23: WATCHERS
STILL SEP 29
Later that afternoon, a kerfuffle in the circ area struck Pearl’s ears, a clamor of loud excited voices. Bruce was there, and Mom, and Oleg. As Pearl came in the back, Nichols came in the front. Bruce spread out his arms to them both, beaming.
“A head! A head! My kingdom for a head!” Bruce announced.
“What are you talking about?”
Oleg glowed. He said, “The stonemason I found—at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Your mom wrote her a letter, and I took it to her. And I showed her that photographer’s photographs in the paper, and she said yes! She agreed to carve Vincent a new head.”
Mom said, “I’m going to send Jonathan Yoiks a note,” and turned away.
Pearl barely heard her. She was demanding of Oleg, “Who’s going to pay for that?”
“Pearl,” said Bruce. “Cool it. Oleg’s being a big help.” He shook his head at her and went up the stairs.
Feeling scolded, Pearl turned and went out to the garden.
But Oleg followed. “Wait, but Pearl! The stonemason is going to do it for free!”
“What? Why would she?”
“Nobody’s about to let her carve anything’s head at the cathedral,” said Oleg. “She’s an apprentice. So she’ll do it for free for the chance.”
Again Pearl said, “Why?”
“Look, it’ll be in the paper, right?” Oleg went on. “So it will be good for her, and good for the library. Isn’t that the theory?”
“Yes,” said Pearl slowly. “That’s the theory.” She still couldn’t stand the thought of a new Vincent.
“You know that picture on the ‘lost head’ poster?” Oleg asked. “That’s the original Vincent, right? Should I send that to the stonemason to copy?”
“She’ll never get it right,” said Pearl.
Oleg stopped moving as suddenly as if she’d hit him. Then he looked away and stepped onto the bricks edging Vincent’s pedestal and ran his fingers over the smooth, warm granite. Pearl felt sorry all of a sudden. Oleg cared about Vincent, too, even if it was for different reasons.
“You really think a new head is a good idea?” asked Pearl.
“She’s doing it for nothing,” Oleg said again. It seemed to really matter to him that Pearl was on his side. “It’s not just for fame or money. She wants the experience of replicating the head.”
“I’m worried Vincent will never look the same,” said Pearl. But she found it impossible not to like how much Oleg liked the statue, even if it was just a piece of stone.
Hang on a second. Her eyes narrowed. Could he—could he?—have planned it this way? “Was it you?” she asked. “Did you steal the head, so you could get to replace it?” For a moment it was as if Pearl’s whole brain stood on its tiptoes, stretching, reaching.
Oleg’s knees seemed to cave, and it wasn’t just drama. He really was shocked at her accusation. He sat down on the edge of the pedestal and stared up into her face, devastated.
“Of course not,” he said.
She believed it. Oleg was too sincere, too real. Real was real. She decided to trust herself on this one—which meant trusting Oleg.
“Sorry,” she whispered. She would have liked to reach out, but was too shy to take his hand. But he put his hand up to her, and she had to pull him up. He didn’t just stand, he leaped to his feet.
“You’ve got superpowers,” he said, and flexed his own bicep at her. “Woo!”
He was nice, and she was mortified. “I didn’t mean to call you a thief,” she said again.
“Okay if you did,” he said.
“But I’m not like that.” “I know,” she said. He waved as he walked away. Yes. She believed him.
But these were slippery times in Pearl’s mind. Whether Vincent got a new head or got her old head back, the question of the criminal tendencies would not go away. Who had taken it, and why? And now—even now, when some new people were coming to the library thanks to the Moon, was there still someone out there who wanted to do Vincent harm?
“Mr. Nichols?” Pearl slid in alongside the atlas, wedging herself between the shelf and the corner. There was something she had to know, even if it brought up the whole question of his sleeping place again.
“Yup?” His eyes were half closed.
“What do you think about Vincent getting a new head?”
“Seems like progress,” said Nichols. He folded the Moon over his chest.
“Mr. Nichols,” she whispered, “were you sleeping in the garden the night her head was stolen?”
His eyes opened all the way. He said, “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Pearl’s mind whirled. “Do you know who took it?”
He nodded.
Her voice was hardly audible. “Do you know where the head is now?”
He shook his head.
“Will you tell me who took it?”
He shook his head again.
She exploded, “WHY NOT?”
Mom called from the circ counter, “Pearl!”
Nichols opened the paper and hid his face.
“Why not?” Pearl whispered hotly. She thought she might cry.
“It was dark,” he murmured. “I can’t be sure. So don’t ask anymore.” In a more normal voice, he added gently, “I don’t want to have to lie to you.” He put down the paper and bent in her direction, but she pulled away, her back pressing against the atlas shelf.
“How could you just let somebody do something that hurts the library?” asked Pearl.
“The library has worse things wrong with it than the missing head of a statue,” said Mr. Nichols.
“Like what?” Pearl’s voice was rising again.
