by Kym Roberts
I approached one of the trash trucks and knocked on the driver’s door. He jumped and grabbed his chest before rolling down his window.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No worries, darlin’. I was just waiting for the boss to show up.”
“Do you mean Dallas Dover?” I asked.
“That’s right. In fact, that’s him coming across the lot now.”
I turned around to see a lanky man wearing jeans, a plaid button-down shirt, and a black leather belt with a silver buckle that had two old Mexican coins adorning the front. The black cowboy hat he wore had feathers plastered across the front. The whole outfit showed off his long dishwater-blond hair and a goatee. A pair of dark wraparound sunglasses hid his eyes and reminded me of biker goggles, but he wore a wide, friendly smile as he pulled off his leather gloves.
He glanced at the trashman and shook his head. “I’ll be with you guys in a minute.” He turned to me and grinned even larger. “How can I help you ma’am?’
“Are you Dallas Dover?”
He nodded and led me toward the trailer. “Yes, ma’am. But we’re not open for business yet. Gary at the gate should have told you that.”
I thought about the man who’d let me in the driveway. Maybe he’d been trying to wave me back. “Sorry. I thought he was just being friendly.”
Dallas laughed. “I suppose I can’t fault him for that, now can I? Since you’re already here, what can I do for you?”
“Mayor Calloway sent me to see you.”
“The mayor’s a good man.”
I nodded in agreement. “Yes, he is.”
As we approached the back of my daddy’s truck, Dallas got a whiff of the books and began looking around for the culprit.
“That smell is my problem. I own the Book Barn Princess in Hazel Rock and a skunk got into the store and sprayed the books.”
Dallas chuckled. “I was afraid my breakfast burrito was coming back to haunt me in front of a customer.”
I smiled but thought I was going to die of embarrassment for him, but Dallas didn’t seem to mind talking about bodily functions with a complete stranger.
“I hope that’s all it sprayed,” he continued. When I shook my head, he grimaced.
“That couldn’t have been good.”
“You have no idea. Can I show you what I have?”
“Sure thing.”
As we reached the tailgate, Dallas lifted his shirt and covered his face. “Are you sure it wasn’t a whole herd of skunks?”
“No, it was just one very aromatic male. He wasn’t happy.”
“I’d say he sprayed more than once.”
I hadn’t thought about that, but remembering Mateo and Liza on the floor, I had no doubt the skunk probably had. I pulled a box toward the back of the bed, but Dallas stopped me.
“I’m sorry but I won’t be able to help you.”
“What?”
“We can’t take these in the center. My employees would quit.”
“But…but…what about the bins outside?” I pointed to the bins where the three drivers waited patiently inside their trash trucks for Dallas. “Or the trucks. They could go directly into the trucks.”
“I’m sorry, miss, but those are trash trucks. They take what we can’t recycle.”
I looked over at the trash trucks and saw the different logo on the side. They had two large letter Cs with Waste Services printed below them.
Fuzz buckets. I wasn’t sure how I’d missed the Coleman County logo. “But you can’t recycle these. Couldn’t they take my boxes?”
“I would be in violation of the contract I have with them. We aren’t supposed to accept trash here, it’s only the trash we inadvertently pick up. If I took this in front of the drivers…
I can’t break the contract, but you could put them in the trash or take them directly to the dump.”
I thanked Dallas for his time and got back in my daddy’s truck. I’d already thought of his suggestions and decided against them. They weren’t viable options. For one, my trash pickup was Wednesday morning. It was Thursday. Where in the world would I put these boxes for the next week? I’d also thought of taking them to the dump, but a “green” candidate couldn’t have his name associated with such a move, and Cade’s stuff couldn’t be handed off to dump personnel to go into a landfill. Nor could books stamped with the Book Barn’s trademark tiara stamp. We were located in his town. We were his friends. We, namely I, could be a blemish on his career. The last thing in the world I wanted credit for was being the boil that busted his career.
I backed up and drove past the trash trucks raising the recycle bins to empty into their beds, but all I could think about was what I had to do. It was the last thing any bookstore owner would even consider. Yet I had no choice.
I had to burn the books.
Chapter 4
After leaving the recycling plant, I immediately called the sheriff’s office and advised the dispatcher that I was going to be burning debris behind the Barn. It was a lie, and I felt sick about my blatant disregard for the law and the environment. The dispatcher, however, told me I had to wait twenty-four hours. It seemed Mother Nature didn’t particularly care for my decision to have a book burning. She’d kicked up the winds to stop me.
The entire rest of the day I pouted. I unloaded every stinky box of books from daddy’s truck by myself before anyone else caught wind of what I was doing and carted them into the middle of the backyard. Once there, I cussed them and arranged them neatly into a symmetrical pyre that would ignite easily. Then I hauled branches that had fallen off the trees in the last wind advisory to the pyre. Daddy normally took them to the county’s recycling center. Not this time, though. They were the camouflage for my crime.
Which spoke volumes to how low I’d sunk.
