Pamela Morsi (20 page)

D.J. nodded. “Yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking this morning. But I was expecting to have James onboard. I was expecting for him to help me.”

Viv smiled and patted her on the arm. “Then you need to remember to include him.” She turned to Scott and tapped the face of her wristwatch. “It’s never good to be late to a funeral. People will think we’re part of the family.”

In Verdant, there was probably no danger of that, but Scott did escort her out.

418.8 Applied Linguistics; Structural Usage

D
utch Porter’s funeral was as sad and sorrowful as such occasions tended to be. It also felt rushed. And although much effort was made by the funeral director and those in attendance to negate that sense, it persisted.

Outside the church at the four-way stop on Main Street the air brakes of the grain trucks could be heard. They were headed through town and out into the fields. Life went on. Jobs were done. The world kept turning. And the truth of that invaded the seclusion of sorrow within the building.

Scott had liked Dutch. He’d been a hard worker, fine parent and excellent citizen. It seemed wrong that his life should get such short shrift because of one bad decision at the end. Or perhaps even natural causes during harvest resulted in a hasty eulogy. It wasn’t until Scott noted the jitters in his own legs that he realized he was as antsy as everyone else.

With a final benediction, the body was loaded into the hearse and Scott and his mother followed the procession to the cemetery. Most people had taken that opportunity to disappear. At the graveside it was mostly the immediate family. The VFW was in attendance to acknowledge Dutch’s service in the jungles of Viet Nam. They played a CD version of “Taps” as they folded the flag atop his casket.

Finally, it was over. Except, of course, it wasn’t. His mother needed to talk to everyone, interact as if she was tacit hostess of a garden party in this garden of stones.

Scott wandered over to his father’s grave. He found it easily, though he hadn’t been there since the headstone was laid. His mother had planted little dark pink flowers at the head and lined the rectangle with chalky white rock. Scott was pretty sure that was against the rules. But he also recalled her panic that first morning after the burial, afraid she might not remember where it was, that she might lose him.

Scott closed his eyes as if that could shut out the memory of the pain of those first days.

Suddenly she was there at his side and he smiled down at her.

“The flowers look good, Mom,” he said.

She nodded. “The heat has been hard on them, but I try to water every day.”

He hated that. He hated that she came here every day. He hated that she kept such a lonely vigil by herself.

“Maybe after the harvest is done, we could...we could all come out here and you and I can...I don’t know. Leanne and Jamie would come. Should we do something? Some kind of ceremony?”

She looked up at him and smiled.

“No,” his mother answered. “There is nothing else to be done. But thank you. You are a good son, Scott. I don’t always remember to tell you that, but I want you to know. To always know, whether I tell you or not.”

“Thanks Mom,” he said. “I’ll remind you of that next time you get pissed off at me.”

“A lady may get annoyed, but she never gets...p.o.’d,” she told him.

He let her drop him off to get his van. She went on to the Porters’ home, where she intended to be of help if needed.

Scott changed into more casual clothes and drove to the store. He’d left his cell number on the door, but he hadn’t gotten so much as a text from anyone. Main Street was deserted once more. He was too antsy to sit inside and do nothing all afternoon. So he left his sign up and drove on by.

There were a number of trucks lined up near the grain elevator. Unloading was a two-step process. Each truck was driven onto the scales for total tonnage. Then the wheat was dumped into the pit area, where cuplike conveyers scooped it up and moved it into storage silos. Once empty, the truck was weighed again. Because of the incendiary properties of airborne grain dust, the operators as well as the truck drivers took extra precautions to avoid the dangers of explosion that even the most up-to-date ventilation technology couldn’t completely prevent.

Scott spotted Amos in the line, leaning indolently against the wheel well of a heavily loaded vehicle.

With a quick glance in the rearview mirror to make sure that there was no traffic coming behind him, Scott pulled to a stop in the middle of the road.

“Hey, shirker, what’s up?” he called out.

Amos pressed one foot against the tire to push himself into a standing position and walked toward the van.

Scott noted that he was better dressed than might be expected for a wheat hauler. Even for a workday, he looked more slicked up that usual. Although he hadn’t seen him, Scott assumed that meant he’d been to Dutch’s funeral and said as much.

“No,” Amos replied. “I couldn’t really go. There was so much grain to be cut, and most of the Browns’ crew were among the family. So I stayed out there to help. I was running the cart until the truck got full.”