Nichols held up his hands. “Even if everything was the way it should be and circulation was up and the library had zillion- speed internet and it was a great neighborhood, there would still be the question of this building here.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“There’s a building code in this city,” Nichols said. He touched the fingertips of his hands together, thumb to thumb, pinky to pinky. “A building code is a set of rules for safe buildings. This library is in violation all over the place: the glass floors, the iron railings, the fire escapes, the width of the doors.” He stopped, his clear gray eyes looking firmly into Pearl’s. “Not to mention the wild animals.”
“Are we supposed to fix all those things?” It sounded to Pearl like just about everything in the library was in violation.
“Yup. And that takes money.”
“Well, the city has money.”
“Not much money. And that bad publicity you’ve been hearing about, from the head being stolen, that’s the kind of thing that makes the city nervous to spend money.” He closed his eyes as if he was done talking and wasn’t going to say any more.
“But that’s not the whole story,” Pearl protested. “We’re not just some . . . village of criminals!”
Nichols opened his eyes. He sat forward and took her hands. “I know it breaks your heart. And you’re not the only one who feels that way. But I’m here to tell you that even when the bottom falls out of something, you can keep going.”
If you want to feel really depressed about your prospects of fixing something, listen to a friend when he tells you he’s been there before and gotten through it—and have that person be a lonely man with no job or home. It did not exactly fill Pearl with confidence. But it did not make her want to give up!
Nichols leaned back in his chair, waiting. Then he exhaled softly and said, without looking at Pearl, in a very soft voice, “Just do your best.” He opened his eyes a slit and said, deeper, “And think more about the raccoons!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Use what you know.” He put his fingers to his lips. He lifted the paper up again. He was done talking.
What did that mean? Use what you know? The raccoons? Was he trying to say the raccoons had stolen the head after all?
Pearl was done with this theory. It was impossible.
Pearl went behind the circ counter and leaned her head on her mother’s back, between her shoulders. “Mom,” she murmured. “Mom, Mr. Nichols says he knows who took Vincent’s head.”
“Does he know where the head is?”
“No.”
Pearl didn’t expect Mom to leap into the air and yell, “Gadzooks!” but she didn’t expect her to just stand there calmly stamping cards for books due three weeks ahead, oct 21. Halloween, one month away, was the date Mom and Alice had named for the new-head ceremony. It would be a neighborhood party. Or maybe nobody would come but Yoiks, to document the library’s doom. Clunk-bump. She didn’t see how Mom could keep her cool.
A Sidebar About Publicity
Some people think any publicity is good publicity, whether what’s being said about you is good or bad. They think the point is to get somebody thinking about you, to let them know you exist.
It’s what somebody does once they start thinking about you that’s more concerning.
—M.A.M.
“No, but Mom, if you could get Mr. Nichols to tell us, we could grab that person and make them . . .”
“Pearl. Do you really think Mr. Nichols wants to report anything to the police?”
“Oh. No,” Pearl realized. “That would make more trouble for him.” This stopped her completely.
“We’ve got a new head coming now, and that means good press,” said Mom. Clunk-bump. Clunk-bump. Clunk-bump. “Ramón is working on improving internet service. You and I are working on circulation—and Francine, too. Alice and Simon and I are working on a couple things for the Halloween new-head ceremony. And Bruce—bless Bruce—he is still running the numbers and applying for grants like a crazy man. For all I know, there’s some magic glue out there that can stick all these pieces together. You know what I told you, Pearl girl. We’re not going to look back on this time and regret anything we didn’t do that could have made a difference. Let’s keep doing everything we can.”
24: COYOTES
SEP 30
Pearl left a note on the bottom basement step for Mary Ann. She had written it out carefully, sitting in her nook, revised it, and copied it over by hand, not wanting anyone to see it on a screen or in the printer. Even if it wasn’t addressed to the editor of a newspaper, it was her best effort at a persuasive letter to a city reporter.
(Yoiks wasn’t the only one covering this neighborhood.)
After this, she climbed the ladder to the mezzanine of the reading room, where the public was not allowed to go. It had long been closed off for being rickety. She scooted under the railing close to the end of the alphabet, where the stacks were full of Time magazine and U.S. News and World Report and Utne Reader.1 Then, inside her head, she walked through the story she had been writing, putting in more than one of Francine’s cuckoo ideas, enough to make her a contributor, but certainly not a coauthor: Vincent waking sweetly that summer morning, discovering that her head is missing, screaming with devastation, and setting off to walk through the neighborhood, demanding its return, pledging books in exchange. Until she got her head, she would hunt down everyone in the neighborhood individually, promising the exact right story for every single one of them—if only they’d come to the library and pay homage to her by . . . making an offering? Bowing down and dancing around her pedestal? Or just taking out some books, and raising circulation, and making the library look good?
Pearl thought the rest of her story over for what must have been the nineteenth time. It pleased her. It was kind of over the top with the drama. Pearl thought kids would like it. It was good and horrifying.
Simon came down the back hall with Jonathan Yoiks. “Oh. Beautiful!” Yoiks was saying.
Pearl watched him take a number of pictures of the reading room’s pretty iron vines, the old-fashioned sliding ladder, the afternoon light coming on dusty beams through the garden windows. She knew Yoiks didn’t know she was up here.
