Wonderland Creek Part 7

"Mmm, mmm. No story? That's the saddest thing I ever heard."

Her reaction made me mad. "Of course I have a story-everyone does. Just not a very exciting one. I grew up in Illinois. I worked as a librarian . . ." I paused so I could maintain my composure. "I love books, so when I heard that your library needed some, I held a book drive in our town. Then I came down here to deliver them and help out."

She studied me as if my skin were transparent and she could see what was going on inside me, watching my heart beat and the blood whoosh through my veins. Her scrutiny made me uneasy.

"You ever been in love?" she asked. The abruptness of her question startled me.

"Me? I had a boyfriend, but we broke up. That's one of the reasons I came here. I needed to get away for a while."

"I ain't asking if you had a boyfriend. I ask if you ever been in love."

"It's the same thing."

"Oh no, it ain't." She laughed out loud, and it made me angry. I wanted to justify myself but something stopped me. I thought of all the love stories I'd read over the years, and the way the lovers in those books thought about each other day and night; the way they confided in each other, doted on each other. Was true love really the way authors portrayed it in books?

I was sitting on the floor beside the mattress, and when I didn't reply, Lillie gently laid her hand on my head, a mother soothing her child. "What'd you like about this boyfriend a yours?"

The first thing that came to mind was that Gordon was a good catch. He was even-tempered and reliable and had a good job. Until he'd broken up with me, he had been as logical and predictable as the Dewey decimal system. I opened my mouth to say those things, then quickly closed it again. Lovers in romance stories never mentioned the Dewey decimal system when describing their beloved.

"Ah ha! See, honey?"

"See what? I haven't answered your question yet."

"No, but your face says it all. When a person's in love, all you gotta do is mention her lover and her face starts glowing like a harvest moon."

I shrugged, wanting to avoid the subject, but Lillie wouldn't let me. "This boyfriend got a name?"

"Gordon. Gordon Walters."

"See? Most people smile when they speak the name of the man they love. And you ain't smiling."

"Well, I'm very angry with him. I told you, he broke up with me. He isn't my boyfriend anymore."

"You want him back?"

I thought for a minute, then shrugged again. "I don't know. I don't think so."

"Now, why ain't you heartbroken, honey-girl? You ain't shedding a single tear when I'm asking about him."

"I don't cry very easily, that's all."

"No? And why's that?"

Again I opened my mouth to reply but nothing came out. I could cry buckets of tears when reading books with sad endings-and sometimes I cried over happy endings, too. Why didn't I feel those emotions in real life? I gaped at Lillie, speechless, as she nodded her head. "Um hmm, um hmm. See now?"

"No. I don't see anything." Why was she asking me all these questions? What business was it of hers? I thought people in Appalachia didn't ask nosy questions. I decided to turn the tables on her.

"Have you ever been in love, Lillie?"

Whether it was an act or not, I didn't know, but her face did seem to glow as she broke into a wide gap-toothed smile. Even as she smiled, tears pooled in the creases around her eyes. "Oh my, yes, honey-girl. I sure was in love once. I reckon we only get one great love in a lifetime, and Sam was mine."

"How did you meet him?"

"That story's gonna take a long time to tell."

"I don't mind. We have plenty of time." I loved stories. I could get lost in a good story and easily forget everything else. And right now I had a lot I wanted to forget. "Please tell me, Lillie."

"Maybe another day, honey. I'm real tired right now. I think I need a little rest."

Lillie closed her eyes and fell asleep as quick as a cat. I pulled the blanket around her shoulders and tiptoed over to the library desk to card books. I couldn't stop thinking about Gordon and me, until at last I came to the conclusion that if true love really was the way people described it in books, then no, I never had been in love with Gordon or he with me. But why hadn't I ever realized it before?

I was shelving books after lunch when I heard voices outside and footsteps clattering up the porch steps. Were patrons finally paying a visit to the library? I hurried to the door and swung it open to find a middle-aged woman and four little boys. "We come to hear the story," the oldest boy said. The three younger ones ducked under my arm and squeezed through the door before I could stop them. Their faces were white, but their bare feet were as brown as Lillie's.

"Wait! Mr. MacDougal is sleeping and-"

"Mamaw wouldn't let us come yesterday 'cause we didn't behave," the oldest boy told me somberly. He pointed to the woman who I a.s.sumed was Mamaw. She was barefooted, too. "But she said we could come today."

"Never did see kids get into as much trouble as these young ones," Mamaw said, shaking her head. "But like Little Lloyd says, they been minding themselves all morning so I brung them here for the story." She moved past me to follow the boys inside. I closed the door and hurried after them, afraid they would disturb Mack and Lillie. I found the group gathered around the mattress, gazing down at Mack in his b.l.o.o.d.y overalls as if looking at an exotic animal in the Lincoln Park Zoo.