Scott nodded. “How long have you been in line?”

“Not long, twenty minutes maybe,” he answered. “I’d say it’s going pretty fast, but that would probably jinx it.”

Scott grinned at the typically pessimistic viewpoint of his friend.

“With that attitude, I guess there’s no use asking if you’re making progress with Jeannie.”

Amos actually blushed. “I did say, ‘Do you want to grab a sandwich sometime?’”

“And?”

“She said, ‘Sure.’ But, she was probably being polite.”

“Yeah,” Scott agreed sarcastically. “Women are always agreeing to stuff they don’t mean. Especially Jeannie, which is why she’s still with her ex, right? And since you are asking women to eat with you basically all the time, she probably thought exactly nothing of the invitation.”

Amos lowered his chin to eyeball Scott more effectively. “You mock me? The crazy vet guy is getting ridiculed by the sad sack whose wife had to find sexual satisfaction elsewhere.”

Scott laughed. “If I don’t mock you, who will?”

“Right back at ya.”

The line of trucks moved, Amos waved off and Scott headed down the road. He seriously hoped that Amos and Jeannie could find something together. What had happened to Amos in service to his country couldn’t be changed. But if he could move beyond it, find his share of happiness, that would be good.

“Take your own advice, Sanderson,” he admonished aloud.

The librarian was warming to him a little bit. D.J. The name, or the nick of it, suited her. It was strange how he’d thought she looked like his Sparkle girl. She actually looked nothing like her. Or at least he didn’t think that she did. As he tried to conjure up the woman from the beach so many years ago, he could no longer recall her face.

The face had not been one of her important parts,
he reminded himself jokingly.

Scott drove out to his house. He parked the van in the drive and walked around to the backyard. His garden had missed him. He picked snap beans until his hands were so full he needed a pail. There was broccoli and cauliflower, as well. And from the looks of the tops on his root crops, the potatoes and beets were going to be ready to dig soon. What had been a lovely cabbage had been partially ripped out of the ground by an unwelcome wildlife visitor, but it couldn’t be helped.

He carried his vegetable plunder to the back step and uncoiled the hose and turned on the outside tap. He took his time, watering thoroughly as his mind wandered where it would.

Where his mind mostly wanted to wander was back to D.J. He pictured her as he’d seen her earlier. Efficient and businesslike behind the circulation desk. The image made him smile.

He recalled the conversation of the previous evening. Their childhoods had been in such sharp contrast. Scott had been sustained and sheltered and sometimes nearly suffocated by the love of his parents. D.J. had been an unwelcome third wheel sent rolling off on her own at the earliest possible moment.

Scott had the best of that deal. He was certain. But all that early independence and self-reliance gave her a natural sense of confidence that was not typical of a lot of people in their twenties. He’d been working in the drugstore for most of his life. But he missed his father on-the-job even more than at home and wished he were around to talk things over.

D.J. had come to a town she’d never seen, where she didn’t know a soul and stepped into a situation that had problems set in place for years. And she’d never flinched. He admired that.

“I bet
she
never studied sex in a book,” he murmured to himself.

He quickly reproved himself. Best not to put D.J. and sex in the same thought. He found her incredibly attractive. But she was just beginning to accept him as a friend. If he went all masher on her, they’d be back to square one in a hurry.

When he finished watering he unlocked the back door and let himself inside. He’d left all the windows open to prevent any buildup of sewer gases. So far, everything seemed to be fine.

In case a plumbing miracle had occurred as unexpectedly as the plumbing disaster, he ran water in the sink. It took about five minutes before the water began to back up. The clog was still there, and it was very far down the pipe. For sure they’d be digging up the backyard.

In the bedroom he pulled out more clean shirts to take to his mother’s. He was headed back through the house when the phone rang. He slung the clothes over the back of a kitchen chair before picking up the receiver.

“There you are!” the voice on the other end of the line announced in a fashion that was almost accusatory. “I’ve been calling the drugstore all morning with no answer.”

“Hey sis,” he replied. “You know, out in the country here we’ve got this new technology thing. We call it a cell phone. You can call the number and it rings right in my pocket.”

“Very funny.”

“It even has the cool texting feature where you can type in a message and the words fly through the air to find me.”

“Stick with the drug dealing,” she quipped. “You’ll never make it as a comedian.”

He chuckled. “I don’t know, lots of strange stuff passing for comedy these days.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Leanne answered. “My life is no laughing matter. Why aren’t you at work?”

