by Sam Starbuck
Or...I could call Marjorie. She knew everything. She'd know exactly who to talk to, and any excuse to call Marjorie was a good one, anyway.
"Eighth Rare Books, Marj speaking," she answered when I called. I heard the clacking of her pencil against her newspaper in the background.
"Marjorie, this is the exile," I said.
"Christopher!"
"Country mouse reporting in."
"Why do you break an old woman's heart, Christopher? I haven't heard from you in weeks," she said.
"Mea culpa, Marj. I've been busy."
"So, you've had two whole customers this week, you don't have time for me?"
"Three," I said.
"Oh, well, never mind then," she answered with a chuckle. "How are you, sweetheart?"
"You know me, I'm always fine. And you? Eighth Rare is thriving?"
"Christopher, I've been running this store for thirty years. If it failed now it wouldn't be my fault."
"What if a Borders moved in across the street?"
"Wouldn't matter. I don't sell to the Borders crowd. My books don't smell like boiled coffee and cardboard pastries."
"I hear they sell aromatherapy kits now," I teased.
"Bite your tongue."
"You could always move out here with me and live the simple life."
"No thank you, dear, I'd know I was old, then."
"I'm not old, and I live here."
"You are older than you know, Christopher. Anyway, what's on your mind? It's early for a social call."
"I have a botched delivery."
"Oh?"
"They sent me porn, Marjorie."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
"What were you trying to get, Christopher?"
"True Crime. And it's not funny."
"Of course not, sweetheart. We wouldn't want your patrons' delicate eyes damaged by the concept of free sexual expression." Marjorie came of age in the sixties. "What kind of pornography, dear?"
"Literotica anthologies. Classy stuff, but not really our bag here in Low Ferry, prime export corn and dairy, population six hundred and thirty-four."
"It was six hundred and thirty-two the last time you called."
"The twins are due in a few months."
"Oh my god, Christopher."
"It's been three years, Marj, you should be used to me telling you these things by now."
"And yet," she said drily. "All right. True Crime, you said? I think Anna said she got a bad shipment yesterday."
"Anna, Anna...owns the Lesbian bookstore on Clark?"
"As if there's only one? And no, she has a little place out in Oak Park. Bored suburbanites and horny teenagers," she added. "Yes, here we go...I meant to call about that. Tell you what, let me talk to Gary in shipping, he'll give you both postage credits and you can just ship them to each other. Do you know Anna? She's great. Pack up the erotica and I'll have her call and give you her address. Do you have an address, or should I just have her ship it to Nowhere, Illinois?"
"You're a gem, Marj," I said. "I owe you."
"I know. Which reminds me," she said. "Some of your friends came by to see me yesterday."
I was sure I'd heard her wrong, and also that she wouldn't spring that kind of thing on me. "What?"
"The crowd you ran with here. They come by sometimes." Well, wrong on both counts. "They always buy something. I suppose that's their price for information."
"They ask you about me?" I asked.
"No, they ask me about the economic status of Japan. Yes, about you."
I fingered the edge of the leather cover for Jacob's father's book. "What do they say?"
"They want to know how you are."
"Please don't lie. I'm not stupid, Marj."
"Nobody said you were, sweetheart," she replied, which made me feel like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. "They ask about you, they say you should come back. They think three years is more than enough time to find yourself or whatever it is you're doing in the boondocks."
"And what do you tell them?"
"That they should say that to you, not to me. Do they ever call you?"
"No, not really."
"Not 'really'?"
"Well," I said, wishing I hadn't asked her not to lie to me, "even in the boondocks we have caller ID. I don't pick up, usually."
She sighed. "Christopher."
"Because they probably would say that to me, and I don't want people to tell me I'm an idiot on some kind of...Kerouacian quest. Bad enough they think it."
She was quiet.
"Marjorie?" I asked.
"Did you just say Kerouacian?"
"Marj!"
"Christopher, child of my heart," she said. "I'm not going to carry messages back and forth for your friends. All I'm saying is that they come here and ask about you, and I thought you'd like to know."
