by Pamela Morsi
In the bedroom he pulled out more clean shirts to take to his mother’s. He was headed back through the house when the phone rang. He slung the clothes over the back of a kitchen chair before picking up the receiver.
“There you are!” the voice on the other end of the line announced in a fashion that was almost accusatory. “I’ve been calling the drugstore all morning with no answer.”
“Hey sis,” he replied. “You know, out in the country here we’ve got this new technology thing. We call it a cell phone. You can call the number and it rings right in my pocket.”
“Very funny.”
“It even has the cool texting feature where you can type in a message and the words fly through the air to find me.”
“Stick with the drug dealing,” she quipped. “You’ll never make it as a comedian.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know, lots of strange stuff passing for comedy these days.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Leanne answered. “My life is no laughing matter. Why aren’t you at work?”
“Harvest,” he answered. “And we had a funeral this morning. I didn’t even open.”
“Who died?”
Scott went into a short version of Dutch Porter’s last days. His sister was sympathetic. She, too, remembered the older man. And had actually dated one of his sons a couple of times in high school. The two chatted companionably for several minutes, laughing as they remembered stories from the past.
“So when are you coming this way?” Scott asked her. “I sort of miss you, in a disinterested, kid brother kind of way.”
“We were going to come this weekend, but Mom said no,” she answered.
“You’re kidding, right. Our mom? The same mom we’ve always had?”
“The very one,” Leanne answered. “She said somebody was going to be staying in the guest room for harvest.”
“Really? I didn’t hear anything about that. And, actually, I’m staying there.”
“You’re staying at Mom’s?”
“Uh-huh, I’ve got some snafu with my septic system. With everybody out in the fields, there’s nobody to look at it this week.”
“Well, good. I mean, bad for you, good for me. I’m glad you’re staying with Mom. I’m a little worried about her.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“She’s being way too secretive these days. Surely you’ve noticed.”
The only thing Scott had noticed was the excess of canned goods.
“Yeah, maybe, I guess,” he answered, vaguely.
“Do you know about the private detective?”
“Private detective?”
“Mom asked Jamie to recommend a private detective. And he did! I could have killed him. I said, ‘Why didn’t you make her tell you what it was for?’ and he said, ‘Because it wasn’t any of my business.’ It’s one of the things that drives me crazy about him.”
“Absolutely,” Scott said. “Integrity can be so inconvenient.”
“Oh, shut up! You know you’re as curious as I am.”
In that, his sister was completely right.
Thirty-Three
440.0 Romance Languages
D.J. spent the whole afternoon working on her floor plan for the stacks. She must have been extremely intent on her job, because she didn’t notice Ashley Turpin until the girl spoke.
“What are you doing?”
The pudgy, flat-faced little girl was wearing very baggy shorts and a pink T-shirt with the image of a unicorn. The shirt was both undersize and faded, but there was nothing lacking in the curiosity of the bright brown eyes.
“I’m drawing a picture of the library,” she explained.
“Can I see?”
D.J. nodded and motioned to Ashley to come around the desk.
The little girl obeyed, but with the trepidation and reverence of one being beckoned into a secret, magical kingdom. Trolls might lurk anywhere.
“What do you think?” D.J. asked, showing off the precise, scaled graph paper layout.
Ashley looked at it for a long moment. “Well,” she said finally. “The lines are very straight, but...it’s not very pretty.”
D.J. laughed. “You’re right, it isn’t. But it represents something that will be very beautiful.”
The girl eyed her questioningly.
“You see these rectangles here on the edge,” D.J. said, pointing to them. “These are the windows on the side of the building. By moving the shelving in this direction, the light from those windows can actually flow down the aisles, all the way to the vestibule.”
Ashley’s brow furrowed. “What’s a vesta-pewl?”
“Vestibule. It’s this area right in front of us.”
The girl was surprised. “The light from the windows will come all the way down here?”
D.J. nodded. “Yes, I think in the morning, it will.”
“That’ll look good with the pink and white floor.”
D.J. smiled. “Yes, I think it will look very nice with the marble.”
“Maybe you should add that to your picture,” Ashley suggested.
D.J. looked at her meticulously accurate representation. She didn’t think it needed anything.
“Sometimes color helps,” Ashley told her. “It helps other people see what you see.”
The diagram was mostly for her own benefit. But the memory of repeated book slamming suddenly rang in her ears.
“I don’t know that I really have time to add color to it,” she hedged.
“Oh.” The little sound was full of disappointment and resignation. As if a million ideas she’d come up with in her life had been rejected just as easily.
“I think it’s an excellent suggestion,” D.J. assured her. “Very much worth doing. But I need to get busy on laying out the aspects of the move, which is very complicated.”
Ashley nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve got my crayons,” she told her. “I could do it for you.”
D.J. looked into the hopefully expectant little face and saw, as she always had, herself. The lonely excess baggage of life plan that wasn’t quite working out. She was transported back to those early days among the books of the children’s department at Wichita Public Library where the encouraging whispers of the librarians were the only voices of approval that she ever heard. D.J. had to pass that forward.
