Check Me Out

by Becca Wilhite

  There was one more letter.

  Who Needs the Library:

  An Honest Look Inside

  In the upcoming election, voters will see an article on the ballot for a tax increase. This tax will serve to give our town’s public library an even larger percentage of tax revenue. If voters look honestly at the situation, they will come to see that the library is an outmoded and unnecessary piece of Americana that we can allow to bow gracefully out of our community.

  The library is a place to find and borrow books. Books are available for free online or from multiple retailers. Most of us have digital reading devices in our mobile phones, in our computers, and on our other handheld devices.

  Once, libraries were a research facility. Now, every man, woman and child can access a wealth of information on every subject imaginable from the comfort of home. The thousands of dollars spent on reference materials, outdated almost before they reach the shelves, are dollars better spent on useful civic projects.

  Libraries do not support authors. Thirty, fifty, or a hundred families may read the same borrowed copy of a book, but the author sees royalty for only one sale.

  Libraries have become free day-care centers where parents drop off their children and come back for them hours later. This is not an activity that should be paid for through our taxes.

  In this digital age, the library of yesteryear is but a glowing memory. We do not need a library, and the one we have certainly does not deserve a greater portion of our money.

  Vote No next week and let the memory of the Franklin library rest in peace.

  I clicked the browser window closed. Well. At least we knew how people felt.

  And I felt sick.

  Chapter 30

  Saturday.

  I slid my bag under the desk. Julie was on the phone, so I mouthed, “Morning.”

  She flicked her wrist in a small hello wave. Then she pointed to a padded envelope on the counter. It had my name on it. I hadn’t ordered anything, but here something was. A surprise package. A present.

  No return address.

  Stamped in town, though.

  How mysterious.

  I ripped open the envelope, unwilling to drag out the mystery. Inside was a folded piece of fabric. I pulled it out and shook it.

  A black T-shirt with white letters across the front: “Check Me Out.” There was a graphic of book spines under it.

  I carried the shirt to the workroom in the back. It almost covered the little table when I stretched it out. I shot a photo of it with my phone and sent the image to Will.

  He responded within a minute.

  There was a pause.

  Well, that would be a pleasant change.

  I picked up the T-shirt and held it out in front of me. I stared at it for a few minutes. I wondered what Julie would say if I put it on. I could imagine a few different responses she might have to using me as visual propaganda. The thought amused me for a minute. I realized I should probably do something more work-related than stare at a T-shirt, so I grabbed a handful of thumbtacks and hung the shirt on the bulletin board.

  Grabbing the recycling box from the corner of the workroom, I went to the front desk and added the papers and cans from that bin. Julie was still on the phone, so I pointed to the box in front of me and nodded toward the Dumpster outside.

  The only benefit of having Mr. Greenwood for a neighbor was that we could tuck our ugly green commercial mini-Dumpster up against his side of the lot and people wouldn’t connect it to the library at all. It almost disappeared among the piles of trash spilling across his yard.

  A once-blue metal barrel leaned next to the green trash box, slightly holey from decades of rust. Tetanus waiting to happen, that’s what it looked like. I peeked inside the barrel. I knew it was weird even as I was in mid-lean, but I wanted to see what was in there. An old rubber tire, or what was left of it, kept the barrel from crumbling to the ground.

  A stack of moldering phone books, probably from the decade before I was born, lay piled beside the barrel. I almost picked them up and put them in the recycling bin, but the thought of touching them with my bare hands? No thanks. I shook the recycling from inside box to outside bin and turned back to the library. From this angle, I could see the stained glass windows. The maple tree shading the backyard was starting to drop its red leaves.

  I stood staring at the windows, my breath leaving little clouds in the air.

  Today was Saturday. The election was Tuesday. How long would it take them to shut us down if the vote went badly? A week? A month? These were questions I couldn’t ask Julie. And even if the people voted for a new building, what would happen to this place I had worked in for so many years? What would happen to me? I’d built an identity around this place. I loved this building like it was capable of returning the feeling.

  The vote couldn’t go badly.

  But I knew it really could.

  My stomach hurt. And my arms couldn’t seem to decide if they were having a shiver or if they’d been punched. Like there was a stretch in there that I couldn’t get out.

  I turned around and kicked the barrel. It rang out with a sickly clang. I kicked it again. Pieces of the rusty metal flaked off from around the holes. I kicked it again and wondered how long I’d have to work to make a real dent. One more kick. It didn’t make a dent in the barrel, but may have broken my toes. Ow. I wasn’t really done punishing the stupid barrel, but if I kicked it again, I’d cry, and there was no way I was touching that thing with my hands. Stupid.

  They’ll vote for the tax increase, I told myself. People are basically decent, I told myself. My signs will work, I told myself.

  And the signs under the other signs would work. My signs had to work.

  We’ll see, I told myself.

