by Jeff Abbott
I quit having to worry much about Candace and Sister, as my morning got unduly hectic at the library. The rest of my staff, Florence Pettus and Itasca Huebler, were both out sick with a bad flu that was making early rounds of Mirabeau. So I did the layout for the library newsletter, returned phone calls to people wanting to reserve books or tapes, and listened to a very eager salesman from Austin as he pitched unaffordable booktracking software to me. Determining I’d earned a moment of peace, I enjoyed a cup of coffee out by the periodical tables with the library’s most loyal patron, old Willie Renfro (coffee out on the floor is strictly forbidden, but he and I were the only ones around and we’re extra careful). I was then pleasantly surprised by a visit from my old friend Davis Foradory and his son Bradley.
Davis kept the nickname “Four Door” by becoming a solid kid and plowing through other schools’ defensive lines for the Mirabeau Bees. (Our school mascot comes from a less-than-stylish play on the name of the second president of the Republic of Texas, for whom our fair town is named: Mirabeau B. Lamar. It has cursed all Mirabeau High School graduates with horrible memories of wearing too much yellow and black during our formative teen years.) Davis had kept his owlish look, though, and now he worked as a lawyer and was also a part owner of KBAV, our county’s only radio station. Not that many men in Mirabeau wear coats and ties on a daily basis, but Davis always looked as sharp as a crease. By Mirabeau standards, you understand. He wouldn’t have kept a single client if he’d represented them in an Armani-too sophisticated to trust at that point. Today he wore a gray suit with a red striped tie. He stood at the counter with Bradley, who did not look too happy.
Bradley’s big for fourteen-he’d gotten his growth spurt early, a gentle blond boy with a smiling face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bradley unhappy; but when life is so very simple as it is for Bradley, I suppose it’s more difficult to be sad.
“Hello, Jordan.” Davis greeted me with his usual cool formality. He’s one of my oldest friends, but he never addresses me by my nickname.
“Hi, Davis. Hey there, Bradley.”
Bradley, for some reason shy, shuffled his feet and stared at the floor. “Hi, Jordy,” he finally said.
“Jordan, this is a little embarrassing. I found this under Bradley’s bed.” Davis reached behind Bradley’s back and produced a thin children’s book: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It’s a classic. Most boys Bradley’s age are hiding a different kind of wild-thing literature beneath their beds.
“Bradley neglected to return this book when we returned several others a few weeks back,” Davis said, using what sounded to me like his courtroom voice.
“I like it-cool pictures,” Bradley said by way of defense. Nervously, he dragged a hand across the back of his mouth and along a freckled cheek, leaving a wet smear. Bradley salivates more when he’s tense, I’ve noticed.
Admiring a book was a good defense with Judge Poteet. “That’s okay, Bradley. I love books, too. But other people might want to read it, too, and we only have one copy.” I kept my voice real kind. I have a reputation for being sharp-tongued (not sure how I earned that) but I’m genuinely fond of Bradley. I opened the book and peeked at the due date. Whoops, twenty weeks ago. This one’d slipped through the cracks. Bradley gave me a cautious, toothy smile. Davis looked pained. Breaking rules was not ever on his daily agenda.
“Say you’re sorry to Jordan, son, for hoarding the book,” he instructed.
“Sorry, Jordy,” Bradley whispered, staring at his feet. I take back what I said before; he could and did look sad.
“Bradley’s going to pay the fine out of his chores money,” Davis announced, Bradley hung his head in fur-flier shame.
I did a quick calculation. Usually we notify someone of an overdue book three times, then charge them the fine, the replacement cost of the book, and a five-buck extra processing fee. That’d come to over thirty dollars for this particular transgression. But we hadn’t notified the Foradorys; Itasca probably forgot to file the card right. I couldn’t entirely blame the problem on Bradley. He’d kept the book because he loved it, and we’d let him. The book was being returned in perfectly good shape. How many pleasures in life did this kid have?
“It’s a quarter, Bradley,” I said, using my patented authoritative voice.
Bradley began digging around in his pockets. Davis frowned; he pointed at a sign some idiot-in-charge (who shall go unnamed) had left hanging behind the counter.