“Go get your crayons,” she told her.
As the girl scurried off, D.J. looked at her perfect, clear-cut, accurate rendering with a sigh. Then she hurried to the copy machine. At least if Ashley ruined it completely, she’d have a backup.
“I need to be able to read all these numbers,” she explained, pointing out the measurements that she’d made. “Maybe you could color around them.”
“Sure, no problem,” Ashley told her.
D.J.’s expectation was that the little girl would be as haphazard in her illustration as she was in her personal hygiene and grooming. In that she was completely wrong. The child was careful and capable. And she was also curious about the process that D.J. was putting together.
“This is my master plan,” D.J. explained. “It’s kind of like a flow chart.”
Ashley’s expression indicated the concept of “flow chart” was a new one.
“It’s the actions that we’ll need to take to get from where we are now, to where we will be in the picture you’re coloring.”
“Okay,” the girl replied, vaguely. “But don’t you just take the books off and turn the shelves and put them back on?”
“Well, we could do that,” D.J. told her. “But it would be very disruptive. Being able to locate the books we have quickly and efficiently is, in many ways, the whole underlying basis of librarianship. And book locations are not based on the books themselves, but to their relationship to the books around them. When a book comes off the shelf, the only way we know where it goes back, is what books are around it.”
“Don’t the numbers and letters on the back tell you that?”
“They help us,” D.J. said. “They explain the
relationship of one book to others. But if all the books are in a pile willy-nilly, there is nothing to tell us which book goes on which shelf. It could take months of trial and error and endless shifting to get everything back in order again.”
Ashley seemed to be satisfied with that explanation. And D.J. would have left it there, if she had not heard, or perhaps merely sensed, a presence in the shelving range nearby. James was there. He was listening.
She kept her speech at a conversational volume, but she was careful to keep her chin up, so that none of her words would be missed.
“For each shelf in the stacks, I am assigning two numbers. One number is for the physical shelf. So we can know where it is now and where it will be after the move.”
Ashley nodded.
“The second number is for the contents of that particular shelf. That same group of books will sit together in the new configuration, but on a different physical shelf, that we can point to before we’ve even removed one volume. While the shelves are moved, each set of books will be together vertically in the reading room with its number. So we can know where the books are every moment and get them back to where they are supposed to be with the least disruption possible.”
Ashley seemed perfectly agreeable to that. D.J. could only hope that James would ultimately feel the same.
By closing time, D.J. had made a sizable dent in completing the flow chart. Ashley, on the other hand, finished her coloring. And D.J. was forced to admit that it looked surprisingly better. The rich browns of the library’s oak shelves contrasted very nicely with the yellow light that flooded in through the windows. And Ashley had continued it down the aisles to cast a creamy, almost butter, color upon the pink-and-white marble in front of the circulation desk. All of her measurements and calculations were easily readable, and the paper did simply look prettier.
“This looks great,” D.J. told her. “You did a wonderful job. I am so proud of you.”
Ashley beamed under the praise. Then seemed almost embarrassed at accepting it. Assuring D.J. that, “It was coloring. Even babies can do coloring.”
“No baby could do this. It takes an artist’s eye. I don’t have that. And I appreciate the loan of yours. Thank you.”
The girl liked that. “You’re welcome.”
“It’s late, why don’t I give you a ride down to the Brazier.”
For an instant she looked delighted, but then her expression turned to worry. “I am not allowed to accept rides,” she said. “It’s my mom’s biggest rule. Just because our town isn’t full of strangers, doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen to little girls.”
D.J. was sure that Ashley’s mom was right. Lonely little girls on their own would always be easy prey for someone. At least her own parents had the financial resources to pay someone else to keep her safe.
“Why don’t we call her and ask permission,” she suggested. “That way, even if she says no, she’ll realize that you are running late, and she won’t worry.”
Ashley agreed to that. And when her mother agreed to let her ride with the librarian, one would have thought from her reaction that the little Chevy hatchback was an amusement park and an ice-cream sundae rolled into one.
While the girl excitedly gathered up her things, D.J. considered the work she’d spread out upon the circulation desk. Her first thought was to take it all home with her and work on it that evening. See if she could get it done. But getting the plan done was not going to be worth a lot if she could get no one to help her implement it.
She left all of it sitting out on the desk, with the painstakingly illustrated future layout sitting right on top. She crossed her fingers for luck. She was going to need it.
D.J. locked the front door, turned out the lights and let herself and Ashley out the service entrance. The girl was so excited about the car, D.J. was worried she would be disappointed with the small, unimpressive vehicle.
“It is so cool,” Ashley said. “It’s like a kiddie car. Most of the guys my mom dates drive trucks. My grandparents have a car. I get to ride in it sometimes, but it’s really big. And it kind of smells like old people.” She wrinkled up her nose derisively. “Your car smells... like a dog.”