  Chapter 31

  Thirty-nine. I had to rearrange thirty-nine more signs. The first one was in front of my apartment building, and the next was only a couple of blocks away, at the corner by the convenience store. I waited until the sun went down, so I’d be a little more subtle. I knew traffic wouldn’t be a huge issue on a Sunday evening in Franklin, but I expected at least a few cars to slow down and notice me. Nothing. I leaned over the sign, pulled the outer magnet off, and revealed the sign beneath it. I allowed myself a smile as I reattached the “Don’t Forget to Vote” part underneath, to the metal legs. Both sides. Now the real message stood out above the generic one, out there for everyone to read.

  Could it be that easy? I wondered.

  After seventeen signs (times two magnets each), my fingers were screaming in pain. It was cold. Really, really cold. And a tiny bit creepy alone in the dark. I started to wish I’d asked someone to help me. Mac would have been my first option, but Mac might have requested that we take a break after unmasking each sign to kiss. Not exactly an efficiency boost.

  I could have asked Will to help me. He would have. But he wasn’t exactly . . . subtle. When a car came around, I could slink into a shadow. Will did not slink. I amused myself for the next several signs imagining Will slinking, skulking, and scurrying in various situations. Before I knew it, I’d removed and replaced all the magnets. They now sat on the legs below the signs I’d intended for everyone in town to see, eventually.

  Eventually was now.

  I shifted the biggest sign from the grass patch in the library’s front yard to the corner of the lot and jammed the metal legs into the ground. Pulling the magnetic “Vote” signs off this larger sign felt more real, more of a statement.

  A statement that was about to get a little—or a lot—more clear.

  I dragged Mr. Greenwood’s rusty, holey barrel from the back of the lot up to the sign. It screeched across the gravel, completely unsubtle. Pulling on rubber work gloves, I went back for a pile of phone books. Then another. And one more. I leaned over the barrel and took a breath. It was time.
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br />   It only took a few seconds. The crinkly, crusty paper lit so fast that I practically ran off the lot and around the corner. Fine. My plan was to circle the block anyway. I slowed my steps as soon as I cleared the Greenwood house. I took deliberate steps past each house and building on the block. I checked my phone: 8:45. When I got half a block from the library, I turned around and started to circle the block again in the opposite direction.

  I sent out a tweet from my librarian account. “Shut down the Franklin Library in November. Book burning party in December. #SaveFranklinLibrary #CheckOutTheLibrary”

  I took as long as I could to walk without looking like I was loitering or waiting for something. By the time I got close to the library again, I could hear people muttering. Then I was there.

  I smelled it before I saw it. The ugly, oily reek of rubber on fire. It rose through the air and hung there, close to my face. Inescapable. Rounding the corner at the Greenwood house, I saw the barrel. I tried to see it as a person seeing it for the first time: a huge metal barrel like they have in construction sites on the side of the freeway standing in the lot beside the library’s front door, belching black smoke. Ashy paper floated up and spun in the hot air.

  Then I saw the sign. The one that I’d placed there. The largest. The last of the forty signs, looking sinister and horrible, all backlit with fire like that.

  Franklin may not have extra money,

  but the library’s got books to burn.

  I knew what it said. Of course I knew. I’d created the images and made the order, and I’d had the box of signs in my bedroom for weeks. I’d stuck every metal post into the ground, the “books to burn” message hidden beneath the innocent voting reminders. But seeing the total effect of what I’d done nailed me to the ground. I couldn’t move. My feet felt glued to the sidewalk. Legs stiff, I lurched but still couldn’t make my feet move.

  Come on, feet, I told myself. You have to keep walking.

  This was not how I’d planned it. This was, in fact, the opposite of a nonchalant stroll.

  Becoming aware of the buzzing is the next thing I remember. The humming, muttering noise of a lot of people trying not to say the same thing very loudly. I turned my head away from the burning barrel and saw a decent crowd. It had only been about fifteen minutes, but the neighbors gathered. And probably made some calls. They stared at the sign. They pointed past me, or maybe at me. They shook disapproving heads.

  They were horrified. Disgusted. Sickened.

  Angry.

  No. This was not how it was supposed to happen. This was not the plan. They were supposed to be shocked by the message. They were supposed to be enraged on behalf of the library. They were supposed to be a tiny bit impressed. Not offended. Not revolted.

  The crowd grew like crowds do, and I stayed stuck to the sidewalk.

  I heard Julie. I shouldn’t have been able to hear her, not over the crackling and popping of the fire, not over the grumbling crowd, but I did. I heard a gasp. A croaking, gagging sound. And I knew it was Julie. Her house was on the back of the next block, so it wouldn’t have taken her long to get there. I slid farther into the shadow.

  Turning toward her from my place on the outside of the crowd, I looked at a horror movie version of my boss. She stood at the edge of the parking lot, her face lit orange and shadowy from the fire. Eye sockets haunted and mouth drawn down, she looked ragged and frightening. Her head seemed to shake back and forth on its own; she didn’t seem to have any will left. More ashen pages lifted on the air currents as she stared.

  I knew what was burning. And even to my eyes, the fact that these were several years’ worth of ancient telephone books didn’t lessen the ghastliness of the whole thing.

  All my clever ideas came down to this. What I’d done as a symbol—as a metaphor—became an ugly reality.