"All that blood come from him?" one of them asked. His brother nudged him.

"'Course it did, stupid. He got shot with a gun, remember? Ma said so."

"Is he going to die, Miss Lillie?"

"He might," she said matter-of-factly. "Too soon to tell."

"Who's going to read the story to us if he dies? Mamaw can't read."

I glanced at Mamaw and she lifted her palms, sadly shaking her head. I heard a moan as Mack shifted positions and opened one eye. He closed it again and said, "Hey, boys. Missed you yesterday. You fellas been acting up again?"

"It was Bobby's fault. He's the one who caught the cat."

"Yeah, but Clyde dared me."

"Did not! Lloyd did!"

I recognized the names-these must be Faye's boys. They were raggedy little urchins scarcely old enough for school, but they looked as wise and battle worn as old men. The youngest one, about three years old, already mimicked the swagger and toughness of his older brothers.

"We don't need to know the gory details," Lillie told them. "Just as well you didn't come yesterday. Mack here has been under the weather."

"He shot himself, didn't he?"

"Let that be a lesson to you," Lillie said, shaking her withered finger. "Don't you go fooling with your daddy's rifle again-you hear me, Clyde?"

"What about the story?"

"And the pirates?"

"Maybe Miss Ripley will read to you today."

"That yellow-haired lady?" Little Lloyd pointed to me. "Can she read?"

"Yes, of course I can-" Before I could say more, they plopped down in a tidy row on the floor in front of me, oldest to youngest, and gazed up at me expectantly.

"Treasure Island," Mack murmured. "The book's in my top desk drawer." He smiled at me, and for the first time since I'd met him, I felt like smiling back. Mamaw pulled up two chairs from the library table, one for each of us, while I fetched the book.

My audience sat completely spellbound as I read, the way kids back home would sit in front of the radio for hours listening to Buck Rogers or The Lone Ranger. When I finished the chapter, Mamaw poked my arm with her elbow and smiled. She didn't have any teeth. "Then what happened?" she asked.

I read the next chapter, and I had never felt happier being a librarian than I did in that moment. We were all engrossed in the story when we heard a sound outside. It took me a moment to recognize it as a car engine. Bobby jumped up and peered out the front window. "Holy cow, it's the sheriff!" Before I could move, all four boys scrambled to their feet and scurried out of the library like rabbits disappearing into the underbrush. Mamaw followed them.

I looked over at Lillie who was now wide awake. "Don't you say a word, honey." We heard boots tromping up the steps, the door squealing open, footsteps in the hallway. A mountain-sized man in a tan uniform halted in the doorway to the non-fiction section, looking all around. He removed his hat to reveal graying black hair and a receding hairline. Lillie acted as wary as a cat with a big dog sniffing around. I could see their mutual distrust and wondered what was behind it. I was quite sure he hadn't come in to check out a book.

"Afternoon, Miss Lillie." He nodded slightly.

"Afternoon, Sheriff. This here's Alice from up in Illinois. She come to help out in the library."

"So I heard."

How in the world had he heard?

"Also heard you had a little hunting accident down here. Came to see how Mack was doing."

I longed to jump up and plead with the sheriff to drive Mack to a hospital where he could get proper medical attention instead of enduring sticky homemade poultices and tansy tea with moonshine, but something about the man made me as uneasy as Lillie.

"Tell you the truth, I'm thinking he may not pull through," Lillie said softly.

That was news to me-and probably to Mack who had been awake a moment ago and now was faking unconsciousness.

"I'll know more in a couple of days," she said.

"I need to talk to him when he wakes up," the sheriff said. Lillie didn't reply. "Anything I can do for him?"

"You saying your prayers, Sheriff? Prayer never hurts and always helps."

He smiled without giving a reply, a smile that went no deeper than the skin on his face. "You ladies need anything?"

This might be my only chance to get to a telephone or a train station and back to civilization, but I hesitated. I had an instinctive dislike for this man, something deep in my gut that I couldn't explain. And I knew from reading mystery stories that the heroine always ended up in worse trouble when she didn't follow her gut instincts. Even so, I might have asked the sheriff for help and fled Acorn for good if it hadn't been for Mamaw and those boys. But during the past hour when I had been carried away to Treasure Island, something had changed inside me. In spite of the hard work and the uncooperative farm animals, in spite of my misgivings as a sorcerer's apprentice-or maybe her accomplice-in spite of everything about this crazy, bat-infested library, I decided in that moment to keep quiet. I would stay here and work. And help.

"Can't think of anything we need, Sheriff," Lillie said with a shrug. She shook her head-and so did I.

"Well, I'll be on my way then. Afternoon, ladies." He tipped his hat to us as he placed it back on his head. His heavy boots made the floorboards groan as he left the house.

