by Jojo Moyes
Please don’t say anything else, she said silently. Her cheeks were aflame again, her thoughts a jumble. But when she glanced up he wasn’t looking at her.
“Was that door like that when we came in?” He was staring at the back of the library. The door, which had been open a sliver to allow in the sound of the music, was now wide open. A series of distant, irregular thumps came from within. He stood very still, then turned to Alice, his ease of the previous minutes gone. “Stay there.”
He strode swiftly back inside and then, a moment later, emerged from his house with a large double-barreled rifle. Alice stepped back as he passed, watching as he walked toward the library. Then, unable to stop herself, she followed a few paces behind, her feet silent on the grass as she tiptoed down the back path.
* * *
• • •
What seems to be the problem here, boys?”
Frederick Guisler stood in the doorway. Behind him Alice, her heart in her mouth, could just make out the scattered books on the floor, an overturned chair. There were two, no, three young men in the library, dressed in jeans and shirts. One held a beer bottle, and another an armful of books, which, as Fred stood there, he dropped with a kind of provocative deliberation. She could just make out Sophia standing, rigid, in the corner, her gaze fixed on some indeterminate point on the floor.
“You got a colored in your library.” The boy’s voice held a nasal whine and was slurred with drink.
“Yup. And I’m standing here trying to work out what business that is of yours.”
“This is for white folks. She shouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah.” The other two young men, emboldened by beer, jeered back at him.
“Do you run this library now?” Fred’s voice was icy. It held a tone she had never heard before.
“I ain’t—”
“I said, do you run this library, Chet Mitchell?”
The boy’s eyes slid sideways, as if the sound of his own name had reminded him of the potential for consequences. “No.”
“Then I suggest you leave. All three of you. Before this gun slips in my hand and I do something I regret.”
“You threatening me over a colored?”
“I’m telling you what happens when a man finds three drunk fools on his property. And if you like, just as easy, I’ll tell you what happens if a man finds they don’t leave as soon as he tells them. Pretty sure you ain’t going to like it, though.”
“I don’t see why you’re sticking up for her. You got a thing fer Brownie here?”
Quick as a flash, Fred had the boy by the throat, pinned against the wall with a white-knuckled fist. Alice ducked backward, her breath in her throat. “Don’t push me, Mitchell.”
The boy swallowed, raised his palms. “It was just a joke,” he choked. “Can’t take a joke now, Mr. Guisler?”
“I don’t see anyone else laughing. Now git.” Fred dropped the boy, whose knees buckled. He rubbed at his throat, shot a nervous look at his friends and then, when Fred took a step forward, ducked out through the back door. Alice, her heart pounding, stepped back as the three stumbled out, adjusting their clothes with a mute bravado, then walked in silence back down the grit path. Their courage returned when they were out of easy range.
“You got a thing for Brownie, Frederick Guisler? That why your wife left?”
“You can’t shoot for shit anyway. I seen you hunting!”
Alice thought she might be sick. She leaned on the back wall of the library, a fine sweat prickling on her back, her heart rate only easing when she could just make them out disappearing around the corner. She could hear Fred inside, picking up books and placing them on the table.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Sophia. I should have come back sooner.”
“Not at all. It’s my own fault for leaving the door open.”
Alice made her way slowly up the steps. Sophia, on the surface, looked unperturbed. She stooped, picking up books and checking them for damage, dusting their surfaces and tutting at the torn labels. But when Fred turned away to adjust a shelf that had been shoved from its moorings, she saw Sophia’s hand reach out to the desk for support, her knuckles tightening momentarily on its edge. Alice stepped in and, without a word, began tidying, too. The scrapbooks that Sophia had so carefully been putting together had been ripped to pieces in front of her. The carefully mended books were newly torn and hurled across the room, loose pages still fluttering around the interior.
“I’ll stay late this week and help you fix them,” Alice said. And then, when Sophia didn’t respond, she added: “That is . . . if you’re coming back?”
“You think a bunch of snot-nosed kids are going to keep me from my job? I’ll be fine, Miss Alice.” She paused, and gave her a tight smile. “But your help would be appreciated, thank you. We have ground to make up.”
“I’ll speak to the Mitchells,” said Fred. “I’m not going to let this happen again.” His voice softened and his body was easy as he moved around the little cabin. But Alice saw how every few minutes his focus would shift to the window, and that he only relaxed once he had the two women in his truck, ready to drive them home.
EIGHT
Before today, Jody had been a boy, dressed in overalls and a blue shirt—quieter than most, even suspected of being a little cowardly. And now he was different. Out of a thousand centuries they drew the ancient admiration . . . that a man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot. They knew that Jody had been miraculously lifted out of equality with them, and had been placed over them.
• JOHN STEINBECK, The Red Pony
Given the speed at which news traveled through Baileyville, its snippets of gossip starting as a trickle, then pushing through its inhabitants in an unstoppable torrent, the stories of Sophia Kenworth’s employment at the Packhorse Library and its trashing by three local men were swiftly deemed serious enough to warrant a town meeting.
