Instead I have books under my bed, under Mab’s and Mirabel’s beds, under Mama’s, on our bedside tables, under our kitchen and coffee tables, on our countertops and next to our sinks, though you have to be careful because books, like huskies, do not like to be wet. I have piled books on the sides of the stairs because our stairs are thirty-four inches wide, and you only need fourteen inches to walk up. Mama bakes a lot, so I cannot put books in the oven, but she says you cannot bake in a microwave, and she does not trust the microwave anyway, so I put books in it and just take them out and hold them if someone wants to heat something up and Mama is not home to object. They are on top of the kitchen cabinets, between the blankets in the upstairs hall closet, in the spaces beneath the sinks between the water pipes and the walls, under the sofa, inside the fireplace, on the corner of the porch it does not rain on. They fill the unfinished attic and the even less finished crawl space. They are stacked tightly around the chimney, which is good because that means they could also help hold up the house if there is an earthquake or mudslide.
My mother keeps all the law books in her room.
Mr. Beechman told us all about how taxes work the year we were doing percents in math. Instead of each individual paying for her own teacher and her own school, her own roads and her own sidewalks, her own books and her own wars, each individual pays taxes on her home, land, income, investments, and holdings, and that money goes to the government, and then the government buys one teacher and one school and one road and one sidewalk and one library, and everyone shares. The government hosts a war, and everyone just comes to that. This is called efficiency, and it means you cannot have your own war. You can only join someone else’s.
This is also why the library is at my house instead of at the library.
The residents of Bourne do not have investments and holdings. We do have homes and lands, but they are not worth any money. Some Bourners do not even have jobs because lots of our stores closed and most of our restaurants too. We still have a pizza place, and it is called Bourne’s Best Pizza which is technically true but not that impressive since it would be just as accurate to call it Bourne’s Worst Pizza since it is also Bourne’s Only Pizza. A lot of people worked at the places that closed, and now they do not have jobs.
And of course all the plant workers. Most of them are unemployed. Or dead. (“And/or dead” is more accurate. Some are both.)
Eventually, we did not have enough money to have a library, but the library building is Historically Significant (which means more than when it is just historically significant which no one cares about), so they left it right where it was—or, to be more accurate, where it still is—but with nothing inside. They tried to sell the books, but there is a very small market for used library books. What they could, they sold, and donated the money to Mr. Bergoff’s scholarship he set up in memory of his wife. The rest, Mrs. Watson, the former librarian, gave to me.
Now I am the librarian.
I take this job very seriously. I take all jobs very seriously, but this is more important than other jobs because Bourne citizens are stupider than other citizens—I am not being mean; this is just a true fact—and the way to get less stupid is to read more books. You might argue we need books more than we need extra ramps.
That is what I did argue.
That is how I convinced Mrs. Watson to give me all the books.
Straight after school I go home and wait for anyone who might come. Maybe they will want a good mystery to occupy their mind if their body is not working well. Maybe they will want a memoir by someone else who overcame odds. Maybe they will want a book about computers so they can get a better job. There are not a lot of jobs in Bourne, but if you knew computers, you could work somewhere else.
When the doorbell rings today, the person ringing it is Pastor Jeff. The person ringing it is often Pastor Jeff. As I have said—and as should be obvious—stupid people need to read books in order to get smarter, but unfortunately people who like books are usually smart already, and stupid people do not read. Maybe this is tragic irony, or maybe cause and effect. I do not know. What I do know is that Pastor Jeff is not stupid. But sometimes he makes stupid book requests.
“I need a book about how to sew wheelchair and walker parts,” he says when I answer the door.
“I have no books about how to sew wheelchair and walker parts,” I regret to tell him.
“How about a book on how to sew car parts?”
“I do not think that book has been written.”
Like everything else in Bourne, the church is underfunded, but because it was built a long time ago by Bourners who were richer than we are, it is also very big. Therefore there is enough room inside for God and fundraising. On Saturdays, Pastor Jeff does not have clinic services or service services, so he teaches yoga and aerobics classes in the back of the nave. In the rectory, which is attached to the church, he has machines which you can use for a small fee to copy documents, keys, and old videotapes. In the church basement, he has a wheel and a kiln and teaches pottery classes. Every summer, he goes on a thrift-shop tour around the state, and this summer he bought an old sewing machine. He was going to teach sewing classes, but it turned out he did not know how to sew.
“Ham Roland needs snow tires for his walker before it gets cold,” he tells me. “Donna Anvers is having trouble reaching the bag on the back of her wheelchair. I’m sure Tom has something at the depot that would work, but I thought I could help. A hubcap bag that fits over the wheels instead. Some kind of extra-grip, anti-slip device I could stitch.”
“Those are good ideas,” I compliment him.
One thing that is good about librarians is they listen to what you need and want and think of a way to help you which sometimes is by ignoring what you need and want. Maybe they do not have the book you requested because their library is nothing but leftovers. Or maybe what you requested is wrong—people often are, even smart people who read—but it is okay because librarians have witchlike librarian magic to pick the right book for you.
For instance, Pastor Jeff’s cheeks show red which means he is embarrassed because he does not know how to sew. Pastor Jeff’s belt shows holes which means he is skinny and should eat more. Pastor Jeff’s hands show twisting all around themselves which means he is worried, so even though he did not ask for cheering up, I know cheering up is what he needs and wants.
“Wait here,” I say and return four and a half minutes later with a book on decoupage which is the closest thing I have to sewing, an owner’s manual for a 1995 Honda Civic which has sections on both snow tires and hubcaps, and a novel about a woman who finds inspiration in fattening and joy-inducing (and, it can be assumed, non-embarrassing) pies. That is how to be a good librarian.
When I get back to Pastor Jeff in the kitchen, he is at the sink where he fills a glass with water, drinks it down, refills it again, drinks it down again.
Just like books, there is no right way to systematize the categorization of people. But in Bourne, one good way is by water usage. Or, to be more accurate, lack of water usage. Some people use their tap water for laundry but not for cooking. Some people use it for washing their bodies but not their carrots. Some people will flush toilets with it but not wash their hands in it afterward. I do not do sports because there are germs in locker rooms, and when Mrs. Radcliffe said I could shower afterward at home instead, I could not do that either because I only shower for three point seven five minutes at a time, and that is enough to wash off a regular amount of germs but not an athletic amount of germs. Petra and her mother shower for as long as they like but only on Wednesdays and Sundays. They separate their laundry not by lights and darks or delicates and regulars but innies and outies, like belly buttons. If the garment hardly touches their skin like it is a sweatshirt or a cardigan or a skirt they wear with tights underneath, they wash it in their washing machine with Bourne’s own water. If it is underwear or socks or T-shirts or a bra, they wash it in their bathroom sink with bottled water. If it is jeans, they just let them air out and wear them again, even though they only shower twice a week. (Petra’s mother does not leave her house but does not care about germs that might be in there in her jeans with her already.) Our mayor, Omar Radison, has the water tested every year, and he prints out the results and posts them all around downtown so we can all see it is safe now, but even Mayor Omar drinks bottled water.