"Do you agree with them?"
"I don't pretend to know whether I should. I think you could come back. If you wanted. You know I'd help you."
"And do what?"
"What do you do there? Sell books, do some binding on the side. There are a few places around here that are looking for someone to buy them out."
"Not in the city. It's too cutthroat there."
"Big fish in a little pond, eh?" she asked.
"Something like that."
"Well, the offer stands, there's no expiration date. I won't mention it again. Do you suppose they ever read the books they buy from me?" she added lightly.
"They might. I should go, Marj."
"Ah yes. Your bustling clientele. I'll have Anna send you the address for the naughty books. Though if I were you I'd consider nailing some of the interesting parts to the church door."
Marjorie always knows how to end a conversation on a high note.
"I knew you'd come through for me, Marj. Have a good day."
"Look after yourself, Christopher. Bye," and she hung up.
I tossed the phone back in its cradle and leaned against the counter, rubbing the bridge of my nose. Headache coming on – and no doubt more upset than I should be. Not Marjorie's fault.
They probably weren't reading the books they bought from her. Nobody has enough time in a city to do everything, after all, so we'd always neatly divided up our duties, and reading had been my job. The friends I'd had in the city might attend a lecture with me or ask my opinion about a book, but they didn't read much. To be fair, I didn't listen to a lot of music of pay any attention to fashion or politics, outside of what they told me. Splitting up our culture saved our own most precious resource in the city: time.
The thing is, time is thick on the ground in small towns, where there's so much less need for meticulous expertise. There were no readings, nightclubs, or jazz concerts in the village. That makes it sound boring, but I didn't care. There's something to be said for having the time in which to become truly experienced in a discipline, instead of merely knowing a little about all of them, passed on second-hand over cocktails.
In the end, the friends I'd had in the city didn't have much in common with me, or even with each other. What we'd shared there was just...geography.
****
"Mr. Dusk! Mr. Dusk!"
They never show up during business hours.
I could have happily stayed curled up in my chair, working on the Farmer's Guide, except that the lights were on in my apartment, which meant people knew I was there. The shop technically closes at five, but when you live where you work there's always the hazard of latecomers. You can't just ignore people when everyone in town knows you.
The boy was calling up from the street, and when I glanced out the window I saw he was standing on the back of a pickup truck laden with wood. The truck was Phillip MacKenzie's, but the wood must have belonged to the boy's father.
He saw my face at the window and gave me a broad grin and two thumbs up, then bent to speak to Phillip through the window. The truck made a lurching turn and pulled around the building next
door, heading for the little loading alley in back.
"You're my last delivery today," the boy said, hauling small bundles of wood from the back of the truck's bed to the gate, where Phillip was offloading them into the sheltered back porch. "You want 'em here?"
"Sure," I said, emerging barefoot onto the porch. "Hi, Phil."
"Christopher," Phillip said, nodding to me as he stacked another bundle next to my door.
"Hope the kid's paying you for all this."
Phillip grinned. "Gas, labor, and I get to keep all the tips. Beats kicking cows around the pasture this late in the year."
"I can imagine. Business booming?" I asked the boy.
"Yes sir. Would have been here sooner but we had to drive out to The Pines and you know the roads ain't great."
"Lucas bought some wood from you, then?"
"Yep," the boy said. "Gave him a good deal too."
"Oh?"
"Like yours," he said, offhand. "My dad says I gotta do better in school, so he's gonna tutor me."
"Who, Lucas?" I asked, baffled. "Is he a teacher?"
"No, but he knows a lot. I said, what'll you gimme for the wood, and he said he didn't have much money on him, and I said he could do my homework for me, as a joke."
I chuckled. "I bet he took that well."
"Well, he said he'd show me how to do it myself. He knows a lot," the boy added. "About history and stuff. And I don't."
"Aren't you interested in history?" I asked. "You buy books about it, don't you? I'm sure you have."
"That's interesting history," the boy replied.
