Ashes (18 page)

She must have done something right, because when she went back to the circulation desk, her coffee in one hand and the plate of scones in the other, Mr. Bradbury said, “Something smells good.” Then his eyes lit up. “Oh! You made scones.”

“I hope they’re good, I mean, I never made them before and if you don’t like them I’m...”

He held up a finger to his lips. “Shhhhh. Never apologize ahead of time.” He plucked a scone from the plate, took a bite.

She was sure she’d screwed up. For a moment he had a strangely pensive look on his face. Probably thinking about how to politely say,
Jennifer, your scones would serve better as doorstops
.

“You’ve never made these before?”

“No, never. That bad, huh?”

“That good. Like the ones my mother used to make.”

“Really?”

“Really. You ought to have a little more faith in yourself, Jennifer.”

She let that one slide by. “So when do the third-graders arrive?”

“Two o’clock. That should give us time to eat all these scones. The last thing those children need is more sugar.”

* * *

J
ennifer found the book after the third-graders left, while she was straightening out the juvenile room. They weren’t bad kids, just kids, and there was the usual mess of paper wads and pencils scattered over the tables, books lying helter-skelter. She had finished tidying up, shelved the cartful of books she’d brought in, and was getting ready to leave the room when she saw the book, far off in the corner, on the floor.

She walked over, knelt, and picked the book up. A children’s book about Canadian wildlife. Must be science report time, she thought, and flipped to a random page.

Someone, some kid, had drawn all over the pages. No, not drawn. Scribbled, big looping scrawls of pencil, in some places so hard the pencil had gone through the paper. Bad enough that she found graffiti in the restrooms, but at least some of that was occasionally amusing. She'd been working at the library long enough to feel protective of the books, and defacing one was just uncalled for. “Creepy little vandal,” she said, glancing out the window to see if the school bus was still there. It wasn’t.

Jennifer brought the book back with her to the circulation desk, handed it to Mr. Bradbury. “Looks like we’ve got to replace this one.”

He leafed through the book, his eyebrows slightly raised. “It happens. Not often, but it does.”

She was a little surprised at how annoyed she felt. “I thought I’d gotten away from all that. But it’s like the graffiti taggers in L.A.” It was a scratch on the shining surface of Haven Cove. A tiny one, but a scratch nonetheless.

Mr. Bradbury turned to the back of the book. A sheet of paper slipped out; it had a wrinkled look, as if it had been crumpled and then smoothed out, shoved into the back of the book. He gazed at the paper a moment, then handed it to her. “Look at this.”

The paper was a school assignment, asking the student to write a theme. A list of half a dozen topics was provided, but what Jennifer noticed was more of those pencil scrawls, and for the first time, words.
Stupid stupid stupid.

“Someone hates their homework as much as the book.”

Mr. Bradbury took the book and the assignment paper back from her. “Well, there’s the reason. And then there’s the real reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“What seems to be the reason someone does something, and what that reason really is, are often very different.”

Jennifer was silent. Thinking of the phone calls she’d gotten after she sold her story, the names she’d been called. All she’d wanted to do was tell them why she’d done it, just explain things. So they could know the real reason instead of the reason they wanted to believe.

Mr. Bradbury went on. “This doesn’t feel like someone writing dirty words on the wall. It’s not even ‘Kilroy was here.’ Something else is happening.”

“I’ll keep an eye out next time they’re here. See what I can see.”

He nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.”

* * *

A
week later, the third-graders back again. Mr. Bradbury took charge of the circulation desk while Jennifer patrolled the juvenile room as stealthily as she could, quietly shelving books and calling no attention to herself.

It was toward the end of their hour that she saw him. Off at one end of the room, away from the others. A boy with his blond head bent over the book in front of him, nose nearly touching the page. One hand held a pencil, and he was poking the pages of the book, leaving little black dots. The other hand was clenched in his hair. As she watched he sat up straight, looked at the clock on the far wall, and for a moment she thought the look on his face was one of anger. No, not anger, she realized as she looked at his eyes. Frustration.

She thought of those scrawled words
stupid stupid stupid.
It wasn’t the book he was calling names. It was himself.