Simon told Yoiks, “May as well photograph it while you can.”
“Exactly,” said Yoiks. “What’s left of old New York.” He glanced around the stacks. “Do you know about Jacob Riis and his photographs? One of the first activist journalists, helped get policies changed regarding child labor.”
“What did he photograph?” asked Simon.
“People. The way they really lived. A side of New York that most of the people who could afford a newspaper never knew existed.”
Simon brightened. “You mean your paper’s looking for real-life stories? You’ve come to the right place. Publicity would really help the library right now. And if you can get it in the paper before the library board votes about letting builders propose putting apartments here, destroying, you know, a cultural paradise, that would be great.”
Yoiks sighed. “That’s not exactly the type of story I’m looking to do,” he said. “My editor is looking for—”
“Dramatic breaking news,” Pearl called down from above.
“Uh, yes, and if I’m the one to deliver it—”
“If you are, so what?” asked Simon.
Yoiks’s eyes bugged a little. “Well, then I might—”
“I mean, sure, if you’re lucky a fire truck might crash into a cop car and you’ll be there on the scene to take a picture with your phone,” said Simon. “Congratulations. I could do that, too. So could anybody. Or you could do what this Jacob Riis guy did.”
“Jacob Riis documented poverty,” said Yoiks. “He showed the conditions people were living in, and when people saw his photographs, they were shocked at the human condition.”
“Exactly,” said Simon. “So he documented the way things were . . . which meant he was on hand while they changed. Not just at the sad end or the scary beginning.”
“You could do that here,” said Pearl. “Show what things are like normally on Lancaster Avenue, instead of writing stories about awful things that happen one time only.”
“Exactly,” said Simon. “Call it human-interest.” (That again!)
Yoiks looked thoughtful. “Well, this sure is a side of New York most people don’t think exists anymore,” he said. “No one wants to come down here.”
“Down here? What if you already live ‘down here’?” said Simon.
“Yeah, what if ‘this’ is your side of New York?” said Pearl.
Yoiks winced. “I’m sorry, kiddos. I don’t mean it like that. It is called downtown.”
“That isn’t what you meant,” Pearl said. “You meant people don’t want to come down in life. You meant that we’re in a part of the city people are scared of.”
Below her, she saw Mom in the doorway, listening.
“Do you think it’s scary?” Yoiks stood back and peered up at the mezzanine and Pearl.
“I do NOT,” Pearl said stubbornly. But she remembered last spring, when she’d gone to visit the new Knickerbocker branch library with Mom—how clean and shiny it was, with all those computers, nothing old or crumbling about it. It didn’t smell of old wood; it smelled more of new paint than books, but it was still, well, she had to say it—nice. But jealous? Her? Hardly. After all, the Knickerbocker surely didn’t have raccoons in the basement.
“This is where we live,” said Simon defensively. “What are we supposed to do about it?”
“I’m sorry,” said Yoiks. “I like this library, too.”
Pearl piped up. “But you don’t like the neighborhood?”
“No,” said Yoiks bluntly. “But I know the story is important. That’s why I’m here now. I want the library to be remembered.”
There was a silence in which Pearl realized what he was up against—the same thing the library had been up against—before she screamed, and after, too. If there was anything Pearl could understand, it was the need for good stories. And once people expected them, well, you had to deliver.
“Work on it,” she said.
“How?” he asked.
“You’re the reporter!” she responded.
Before he could get annoyed, Mom said, “And if you can get your story in the paper the day the library board votes, October 2, that would be great. The board is voting on whether to take the building proposal seriously. It needs to see enough value in the library to at least send the decision about how to use the building to the district vote.”
A Sidebar About Persuasion
Persuasion is the art of convincing someone that they want to do what you want them to do. I present Pearl’s letter as a case study concerning the power of the pen, the power of the public schools (where, I presume, she learned to write such a letter), and the power of persuasion.
Dear Mary Ann, (Why not Miss Mallomar? Because we were past such formalities.)
Since you are a library resident and the local expert on raccoons, (Establishes the reason for writing to this person, and a little flattery can’t hurt.) I would like to ask you to give me your opinion about a story I am working on. (Establishes the goal of letter.)
It is not very long, and won’t take you much time. I can leave it on the step like this and you can return it at your convenience. (Makes an offer that seems easy.)
It concerns local characters and settings, and I hope you will find it interesting. (Makes the proposal seem personally appealing to the addressee.)
With this story, we just might save the Lancaster Avenue branch of the New York City Library. (Raises the stakes. Makes the reader feel like part of something grand. Aims for the heart.)
You will want to be a part of it. (Call to action.)
Yours truly,
Pearl A. Moran
—M.A.M.
“‘Whether to take the building proposal seriously,’” repeated Yoiks. “And that depends on—”
“On whether the board thinks our branch is valued by the neighborhood,” said Mom. “On whether the building would be worth more sold as real estate.”
“Horrors,” said Yoiks. For the first time, Pearl smiled at him. “I mean it,” he told her. But she could already see that. He turned back to Mom. “Do you think they’ll accept the proposal?”
A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon Page 15