  I knew I should go to her. She tipped dangerously to the side as she watched the black smoke rise out of the burning barrel. She could pass out. She could fall over in front of all these people, none of whom seemed to know what to do any more than I did.

  But what if she asked me how this happened? Could I lie? Could I tell her I didn’t know?

  The firelight flickered orange through the oily black smoke. Other lights bounced off the smoke and the buildings. I looked around. Four police cars. Two fire trucks. A TV van with a dish on the roof. The red-and-white ambulance. Ambulance? Someone was overreacting.

  A couple of police officers pushed their way through what was by now a deep line of watchers. They took Julie inside the library, maybe to take her statement.

  What kind of statement, I wondered. What could she say? She didn’t know anything.

  I stayed beside the oak tree. I couldn’t go in there. I couldn’t let them ask me anything. I couldn’t say I didn’t know. Because I knew more than anyone else knew. And all of a sudden, I really wanted to forget.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Marigold.

  “Where are you?” It didn’t even sound like a question. It was a demand.

  “I’m walking.” Not true. I stood rooted to the sidewalk, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “You have to come down to the library.”

  I couldn’t make any more words come out.

  “Greta?”

  “I heard. Are you there?”

  “You heard what?” She sounded both excited and sick. I recognized the feelings.

  “I heard you tell me to come.” She was here somewhere. I looked around without moving too much, but I couldn’t see her.

  “Some activist is calling the people who won’t vote for the tax increase Nazis.”

  “Mm.” It was all I could manage.

  “This is perfect for my paper.”

  I couldn’t even grunt this time.

  Her voice kept coming through my phone, way too pleased. “It’s amazing. Fantastic. What a show.” She laughed. “Wish I’d thought of it.”

  My ears started buzzing, and heat rushed up the back of my neck.

  “I’m sick. Have to go.” I clicked off my phone and turned away from the firelight. I leaned against Mr. Greenwood’s monstrous oak tree, tipped my head up, and closed my eyes.

  Breathe, I told myself. Breathe in and out, and don’t cry. And don’t vomit.

  Those were a lot of directions for my brain to take in at once, so I repeated it all in my mind until I felt myself relaxing. Preparing myself to open my eyes, I took another smoky breath and felt a hand clench my shoulder.

  I couldn’t help it. I screamed. Then I opened my eyes and screamed again. If Mr. Greenwood was scary in the daytime, it was nothing to what he looked like in the spooky glow of a trash fire. His sunken cheeks looked twice as deep. Orange sparks reflected in his hooded eyes.

  “Quiet, please.” He didn’t let go of my shoulder, but he pivoted me farther behind the tree. Blocked from the glow of the fire, he stopped looking like an ancient demon and resumed looking like an ancient grouchy man.

  He stared at my face, and I tried not to think serial killer victim thoughts. His hand that was not clutching my shoulder was moving up and down between us, and I realized he was directing my breathing, guiding me to inhale and exhale. Staring at that moving hand was far easier and much less terrifying than looking at his face, so I watched his hand and felt myself calming. After a couple of minutes that could have been several lifetimes, he dropped both his arms to his sides. He reached into a pocket and handed me something. I was afraid to look, but I did it anyway. A perfectly folded square of fabric with a flower sewn into the corner. A handkerchief.

  He pointed to my face. “Clean yourself up. Maybe you should breathe through it. This mess you’ve made is bound to make you sick.” He gave me a pointed look and turned away. Somehow he knew it was me. Maybe he saw me. Walking slowly to his porch, he looked back and shook his head. The firelight did strange things to his f
ace. It almost looked like he was smiling at me. Beckoning?

  Weird. And scary.

  I followed him anyway.

  You will not, I told myself, enter the house. You will not, for any reason, go beyond the porch. My memory of the piles of rusty metal on the porch removed most of the comfort from that thought. All kinds of horrible things could happen to a person even on the porch.

  When I got to the steps, I squinted to find Mr. Greenwood. He sat on the edge of a rusty metal chair, pointing to the swing at the side of the dark porch. I picked my way across without speaking, almost without breathing. What was I doing here?

  When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “What’s your plan?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Which plan could he be asking about? Was this conversation really even happening? He waited.

  When I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I love the library. Lots of people do. I just thought I’d give people who hadn’t quite decided how to vote a little nudge.”

  “That’s your justification, not your plan.”

  “What?”

  He cleared his throat. His voice sounded rusty, disused. “You seem like an intelligent person, and I would assume you know the difference between a justification for a previous action and a plan for a future one.”

  Who was this guy?

  “Right. Yes. I do.”

  He waited.

  “So. My plan. Wait for the vote?”

  He said nothing.

  “Okay, I guess I don’t have a plan.” I sneaked another look at him. My eyes had adjusted to the dark porch, and I saw him shake his head. But he was still smiling. So if he was planning to murder me with a broken yard decoration, at least he was happy about it.

  “Mr. Greenwood, what am I doing here?”

  He either coughed or laughed, but I swear, it sounded like he barked. When he started shaking his head, I decided he’d laughed. He got up from his chair and stepped close to me.