“Harvest,” he answered. “And we had a funeral this morning. I didn’t even open.”

“Who died?”

Scott went into a short version of Dutch Porter’s last days. His sister was sympathetic. She, too, remembered the older man. And had actually dated one of his sons a couple of times in high school. The two chatted companionably for several minutes, laughing as they remembered stories from the past.

“So when are you coming this way?” Scott asked her. “I sort of miss you, in a disinterested, kid brother kind of way.”

“We were going to come this weekend, but Mom said no,” she answered.

“You’re kidding, right. Our mom? The same mom we’ve always had?”

“The very one,” Leanne answered. “She said somebody was going to be staying in the guest room for harvest.”

“Really? I didn’t hear anything about that. And, actually, I’m staying there.”

“You’re staying at Mom’s?”

“Uh-huh, I’ve got some snafu with my septic system. With everybody out in the fields, there’s nobody to look at it this week.”

“Well, good. I mean, bad for you, good for me. I’m glad you’re staying with Mom. I’m a little worried about her.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“She’s being way too secretive these days. Surely you’ve noticed.”

The only thing Scott had noticed was the excess of canned goods.

“Yeah, maybe, I guess,” he answered, vaguely.

“Do you know about the private detective?”

“Private detective?”

“Mom asked Jamie to recommend a private detective. And he did! I could have killed him. I said, ‘Why didn’t you make her tell you what it was for?’ and he said, ‘Because it wasn’t any of my business.’ It’s one of the things that drives me crazy about him.”

“Absolutely,” Scott said. “Integrity can be so inconvenient.”

“Oh, shut up! You know you’re as curious as I am.”

In that, his sister was completely right.

440.0 Romance Languages

D.J.
spent the whole afternoon working on her floor plan for the stacks. She must have been extremely intent on her job, because she didn’t notice Ashley Turpin until the girl spoke.

“What are you doing?”

The pudgy, flat-faced little girl was wearing very baggy shorts and a pink T-shirt with the image of a unicorn. The shirt was both undersize and faded, but there was nothing lacking in the curiosity of the bright brown eyes.

“I’m drawing a picture of the library,” she explained.

“Can I see?”

D.J. nodded and motioned to Ashley to come around the desk.

The little girl obeyed, but with the trepidation and reverence of one being beckoned into a secret, magical kingdom. Trolls might lurk anywhere.

“What do you think?” D.J. asked, showing off the precise, scaled graph paper layout.

Ashley looked at it for a long moment. “Well,” she said finally. “The lines are very straight, but...it’s not very pretty.”

D.J. laughed. “You’re right, it isn’t. But it represents something that will be very beautiful.”

The girl eyed her questioningly.

“You see these rectangles here on the edge,” D.J. said, pointing to them. “These are the windows on the side of the building. By moving the shelving in this direction, the light from those windows can actually flow down the aisles, all the way to the vestibule.”

Ashley’s brow furrowed. “What’s a vesta-pewl?”

“Vestibule. It’s this area right in front of us.”

The girl was surprised. “The light from the windows will come all the way down here?”

D.J. nodded. “Yes, I think in the morning, it will.”

“That’ll look good with the pink and white floor.”

D.J. smiled. “Yes, I think it will look very nice with the marble.”

“Maybe you should add that to your picture,” Ashley suggested.

D.J. looked at her meticulously accurate representation. She didn’t think it needed anything.

“Sometimes color helps,” Ashley told her. “It helps other people see what you see.”

The diagram was mostly for her own benefit. But the memory of repeated book slamming suddenly rang in her ears.

“I don’t know that I really have time to add color to it,” she hedged.

“Oh.” The little sound was full of disappointment and resignation. As if a million ideas she’d come up with in her life had been rejected just as easily.

“I think it’s an excellent suggestion,” D.J. assured her. “Very much worth doing. But I need to get busy on laying out the aspects of the move, which is very complicated.”

Ashley nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve got my crayons,” she told her. “I could do it for you.”

D.J. looked into the hopefully expectant little face and saw, as she always had, herself. The lonely excess baggage of life plan that wasn’t quite working out. She was transported back to those early days among the books of the children’s department at Wichita Public Library where the encouraging whispers of the librarians were the only voices of approval that she ever heard. D.J. had to pass that forward.

“Go get your crayons,” she told her.

