Beautiful Darkness(33)

All of those?” There were three stacks of brown paper packages on the checkout desk. Marian marked the last one with the familiar GATLIN COUNTY LIBRARY stamp, always twice and always tied with the same white string.

“No, take that pile, too.” She pointed to a second pile, on the nearest trolley.

“I thought nobody in this town reads.”

“Oh, they read. They just don't own up to what they read, which is why we make not only library-to-library deliveries but library-to-home ones as well. Circulating books only. Allowing two to three days for the processing of requests, of course.”

Great. I was afraid to ask what was in these brown paper packages, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to know. I picked up a stack of books and groaned. “What are these, encyclopedias?”

Liv pulled the receipt from the top bundle. “Yes. The Encyclopedia of Ammunition, actually.”

Marian waved us out the door. “Go with Ethan, Liv. You haven't had an opportunity to see our beautiful little town yet.”

“I can handle it.”

Liv sighed and pushed the trolley toward the door. “Come on, Hercules. I'll help you load up. Can't keep the ladies of Gatlin waiting on their …” She consulted another receipt. “… Carolin-er Cake Doctor Cookbook, now can we?”

“Carolina,” I said, automatically.

“That's what I said. Carolin-er.”





Two hours later, we had delivered most of the books and driven by both Jackson High and the Stop & Steal. As we circled the General's Green, I realized why Marian had been so eager to hire me at a library that was always empty and didn't need summer employees. She had planned for me to be Liv's teenage tour guide all along. It was my job to show her the lake and the Dar-ee Keen and fill in the gaps between what folks around here said and what they meant. My job was to be her friend.

I wondered how Lena was going to feel about that. If she noticed.

“I still don't understand why there's a statue of a general from a war the South didn't win, and one which was generally embarrassing for your country, in the middle of town.” Of course she didn't.

“Folks honor the fallen around here. There's a whole museum dedicated to them.” I didn't mention the Fallen Soldiers was also the scene of my dad's Ridley-induced suicide attempt a few months ago.

I looked over at Liv from behind the wheel of the Volvo. I couldn't remember the last time there had been any girl except Lena in the passenger's seat.

“You're a terrible tour guide.”

“This is Gatlin. There isn't all that much to see.” I glanced in the rearview mirror. “Or just not that much I want you to see.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“A good tour guide knows what to show and what to hide.”

“I stand corrected. You're a terribly misguided tour guide.” She pulled a rubber band out of her pocket.

“So I'm more of a misguide?” It was a stupid joke, my trademark.

“And I take issue with both your punning and your tour-guiding philosophy, generally speaking.” She was working her blond hair into two braids, her cheeks pink from the heat. She wasn't used to the South Carolina humidity.

“What do you want to see? You want me to take you to shoot cans behind the old cotton mill off Route 9? Flatten pennies on the train tracks? Follow the trail of flies into the eat-at-your-own-risk grease pit we call the Dar-ee Keen?”

“Yes. All of the above, particularly the last bit. I'm starving.”





Liv dropped the last library receipt into one of two piles. “… seven, eight, nine. Which means I win, you lose, and get your hands off those chips. They belong to me now.” She pulled my chili fries over to her side of the red plastic table.

“You mean fries.”

“I mean business.” Her side of the table was already covered with onion rings, a cheeseburger, ketchup, mayonnaise, and my sweet tea. I knew whose side was whose because she had made a line between us, laying french fries end to end, like the Great Wall of China.

“‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ ”

I remembered the poem from English class. “Walt Whitman.”

She shook her head. “Robert Frost. Now keep your hands off my onion rings.”

I should've known that one. How many times had Lena quoted Frost's poems or twisted them into one of her own?

We had stopped for lunch at the Dar-ee Keen, which was down the road from the last two deliveries we'd made — Mrs. Ipswich (Guide to Colon Cleanliness) and Mr. Harlow (Classic Pinups of World War II), which we had given to his wife because he wasn't home. For the first time, I understood the reason for the brown paper.

“I can't believe it.” I wadded up my napkin. “Who would have figured Gatlin was so romantic?” I had bet on church books. Liv had bet on romance novels. I lost, eight to nine.

“Not only romantic, but romantic and righteous. It's a wonderful combination, so —”

“Hypocritical?”

“Not at all. I was going to say American. Did you notice we delivered It Takes a Bible and Divinely Delicious Delilah to the very same house?”

“I thought that was a cookbook.”

“Not unless Delilah's cooking up something quite a bit hotter than these chili chips.” She waved a fry in the air.