August Moon (3 page)

“Johnny, I meant! Sorry. I was just putting away a book by some Jeff guy. It’s still early, for me. Bye,
Johnny
.” The name of my murdered ex-lover dangled heavy in the air between us, and I couldn’t for the life of me decide if I had thrown it out there on purpose.

He hung up without another word. I went into the back room to splash water on my face. On the way, I gathered all my feelings around me like a billowing parachute, carefully folding and tucking until they fit into a neat knapsack, which I put off to the side. It was the last time in my life I’d be able to compartmentalize so easily.

August lumbered in, the
weather grew impossibly hotter, and farmers muttered about drought as their crops turned crispy and their irrigation systems taxed the water supply. The tourists loved the hot, clear weather, and the beaches and local shops were packed like seeds in a pomegranate. The out-of-towners seemed not to notice the lawns turning brown or the watering bans, and happily packed themselves into Stub’s every night to enjoy live music and juicy, butter-knife steaks. In this way, the dance between the needs of an agricultural community and the requirements of a tourist-based economy played out against each other as they had since rich East Coasters discovered the beauty, solitude, and plentiful fish in Battle Lake back in the early 1900s.

As the resumés for the job as new Battle Lake head librarian began trickling in, I studied each one, reminding myself it was a ticket out of here, away from memories of Johnny, and Jeff, and crazy people too numerous to count. I was too far into feeling sorry for myself to even be embarrassed by how wildly under-qualified for this job the incoming applicants proved me to be. When a little downtime in the library presented itself, I created a banned books display to feed my low-burning but constant anger and frustration. The display featured some of my favorite books of all time.
Of
Mice and Men
,
The Catcher in the Rye, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, A Wrinkle in Time,
The Color Purple
, pretty much anything by Judy Blume and Stephen King, the Harry Potter series, and
The Handmaid’s Tale
. I took grim pleasure in the fact that books flew off the display and I needed to continually dig for more censored literature to add.

I also sent Sunny a postcard to let her know I was moving. It would have been braver to call, but her hours were unpredictable, I reasoned, so mail would be the best way to let her know that in a couple weeks, a very nice couple from town would be moving from their apartment to Sunny’s vast and beautiful farm to care for her house and dog until her return.

Before I knew it, it was Friday, August 13, and it was time to interview the crop of hopefuls to find my worthy replacement. Mrs. Berns had agreed to come in early with me to get the library spick and span before the interviews. Not surprisingly, I found myself alone in the yellow brick building at eight a.m. on this scorched but cloudy day. The weather, a colicky mix of heat and shade, set my teeth on edge as I unlocked the library door. The air had a hint of smoke, despite the burning ban, which created a mental image of the prairies surrounding us going up like a Kleenex. There’d be no white knight to save me, I thought petulantly, missing Johnny so much in that moment that my skin felt swollen. I hadn’t heard from him since our unpleasant July phone conversation. When a rap came on the door behind me and pulled me out of my self-pity, I was grateful.
Mrs. Berns
, I figured.
Now I’ll have someone around to be mad at
.

I turned and was surprised to see a young and pretty woman instead of a geriatric and libidinous one. For a moment I thought it was Lucy, the peppy high school girl who had been helping me out on the busy weekends, but the woman shifted her face and I saw she was a stranger. I made the universal, point-at-your-watch-and-shake-your-head gesture for “we’re closed, come back later,” but the woman shrugged her shoulders and smiled like she didn’t understand.

I pulled the door open. “The library doesn’t open up until ten o’clock. You’ll have to come back in a coupla hours.”

“Oh no! I’ve got a super-long shift, and I don’t have a thing to read. I was supposed to be at work five minutes ago, but I can’t bear the thought of another day without any books! I love those romances. I’m Alicia, by the way.” She held out her manicured hand.