“That says ten cents a day, Jordan.”
“That applies to adult literature,” I said smoothly. “We’re currently running an amnesty program on overdue picture books.” Note I was careful not to say children’s books in front of Bradley. I’m sure he must have some pride.
Davis wasn’t buying. “Now, Jordan-”
I wasn’t about to brook argument. “Mr. Foradory, I am the director of the Mirabeau Public Library and do believe I know our current overdue rates.” I said this with all the gravity it was worth. I was glad Candace wasn’t here to see me in my nobler moment; I’d never hear the end of it. Bradley carefully picked a quarter out of a palmful of change, held it up for my inspection, and when I nodded, he placed it in my open hand.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Jordy. I won’t do it again,” Bradley offered. I knew he was right; I’d just decided what to give Bradley for Christmas. With his own copy of Sendak, he wouldn’t be tempted by ours and he could spend hours with Max and his fanciful friends.
Davis still frowned. Okay, if he wanted to make up for Bradley’s minor crime, he could help me decide how to keep poor Ed from selling his soul to Elvis merchandisers.
Inspiration struck. We’d received three new books today: a best-selling, sex-dripping potboiler, the latest James Lee Burke, and a new children’s book. They still lay on the counter.
“Bradley. We just got in a new picture book. Want to be the first to look at it?”
His sky-blue eyes lit up and he laughed, a deep-chested cawing. If he hadn’t been deficient in certain areas, he might have been considered the handsomest boy in the junior high school. It really was a shame.
“Sure! A new book! Yeah!”
“Now, you can’t check it out yet, because I haven’t done all the paperwork or put in the date-due slip.” This went over his head and I hurried along. Best with Bradley just to give him instructions rather than options. “You sit over there and be real careful with it, since it’s new. I need to talk to your daddy for a minute.”
Bradley took the book and ambled to a chair mumbling to himself. Davis looked like he’d just been summoned to the principal’s office.
“You have a second, Davis?” I asked.
“I guess. I need to get Bradley home, though. Cayla doesn’t like it if he’s out long.” He followed me into my little office. I sat on the desk and gestured toward a chair.
“How’s he doing with home schooling?” I asked.
Davis shrugged. “As well as can be expected. Cayla has the patience of a saint with him, of course. I think it’s hard not being around other kids as much, but he’s probably learning more. Maybe we’ll have him in regular school again before too long. If Cayla’s comfortable with him being back around other kids.” Davis indulged himself in a long sigh. “I’ve found it’s best not to hope too highly for Bradley. That way he doesn’t get disappointed.”
I thought it was more that Davis didn’t get disappointed, but I forced my jaws shut. Davis misinterpreted the thinness of my mouth.
“I’m sorry about the book, Jordan.” Davis ran a hand through his thinning strawberry-blond hair. I hoped I wouldn’t lose mine as quickly as he seemed to be relinquishing his.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Actually, I wondered if you’d talked to Ed about his Institute of Elvisology. You know that Wanda cavorts about town acting like the King during various stages of his career. She’s practically auditioning for a postage stamp.”
Davis permitted himself a quick smile
. “I had lunch with Ed yesterday. Wanda’s pretty excited about their new venture. Her mother’s pushing Ed and Wanda to make a success of it.”
I sighed. “Ed’s heart isn’t in that store. I’m not sure he even likes Elvis. Poor Little Ed. I swear that woman and her mother are going to clean him out. Look, he’s got a good job with you at KBAV. I hope he’s not going to forsake that.”
“He says he won’t-Wanda and Ivalou are going to run the store. Ed’s just putting in all his money.”
I made a face. Okay, call me immature. “Doesn’t that sound crazy to you? Ed and Wanda aren’t exactly famous for business savvy.”
Davis nodded, back on the familiar ground of commerce and bankruptcy. “First the nursery she wanted to start, then the arts-and-crafts store, and now this. Not a single one ever pans out for them, I’m afraid.”
“The only good that could come out of this is if he went bankrupt, maybe Wanda would divorce him. That’d get both her and that vulture Ivalou out of his hair. I hate to see him throwing money away, Davis. Can’t you talk him out of this crap? You’re a lawyer. He’d listen to you.”