Lillie gripped my arm the moment the door closed, clutching it hard enough to hurt. "That man's a snake," she whispered to me. "A snake!"

Her words rattled me. Maybe my gut instinct had been right. But the sheriff was the good guy in most stories, rescuing people from the bad guys. Why was everything in this town turned upside down?

Three days later, when Lillie was sure that Mack would live, she started planning his funeral. She announced this news at breakfast, and I couldn't believe my ears. "You mean you're going to lie to everyone and say that he died?"

"It's for the best, honey." The three of us were eating together in the non-fiction section. It was the first time that Mack had been able to sit up and feed himself since the morning he'd been shot. He wore his arm in a sling made from an old tablecloth, and he had to lean against the bookshelf to stay upright, but evidently his condition had improved so much that Lillie had decided he was ready to die and be buried.

I put down my plate and stared at Mack, waiting for an explanation. He was eating tiny bites of his pancake as if it really was going to be his last meal. "You make these pancakes all by yourself, Miss Ripley?" he asked.

"Yes. I decided to cook something different for a change. Why?"

"They're . . . interesting. I don't believe I've ever had pancakes that were deep-fried before."

I may have used a little too much oil. But that didn't change the fact that these people owed me an explanation. I knew quite a lot about funerals after dating Gordon Walters for nearly a year, and I didn't see how in the world you could fake someone's death.

"Funerals are long, drawn-out affairs," I told him, "with a wake and a memorial service and a burial. How are you going to lay here and play dead for two or three days?"

Lillie waved her twig-like hand as if shooing away my concerns like flies. "We don't have fancy funeral parlors around here, so the corpse starts stinking to high heaven pretty fast, especially in warm weather. We try and get folks in the ground as quick as we can, before that happens."

"But you can't bury him! He isn't dead!" Although I had to admit that he could easily play the part of a corpse. Compared to the bear of a man who had answered the door five days ago, he looked pale and sickly. And no wonder, after bleeding the way he had and then lying around on his mattress enduring Lillie's remedies and Cora's homemade moonshine.

"Well, we can thank the Good Lord that he ain't dead," Lillie said. "Jesus answered all our prayers. Now, first thing we gotta do is get Lloyd Hayes to build us a casket. I'll talk to Faye about it when she comes in this morning."

I had lived with Lillie long enough to know it was useless to try to reason with her. I turned to plead with Mack. "Is this what you really want her to do?"

He nodded somberly. "Otherwise, the shooter might come back and finish me off."

"But it's deceitful! We would have to tell a hundred lies and-"

Lillie laid her hand on my arm to soothe me. "No one's asking you to lie, honey. Just keep your sweet little mouth shut."

I stared at her, then at Mack. He looked up at me with eyes as dark and soulful as a c.o.c.ker spaniel's. "Please, Miss Ripley?"

I exhaled in frustration. "What will you do if I say no?"

Lillie tightened her grip on my arm. "Don't say no, honey." It sounded like a threat. She looked at me for a long moment, smiling her gap-toothed smile, then finally let go. "Second thing we gotta do is mix up a potion to put Mack into a deep sleep. I know just how to do it, too. He'll be so far gone, folks can poke pins in his toes and he'll never feel it."

I shivered at the thought. "Haven't you people ever read Romeo and Juliet? Don't you know what can happen when people try to pretend they're dead?"

Mack gave me an irritating grin. "I read it. But I'm not Romeo and there's no Juliet to die along with me-unless you're volunteering for the part."

I crossed my arms and huffed. "I don't want any part of this. How far is it to the nearest railroad station?" I made up my mind to pack my suitcase and walk to the next town if I had to, then take the first pa.s.senger train back to Chicago.

"How far?" Mack repeated. "Well, I guess that depends on which horse you're planning to ride. Belle doesn't like to go very fast so it would take her a couple of hours-"

"You people infuriate me! I asked how many miles it was, not how many hours it takes. Doesn't anyone around here know about miles?"

"Sure, but it depends on which creek bed you plan to follow and whether or not it's flood season. It floods a lot this time of year, and sometimes the bridges wash away and-"

I didn't wait to hear the rest. I gathered up our dishes and carried them out to the kitchen. I would have slammed the kitchen door behind me for dramatic effect, but my hands were full. I could hear their mumbled voices in the other room as they conspired together, planning Mack's demise. I stayed out of it.

Later, I was seated behind the library desk, attacking the piles of returned books, when Faye arrived for work. She peeked into the dining room to check on Mack, who was doing a stellar performance of a man hovering at death's door. Lillie shooed her away.

"He took a turn for the worse last night," Lillie said in a stage whisper. "Now he's running a real high fever." She hobbled into the foyer and made a big show of closing the dining room door as she pulled Faye aside to ask, "Can you get Lloyd to build us a casket, honey? Tell him he can take wood from my shed, if he needs to."