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

“I’ll pay for it,” said Serenity.

Stacey drained her cup. “Hell, no. This is my town, too. I’ll get the coffee and food. I’ll get every restaurant and bakery owner in Maddington out of bed. If Jasper, Alabama can get steel here by eight, we can get food here by seven. Your crews will eat better than they’ve ever eaten in their lives. They’ll beg to work in Maddington.”

Powell looked at his watch. “We’ve got to make an announcement to the press. It’s too late to wake the mayor. Even if he listened, he wouldn’t remember anything I told him. We’ll shoot for a press conference at ten.”

“Wake the mayor at seven, and hold the press conference at eight,” Serenity said. “Have the cameras there with the trucks rolling in behind his back.”

Powell smiled. “One advantage to that is we’ll have to write the mayor’s speech and give it to him just before he speaks. Won’t give him time to recycle his same old bullshit. If we promise him reelection cash, he’ll say whatever we want.”

“We’re done with the same old bullshit,” said Serenity.

“Then let’s stop BS-ing now,” said Burroughs. “I got to hire a bunch of men. Maybe I can get some crews from Birmingham and Atlanta here by morning.”

“No,” said Serenity. “Locals first. Maddington’s going to build the MAD. Go outside if you have to after that.”

“Where the hell am I going to find all those workers?” Burroughs said.

Serenity leaned over and looked at Burroughs’ backside. “Maybe you can hire some of those angels I see flying out.”

THEY WERE STANDING on a half-finished wooden platform in front of the slab for the library expansion, huddled on the front four boards. Carpenters laid down the other planks behind them and a crowd was gathering in front of them. Ron Powell lowered his cell and leaned toward Serenity. “Trucks are coming through Decatur now, and the mayor just left his house.”

“Make sure he doesn’t stop. We want his speech to end just as the trucks pull in.”

“I’ve got a friend driving him. I promised the mayor that after this speech, he can run for any office he wants in the state and get it.”

In front of them a knot of press people were grumpily setting up cameras and mics. A grizzled old man, trying to look younger in a bad wig, a Channel 10 blazer and a hot young blonde beside him, broke away from the pack.

“Serenity,” he said, “you got us news professionals out of bed early for a library event?”

“Won’t be the last, Gary. Get used to it. Going to be a lot of library events from now on, and you won’t want to miss any of them.”

“Really?” The blonde elbowed him aside. “You have burned a silver bullet for what, a crappy little library expansion? You told the station manager that he couldn’t just send a reporter, he had to send the two most popular anchors in North Alabama.”

The man rolled his eyes at her.

“Shut up, Gary,” she said. “Our viewers may not like you anymore, but they like me. And I’m the one who had to get up earlier to get her hair and makeup just right. All you had to do was put that dead rat on your head.” She turned back to Serenity. “A library expansion ain’t big news, sister. Welcome to the real world. This is the last time you’ll see us.”

The woman pivoted on her heel and marched back to the newsmen.

Gary looked at Serenity. “She appeals to the younger demographic.” Then he followed her back to the pack.

Powell nodded at an SUV coming onto the lot. “He’s here.”

The mayor had found a black stovepipe hat. The stubble on his chin looked like he was trying to start a Lincolnian beard, but could only get three whiskers to volunteer for the job. He bounced up onto the stage.

“Brief me,” he said to Serenity.

Powell was putting his phone away. “Actually, we don’t have time. The trucks are turning onto Maddington Boulevard. You’ve got three minutes. If you want the speech to end with the trucks barreling in, mayor, you take the microphone now. Serenity, you stand behind the mayor. I want you to look like you’re beaming up at him, but I want you to whisper his speech in his ear. Mayor, you just repeat what Serenity says and you’ll be a hero.”

The mayor beamed at Serenity. “I trust you, sweetie. I’ve already taken your advice on one thing.” He tapped his hat and smiled. “And look at how well that turned out.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to Powell. “Seriously, Ron. I’m told this is really big. Can we do it?”

“We can. And, if you want to get credit for the biggest event in fifty years, you need to give this speech right now.”

The mayor said, “I’m in.”

Powell took the cell from his ear and said, “You guys need to get started now .”

The mayor stepped to the mic, and Serenity stepped up behind him and whispered, “Thank them all for coming. Then tell them that we stand in front of bare concrete to announce the most audacious and important event in Maddington’s history.”

“Good line,” the mayor said under his breath, and then said to the crowd, “Thank you all for coming today. You know, I remember when I was a small boy—”

Serenity hissed, “No hamming. We don’t have time.”

He nodded as if lost in his memory and said, “Today, we stand in an empty field to announce one of the most audacious and important events in Maddington’s history.”

He added, “And I want to remind our voters that this is the kind of boldness and service that they expected when they elected Mayor Weatherford Johnson as their mayor. And—”

“Stick to the script,” said Serenity.

The mayor waved his hands for a cheer that never came.

Serenity whispered, “For too long, all of us have settled for second-best.”

The mayor said, “For too long, we have settled for second-best—until we elected Weatherford Johnson as our mayor.”

Serenity rolled her eyes. “The library has always been the first stop for people looking to better themselves.”

“Under this administration, the library has been the first stop for people looking to better themselves,” paraphrased the mayor.

“And they’ve come because they knew the library was the one place that wouldn’t turn them away,” Serenity said. “No matter how far afield the request, a librarian would smile and say, ‘Let’s see what we can find out.’”

The mayor went two-for-two on getting things mostly right.

Serenity grew bold. “It hasn’t been enough. They’ve come with questions, but because we didn’t have resources, too often they left with their needs—and the needs of the city of Maddington—unfulfilled. People have lost opportunities, businesses have gone unopened, existing businesses have folded, and people have died, because people have come to the library looking for help that they could not find anywhere else, and our library has only been able to offer a Band-Aid. No more.”

The mayor was getting into it. He said the lines with real emotion, and shouted “no more” at the top of his lungs.

Powell sidled up to Serenity and whispered, “Trucks are passing Kroger. Wrap it up.”

She whispered, “What if someone had the courage to end that?”

Serenity looked down the street and saw the first eighteen-wheeler coming and whispered in his ear.

He shouted, “Here, in Maddington, today, we do .”

A few people in the crowd cheered.

Serenity whispered, “Thanks to an innovative public/private funding partnership, which I am personally leading, today we begin the most ambitious building project in American history, here in Maddington, by the people of Maddington, and for the people of Maddington.”