Alice stood shoulder to shoulder with Margery, Beth and Izzy, in a corner at the back, while Mrs. Brady addressed the assembled gathering. Bennett sat two rows back beside his father. “You going to sit down, girl?” Mr. Van Cleve had said, looking her up and down as he entered.
“I’m fine right here, thank you,” she had answered, and watched as his expression turned disapprovingly toward his son.
“We have always prided ourselves on being a pleasant, orderly town,” Mrs. Brady was saying. “We do not want to become the kind of place where thuggish behavior becomes the norm. I have spoken to the parents of the young men concerned and made it clear that this will not be tolerated. A library is a sacred place—a sacred place of learning. It should not be considered fair game just because it is staffed by women.”
“I’d like to add to that, Mrs. Brady.” Fred stepped forward. Alice recalled the way he had looked at her on the night of Tex Lafayette’s show, the strange intimacy of his bathroom, and felt her skin prickle with color, as if she had done something to be ashamed of. She had told Annie the green dress belonged to Beth. Annie’s left eyebrow had lifted halfway to the heavens.
“That library is in my old shed,” said Fred. “That means, in case anyone here is in any doubt, that it is on my property. I cannot be responsible for what happens to trespassers.” He looked slowly around the hall. “Anyone who thinks they have business heading into that building without my permission, or that of any of these ladies, will have me to answer to.”
He caught Alice’s eye as he stood down, and she felt her cheeks color again.
“I understand you have strong feelings about your property, Fred.” Henry Porteous stood. “But there are larger issues to discuss here. I, and a good number of our neighbors, am concerned about the impact this library is having on our little town. There are reports of wives no longer keeping house because they are too busy reading fancy magazines or cheap romances. There are children picking up dis
ruptive ideas from comic books. We’re struggling to control what influences are coming into our homes.”
“They’re just books, Henry Porteous! How do you think the great scholars of old learned?” Mrs. Brady’s arms folded across her chest, forming a solid, unbridgeable shelf.
“I’d put a dollar to a dime the great scholars were not reading The Amorous Sheik of Araby, or whatever it was my daughter was wasting her time with the other day. Do we really want their minds polluted with this stuff? I don’t want my daughter thinking she can run off with some Egyptian.”
“Your daughter has about as much chance of having her head turned by a Sheik of Araby as I do of becoming Cleopatra.”
“But you can’t be sure.”
“You want me to go through every book in this library to check for things that you might find fanciful, Henry Porteous? There are more challenging stories in the Bible than there are in the Pictorial Review and you know it.”
“Well, now you sound as sacrilegious as they do.”
Mrs. Beidecker stood. “May I speak? I would like to thank the book ladies. Our pupils have very much enjoyed the new books and learning materials, and the textbooks have proven very useful in helping them progress. I go through all the comic books before we hand them out, just to check what is inside, and I have found absolutely nothing to concern even the most sensitive of minds.”
“But you’re foreign!” Mr. Porteous interjected.
“Mrs. Beidecker came to our school with the highest of credentials,” Mrs. Brady exclaimed. “And you know it, Henry Porteous. Why, doesn’t your own niece attend her classes?”
“Well, maybe she shouldn’t.”
“Settle down! Settle down!” Pastor McIntosh climbed to his feet. “Now I understand feelings are running high. And yes, Mrs. Brady, there are some of us who do have reservations about the impact of this library on formative minds but—”
“But what?”
“There is clearly another issue here . . . the employment of a colored.”
“What issue would that be, Pastor?”
“You may favor the progressive ways, Mrs. Brady, but many in this town do not believe that colored folks should be in our libraries.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Van Cleve. He stood, and surveyed the sea of white faces. “The 1933 Public Accommodations Law authorizes—and I quote here—‘the establishment of segregated libraries for different races.’ The colored girl should not be in our library. You believe you’re above the law now, Margery O’Hare?”
Alice’s heart had lodged somewhere in her throat, but Margery, stepping forward, appeared supremely untroubled. “Nope.”
“Nope?”
“No. Because Miss Sophia isn’t using the library. She’s just working there.” She smiled at him sweetly. “We’ve told her very firmly she is under no circumstances to open any of our books and read them.”
There was a low ripple of laughter.
Mr. Van Cleve’s face darkened. “You can’t employ a colored in a white library. It’s against the law, and the laws of nature.”
“You don’t believe in employing them, huh?”
“It’s not about me. It’s about the law.”
“I’m most surprised to hear you complaining, Mr. Van Cleve,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, given the number of colored folk you got over there at your mine . . .”
There was an intake of breath.
“I do not.”
“I know most of them by person, as do half the good people here. You listing them as mulatto on your books doesn’t change the facts.”
“Oh, boy,” said Fred, under his breath. “She went there.”
