by Jon Cohen
Certainly, not on the doorstep of someone already living in a castle. No, he would choose an ordinary house on an ordinary street. Nice and ordinary—with a good tree in the front yard. And all things being equal, he’d choose the house closest to the road out of town. Because after he made the drop, he planned to jump into his car and hit the gas.
Could he guarantee that the most deserving person would get the gold? No. He had learned the hard way: life was a lottery, so let the gold land where it may.
He was not an all-knowing god, after all. He was simply a man trying to heal the heart of a little girl by making her fairy tale come true.
24
Elkdale was far from enchanted. Like most of the towns in the Endless Mountains, it hunkered in a valley. None of the towns in Susquehanna County ever seemed to make it to the mountaintop. They were submerged in deep shade for fully half of each day, so that the houses, even the big three-story Victorians built in the coal and lumber boom years of the 1890s, looked stunted and moist, like mushrooms.
The main road through Elkdale was Route 11, and traffic, what little there was, zipped through the middle of town with only a yellow light flashing feebly to slow it down. Four potholed streets intersected Route 11: Center Street, Greenwood Street, McAdams Avenue and Church Road. The largest store in Elkdale was the Agway Feed-and-Hardware at the end of McAdams Avenue where the asphalt petered out into a gravel parking lot. A bedraggled laundromat stood on the corner of Greenwood Street and Route 11. There was a bar of sorts: Tripley’s Tavern, which was really just an outbuilding attached to somebody’s house.
It was late April, but a red aluminum Christmas tree still sat in the dusty window of the Dollar Store on Church Road, its branches festooned with candy bars in their wrappers and snowflakes made out of Popsicle sticks encrusted with silver glitter glue. In lieu of a star, a trucker’s cap perched on top, as if between seasons the tree served as a hat rack.
No, thought Harry, driving in his car at twilight, there was not a whole hell of a lot of enchantment in Elkdale. A bag of gold would be welcome here.
Harry didn’t know which house he’d pick on Center Street, and he didn’t know as he drove down McAdams and Church. But when he turned onto Greenwood Street—he instantly knew. There it was, an ordinary little house beneath the protective limbs of a fine, tall sugar maple. In the fading evening light, a boy and a girl in the side yard kicked a soccer ball back and forth while a cocker spaniel ran around barking. The boy kicked the ball hard, and it smacked into the old stone wall behind the girl, dislodging a small stone from the midsection.
The girl raised her hand like a referee stopping play. And the boy stopped obediently. So did the dog. The girl ran over and picked up the stone and slid it back into place, like she was gently returning a fallen baby bird to its nest.
Nice, thought Harry.
When the girl looked up, the passing car was gone, and the sound of its engine was lost in the high whine of someone revving a leaf blower behind the Methodist church on Center Street.
A mother’s voice called for supper. The dog barked once and followed the boy and girl into the house. All was dark and quiet on the streets of Elkdale.
At midnight, when the broken cuckoo clock above the bar in Tripley’s Tavern cuckooed eleven wheezy times then gave up, when the last toilet flushed and the last light in the last bedroom in town winked out and the raccoons and opossums began to make their nightly trek out of the woods toward the neighborhood trash cans, a hasty delivery was made to 112 Greenwood Street, Elkdale, PA.
* * *
At sunrise the next day, sleepy Phil Bartek came downstairs to walk the family cocker spaniel, Toodie. He snapped the leash onto Toodie’s collar, opened the front door and placed his hand on the storm door. He looked down at the bottom panel of the door and frowned. There was a long crack in the glass he’d been meaning to fix.
Phil didn’t like that the world was falling apart, starting with the storm door in the morning and ending at night with the embarrassingly ornate “Sorrento” metal headboard on his king-size bed. The bed, one of its legs warped, wobbled when he climbed in beside Minnie, his wife of thirteen years. Serves me right, Phil would think, for buying clearance at Stegmyers Furniture in Binghamton.
He pushed on the door. Toodie whined and scratched when it didn’t open all the way. Phil yanked her back.
“Toodie, shh. Hold on.”
