer night.”
She liked the joke. She liked the smile.
Viv stepped out of the stacks and returned to the circulation desk.
“I think he’ll be all right for now,” she said. “It’s a lot for him to take in. You realize he’s lived most of his life in this building.”
D.J. nodded. “That must be why he’s so p
ale.”
“I promised him that you wouldn’t do anything today.”
“Okay.”
“And I said that you’d keep him informed of the plans. That you wouldn’t be doing anything without warning.”
Viv’s tone was pleasant, but her intent was firm. D.J. was the librarian. But James had a say in the library’s future, as well.
“I can absolutely do that,” D.J. assured her. “I was so excited and eager this morning, it probably was pretty scary to watch. A move like this does require planning. And maybe the harvest is not the best time to make it happen.”
“Harvest is probably the best time,” Scott said. “I mean, you don’t have as many people to help you. But you don’t have to close the place down, either.”
D.J. nodded. “Yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking this morning. But I was expecting to have James onboard. I was expecting for him to help me.”
Viv smiled and patted her on the arm. “Then you need to remember to include him.” She turned to Scott and tapped the face of her wristwatch. “It’s never good to be late to a funeral. People will think we’re part of the family.”
In Verdant, there was probably no danger of that, but Scott did escort her out.
Thirty-Two
418.8 Applied Linguistics; Structural Usage
Dutch Porter’s funeral was as sad and sorrowful as such occasions tended to be. It also felt rushed. And although much effort was made by the funeral director and those in attendance to negate that sense, it persisted.
Outside the church at the four-way stop on Main Street the air brakes of the grain trucks could be heard. They were headed through town and out into the fields. Life went on. Jobs were done. The world kept turning. And the truth of that invaded the seclusion of sorrow within the building.
Scott had liked Dutch. He’d been a hard worker, fine parent and excellent citizen. It seemed wrong that his life should get such short shrift because of one bad decision at the end. Or perhaps even natural causes during harvest resulted in a hasty eulogy. It wasn’t until Scott noted the jitters in his own legs that he realized he was as antsy as everyone else.
With a final benediction, the body was loaded into the hearse and Scott and his mother followed the procession to the cemetery. Most people had taken that opportunity to disappear. At the graveside it was mostly the immediate family. The VFW was in attendance to acknowledge Dutch’s service in the jungles of Vietnam.
They played a CD version of “Taps” as they folded the flag atop his casket.
Finally, it was over. Except, of course, it wasn’t. His mother needed to talk to everyone, interact as if she was tacit hostess of a garden party in this garden of stones.
Scott wandered over to his father’s grave. He found it easily, though he hadn’t been there since the headstone was laid. His mother had planted little dark pink flowers at the head and lined the rectangle with chalky white rock. Scott was pretty sure that was against the rules. But he also recalled her panic that first morning after the burial, afraid she might not remember where it was, that she might lose him.
Scott closed his eyes as if that could shut out the memory of the pain of those first days.
Suddenly she was there at his side and he smiled down at her.
“The flowers look good, Mom,” he said.
She nodded. “The heat has been hard on them, but I try to water every day.”
He hated that. He hated that she came here every day. He hated that she kept such a lonely vigil by herself.
“Maybe after the harvest is done, we could...we could all come out here and you and I can...I don’t know. Leanne and Jamie would come. Should we do something? Some kind of ceremony?”
She looked up at him and smiled.
“No,” his mother answered. “There is nothing else to be done. But thank you. You are a good son, Scott. I don’t always remember to tell you that, but I want you to know. To always know, whether I tell you or not.”
“Thanks Mom,” he said. “I’ll remind you of that next time you get pissed off at me.”
“A lady may get annoyed, but she never gets... p.o.’d,” she told him.
He let her drop him off to get his van. She went on to the Porters’ home, where she intended to be of help if needed.
Scott changed into more casual clothes and drove to the store. He’d left his cell number on the door, but he hadn’t gotten so much as a text from anyone. Main Street was deserted once more. He was too antsy to sit inside and do nothing all afternoon. So he left his sign up and drove on by.
There were a number of trucks lined up near the grain elevator. Unloading was a two-step process. Each truck was driven onto the scales for total tonnage. Then the wheat was dumped into the pit area, where cuplike conveyers scooped it up and moved it into storage silos. Once empty, the truck was weighed again. Because of the incendiary properties of airborne grain dust, the operators as well as the truck drivers took extra precautions to avoid the dangers of explosion that even the most up-to-date ventilation technology couldn’t completely prevent.