Margery leaned back against the table. “Times are changing and colored folk are being employed in all sorts of ways. Now, Miss Sophia is fully trained and is keeping published material in commission that wouldn’t otherwise be able to stay on the shelves. Those Baileyville Bonus magazines? You all enjoy them, right? With the recipes and the stories and all?”
There was a low murmur of agreement.
“Well, those are all Miss Sophia’s work. She takes books and magazines that have been spoiled and she stitches what she can save back together to create new books for you all.” Margery leaned forward to flick something from her jacket. “Now, I can’t stitch like that and neither can my girls, and as you know, volunteers have been hard to come by. Miss Sophia isn’t riding out, visiting families or even choosing the books. She’s just keeping house for us, so to speak. So until it’s one rule for everyone, Mr. Van Cleve, you and your mines and me and my library, I will keep on employing her. I trust that’s acceptable to y’all.”
With a nod, Margery walked out through the center of the room, her gait unhurried and her head held high.
* * *
• • •
The screen door slammed behind them with a resounding crash. Alice had said nothing the whole journey back from the meeting hall, walking a way behind the two men, from where she could hear the kind of muttered expletives that suggested an imminent and volcanic explosion. She didn’t have long to wait.
“Who the Sam Hill does that woman think she is? Trying to embarrass me in front of the whole town?”
“I don’t think anyone felt you were—” Bennett began, but his father threw his hat on the table, cutting him off.
“She’s been nothing but trouble her whole life! And that criminal daddy of hers before her. And now standing there trying to make me look a fool in front of my own people?”
Alice hovered in the doorway, wondering if she could sidle upstairs without anybody noticing. In her experience Mr. Van Cleve’s tantrums rarely burned out quickly—he would fuel them with bourbon and continue shouting and declaiming until he passed out late in the evening.
“Nobody cares what that woman says, Pop,” Bennett began again.
“Those coloreds are listed as mulatto at my mine because they’re light-skinned. Light-skinned, I tell you!”
Alice pondered Sophia’s dark skin, and wondered, if she was sister to a miner, how siblings could be completely different colors. But she said nothing. “I think I’ll head upstairs,” she said quietly.
“You can’t stay there, Alice.”
Oh, God, she thought. Don’t make me sit on the porch with you.
“Then I’ll come—”
“At that library. You ain’t working there no more. Not with that girl.”
“What?”
She felt his words close around her like a stranglehold.
“You’ll hand in your notice. I’m not having my family aligned with Margery O’Hare’s. I don’t care what Patricia Brady thinks—she’s lost her mind along with the rest of them.” Van Cleve walked to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large glass of bourbon. “And how the heck did that girl see who was on the mine’s books, anyway? I wouldn’t put it past her to be sneaking in. I’m going to put a ban on her coming anywhere near Hoffman.”
There was a silence. And then Alice heard her voice.
“No.”
Van Cleve looked up. “What?”
“No. I’m not leaving the library. I’m not married to you, and you don’t tell me what I do.”
“You’ll do what I say! You live under my roof, young lady!”
She didn’t blink.
Mr. Van Cleve glared at her, then turned to Bennett, and waved a hand. “Bennett? Sort your woman out.”
“I’m not leaving the library.”
Mr. Van Cleve turned puce. “Do you need a slap, girl?”
The air in the room seemed to disappear. She looked at her husband. Don’t you think of laying a hand on me, she told him silently. Mr. Van Cleve’s face was taut, his breath shallow in his chest. Don’t you even think about it. Her mind raced, wondering suddenly what
she would do if he actually lifted his hand to her. Should she hit back? Was there something she could use to protect herself? What would Margery do? She took in the knife on the breadboard, the poker by the range.
But Bennett looked down at his feet and swallowed. “She should stay at the library, Pa.”
“What?”
“She likes it there. She’s . . . doing a good job. Helping people and all.”
Van Cleve stared at his son. His eyes bulged out of his beet-red face, as if someone had squeezed him from the neck. “Have you lost your damned mind as well?” He stared at them both, his cheeks blown out and his knuckles white, as if braced for an explosion that wouldn’t come. Finally he threw the last of the bourbon down his throat, slammed down his glass and set off outside, the screen door bouncing on its hinges in his wake.
* * *
• • •
Bennett and Alice stood in the silent kitchen, listening to Mr. Van Cleve’s Ford Sedan starting up and roaring into the distance.
“Thank you,” she said.
He let out a long breath, and turned away. She wondered then whether something might shift. Whether the act of standing up to his father might alter whatever had gone so wrong between them. She thought of Kathleen Bligh and her husband, the way that, even as Alice read to him, Kathleen would stroke his head as she passed, or place her hand on his. The way, sick and frail as he was, Garrett would reach out for her, his hollowed face always finding even the faintest smile for his wife.
She took a step toward Bennett, wondering if she might take his hand. But, as if reading her mind, he thrust both into his pockets.
“Well, I appreciate it,” she said quietly, stepping back again. And then, when he didn’t speak, she fixed him a drink and went upstairs.