I knew Alicia, or at least her type. It was her brunette-Barbie beauty, youthful arrogance, and overfamiliar, “you’ll give me whatever I want, won’t you?” smile that tipped me off. She was
that
girl, the one who, in middle school, got all the other desperate follower girls to wear their Guess jeans and turtle necks on Monday, and then showed up in a completely different outfit herself and made fun of them for being uncool. On Tuesday, she’d coach those same lonely girls to be mean to a randomly chosen chick in their group. When Wednesday rolled around, she’d make them all drink some nasty concoction to show their loyalty to her, and then ignore them when the popular kids strolled past. And so it went, until no girl in Alicia’s orbit knew who she could trust and either got smart and started hanging out with the nerds or the druggies, or morphed into a miniature, poorly dressed Alicia. Be sure and ask me how I know so much about what the lonely, follower girls went through in public school.

Yes, I knew Alicia’s type—the ones who were pretty, popular, confident, and entitled in elementary, middle, and high school— and thought they could coast on that for the rest of their life. Too bad no one bothered to tell them you could only cash those checks until you were eighteen. After that, the playing field evened out. A little. “Sorry. You’ll have to come back later. Maybe over your lunch break?”

“Is that a mouse behind you?”

I turned toward where she was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

“I swear I just saw something run under that desk over there. Maybe it was a rat. I’m gonna go peek, and we can herd it outside together.” Alicia sailed past me, flashing a conspiratorial grin on the way. We were going to hunt rodents together. No scaredy cats, us.

She crouched on all fours. “Mind turning on the lights?”

I flipped the switch and went to fire up the front computer. There was no mouse, but she was going to entertain me in exchange for letting her in early. Crafty, that one, I thought as I appraised her. She was an inch or two taller than my 5'6", maybe ten pounds lighter but two cup sizes larger, and her long brown hair was curled and sprayed into place. She wore a fair amount of makeup, but it was expertly applied to look natural.

She was cute and she wanted to play Power Ball, but I wasn’t in the mood. That was more telling than any other sad sack thing I had done in the last four weeks since Johnny had ditched town and me. If I wasn’t willing to outwit an obvious control freak in my own territory, I was seriously depressed. “If there was a mouse, it’s long gone. You might as well grab a book or two, since you’re in here already.”

“You sure you don’t want me to get the mouse?”

“We both know there’s no mouse. You need a library card, too?”

“If you don’t mind.”

I slid the form toward her. “Fill this out.”

Alicia attempted to catch my eye and make nice, but I kept my gaze fixed on my computer screen. When she grabbed a pencil out of the cup in front of me and filled out the form, though, her necklace caught my eye. It was a delicate golden cross hugged tight around her neck, like a choker, and splayed on the cross was a tiny, crucified Jesus in all his scrawny glory.

She caught me staring. “It was a gift from my mom.”

“Hmm. Where’d you say you work?”

“I didn’t.” She slid the card back toward me. Alicia Meale, and an address in Clitherall, the two-bars-and-a-post-office town just up the road from Battle Lake. Ms. Meale looked like she had neither done an honest day’s work in her life nor eaten venison, pheasant, or snapping turtle, which would make her stand out like a purple pig in that town.

“You’re new around here?”

“Not exactly. We’ve been here a few months. Anyhow, I better be going, or my boss is going to get crazy angry. It took longer to get a card than I thought it would. Maybe I’ll come back over my lunch hour?”

“We’re open until five o’clock.”

“Great! This is an awesome library.” She trailed her fingers over the front counter as she left, and stopped at the banned book display on her way out. “Unbelievable!” She laughed. “You’ve got a display of banned books! Too cool for school. Aren’t you worried you’re going to get in trouble?”

I warmed to her a hair, a microscopic, split-end of a hair. Maybe she was a misplanted chick, just like me. “In Battle Lake, you don’t get in trouble. It gets in you. Besides, they’re just books.”

“You’re a little bit of a rebel, Mira James.”

The door dinged as she let herself out, and I looked around for anywhere my name would appear. I didn’t wear a nametag, announce my name or station anywhere on the front desk, and I didn’t post newsletters around town. For someone I had never met before, she knew a little too much for my comfort. Or maybe my depression was making me paranoid, as well.