As the girl scurried off, D.J. looked at her perfect, clear-cut, accurate rendering with a sigh. Then she hurried to the copy machine. At least if Ashley ruined it completely, she’d have a backup.

“I need to be able to read all these numbers,” she explained, pointing out the measurements that she’d made. “Maybe you could color around them.”

“Sure, no problem,” Ashley told her.

D.J.’s expectation was that the little girl would be as haphazard in her illustration as she was in her personal hygiene and grooming. In that she was completely wrong. The child was careful and capable. And she was also curious about the process that D.J. was putting together.

“This is my master plan,” D.J. explained. “It’s kind of like a flow chart.”

Ashley’s expression indicated the concept of “flow chart” was a new one.

“It’s the actions that we’ll need to take to get from where we are now, to where we will be in the picture you’re coloring.”

“Okay,” the girl replied, vaguely. “But don’t you just take the books off and turn the shelves and put them back on?”

“Well, we could do that,” D.J. told her. “But it would be very disruptive. Being able to locate the books we have quickly and efficiently is, in many ways, the whole underlying basis of librarianship. And book locations are not based on the books themselves, but to their relationship to the books around them. When a book comes off the shelf, the only way we know where it goes back, is what books are around it.”

“Don’t the numbers and letters on the back tell you that?”

“They help us,” D.J. said. “They explain the relationship of one book to others. But if all the books are in a pile willy-nilly, there is nothing to tell us which book goes on which shelf. It could take months of trial and error and endless shifting to get everything back in order again.”

Ashley seemed to be satisfied with that explanation. And D.J. would have left it there, if she had not heard, or perhaps merely sensed, a presence in the shelving range nearby. James was there. He was listening.

She kept her speech at a conversational volume, but she was careful to keep her chin up, so that none of her words would be missed.

“For each shelf in the stacks, I am assigning two numbers. One number is for the physical shelf. So we can know where it is now and where it will be after the move.”

Ashley nodded.

“The second number is for the contents of that particular shelf. That same group of books will sit together in the new configuration, but on a different physical shelf, that we can point to before we’ve even removed one volume. While the shelves are moved, each set of books will be together vertically in the reading room with its number. So we can know where the books are every moment and get them back to where they are supposed to be with the least disruption possible.”

Ashley seemed perfectly agreeable to that. D.J. could only hope that James would ultimately feel the same.

By closing time, D.J. had made a sizable dent in completing the flow chart. Ashley, on the other hand, finished her coloring. And D.J. was forced to admit that it looked surprisingly better. The rich browns of the library’s oak shelves contrasted very nicely with the yellow light that flooded in through the windows. And Ashley had continued it down the aisles to cast a creamy, almost butter, color upon the pink-and-white marble in front of the circulation desk. All of her measurements and calculations were easily readable and the paper did simply look prettier.

“This looks great,” D.J. told her. “You did a wonderful job. I am so proud of you.”

Ashley beamed under the praise. Then seemed almost embarrassed at accepting it. Assuring D.J. that, “It was coloring. Even babies can do coloring.”

“No baby could do this. It takes an artist’s eye. I don’t have that. And I appreciate the loan of yours. Thank you.”

The girl liked that. “You’re welcome.”

“It’s late, why don’t I give you a ride down to the Brazier.”

For an instant she looked delighted, but then her expression turned to worry. “I am not allowed to accept rides,” she said. “It’s my mom’s biggest rule. Just because our town isn’t full of strangers, doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen to little girls.”

D.J. was sure that Ashley’s mom was right. Lonely little girls on their own would always be easy prey for someone. At least her own parents had the financial resources to pay someone else to keep her safe.

“Why don’t we call her and ask permission,” she suggested. “That way, even if she says no, she’ll realize that you are running late and she won’t worry.”

Ashley agreed to that. And when her mother agreed to let her ride with the librarian, one would have thought from her reaction that the little Chevy hatchback was an amusement park and an ice-cream sundae rolled into one.

While the girl excitedly gathered up her things, D.J. considered the work she’d spread out upon the circulation desk. Her first thought was to take it all home with her and work on it that evening. See if she could get it done. But getting the plan done was not going to be worth a lot if she could get no one to help her implement it.

She left all of it sitting out on the desk, with the painstakingly illustrated future layout sitting right on top. She crossed her fingers for luck. She was going to need it.

D.J. locked the front door, turned out the lights and let herself and Ashley out the service entrance. The girl was so excited about the car, D.J. was worried she would be disappointed with the small, unimpressive vehicle.