I’d also cleaned the Barn and used the skunk scent remover on the floorboards, shelves, and tables in the loft. The wood on the tables survived the onslaught. The old wood floors and the shelves, however, were going to need some TLC. Instead of sorting through the books and taking the titles out of inventory one stinky volume at a time, Sugar had suggested taking photos of them and using the photos to delete them from the program. It worked like a charm, and three hundred and sixty-one books were wiped out of inventory.
The number alone was staggering. The value to the Barn was worse. Yet it couldn’t be helped. If I looked on the bright side, only used books had been damaged. The new books were on the lower level and although some of the scent went downstairs, the inventory downstairs had been protected from spray and residual fog by the shelves of books that were destroyed in the loft. Still, taking that quantity of books out of our inventory made me ill. To top off my really bad day, Princess didn’t want my company that night after my second chemical shower. She wanted to go out and stay out. She never stayed out overnight. It seemed her new friend was more appealing than me.
When I lay my head on my pillow and closed my eyes, I thought the nightmare would finally be over. It wasn’t. All night long the smell from the pyre in my backyard wafted in through the deck doors to my bedroom. I had dreams of smelling like skunk for the rest of my life with Cade opening a skunk perfume store and Mateo giving me a bottle of skunk perfume for my birthday.
I welcomed the obnoxious bell of my alarm clock the next morning and immediately called the sheriff’s dispatcher to let her know I’d be having a fire the first thing that morning. She’d taken my information and address and the fire was set for eight o’clock.
I took yet another shower and headed to the store. The first thing I did when I opened the door was take a deep breath. Peroxide and soap hit my senses.
I smiled and savored the new scent. Today was going to be a good day.
I made my way downstairs and started my daddy’s coffee. Normally, I would have made sweet tea for our custo
mers as well, but the tearoom would be closed for three more days thanks to Cade’s boxes filling every table and chair. He’d promised to move all of the boxes out by Monday, and I was going to hold him to it.
Princess came in through her pet door at the back of the store, and I immediately looked for her cohort. Thank God, he hadn’t followed her. As she approached, however, I could smell his cologne.
“He’s a bad influence. You know that, right?”
Princess looked up at me with innocent eyes.
“Do we need to have a talk about you staying out all night long?”
Princess snorted and headed for her bedazzled dog bowl for breakfast. She wasn’t going to be happy with the healthy meal that awaited her.
“I never thought I’d have a teenager at thirty!” I yelled, but she ignored me completely and disappeared behind the pink curtain to the store room.
Her bowl shuffled across the floor and from the sound of it, Princess was none too happy about the dried mealworms I’d put down for her. I hid a smile only a parent trying to get their kid to quit eating junk food would understand. While she ate in a huff, I prepared a bath that would do away with the scent of her new boyfriend. I knew I wouldn’t have to coax her into the water; after being out all night, Princess was going to relish rolling around in one tub and then the next. It was her favorite thing to do.
Just having her home eased my mood. Her nose pushed out from under the curtain. It twitched as she stood there and smelled the scent of her bath. She knew something was up, but the draw of her favorite pastime caused her to come out and make a dash for the tubs. Seconds later, she was rolling around in the de-skunk water and then rinsing in the second tub. I sat down and watched her frolic in the water and just enjoyed the moment.
When she finished, we both relished the time together as I toweled her off, rubbed her belly, and scratched her ears. Our favorite nighttime routine wasn’t too bad during the morning hours either.
I looked at my phone and realized I needed to get busy. If I didn’t get the fire going, I wouldn’t have it almost out by the time we opened the store at ten.
I gave Princess a final pat and said, “Mama’s gotta go to work.”
Princess shook her body like a dog would after a bath, her little tail shaking last. Then she headed for her bed under the register. I had no doubt she’d sleep the day away.
I grabbed the lighter fluid and matches I’d purchased and headed out the back of the Barn. As I approached my pyre, that same feeling of dread came over me that I’d had all day the previous day. There was something about burning books that just didn’t sit well with me. It was bad enough that I was breaking the law by burning something that the trashman would take, but voluntarily burning books was just wrong on so many levels. I knew the books couldn’t be saved. I’d created a business of selling used books and creating art out of those that were too damaged to resell, but these weren’t good for resale or book art, and because of that, I was stuck with no other recourse. It still didn’t make me feel any better. Today’s task was the greatest sin a bookseller could commit.
I kicked the boxes at the bottom of the pile, then reached through to rattle the boxes on top as I yelled to make sure no critters had decided to nest in them overnight. When nothing scurried out, I sprayed the lighter fluid in between to make sure the bottom boxes were saturate. I bent down to light the pages I’d curled up for kindling around the base.
“There she is!”
I didn’t recognize the masculine voice coming from the other side of the fence.
Holy schnikes, what if a child had hidden in the middle of the boxes! I quickly shook out the flame that had leapt to life on the end of my match and stood up.
“Are you missing someone?” I yelled over the fence.
A camera appeared in response.
Fuzz Buckets.