Jennifer walked over to the table. He had his head bent over the book again and didn’t notice her until she spoke. “Hi,” she said in her library-quiet voice.

He looked up at her, startled. His eyes were brown, an interesting contrast to the blond hair, brown and wide. His eyes got even wider when he saw her: the adult, the person in charge. But she wasn’t angry any more.

“OK if I sit down?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a small voice.

She sat, instinctively put her hands out in front of her so he could see they were empty, nothing in them to hit him with. “My name’s Jennifer. What’s yours?” She hoped she wasn’t talking to him like he was a baby, but she hadn’t talked to an eight-year-old since she herself was eight, two decades ago.

“Matthew Tally, ma’am.” His eyes were not quite so wide now.

At least he had manners. She began to think Mr. Bradbury was right, this wasn’t just vandalism. “I work here at the library. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

He looked down at the book, at the little black pencil dots on the page. “I’m sorry. I’ll bring in the money and pay for the books.”

“We can worry about that later.” She thought of telling him that it wasn’t right to mess up things that weren’t yours, but she could tell he already knew that. But the question remained, and she asked it. “Can you tell me why you did that?”

It took her ten minutes of gentle prodding, and a promise not to tell the teacher. “I didn’t mean to mess things up,” he finally said in that soft, polite voice. “I just...it makes me...all the books and the stupid words, stupid me, I don’t know how...” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

“You don’t know how to read,” she said, not sure if it was a question or a statement.

It didn’t matter. Matthew Tally looked back down at the desk with a fierce, fixed look, blinking too much. She recognized it. Trying not to cry.

“Matthew,” she said as gently as she could. “Hey, Matthew. Look at me.”

He finally did. He wasn’t crying but his eyes were shiny. “Am I in trouble?”

“No. No, don’t worry.” What to do, she wondered. Talk to the teacher. She thought of the substitute teacher, harried and disorganized. No. “Is it OK if I talk to your Mom?”

Matthew’s eyes got a strange look, sad and yet distant. “My Mom’s gone.”

Dead, he meant. Poor baby. “How about your Dad? I won’t get you in trouble, I promise. I just want to talk to him, OK?”

“OK,” he said.

From the other end of the room came the sounds of children gathering their books. “I have to go,” he said.

“All right. Can you do one thing for me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She held up the book. “Don’t go scribbling in any more books. Can you do that?”

He nodded, got to his feet and gathered his books and papers.

“Thank you for not getting me in trouble,” he said.

“We’ll work it out. I promise.”

For the first time he smiled at her, a quick, shy smile. Then he joined the other kids, leaving Jennifer sitting there, wondering what she would say to Matthew’s father.

* * *

J
ennifer got up early the next morning and drove down to the harbor. Mr. Bradbury didn’t have a home address or number for Matthew Tally’s father, but he did have a name and an occupation. “Gene’s a fisherman,” he said. “And when the fish aren’t out, he’s usually helping fix up someone’s boat. The harbor’s your best bet.”

She'd only been down here a few times. Once to stroll around, the other times to have some dinner at one of the seafood restaurants; she thought it was worth moving up here just for the salmon, so fresh and melt-in-your-mouth perfect. Jennifer got out of her car, feeling very much a landlubber. And yet she liked it, the bustle of people, men mostly, going to and fro on their boats, even liked the smell — salt water, diesel fuel, and fish all combined, the tarry scent of the docks underneath.

Harbormaster
said a sign on a small shack, and she walked over. The man inside was barking into a radio. “I did not say that. If I said that, I would be a liar. I don’t lie — I’m a Christian, damn it! Over and out.” He hung up the radio and looked at her. His voice was brusque, probably from years of shouting into radios, but his face was kind and he smiled at her. A gold tooth winked at her from the corner of his mouth, making him look like a cheerful pirate. “Can I help you, miss?”

“Ah, yes. I’m looking for Gene Tally.”

He pointed to Jennifer’s right. “Gene’s the trawler with the blue trim.”

Jennifer stared blankly. She wouldn’t know a trawler from the
Queen Mary,
and more than ever she felt like an idiot.

