Лори Касс - Lending А Paw

The man read my expression of woe. “Ah, don’t worry about Stevie.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “He’s so stuck in that ivory tower he built for himself that he’ll never hear a word about Eddie.”

“You know Stephen?” A small hope beat in my heart.

“He’s the same now as when he was a kid. Smart, but not really seeing anything.”

I blinked and tried to imagine a young Stephen. Somehow he looked just like he did now, only shorter, buttoned-down shirts and all.

“Downstate,” the man said, “he and his folks lived on the next block. And here I end up retiring practically down the street from him. Funny old world, eh?”

Life up north was full of odd coincidences like this. On a ferry ride to Mackinac Island last summer I’d sat in front of my high school biology teacher. And two winters ago I’d been skiing at the nearby Nub’s Nob, and ridden up the ski lift next to a guy I’d had a class with in graduate school. Things like that happened when the region’s major industry was tourism on a grand scale. Up here, the odds of running into your grade school crush were about the same as running into the latest American Idol idol.

Stephen’s old neighbor asked, “So, you going to bring Eddie around next time, right?”

I smiled. “Not a chance.”

• • •

During the drive to the next stop, I kept the conversation tight on the complexity of tasks involved in being a librarian. Thessie was a high school senior and considering library science as a major. Ergo, her volunteering on the bookmobile. “There’s a lot more to being a librarian than most people realize,” I said.

“Yes, I know. Um, that man? What did—”

“Dealing with odd questions is one of those things they don’t tell you about in college.” I tossed off a careless laugh. “Another thing they don’t tell you about is working with library boards. Chilson’s board is wonderful, but I could tell you stories.” And I did, on and on without a break until we came to the next stop. “Well, here we are,” I sang out. “And we have people waiting for us already. Isn’t that great?”

Thessie may have been only seventeen, but she was no slouch in the brains department.

“So if anyone asks about the cat, what do I say?”

“There is no cat,” I said firmly.

“Yeah, but maybe there could be.” She gave me a sidelong look. “I mean, if there was a cat, it might be fun having it around.”

I rotated the driver’s seat and brought the laptop to life. “Will you pop the roof vents? Thanks.” Thessie, at least eight inches taller than me, could reach the ceiling easily. “No cat. There’s no way Stephen would allow a fuzzy, furry feline on the bookmobile.”

“Not a cat guy, is he?” Thessie asked.

“He’s not an animal person.” Neither cat nor dog nor feathered friend was held in esteem by the library director. “Says all pets do is eat and make messes that other people have to clean up.”

It was easy to see the gears whirling around in Thessie’s pretty dark-haired head. I shook mine. “There’s no use bringing it up. Even if we get around his dislike of pets, he’ll say that people are allergic and we can’t possibly run the risk of exposing anyone.”

“Okay, but the bookstore downtown has a cat and they don’t have any problems. And wasn’t there a library in Iowa or somewhere that had a cat living there?” She glanced around. “A bookmobile’s smaller, I guess, but if we vacuumed every time to get the hair and dander out—”

I was shaking my head. “Not going to happen.” I unlocked the back door and pushed it open. “Good morning! Come up and into the bookmobile.”

Up the stairs first was a young man of about twelve. Red springing curls, bright blue eyes, and braces on his teeth. “Do you have anything about fishing? There’s this bass in the lake I want to catch and my grandpop said you might have something.”

Thessie took him under her wing and escorted him to the high shelves at the rear end of the bus.

Next up the stairs was an elderly couple, hand in hand, looking for books on gardening. After I got them settled, I noticed a young woman coming aboard. Twentyish, long sun-washed blond hair, tan, wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a tank top covered by a flowered-print short-sleeved shirt, she looked the image of a California surfer girl.

I watched as she ran a finger over the books, scanning the titles, her head tilted to one side. She went through half a dozen shelves like that. Hunting for something, but not asking for help. Hmm. “Are you looking for something special?”

She jumped. “Oh! Um, no, thanks. I’m just looking. Is . . . that okay?”

A shy surfer girl? I didn’t know that was possible. Then again, I’d only been to California once, and that was when I was six and we took a family trip to San Francisco, so what did I know?

“Absolutely it’s okay,” I said. “If you have any questions, just ask.” I turned away, then had a thought. “If you’re looking for something in particular, I can get it from the main library and bring it out on the next trip.”

“Oh . . .” She opened her mouth, shut it, glanced around. “Um, no, thanks.” She scurried down the stairs.

I stared after her. What had that been all about?

“What did you say to her?” Thessie asked. “She looked . . . well, scared.”

Frightened as a rabbit had been my thought. “All I said was we could pull a book from the main library and bring it out to her.”

“Well, there you go,” Thessie said comfortably. “That’s pretty scary, for sure.”

I stared at her, then started laughing. Which is a good way to end a bookmobile stop.

• • •

The last stop of the morning was the rutted gravel parking lot of a middle-of-nowhere gas station and what you might have called a convenience store except that it didn’t stock anything that travelers might have found it convenient to purchase. Bottled water? Soda? “Nah, we don’t carry that crap.” Snacks? “Got some beef jerky the wife made last fall.” Map of the area? The grizzled proprietor would nod at a map stuck on the wall in 1949, long before paved roads reached this part of Tonedagana County.

The points in the location’s favor were a tolerably clean bathroom, the large amount of shade cast by a huge oak tree, and that it was a nexus point for a number of homeschooling families. As soon as the bookmobile’s purchase had been publicly announced, a representative mother had called me and begged for a stop.

We drove into the shaded parking lot, which had more cars in it than I’d ever seen.

“Are all these people here for the bookmobile?” Thessie’s gaze was stuck on the group of adults and children milling about.

I studied the adults, trying to see if anyone looked familiar. One mother, two . . . “All of them,” I said. “There are six families around here who homeschool.”

“Lots more than six kids.” She sounded apprehensive.

“It’ll be fun,” I said, stopping the bookmobile in front of a knot of cheering children. “What’s the matter?”

“Kids I like just fine. It’s tight spaces I’m not good with.”

I stared at her, then stared at the aisle that would soon be filled with youngsters and moms and a dad or two. Houston, we have a problem. “Tell you what,” I said, flipping the driver’s seat around. “You sit here and run the computer. I’ll take care of all the questions and send them your way to do checkout. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I just never thought . . .”

“It’ll be fine,” I repeated, patting her on the shoulder.

When I pushed open the back door and let the kids run up and inside, the noise level instantly went from calm to ear-damaging. I shot a glance at Thessie. She’d wedged herself into the gap between the seat and the bookmobile’s outer wall, a feat I wouldn’t have thought possible for any creature larger than Eddie. But though she was pale, she’d put on a bright smile and was chatting with a round-cheeked youngster.