A picket sign appeared next. Bobbing above the privacy fence, it read: Censorship is un-American, written in bold red letters on a large white poster board. A second sign appeared: The Book Barn Princess dictates what you can read. It was written in cursive and was a little hard to read, but its message got across loud and clear. Especially when it was accompanied with a chant that was getting louder by the moment. “Stop the Book Barn’s Book Burn!”
My heart raced. This was a nightmare. How had anyone found out about my plans? As the chants grew louder, I could only see two choices in front of me. I could abandon my plans and wait until they went away. Or I could get it over with and destroy the evidence. If I waited, the crowd could grow. Cade would hate that, and Mateo would be ticked off.
I struck the match and lit the pyre in multiple places. It was in a full blaze when my daddy walked out the back door of the Barn. The crowd on the other side of the fence sounded like it had grown to around fifteen people from what I could tell by the volume of the voices and the number of women sitting on shoulders yelling obscenities at me.
“Please tell me you’re not burning the books,” Daddy said.
I looked at him and a tear slipped down my cheek. “Burning books is the last thing I ever thought I’d do. But I didn’t have a choice.” My voice hitched, and Daddy put his arm around my shoulder.
“It’ll be alright. This will blow over.”
No sooner had he said those words than Liza Twaine came around the end of the fence down by the river with a cameraman. His camera was on his shoulder, and a red light at the base of it was blinking a warning in our direction. He was documenting every last moment for the local news. Daddy tried to push me behind him, but I wasn’t about to let that happen. I moved up next to him to let the world know we stood together.
“You’re on private property, Liza Twaine,” I said.
“Why are you burning books at the Book Barn Princess?” Liza held a large microphone in her hand and turned her best side to the camera. She hadn’t been accompanied by cameraman for a long time. Not since she’d broken into Scarlet’s trailer to get the scoop on a story. That crime had gotten Liza in trouble with the law and the local townspeople. Since then she’d been demoted to her cell phone for interviews. Unfortunately for us, it seemed she’d gained back her status at the television station.
Dagnabit! This day had started off so good. Now I knew what being a criminal was really like.
“You’re trespassing,” I said. My tone was cold and my eyes squinty. I could blame it on the morning sun backlighting her, but I hoped she saw warning behind my expression.
If she did, she ignored it.
“Our viewers would like to know what drives a bookstore owner to burn literary works of art?” Fate screwed with me at that moment. It was almost as if it was thumbing its nose at me for comparing Liza to an out of control five-year-old the previous day. A box tumbled down from the top of the pile, bypassing the branch that was meant to hide it, and several books spilled out at the base of the pyre.
“Why would you burn The Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre?” Liza directed the cameraman toward the classics catching fire.
“You know good and well why we’re burning these books, Liza Twaine.” Daddy chastised Liza, and I thought for a moment she was going to quit. Her shoulders slumped ever so slightly in her sleeveless purple blouse. But fate was on her side today. A box on the outside edge began burning and revealed the contents no one was supposed to see.
Liza leaned closer and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Is it true?” she asked. Frantically she waved the cameraman in the direction of the forbidden box. The cameraman moved for a better angle, and her assistant turned the lens to zero in on his target.
I quickly stepped in front of him. “That’s none of your business, Liza.” I pointed back at the fence where they’d come in and where some of the braver protestors were starting to come around. “You need to leave.” I addressed the picketers. “All of you need to leave. This is
private property.”
Liza, however, had found the bloody trail to another story, and she wasn’t going to let it go. She went to the other side of the fire and began pulling a box from it. That was such a bad idea, I couldn’t begin to fathom how stupid she was being.
The fiery pile wobbled. It’s neat cone shape giving way on Liza’s side. Daddy ran and pushed her back, but the damage was done. An avalanche of boxes and books scattered across the lawn. I ran for the hose that I’d laid at the ready in case something went wrong. I never dreamed it would be like this.
Liza didn’t miss a beat. “Cade Calloway is running for the Senate?” she asked.
But all Daddy could give her was a blank stare. He didn’t know. He hadn’t seen the posters. He’d assumed the stuff in the tearoom was for Cade’s next mayoral race. And I’d let him believe it. He looked down at the posters. Flames licked at Cade’s political campaign slogan: A Greener Tomorrow with Cade Calloway.
Fuzz buckets. Cade’s dreams were slowly ebbing from existence as the fire devoured his posters and the camera recorded every last bit.
Chapter 5
“It made the national news.” Cade scrubbed the back of his neck as he paced back and forth in the tearoom. It’d only been forty-five minutes since Liza had blown the whistle on my crime, but the damage was done. The pile had continued to burn rapidly with the exception of two boxes I doused that had fallen out of the pyre.
“I’m sorry.”
Cade didn’t say anything as he continued to pace the tearoom filled to the gills with boxes upon boxes of his political campaign advertisements. He ran his fingers through his hair, a habit he’d had since high school. According to Cade, he’d refrained from doing it for twelve years—until I returned to Hazel Rock and drove him back to the habit that was going to make him bald by forty. He only did it when I frustrated the heck out of him. Like now.