The harbormaster took pity on her and said, “About ten slips down. His boat’s called the
Tally-ho.
Gene’s a blond guy, starting to go bald.”

“Thanks,” she said. She made her way down the docks with no difficulty and found the
Tally-ho.
On the front part of the deck — she wondered what the names of all the parts were, and which was port or starboard — was a man, kneeling and tying some sort of knot. She couldn’t make out much of his appearance, but she could hear him humming some tune as he worked.

“Mr. Tally? Sir?” she called out, and he looked up at her. His resemblance to his son was striking, except for the eyes. Gene Tally’s eyes were not brown but blue, a strangely pale blue, as if their original hue had been faded by years of looking out at the sea and the sun.

He looked back at her and did not immediately answer. A faint frown line appeared between his brows, as if he was trying to remember something. “Yes, that’s me,” he said finally.

“My name’s Jennifer Thomson, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“OK, sure.” He got up, walked over, and nimbly jumped from the boat to the dock. As he stood in front of her that little line appeared between his brows again. “What can I do for you?” His Canadian accent was a bit different from others she’d heard.

“I want to talk to you about Matthew.”

The frown line deepened. “Is something wrong? Is he OK?”

“Yes. No. What I mean is that I work in the library, and I found him messing up some of the books. Scribbling in them. But you see —”

“I’ll pay for the damage,” he said.

“No, it’s not that. I talked to him and asked him why and he did it because he’s upset. He says he can’t read, Mr. Tally.”

Gene’s thin mouth got thinner; he turned his gaze to his feet, then to the sky, anywhere but toward her. Finally he sighed. “Did you talk to his teacher?”

“I thought I should talk to you first. The teacher’s a sub, I don’t know if she can handle this. And well, you are his father,” Jennifer said.

He sighed again, a sound of disappointment. She hoped he wasn’t going to give Matthew grief over this. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

“I think you should do more than that.”

“Like what?”

She felt something thrumming inside her like a live wire, and she realized that she was getting very annoyed with this man. “Well, maybe you could help tutor him.”

For the first time since she told him Matthew couldn’t read he looked her in the eyes. “I can’t.”

“Why not? Are you too busy?”

“It’s not what you think.” He walked back onto his boat, calling over his shoulder. “Thank you for coming by, Ms. Thomson.”

“Look, I’m not going to leave it like this,” she said. She kept seeing Matthew Tally with his hand clenched in his hair in frustration. “Your son can’t read, doesn’t that bother you?”

He turned back to her. “Yes, it bothers me a hell of a lot!”

“Then why don’t you do something about it?”

“Because I can’t either.”

As soon as he said it a look of shock came over his face; she felt the same look on hers. He couldn’t believe he’d said it and she couldn’t believe she’d heard it. She turned away, trying to think of what to say, and all she could come up with was that old useless standby
I’m sorry
. She started to say it, but before she got the words out he’d fired up the engine of the
Tally-ho
and was steering his way out of the harbor.

* * *

A
s dusk was falling and softening the edges of the world, Jennifer stood waiting at the
Tally-ho’s
slip, a cup of coffee in each hand. As she waited she took the occasional sip from her cup. She was beginning to wonder if a warm-up for Gene’s coffee might not be a bad idea when his boat pulled into the slip. If he saw her he gave no sign; he was busy unloading salmon into a large wheeled bin. As she waited, a man with a coverall declaring him to be from the local fish processing plant came and took away the catch. As the man left, Gene raised his arms overhead, stretched and sighed, then stepped onto the dock.

Only then did he notice her. “Oh,” he said. “Hello.”

“Hi.” She walked over and handed him his coffee. “The harbormaster said you liked a cup of coffee after you come in. I told them to give you your usual.”

“I see. Thanks.” As if to make up for his gratitude he said, “And what are you having, Miss California? A soy milk cinnamon half-caff grande latte?”

“French roast with one cream and one sugar. Same as you,” Jennifer replied. She didn’t stop to wonder why he called her Miss California, but forged ahead. “I wanted to apologize for this morning. I didn’t mean to...well, I still think the most important thing is to help Matthew. And I’d like to help.”