Michael Guillebeau - MAD Librarian - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Library

Never seen that in the stacks before. Serenity lowered the heavy book.

Shakespeare bent down to pick up his weapon and Darth Vader crashed into him and they fell to the floor. Will saw Serenity and looked panicked.

Scarlett O’Hara stepped over both of them.

“Honestly, you boys,” she said, “I do declare.”

Serenity recognized the accent and then the face. “Doom?”

“Why, Ms. Hammer, I am so flattered that you recognized little ole me.”

Serenity shook her head. A horse (Black Beauty, she guessed) was stumbling in. Or rather, the front half of the horse was.

“Lord a’ mighty,” said Serenity. “To what do we owe the pleasure of this unannounced and probably totally inappropriate visit?”

Doom/Scarlett put her hands on her hips in a gesture that would have worked for either identity. “It was inappropriate yesterday, when this was the library. But now, this is the MAD. It’s our place. Everybody’s place for everything. All the time.”

“Yeah,” said Serenity, maybe we need to go slow on that idea. It’s just kind of a dream right now.”

Doom gave an un-Scarlett squeal as several boys in football uniforms squeezed past them. “ It is . It is a dream, but we’re actually doing this. I mean, you’re doing this, and we’re helping.” She took Serenity’s hand. “So I was working with this theater group. We were doing the dress rehearsal for our play, which explores the idea that all great literature is basically the same. We open tonight, if you want tickets.”

“Thanks.”

“But I’ll warn you that it may not be very good. It’s all improv.”

Serenity watched Snow White sweep in, followed by three guys walking on kneepads, presumably to stay in character as dwarves. “Imagine that.”

“Our rehearsal was really, really bad. So we went to a bar and kept rehearsing. Rehearsing and drinking. They threw us out after a while, claiming we were loud, and we went to another bar. They decided to close early. We went to an after-hours club, but then they closed. Can you believe all these places closing right after we got there? We were buying a lot of drinks, too. And I mean a lot.”

King Lear stumbled in, leaning on Sam Spade.

Serenity said, “I can see that.”

“Then the sun came up and we couldn’t get into the theater and we couldn’t get into a bar. I said, ‘I know what Serenity Hammer would want us to do.’ So here we are, the place for everything the people of Maddington need. All MAD, all the time.”

“All MAD,” Serenity agreed.

Doom gave her a drunken hug and bounced off.

The rear end of the horse came in bringing up, well, the rear. “Serenity!” came a cry from within the folds of black cloth. The half-horse came up to Serenity and pulled the cloth back.

“Jolene,” said Serenity. “My favorite drama teacher.”

“Former drama teacher. The school board cut out the drama department last year. All schools. Serenity, thanks so much for opening up the library to us.”

Serenity laughed, “I’m not sure I did, but—”

Jolene grabbed Serenity’s arm. “You don’t know how bad it is. It’s getting hard to find a place anymore. No place, no money. Soon, there will be nothing but reality TV to spur people’s imagination.”

“No wonder we’re so brain-dead.”

Jolene wouldn’t let go of her arm. “And poor. That’s the really stupid thing of all this. By not spending money, we’re costing ourselves jobs and even bigger money. Georgia, Florida and other states are funding film and TV centers. Guess where Hollywood goes to spend millions of dollars making movies? Guess where the big buildings housing hundreds of people working on TV news networks are?”

“Not here.”

“Not here is goddamned right. Doom tells me you’re going to change that. She says you’re building a new library here that will have a place for all this. A place where kids can get the experience and training they need. A place that can do things faster and better than the schools do. So that, maybe, for once, Alabama will be ahead of the world.”

Serenity pulled her arm away and looked at Jolene. The dark horse fabric covered everything except two sad, human eyes, staring, pleading with Serenity. Behind her, Doom had most of her troops ready to start. She tapped her watch and looked at Serenity.

“Jolene, you know I’ll do what I can, but, there’s so little I can do. Really, Doom gets carried away—”

“Serenity, you’re all we’ve got. You’ve got to find a way.”

“I’m not Robin Hood, Jolene. I’m not a savior. I’m just a small-time librarian. And lately, not even a very good one at that. I can’t—”

Doom yelled at them.

“Hey, we need that horse’s ass now !”

MID-AFTERNOON. A head peeked around the corner of Serenity’s office and then ducked back. There was giggling. The empty doorway filled with a double bouquet of roses, followed by a teen-aged girl.

“From Mr. Hammer,” she said. “Honestly, he is so dreamy.” Serenity pushed papers aside and motioned for the volunteer to put the vase on the side table where Faulkner lived. The girl stood there with a big grin, like she’d found herself in the middle of her own personal romance novel.

Serenity looked at the girl and wondered if the word “dreamy” was cool again, or if this sweet, clueless girl was just sweet and clueless. She also knew that until she could get enough paid staff, she was dependent on volunteers like her to keep it running, even if they thought books with a Dewey Decimal System number on them should be filed under “Math” because they had numbers.

Serenity smiled at the girl, if not at the flowers, and went back to studying the stack of invoices along with the dwindling balance in the Special Projects fund.

The girl was still there when she looked up, still giggling.

“He’s waiting,” she said. “He said he would stand in the lobby all day for an answer. Really, if you need time to fix your hair or makeup, I can go back out to the desk and stare at him. He’s just so—”

“Dreamy. Yeah, I get it.” Serenity noticed there was a note attached to the flowers. She ripped it off and the vase teetered, and the girl held her breath until it stabilized.

The note read, still friends? more? i didn’t like the way we left things last night. can i meet you for dinner at the café and make it up to you? six?

Serenity thought about how Joe probably looked in the lobby. Most likely, he was leaning back against the doorjamb, cowboy hat still on and tilted lazily over his eyes, looking like he would wait there forever for her. He knew how to play the part of a romance hero.

Not going to work today. Not yet.

“Tell him six-thirty. Maybe seven.”

“You aren’t going to tell him yourself?”

“You tell him. I’ve got work to do.”

“But he’s standing there waiting with those kissable lips and—”

Well, that answered the question of whether “dreamy” was back in the teen lexicon, or whether this girl spent too much time in the romance stacks.

“You tell him. And stay away from those lips.”

The girl left and Serenity put her head down on Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and prayed the inspiration in it would seep through. You can’t win, but you can be brave.

Inspiring. But not a how-to book.

She wondered what Hemingway himself might do. She pulled her head up and looked for her cup. You can’t win, but you can stay drunk. She fished the bottle out and held it over her mug.

Joy slunk into Serenity’s office and dropped herself into the good chair.