"Oh, well, interesting history," I agreed, passing a tip to Phillip, who doffed his ball cap and climbed back into the truck, dusting splinters and wood chips off his hands. I circled around to the truck's gate and crooked my finger at the boy until he crouched at the edge and regarded me with quick, sharp eyes.
"What's he like around you?" I asked. "Lucas, I mean."
"What do you mean, like?" the boy asked back.
"You know. Is he shy? He seems shy around most people."
"Nope, not really. Trick is not to care," the boy replied.
"Why would I care?"
The boy beamed. "Exactly. See you 'round, Mr. Dusk. Give you my invoice tomorrow!"
I stepped back to let the truck pull out into the alley, then went inside and out to the front to watch it pull away, the boy sprawled comfortably on a pile of tarps in the back.
The cafe was looking interestingly busy, and I hadn't really eaten dinner, so I closed up for an hour and ran across to get a bite to eat. Besides, I wanted to see if anyone else had heard the gossip about Lucas tutoring the boy.
Instead, when I stepped inside the bustling restaurant, I found Lucas himself. He was seated at the window table I usually claimed, studying a menu while the rest of the cafe studied him. He looked jumpy, and he was at my table, so I took a menu from the rack near the door and rested my hand on the chair across from him.
"Evening," I said, and he looked up. "Mind if I sit down? Room's a little scarce right now."
"Oh, well, no – I don't mind," he said, inching backwards as if his legs might be taking up too much room under the table. "Are you sure?"
"That I want dinner? Yes," I said, giving him a friendly smile. "I'm pretty sociable, but if you want me to leave I can."
"No, I don't mind. I'm not much of a conversationalist," he added.
"You don't have to be. I talk enough for both of us."
"Seems everyone here does," he murmured, bending back to his menu. "What do you talk about?"
"Oh, farm business and the weather, the Sunday sermon, whatever's been featured in the magazines this month. Patching leaky roofs," I said, and he smiled faintly.
"You eat alone, though, sometimes," he said. "I've seen you. With a book. And people come up to talk to you."
"Well, I've lived here for a while. And I own the only source of printed material for miles around."
Carmen was on that night, and she appeared at my elbow with two glasses of water. Around us, people were watching even more intently than they had been, and I felt a certain amount of pride in being the one to actually go and sit with Lucas.
"Know what you want yet?" Carmen asked, looking from me to Lucas and back again. "Dinner's on me, Christopher. Payback for Clara's book."
"Hope she likes it," I said, as Lucas practically hid behind the menu.
"She loves it. I think because she stole it."
"Better curb that young, or she'll be boosting cars before you know it."
"Ah, glory days," Carmen winked at me. "Takes after me."
"Then she'll do fine. Have you tried the soup, Lucas?" I asked. He flicked his eyes up.
"No, not yet."
"You should. I think I'll have that, Carmen."
"It's good tonight, split-pea with ham," she said. "And you?"
"Um," Lucas stammered. "Soup too please. Thank you. Thank you," he repeated, when she took his menu. She gave him a small smile, then gave me a what the hell? look and walked off.
"I always worry I won't like something when I come here, and the cook will notice and be offended," Lucas said. "I've seen him, I think he lives on the road I take into town."
"If it helps, he's used to people insulting his food, we all tease him about it," I said. "That's the price you pay for living in a little place like this. It's hard to be anonymous. Everyone learns what you like and dislike, after a while."
"I hadn't thought about that when I moved here."
"You came from the city," I said.
"Pretty obvious," he said.
"Yep. You're not one of the summer crowd, and you might've noticed that the faces don't change much around here."
"But you haven't lived here always, have you?"
"No. Three years."
"Why'd you move here?" he asked, then blushed. "If I can ask."
"I needed a break," I said, and sipped my water so I wouldn't have to talk further. He just watched me, a growing desperation in his eyes to fill the silence. I set my glass down.
"Listen, we don't have to talk," I said. "Ever eaten dinner with a farmer? Total silence. I'm used to it."