I went to the computer and searched until I found Hendo’s library account, then I put his address into Google Maps and pressed PRINT.
chapter thirty
I did not go home after my shift at the library. Instead of getting on my usual bus, I crossed the street, walked two blocks, and got on another one.
Hendo’s house was not very hard to get to by bus, and when I got off the bus I recognized the neighborhood and took a picture of the bus stop so I could remember what it looked like.
Google Maps showed me where to go until I found the address I was looking for. It was not an apartment building but a brown box attached to another brown box and another one. The windows had boards over them instead of glass, which had been broken and still stuck out pointy like teeth.
I took a deep breath and knocked on his door.
There was no answer. I noticed the door had yellow gunk and eggshells on it.
“He’s not here,” someone said. I turned. A man without a shirt was standing on the other side of the fence. He had a very large dog on a leash that stared at me.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Fucked if I know,” he said. “One minute they were there, the next they were gone. Didn’t even lock the door. You can probably go in if you want, but there’s a good chance there’s some squatters living in there and some busted glass.”
He walked his dog away. This was an important warning that any Viking would heed.
I removed my Viking sword from my backpack, in case any of the squatters inside were villains.
Like the man said, the door was not locked. The house smelled like a toilet and also cigarette smoke.
I called Hendo’s name. Nobody answered. I also called Artem’s name, then remembered that if Artem was there, he was a baby and would not answer.
None of the lights were on. I held my Viking sword in front of me and used the light from my cell phone to shine inside. Empty plastic Oreo containers, baby food jars, and pizza boxes were piled on the floor. When I walked it was through an ocean of wrappers and other gross things.
Someone had spray-painted NIGGER on the wall and drawn a picture of a man having sex with a woman. The woman had a face with pain in it, the eyes closed in Xs and the mouth open with the tongue sticking out. It was not the way sex was supposed to be. I shivered.
In one of the rooms I found a bed that smelled like pee and puke. I did not stay in the room very long. None of the lights worked when I tried to turn them on.
I was very afraid but I knew that was part of being a legend. Without fear there can be no bravery.
The house did not have anyone in it, not even squatters. I checked all the rooms. As I was leaving I saw some books in the corner. They were library books. Since I was a Viking and a librarian, I put them in a pile and took them with me. Hendo still had the train book I had found him for Artem, and the train book was not there, which meant Hendo took the train book with him and would have to pay for late fines after he paid for all the other villainous things he had done.
When I came outside I had the books under my arms. There were so many that I had trouble carrying them, and almost dropped some on the dirty ground. I was even madder at Hendo now, because all of those books would have late fees, and people might have wanted to read them and now couldn’t, since they were missing. I wondered if Carol had already entered them into the system as lost and had already ordered replacement copies. Some of the books were older, so they would not be able to get reordered.
I was thinking about which of the books were too old to be replaced, like the one with the picture of Elvis Presley on the cover, and almost walked right into a police officer on the sidewalk. Behind her was a police car.
“Crap,” I said, bending over to pick the books up, and the police officer helped too.
“Didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said, handing me two of the books, which I put on top of the other books I was holding.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I have to go now.”
She walked with me and said she was wondering if we could have a little chat. “It’s technically trespassing, going into a place that isn’t yours,” she said.
I pretended I didn’t hear and started walking faster toward the bus stop. I said to my legs, which felt heavy, stay strong.
The policewoman followed me up the sidewalk. “Where are you headed?”
“Nowhere.”
“For someone going nowhere, you’re sure going there fast.”
I started walking even faster and the policewoman said for me to wait up. I did not want to wait up, and also inside of me I had so much going on that if I stopped to talk I might accidentally let out all the things I had been holding in—about Gert and Hendo and Toucan.
So I started running. I dropped the library books to run faster, which was a very cowardly thing to do as a librarian, and tried to run behind some of the houses.
But the policewoman was faster than me and caught up and grabbed my arm.
“Hey, easy,” the policewoman said. “Slow down. We just want to talk.”
She did not hold my arm very tight and I pulled it away and said she would need to take me by force, even though I wasn’t sure that fighting the police was something a legend would do. The policewoman did not get angry and attack like I thought she would. Instead she said she wanted to talk to me about a friend of mine.
“The one whose house you were in,” she said. “I thought maybe we could work together to find him, that’s all.”
“I don’t have a friend who lives in any house,” I said.
“So you were breaking and entering? Because that’s a crime.”
I swallowed and tried not to look at her eyes, since I am not very good at staring contests.
“Relax. I just want to talk. Okay?” That was when she held up the Viking sword. “And you dropped this. Which I think qualifies as a weapon. So we could arrest you if we wanted to.”
* * *
They said they would give me a ride wherever I had to go, so I didn’t need to take the bus. Since I had the library books with me, I said to take me to the library. I made sure not to say anything about Gert or Hendo or Toucan. I held the books tight to my chest and tried to decide what I would do if they asked me serious questions while shining a bright light on me, the way they did in movies, and what I would do if I got so thirsty from the hot light that I asked for a drink of water and they wouldn’t give me one unless I confessed everything.
“Everything okay back there?” the policewoman said.
“I will say nothing,” I said.
“Sure. You’re just shaking a little bit.”
“So you wanted to get the library books back,” the other police officer said. He was driving.
“The patron’s address was in the computer system,” I said.
“You’re the most dedicated librarian I’ve ever met,” the woman said. “Do you have any siblings?”
I stared straight ahead.
“Zelda?” the other officer said. “Because I think we might know your brother. Gert?”
I did not say anything. My throat was already getting like a desert and they weren’t even shining a bright light on me.
They pulled up in front of the library. The woman police officer got out and came around and opened the door for me. I got out of the car.