He tried the door again, but something was holding it up. He put his face to the glass and looked down at the front porch landing, lit dimly by the sun rising up over Packer Hill.
“What the heck is that, Toodie?”
It was brown and lumpy. Some kind of bag? He pushed harder on the door, but the bag was heavy and some of the burlap had gotten caught under the door. Toodie pushed her nose forward and growled.
“Hush, girl.”
Phil scooped her up and went through the kitchen and out the back door. She tugged Phil around to the front of the house to investigate the bag.
He approached it carefully. It was an old burlap seed bag, and something was in it. Seed, he thought, but that didn’t make sense, because the words Brukmann Seed Corn were stamped on the side of the bag in faded blue, and Brukmann Seed had been out of business for, what, nearly twenty years now?
As he reached down gingerly, Toodie got in front of him and lunged at the bag. When she bit it, it made a strange clinky sound that stopped Phil short. Toodie whimpered and pressed herself against Phil’s pajamaed legs.
From inside the house, Minnie, who had come downstairs, pushed at the storm door, which was hung up on a wad of the burlap.
“Hey, don’t do that, be careful,” Phil said.
“The cold’s getting in. What’s that down there?”
“A seed bag. Somebody put a seed bag on our front porch.”
“Well, pull it loose, the cold’s getting in.”
“It’s not seed inside that bag, Minnie. It’s full of metal.” Phil licked his lips and got a little ahead of himself, drama-wise. “It could be bullets in there.”
Minnie gave him a long look. “A bag of bullets. Somebody left a bag of bullets on our doorstep.”
“Well, they sure left a bag of something.”
“And you won’t know what until you look inside.”
“Something’s not right, I’m telling you.”
“Oh Phil. Bullets.” Minnie knelt to work the bag loose from her side.
“Don’t! Just, hold on a sec, will you?”
She stopped tugging, but she didn’t let go.
Phil said, “We don’t make another move until Skip takes a look.” It really gave him the willies: somebody had been in their yard last night creeping around. Somebody had come up on their front porch in the dark.
“Oh Phil, don’t bother Skip,” Minnie said. “You get so overexcited.”
He wagged his finger at her. “Don’t touch that bag again. I can see his kitchen light on. I’m gettin’ Skip.”
Skip Harmon was a lieutenant in the Pennsylvania State Police. Running across the yard, Phil could see Skip, an enormous man, in his red long johns at his kitchen table drinking his mug of coffee.
Skip stood at his back door and listened to Phil without expression. That was just his state trooper way. Intimidating, but only if you didn’t know Skip’s hobby was raising Gloster canaries.
“You want me to come over in an official capacity, Phil?” Skip said in his deep trooper monotone.
“Well. It would set Minnie’s mind at ease,” Phil lied. He was the one who needed easing.
So Skip came over, still in his long johns but wearing his duty belt slung around his waist, pistol holstered.
Phil’s two kids, Sarah and Phil Jr., were with Minnie now, hopping up and down with excitement, watching through the glass of the storm door. Toodie was still running around in circles in t
he front yard, barking her head off.
“Toodie should be on a leash, Phil,” Skip said.
“She’s on a leash, I’m just not holding it at the moment because there’s a bag full of I don’t know what on my front porch, maybe explosives.”
Skip froze.
Minnie called out from the other side of the storm door. “Oh, it’s not explosives, and it’s not a bag of bullets. It’s probably just chains or something.”
Phil shot her a look. “Skip, the point is, we don’t know what the hell—” Phil flicked his eyes at the kids who grinned in delight at the curse word “—what the heck is in there.”
Skip took the big Maglite off his duty belt and gave the burlap bag a poke. It jangled softly.
Skip nodded. “I think we’re okay here.”
A pickup truck and a minivan had stopped in front of the house, his neighbors rolling down their windows to watch.
Phil sighed. We just live in a tiny corner of the Endless Mountains, and this silly seed bag will be our big excitement for the week. He wasn’t complaining exactly, he just wanted a little more. But that was never going to happen. Not in Elkdale.
Skip clicked on his powerfully bright light and aimed it down into the bag. A golden glow erupted from the bag and lit up his face like the sun.