It didn’t matter much. I’d be gone in two weeks, if all went well today, and Alicia Meale could turn Battle Lake into a hemp-harvesting, pyramid-worshipping, electrolysis-mandating commune, for all I cared. I shelved the books that had been dropped after closing last night, dusted and vacuumed, and had all the résumés arranged by time of interview when Mrs. Berns showed up with Lucy in tow.

“You’re both late.”

“I’m so sorry, Mira.” Lucy looked ready to cry. I had met her last May, when she offered to work at the library for minimum wage. She had been a junior in high school at the time and said she loved books more than anything. There wasn’t enough money to hire her on regularly, but her earnestness had convinced me to let her help out on an as-needed basis. “Mrs. Berns called and asked me to pick her up, and when I went to get her, well, it took a little longer than I thought.”

Lucy looked uncomfortably from Mrs. Berns to me, and then went quickly to the back room to get dusting and watering supplies. “What’d you do to her?”

Today, I was happy to note Mrs. Berns was looking exactly like you’d think a little old lady should—tight-curled apricot hair, penciled-in eyebrows, big saggy nose shading a pair of salmon-pink lips, a red Sedona T-shirt, a pair of white shorts, and white bootie socks with flat white tennies. If not for the pair of sharpshooters tucked into her gun belt, you’d want to hug her and call her grandma. She flashed her watery eyes at me. “Why you always playin’ me, homey?”

“Have you been watching MTV again?”

“Tru dat. And the sweet little poonta over there was helping me out.”

“How?”

She took out a Polaroid. “We pimped my ride. I told her I’d pop a couple caps up her ass if she didn’t help.”

I held the photo of Mrs. Berns’ seldom-used walker and admired the flames on the tennis balls stuck to the bottom of it, as well as the skull-and-crossbones stickers up and down the metal sides. The black plastic streamers coming out the handles were particularly arresting. “Very nice.”

She snatched the picture back. “Thought so.”

“You ready to work?”

“I’m here.”

I blew air out my mouth and settled in. The plan was for her to run the library as I conducted the interviews, but to check in on all the candidates surreptitiously. That was funny, because Mrs. Berns was subtle like a yeast infection. I figured, though, since she was going to work with whomever I hired, she had a right to weigh in on them.

“How many applicants you got?”

“Four interviews, Mrs. Berns. What’s up with those pistols, anyhow?”

“These?” She tugged them out of their holsters and fired a couple rounds toward the ceiling. The smell of sulfur filled the air as the caps popped off. Delicate smoke curled out of each plastic barrel. Lucy, to her credit, didn’t jump as she shelved books. “I had such a hoot with them and Bill after the Fourth of July parade that I figured I’d just hang on to them. They make a good conversation piece. Now tell me again why you’re leaving town, chickenshit.”

“If you promise to stop calling me ‘chickenshit’.” It was how she had been addressing me since I informed her of my plans to move. She holstered her guns and pretended not to hear me, one of the luxuries of the golden years, but I answered her question anyway. “I’m leaving town because there isn’t anything here for me. I’m not qualified to be a librarian, I don’t get paid enough to be a columnist, and this town is full of crazy people and murderers.”

“Pah, pah, pah, and pah. This town was just fine until Mr. Johnny Leeson ditched you like a deer carcass. Don’t you know you’re not ever supposed to do anything just because of a man? Don’t stay for a man, don’t leave for a man. You make your decisions for yourself. Chickenshit.”

I sighed. The door opened, saving me from a chickenshit reply. In walked a woman whose attitude was certainly in its fifties if she was not. Her gray-flecked hair was noosed back in a severe bun, her scraggly eyebrows shot out from her horn-rimmed, bechained glasses, and her nose spread out in an effort to slow its descent into the colorless razor-cut where her lips should have been. Her blouse was gray, as was the sweater tied over her shoulders, the shapeless pencil skirt covering her bony lower body, and her support hose. The only flashes of color were her black, orthopedic shoes. She apparently had not gotten the memo that librarians were cool.