Davis preened a little at the compliment, like a peacock settling its plumage before a flock of hens. “I tried, but Wanda’s got him by the short and curly. I’m not sure what he sees in that woman.”
I shrugged. “Isn’t it awful, Davis? He hasn’t even started and we’re both already sure he’s going to fail again. I ought to have more faith in him.”
Davis shook his head and adjusted his wire-rim glasses. “It’s hard to have faith in Ed’s entrepreneurial sense when you know his history.”
I started to tell him about Junebug getting called away because of an emergency (this isn’t New York, and we don’t have that many emergencies on bright fall Friday mornings) when a tinkling bell announced the early arrival of my newest volunteer, Gretchen Goertz.
Technically, Gretchen is my stepmother, in that she is married to my biological father. However, since most of Mirabeau still regards the late Lloyd Poteet as my dad, Gretchen being my stepmother is not a relationship I’d advertise. Neither would she. We just dislike each other too much. She resents my presence in her husband’s life and any attention and time he pays me. I take exception to the attempts she’s made to blacken my character and run me out of town. It’s a love-hate relationship in that we love to hate each other.
Bob Don (despite his kindness to me, I still have trouble referring to him as “my father”) had come to me a couple of weeks back and suggested that Gretchen volunteer at the library. I’d sooner have invited Jack the Ripper to restock the crime shelf while Genghis Khan minded military history and Joseph Stalin handled psychopathology. But Bob Don pleaded with me.
“I just hate that you and Gretchen don’t get along,” he had said in his most coaxing salesman’s voice, twisting the gaudy diamond ring on his right hand, “and I think if y’all worked together you’d understand each other. She’s trying, Jordy, to accept that you’re in my life. She’s been squeezing in a therapy session over in Bavary between her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and she says it’s helping her deal with her anger.”
“I think she’d like to deal with her anger by eviscerating me, Bob Don.”
“Please, Jordy. I have never asked you for anything, but I am asking you to give her a chance.”
I’d had to consider it, of course. Bob Don pays for my mother’s home health care, which keeps her out of a nursing home and prevents my pocketbook from being pirated. But aside from that-he is my father, and I felt I should endeavor to make the relationship work. I’d counted to ten and, forcing a smile, agreed on a preliminary basis. Anyway, I’d needed a new volunteer to replace Candace, who was resigning from the library to reopen the Sit-a-Spell. I’d just made sure I wore an athletic cup to work the first day Gretchen showed up. I figured she’d appear, grouse, and then I could dismiss her with a clear conscience.
It hadn’t quite worked out that way. Gretchen, to my surprise, proved a conscientious worker and a quick study. Her only failing thus far was her nearly fanatical adherence to every letter of the rules (which I interpreted as I damn well pleased) and an occasional criticism of me, always couched in the most diplomatic and helpful language.
The library’s not so big. With one glance Gretchen took in Old Man Renfro with an empty coffee cup at the periodicals, Bradley Foradory looking at a freshly cracked book, and me having a tete-a-tete with Davis instead of devising an improvement over the Library of Congress system. I could see her whole body frost in about one second.
She stuck her head in my doorway. “Need any help?” she asked. I wondered if she’d left the front door open; seemed a little chillier in here all of a sudden.
“No thanks, Gretchen,” I said.
Davis stood, saying he had to go, but manners made him pause and inquire about my mother. I answered his questions briefly and politely; I know folks don’t like to talk about Alzheimer’s. They act like it’s catching. The niceties completed, he retrieved his son.
“All right, Bradley. Dad’s wasted enough time here. Time to go home.”
And I saw it. For a moment nakedly sharp fear crossed Bradley Foradory’s face. He flinched as his father reached for him. The expression vanished in an instant, replaced by the amiable, empty look Bradley usually wore. He let his father guide him to the counter. Bradley gave me the picture book.
“Thanks, Jordy. That’s a pretty book.” Bradley’s manners are far better than most people’s. “Pretty book.”
Gretchen snatched the book from me as soon as Bradley handed it over. Like I said, his manners are better than most.