“Oh good gosh! Good gosh! Wow!” Skip cried.
He reached into the bag with his shovel-sized hand and brought up a glittering mound of gold coins...
A giant and a bag of gold.
That’s what Phil saw in those first dazzling seconds. He backed away from the wonder of it and kept going until he bumped up against the stone wall that ran along his side yard. He leaned against it, took hold of it with both hands. It’s what he needed. A solid stone wall, thousands of pounds of rock to secure him to Earth and Elkdale.
25
“What’s up?” Amanda said. “You haven’t said a word or moved a muscle.”
On purpose. Because Oriana was trying very hard not to look beside herself with excitement. “I’m okay,” she said in her best neutral voice. Harry, you did it! she thought. You did it, you did it! Oriana imagined the map of Susquehanna County back at the tree house. The dot marking the town of Elkdale pulsing now with a golden glow.
“Are you mad because we’re returning the book?” Amanda said.
They were in the pickup truck on their way to Pratt Library to return The Grum’s Ledger. Yesterday, her mother had asked her, “Hey, you have an overdue book, don’t you?” Amanda was particular about overdue books. She didn’t like to owe money to anyone for anything. With all the Harry fuss of the last few weeks she’d forgotten that it had all started with a lost book.
“I’m not mad,” Oriana said.
“So, how was the book?”
“It was pretty good, I guess. Nothing special.” Out of sight, Oriana’s fingers wiggled with the tension of masked excitement.
Amanda pondered Oriana’s aloofness. In weeks and months gone by, Oriana would’ve given a fevered analysis of a book. Every fairy tale dripping with clues. Amanda prodded her. “Looks pretty special, though. It’s handmade.”
Oriana gave The Grum’s Ledger a bored glance. “I think it was from the old days. Olive said on school visits sometimes she had the kids make their own books. She saved some.”
This one was written on an old bank ledger, Amanda observed. Olive repurposing whatever materials she could get hold of, which would be Olive’s frugal way. It was a shame Pratt Library was in such dire straits. No more supplies for kids, no more school trips, the building falling down around her. Amanda was torn. For the last year, the books pouring out of that library and into Oriana’s brain had been a source of worry and irritation. But somehow it seemed to be coming out okay. A lost book led to Harry Crane, after all. And Amanda had never been against all books. Just fairy tales. And she was definitely for Harry Crane.
Oriana flipped pages casually. Stopped on the illustration of the grum sitting on his gold. They were at the stoplight in New Milford. Amanda reached over and tapped the picture. “I don’t like that creature. He’s frowny. What’s he called? A glum?”
“A grum,” Oriana said. “But it ends happily.”
“Fairy tales always end fifty-fifty happy, though, right? Jack and the Beanstalk—Jack’s happy, but if you’re the giant, you get killed. Or the wicked witch or the big bad wolf. So who kills the glum?”
“The grum. He doesn’t get killed. He changes.”
Amanda pulled the pickup in front of the library. Not hard to get a spot. Amanda got out of the truck, not giving The Grum’s Ledger another look.
Oriana trailed up the steps behind her, the book under her arm. Harry thought it was smart to return it to the library, to lie low. “Your mom’s right. It needs to go back. It’s a clue that could lead back to us. Don’t know how, one in a million, but why risk it.”
Oriana stopped on the top step to look at Pratt Library. It was grand and beautiful, but very sad, too. Green corrosion from the old copper gutters streaked the limestone facade. She picked up a broken slate roof tile. It looked like a heavy scale sloughed from a storybook dragon. Its skin coming off, its bones buckling, the library had lost the ability to protect itself. She patted the side of the building to comfort it. She heard a sharp laugh and turned.
Across the street, smoking a cigarette in front of Endless Dreams Realty, Stu Giptner had been watching her. He shook his head, dragged deeply on his cigarette and flicked it into the street.
“You shouldn’t litter,” Oriana called to him.
“Careful. That building might fall on top of you,” Stu called back.
Inside the library, the sound of a circular saw starting up.
“Ronnie’s fixing things,” Oriana said defiantly.