“It is so cool,” Ashley said. “It’s like a kiddie car. Most of the guys my mom dates drive trucks. My grandparents have a car. I get to ride in it sometimes, but it’s really big. And it kind of smells like old people.” She wrinkled up her nose derisively. “Your car smells...like a dog.”

D.J. wasn’t sure that was better, but she laughed.

“I do have a dog.”

“What’s his name?”

“Melvil Dewey, Jr.”

The girl stared at her blankly.

“I call him Dew.”

The trip through town was completely taken up with questions about the dog. Where did she get him? What did he like to do? Where did he sleep? What did he like to eat?

Once all her questions were answered, Ashley gave a sigh of pure longing.

“I’ve always wanted to have a dog,” she said.

“You should ask your mother,” D.J. told her.

“I have...like a million times. She says, I’d ‘better make enough money to feed myself before I take on feeding something else.’”

D.J. shrugged. “Well, she probably has a point. My parents said something similar to me once. So now I’m grown up and I work hard and support myself and I can have any dog that I want. And I wanted Dew.”

Ashley nodded. “It’s sure a long time before I grow up,” she said.

“But the time won’t be wasted,” D.J. pointed out. “You can read about dogs, learn about the different breeds and how to train them. Decide what characteristics are important to you. As artistic as you are, you could put together your own notebooks of dogs you find interesting.”

The girl considered it. “I’m not sure my drawing is good enough.”

“Then trace the images out of one of our books,” D.J. said. “I already know that you can bring a picture to life with color.”

Slowly a smile crept across the girl’s face. “I can, can’t I?”

“You absolutely can,” D.J. agreed.

The parking lot at the Brazier was overflowing. And there was a line of customers waiting outside.

“You can drive around and let me off at the back,” Ashley suggested.

D.J. carefully edged through the narrow passage between cars at angle. At the back of the building her progress was stopped completely by a recognizable van.

“Thanks, D.J. I had a great day!” Ashley told her as she grabbed up her backpack and headed into the building. The girl nearly ran into Scott who was exiting, carrying a large cardboard box.

The minute he caught sight of her, D.J. was gifted with that amazing hot-guy smile. She deliberately tamped down her reaction, but the truth was, she liked it.

He stowed his load in the van and then slid the side door closed. He walked toward her and she assumed he was circling to the driver’s seat. Maybe he was. But first, he walked straight back to her.

He put his forearm atop the car and leaned toward the window.

“Just get off work?”

“Yeah, I closed up maybe ten minutes ago.”

“Have you got any plans for the evening?”

“Plans?”

His mother wasn’t here to foist some fake date upon them. If he asked her out, if she agreed, that would be something real.

“I...I have some work to do,” she lied.

“Can it wait? I’m taking dinner out to the Browns’ crew,” he said. “I thought maybe you could help me. It would be good for you to see the harvest process up close. And good for the library if people see you have an interest in it.”

“Uh...sure. That sounds great.”

“Okay. We’ll run by Mom’s house. You can leave your car and change your clothes.”

He gave her a smile and a wave as he headed to his van. D.J. resisted the impulse to slap herself on the forehead and settled for silently cursing herself as an idiot. She was already attracted to the guy. Despite his oblivion, they had a history. They were getting way too friendly, way too easy with each other. Last night she had let him get way too close. Not like a lover, but still she’d felt his lips on her skin. That was dangerous stuff.

Typical of a practiced player—soften a woman up, catch her off guard.

The practiced-player warning rang hollow even in her own brain. He may have been a player back in the day. He may have cheated on his wife. He may have had affairs with married women. But there was something about him now that was genuine.

People could change, couldn’t they?

The answer to that rhetorical question had always been, no, they cannot. Her parents never changed. She, herself, had never changed. It was her experience that you either accept people the way that they are, or you move on down the road.

But this was the end of the road for her. Verdant was going to be the place that was her own. Her hometown.

They reached the driveway to her place and she pulled into a space in the back. Viv was not home. She got her case from the backseat. Scott was already turning the van around.

“It’ll just take me a minute,” she promised.

“Jeans, not shorts,” he told her. “And put on some real shoes. I don’t expect you’ve got barn boots, but something sturdy.”

Nodding, she hurried up the stairs. It was exciting. What an adventure! She imagined that her reaction was about as silly as Ashley’s had been about a ride in her car, but she was okay with that.