D.J. wasn’t sure that was better, but she laughed.
“I do have a dog.”
“What’s his name?”
“Melvil Dewey, Jr.”
The girl stared at her blankly.
“I call him Dew.”
The trip through town was completely taken up with questions about the dog. Where did she get him? What did he like to do? Where did he sleep? What did he like to eat?
Once all her questions were answered, Ashley gave a sigh of pure longing.
“I’ve always wanted to have a dog,” she said.
“You should ask your mother,” D.J. told her.
“I have...like a million times. She says, I’d ‘better make enough money to feed myself before I take on feeding something else.’”
D.J. shrugged. “Well, she probably has a point. My parents said something similar to me once. So now I’m grown up and I work hard and support myself and I can have any dog that I want. And I wanted Dew.”
Ashley nodded. “It’s sure a long time before I grow up,” she said.
“But the time won’t be wasted,” D.J. pointed out. “You can read about dogs, learn about the different breeds and how to train them. Decide what characteristics are important to you. As artistic as you are, you could put together your own notebooks of dogs you find interesting.”
The girl considered it. “I’m not sure my drawing is good enough.”
“Then trace the images out of one of our books,” D.J. said. “I already know that you can bring a picture to life with color.”
Slowly a smile crept across the girl’s face. “I can, can’t I?”
“You absolutely can,” D.J. agreed.
The parking lot at the Brazier was overflowing. And there was a line of customers waiting outside.
“You can drive around and let me off at the back,” Ashley suggested.
D.J. carefully edged through the narrow passage between cars at angle. At the back of the building her progress was stopped completely by a recognizable van.
“Thanks, D.J. I had a great day!” Ashley told her as she grabbed up her backpack and headed into the building. The girl nearly ran into Scott who was exiting, carrying a large cardboard box.
The minute he caught sight of her, D.J. was gifted with that amazing hot-guy smile. She deliberately tamped down her reaction, but the truth was, she liked it.
He stowed his load in the van and then slid the side door closed. He walked toward her, and she assumed he was circling to the driver’s seat. Maybe he was. But first, he walked straight back to her.
He put his forearm atop the car and leaned toward the window.
“Just get off work?”
“Yeah, I closed up maybe ten minutes ago.”
“Have you got any plans for the evening?”
“Plans?”
His mother wasn’t here to foist some fake date upon them. If he asked her out, if she agreed, that would be something real.
“I...I have some work to do,” she lied.
“Can it wait? I’m taking dinner out to the Browns’ crew,” he said. “I thought maybe you could help me. It would be good for you to see the harvest process up close. And good for the library if people see you have an interest in it.”
“Uh...sure. That sounds great.”
“Okay. We’ll run by Mom’s house. You can leave your car and change your clothes.”
He gave her a smile and a wave as he headed to his van. D.J. resisted the impulse to slap herself on the forehead and settled for silently cursing herself as an idiot. She was already attracted to the guy. Despite his oblivion, they had a history. They were getting way too friendly, way too easy with each other. Last night she had let him get way too close. Not like a lover, but still she’d felt his lips on her skin. That was dangerous stuf
f.
Typical of a practiced player—soften a woman up, catch her off guard.
The practiced-player warning rang hollow even in her own brain. He may have been a player back in the day. He may have cheated on his wife. He may have had affairs with married women. But there was something about him now that was genuine.
People could change, couldn’t they?
The answer to that rhetorical question had always been, no, they cannot. Her parents never changed. She, herself, had never changed. It was her experience that you either accept people the way that they are, or you move on down the road.
But this was the end of the road for her. Verdant was going to be the place that was her own. Her hometown.
They reached the driveway to her place and she pulled into a space in the back. Viv was not home. She got her case from the backseat. Scott was already turning the van around.
“It’ll just take me a minute,” she promised.
“Jeans, not shorts,” he told her. “And put on some real shoes. I don’t expect you’ve got barn boots, but something sturdy.”
Nodding, she hurried up the stairs. It was exciting. What an adventure! She imagined that her reaction was about as silly as Ashley’s had been about a ride in her car, but she was okay with that.
Thirty-Four
499.9 Other Languages Not Specified
Scott tried to assure himself that it was merely coincidence that he’d run into D.J. It was purely a chance meeting. No way he could have imagined that she would be at the Brazier. But the fact was that he’d already imagined her going with him, that he’d already worked up the scenario in his mind when he’d called Amos to volunteer, that she’d shown up so opportunely only proved that Heaven might well be on his side in this.
He lazed against his van, letting the house shade him from the heat of late afternoon. Having both a mother and a sister, he had no expectations that a change of clothes could happen quickly. The dog came trotting down the stairs eager to take a quick pee in the backyard grass, then, grabbing his dirty tennis ball, he hurried to Scott in hopes to play. Obligingly, Scott threw it for him several times. He liked the dog. And he was pleased at how attached his mother had become to the little guy. Maybe he should consider getting her a pet for her birthday.