“I’m planning to fix it, too,” Stu said. He laughed again, spun on his heel and went back inside the realty office.
“I don’t like you,” Oriana whispered. She turned, pushed open the big oak doors and entered the library.
Her mother was standing beside the circulation desk talking to Olive. In the rear of the library, in the nonfiction aisles, blue poly tarps covered two bookshelves. She could hear Ronnie, the clink and clank of his tools. He was whistling softly as he worked, something staccato like a polka tune. Echoing off the marble walls, it sounded like a chirping bird had gotten loose in the library. Or maybe it really was a bird—certainly there were enough holes in the roof for flocks of them to come and go as they pleased. But Ronnie was doing a good job. He’d patched and sealed a lot of holes. Oh, but there were so many, and so much to do. Holes, flickering lights, teetering bookshelves, peeling plaster.
At the circulation desk, exchanging hellos with Amanda, Olive had been thinking, What is going on here? Amanda never comes in. But when Oriana came through the door a few moments later, Olive trembled. There it was, under the child’s arm, The Grum’s Ledger. It’s come back. And of course, it would. It was the kind of book that came back. And really, why had she given it to the child in the first place? Desperation and despair. In a lifetime of books, it was the one that was writ large.
The echo of Oriana’s approaching footsteps, the portentous book she held out in front of her, Olive felt a wave of dizziness, and bumped back against the circulation desk. She felt Amanda’s strong hand at her elbow.
“You all right, Olive?”
The old librarian gathered herself, pulled away and straightened. Don’t be fainting in front of a nurse, she warned herself, or straightaway you’ll end up in the ER with those oxygen tube thingies jammed up your nostrils. Give them no openings, Olive. If you falter, if you don’t stand tall and vigilant, they will close the doors of this place and you will never get back in. These thoughts in the five seconds of Oriana’s approach. Suddenly The Grum’s Ledger was back in Olive’s hands. Its immense weight almost pulled her to the floor.
“Not overdue. You could have kept it, child,” she murmured.
“It was time,” said Oriana.
Amanda watched Olive staring at her daughter, and sensed that something more than a book had been placed in the old librarian’s hands. There had always been the air of a secret pact between Olive and Oriana, something going on that was beyond fairy tales and fiction. And Ronnie, banging on things in the back. She hadn’t seen much of him lately. Now he’s working on Pratt Library? What was going on in this place?
The doors of the library suddenly groaned open, and a mother and a young girl Oriana’s age entered. The girl eyed Oriana. Gave her a quick wave. Then skipped off to the children’s section.
Please, please, Amanda thought. “Oriana. Why don’t you go look for a book?” She gave Oriana a slight push, as she turned to the mother. “Hi, I’m Amanda Jeffers, Oriana’s mom.”
As the mothers talked, Olive settled in behind the circulation desk and tried to unfluster herself. She’d put some distance between herself and The Grum’s Ledger, which she’d placed in the “returns” bin, as if that would normalize the situation.
Oriana, heading toward the children’s books, saw Ronnie fixing a shelf in nonfiction. She gave a smile and a thumbs-up, but she was worried. Very worried. Poor Pratt Library was in so much danger, maybe too much for Ronnie, she thought anxiously. It’s such a rickety old place.
And that awful Stu Giptner standing across the street smoking his nasty cigarette and tossing it into the gutter. He’d toss a lit cigarette in the front door of the library, if he could. She could hear his sharp laugh, imagined him dancing around the flames of the library, like a troll dancing gleefully around a bonfire.
Ronnie gave Oriana a little wave. He was turning back to his work when he noticed Olive creeping down the next aisle with a book in her hand.
Olive never creeps, thought Ronnie. She was forthright and deliberate. And she certainly never did what he saw her do next. She closed her eyes and felt her way a little farther down the aisle and stopped, eyes still closed, and touched among the backs of the books that lined the shelf in front of her, at shoulder level. It spooked Ronnie, watching her. Her lips were pressed tight, and she was shaking as she moved two books aside and shoved in the one she had been carrying. She made her blind way back down the aisle, then opened her eyes again and walked quickly back to the circulation desk.