“Well, if you want to check it out, you come back by later and we’ll have it all ready,” I offered. He gave me one of his purely happy smiles. He seemed okay. But I felt uneasy as I watched Davis steer Bradley out of the library. Was that boy afraid of his father? A vague apprehension tugged at me as they left.
Gretchen permitted me five blissful seconds of silence before starting. “This book hasn’t been processed, Jordy. You’re not supposed to let anyone have it until it’s processed.” Gretchen would’ve made a great librarian in the Dark Ages, when they chained tomes to shelves to keep them from being stolen. God only knows what vengeance she would have exacted as Bradley’s late fee. Probably she would’ve lopped off his arm and mounted it, book still in hand, above the return desk as a dire warning to all others.
“Gretchen, I’m not in the mood for this. I thought you came in to help, not to lecture me.”
“Well, pardon me, Mr. Lose-the-Taxpayers’-Money,” she huffed. She clutched the book to her blue argyle sweater vest and glared with her steely-gray eyes. “These books don’t grow on trees, you know. That little retard could have wandered off with it or-worse-drooled all over it.”
I glared at her. “I don’t like that word, Gretchen, not one bit. Please don’t use it again in this library.”
She surprised me by looking ashamed. She ran her nail-polished fingers through her short permed gray hair. “I’m sorry. You’re right; Bradley can’t help the way he is. I don’t know the fancy words for his condition, so I call ’em like I see ’em.”
I was still amazed she wasn’t quarreling with me. I softened my tone. “You can say he has a disability without hurting his feelings.” She nodded as though it took an effort. I’d suspected Bob Don had pleaded with her plenty as well. I knew she loved my father, that she wanted to make her marriage work, and that she’d make peace with me for that end. She’d already sobered up-and stayed that way.
I gestured toward the new books. “Since you reminded me-correctly-that the books need processing, go ahead and do the paperwork.”
“Okay, I will,” she said, back to her usual stridency.
“Fine.” I pushed the restock cart toward the shelves. Suddenly, fraught with worries about Junebug wooing Sister, Candace making a go of the cafe, my friend Ed losing his shirt to his female Elvis, having an ill staff, feeling unease over Bradley, and de
aling with my favorite volunteer, I had a hell of a headache. If Darwin ended up in the religious section today, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’d hoped to escape the library for lunch right before noon, but to my eternal regret, I didn’t. Friday at noon is a terror so complete, so utter, and so deep that no adult should have to withstand it.
Friday is Story Day.
The kids start arriving about eleven-thirty. And once they’re inside, their volume controls never seem to get adjusted. Games of tag in the stacks are extremely popular, as are attempts to smuggle in crayons, either for vandalism or for a delicious prelunch snack. The periodical section, usually habituated by the elderly, clears out faster than an after-hours beer joint when the sirens approach. Whoever said old folks crave the company of children needs to come into this library on a Friday and see how spryly these eldsters get away from the little tykes.
Don’t get me wrong. I love children. Well-behaved children. In the “Look What’s New” bin I’m always displaying books on child discipline and the virtues of celibacy. But they just don’t seem to move. I might try personally recommending selected titles to folks who should reconsider adding to their brood in the future.
To my never-ending astonishment, Gretchen lives for Story Day. She wanders among the future embezzlers and spouse cheaters, sweetly cautioning them to “put that down” or “don’t put that in your mouth.” She insists on the little darlings calling her “Aunt Gretchen” and me (shudder) “Uncle Jordan.” It might be easier if a lot of the mothers stayed for Story Day (and several of the sainted ones do), but too many moms see it as the Friday babysitting service and duck out to shop or have lunch or meet some trucker out at the Highway 71 motel (also known as the Mirabeau Mattress) for a little midday epic of their own.
Either Gretchen reads stories to the assembly, or Miss Ludey Murchison does. Miss Ludey’s certifiably insane, in my opinion, but she likes children. And they love her. She’s around eighty and has a wonderful reading voice that is frequently broken by coughing or gasps for air. I’ve tried to break her of her occasional habit of chomping pears while she recites, but she says she needs her vitamins. Fortunately I know both Heimlich and CPR, so our bases are covered.
