John Brandon - Citrus County

Another Sunday. Toby rose and put on shorts and shoes. He went to the kitchen for a handful of cereal, slugged it down with a sip of sports drink. Uncle Neal was in the living room, a room that went mostly unused, sitting on a folding chair. The last time Uncle Neal had been sitting in that spot was the day he’d hit Toby. Uncle Neal was crying or something. A book was open in his hands. When he saw Toby he pulled himself together with one great sob. His face was red, his eyebrows disarranged.

“What about the shed?” Toby asked him. “No hemlock today?”

“Done already,” said Uncle Neal. He guided the book closed, looking up at Toby.

The book had small smudgy paintings on its cover.

“I found this,” Uncle Neal said, trying to boast. “I rescued it from the trash.”

“What trash?”

“At that big gas station by the county buildings.”

The book was a collection of poetry. Uncle Neal combed his fingers over the front of it, like he was petting a cat. He snorted. “I’m getting bored with listening to the cops,” he told Toby. “I haven’t read a book since I was your age, and I want to read one more before it’s too late. It was on the very top of the garbage, on top of a newspaper.”

“Is it any good?”

“‘Forgive, Satan, virtue’s pedants.’” Uncle Neal raised an eyebrow. His throat was full. “‘All such as have broken our habits, or had none, the keepers of promises, prizewinners, meek as leaves in the wind’s circus.’”

Toby squinted. He was thinking about the poem or he was pretending to. He couldn’t tell.

“Who needs a mother?” Uncle Neal said. “Mothers aren’t everything. I had one, and look how I turned out.”

Uncle Neal’s smugness was still intact. His eyes were glassy, but he was smug as ever. Toby wanted to snatch his book from him and smack him with it.

“All mothers do is make sure you’re presentable,” Uncle Neal said. “You look presentable to me. I guess presentable for what is always the question.”

“Do me a favor,” Toby said. “Don’t ever talk about my mother.” Toby had caught Uncle Neal’s bloodshot eyes and he didn’t let go. He looked right through his uncle. “Do me a favor and don’t mention mothers to me for any reason, ever again.” He said this levelly, just the way he wanted to.

The old smirk came to life on Uncle Neal’s lips. “Okay,” he told Toby. “But now you’re going to owe me a favor.”

Shelby was getting to know the woods. She had a good idea where even the minor trails led. She knew where the turtle holes were, knew how to avoid the darkly shaded territories where snakes were likely to loiter. There were direct routes and routes that someone generous or ignorant might call scenic, half-a-dozen ways to reach the library. The substation looked dormant. There was an unfathomable current running through it, but it looked dead. The high school boys that hung out in the parking lot, crouching on their skateboards and sharing cigarettes, now recognized Shelby. As she passed, one of them doffed his cap and the rest of them laughed.

Inside, she signed up to use a computer. There was a line. She stepped over to a podium which upheld a monumental atlas. Bulgaria. The capital city was Sofia. Shelby had never heard of Sofia. It was the capital city of a major nation and she had never even heard of it. Mr. Hibma’s geography class was fairly useless when it came to geography. There were thousands of countries, and Shelby had only been in one. In over thirteen years, she’d managed to experience one nation.

Shelby shut the atlas and found a chair off by herself, near the old card catalog. She breathed the library air, which smelled like all library air. She wanted it to be a cozy smell, like blankets from an old farmhouse or something, but really it smelled like book glue and old people. Shelby was worried about Toby. She wasn’t intrigued by his darkness anymore, didn’t burn to plumb the depths of it. She cared for Toby. She knew Uncle Neal was doing something to Toby, not just the marks on his head and neck that time, but more damaging things. Something had worn the Toby out of Toby. She wanted to know exactly what went on out at that remote property. She didn’t want to go gallivanting off to a distant country without being sure Toby would be okay. She couldn’t leave him to the wolves, and that’s what Uncle Neal was. Toby was Shelby’s affair and she had to get him in order before she left.

It was her turn on a computer. She scrubbed her eyes with her palms then logged on and went to her e-mail. Inbox — one new message.

Niece of mine,

Not much new over here. Interesting things occur less frequently than they used to — generally, in the world. I quit coffee. That’s something, I guess. And I did this thing where you jump in freezing cold water for charity. It’s like you have to do one or the other in the morning — drink coffee or jump in ice water. Well, sorry to cut this short but I’m late for a flight and I can’t find anything.

Aunt Dale

Still no allusion, as of yet, to Shelby visiting. Coffee or ice water. Shelby’s aunt was a very busy individual with an ever-changing schedule. She was probably wary of inviting Shelby and then having to cancel, or having to work the whole time Shelby was visiting. Late for a flight. Shelby wished she were late for a flight. Aunt Dale was casual about these things, that was all. She wasn’t a person who had to plot everything out way in advance. That’s why she hadn’t married that guy she’d been seeing forever; she didn’t like to be hemmed in.

But Shelby didn’t like that Aunt Dale seemed to struggle to find something to write. None of her previous e-mails had felt that way. Maybe Shelby ought to e-mail less often; maybe she was burning Aunt Dale out. It just wasn’t Shelby’s way to play hard to get. Her way was to hint, and if that didn’t work, to come right out and take what she wanted.

She jostled the mouse and clicked on Reply.

I’ve been wishing I could ride a train through the countryside, not one of our musty Amtraks, but a train where they serve soft cheese and pressed coffee and there’s a lounge car full of fascinating people with red lips who all speak different languages and you sleep in a pitch dark bunk and in the morning there are snowy mountains out the window that make you feel small and safe.

One morning when Mr. Hibma had arrived at school early in order to map out his next few basketball practices, Mrs. Conner appeared in the doorway of his classroom. He had a notepad in his hands full of Xs and Os, new drills that would help his guards defend against backdoor cuts. He put the notepad down and looked up at Mrs. Conner and she invited him to come over and look at her books, to see if there were any he wanted. The lot of them were destined for a shelter her church supported, but she wanted to give Mr. Hibma a chance to pick them over first. She was making a gesture. Mr. Hibma had made his gestures and now she was making one.

He followed her into her classroom and it smelled like soap and coffee. It was a big corner room, windows on two sides. She pulled back the doors of a towering cabinet and a thousand spines spied out at Mr. Hibma. As he scanned the shelves, she told him she was honored that he’d chosen to entrust his possessions to her and her husband, that West Citrus U-Stor was the best facility in their region of Florida. She thanked Mr. Hibma for the calendar he’d bought her, one of those where you peel a sheet off for each day. The theme was little-known grammar rules. Mrs. Conner had it on her desk at home.

Most of the books in the cabinet weren’t really books. They were books about books, manuals that instructed one how to teach certain books. There were collections of writing exercises, guides for building a curriculum. Mr. Hibma’s eye was caught by a thick poetry anthology. He worked it out a couple inches and then pulled it off the shelf. Another anthology, essays about Florida cuisine. There was a Complete Works of Shakespeare. It was a fancy edition — probably a hundred bucks in a bookstore.