Scott spotted Amos in the line, leaning indolently against the wheel well of a heavily loaded vehicle.
With a quick glance in the rearview mirror to make sure that there was no traffic coming behind him, Scott pulled to a stop in the middle of the road.
“Hey, shirker, what’s up?” he called out.
Amos pressed one foot against the tire to push himself into a standing position and walked toward the van.
Scott noted that he was better dressed than might be expected for a wheat hauler. Even for a workday, he looked more slicked up that usual. Although he hadn’t seen him, Scott assumed that meant he’d been to Dutch’s funeral and said as much.
“No,” Amos replied. “I couldn’t really go. There was so much grain to be cut, and most of the Browns’ crew were among the family. So I stayed out there to help. I was running the cart until the truck got full.”
Scott nodded. “How long have you been in line?” “Not long, twenty minutes maybe,” he answered. “I’d say it’s going pretty fast, but that would probably jinx it.”
Scott grinned at the typically pessimistic viewpoint of his friend.
“With that attitude, I guess there’s no use asking if you’re making progress with Jeannie.”
Amos actually blushed. “I did say, ‘Do you want to grab a sandwich sometime?”’
“And?”
“She said, ‘Sure.’ But she was probably being polite.”
“Yeah,” Scott agreed sarcastically. “Women are always agreeing to stuff they don’t mean. Especially Jeannie, which is why she’s still with her ex, right? And since you are asking women to eat with you basically all the time, she probably thought exactly nothing of the invitation.”
Amos lowered his chin to eyeball Scott more effectively. “You mock me? The crazy vet guy is getting ridiculed by the sad sack whose wife had to find sexual satisfaction elsewhere.”
Scott laughed. “If I don’t mock you, who will?”
“Right back at ya.”
The line of trucks moved, Amos waved off and Scott headed down the road. He seriously hoped that Amos and Jeannie could find something together. What had happened to Amos in service to his country couldn’t be changed. But if he could move beyond it, find his share of happiness, that would be good.
“Take your own advice, Sanderson,” he admonished aloud.
The librarian was warming to him a little bit. D.J. The name, or the nick of it, suited her. It was strange how he’d thought she looked like his Sparkle girl. She actually looked nothing like her. Or at least he didn’t think that she did. As he tried to conjure up the woman from the beach so many years ago, he could no longer recall her face.
The face had not been one of her important parts, he reminded himself jokingly.
Scott drove out to his house. He parked the van in the drive and walked around to the backyard. His garden had missed him. He picked snap beans until his hands were so f
ull, he needed a pail. There was broccoli and cauliflower, as well. And from the looks of the tops on his root crops, the potatoes and beets were going to be ready to dig soon. What had been a lovely cabbage had been partially ripped out of the ground by an unwelcome wildlife visitor, but it couldn’t be helped.
He carried his vegetable plunder to the back step and uncoiled the hose and turned on the outside tap. He took his time, watering thoroughly as his mind wandered where it would.
Where his mind mostly wanted to wander was back to D.J. He pictured her as he’d seen her earlier. Efficient and businesslike behind the circulation desk. The image made him smile.
He recalled the conversation of the previous evening. Their childhoods had been in such sharp contrast. Scott had been sustained and sheltered and sometimes nearly suffocated by the love of his parents. D.J. had been an unwelcome third wheel sent rolling off on her own at the earliest possible moment.
Scott had the best of that deal. He was certain. But all that early independence and self-reliance gave her a natural sense of confidence that was not typical of a lot of people in their twenties. He’d been working in the drugstore for most of his life. But he missed his father on-the-job even more than at home and wished he were around to talk things over.
D.J. had come to a town she’d never seen, where she didn’t know a soul and stepped into a situation that had problems set in place for years. And she’d never flinched. He admired that.
“I bet she never studied sex in a book,” he murmured to himself.
He quickly reproved himself. Best not to put D.J. and sex in the same thought. He found her incredibly attractive. But she was just beginning to accept him as a friend. If he went all masher on her, they’d be back to square one in a hurry.
When he finished watering, he unlocked the back door and let himself inside. He’d left all the windows open to prevent any buildup of sewer gases. So far, everything seemed to be fine.
In case a plumbing miracle had occurred as unexpectedly as the plumbing disaster, he ran water in the sink. It took about five minutes before the water began to back up. The clog was still there, and it was very far down the pipe. For sure they’d be digging up the backyard.
