Mobile Library (14 page)

They walked until the canopy of the trees was thick enough that the daylight only dripped through, where they came to a storm drain. Beside it was a pile of sodden rags and a collapsed tent, teased by the wind, opening and closing like an unhealthy lung.

Bert sat down next to a large mound of leaves, whipped up and dumped by the wind.

“I think Bert might be going a little senile,” Val said.

“What does that mean, Val?” Rosa asked.

“Silly. Because he's old. Like your mother.”

Val tugged on his tail to try to make him stand up but he jammed his snout into the undergrowth and pushed mud around with his nose. “Bert, come on,” she said, “it's time to go home.”

“Yeah, Bert,” Rosa said, throwing a stick in his general direction, “stop being senile, it's time to go home.”

Suddenly Val screamed, stumbled backward, tripped over a cluster of toadstools and landed on her behind. Bobby moved to help her.

“No, Bobby, get back!” she said. The mound of leaves next to Bert shifted, the ground beneath them rising, and underneath he saw it—a dirty human hand, with grubby fingernails, black as the hair on a skunk.

“Run!” Val said, but Bobby found he was stuck, his feet rooted as deeply as the trees. The hand became an arm, pushing upward from the earth, and then the filthy face of a man. His long blond hair was greasy and bedraggled. There was mud on his teeth and his beard was knotted, disgusting old rope.

“Don't be frightened,” he said, his voice deep and driven through gravel. He got up slowly and they saw that he had been hidden inside a hole in the ground not much bigger than a coffin. The hole was lined with wooden panels to stop it caving in, and fitted with a wooden lid. Inside it was a bag of the man's belongings—a jug for fetching water, sheets of tarpaulin, string, knives and a first-aid kit in an olive green box.

“It's just for the cold nights,” he said, “warmer than the tent, and less chance of . . .”

“Bears?” Rosa said.

“Ha. Yes, bears.” Val shushed Rosa with her fingers to her lips as she got to her feet. Bobby put himself between the man and her, picking up the biggest stick he could find in the mud.

“Who are you?” he said.

“My name is Joe.” Bert traitorously rubbed his head against the man's leg, and Joe bent down to pet him. Clearly they knew each other well.

“What are you doing in the woods?”

“Well, actually, I live here. Temporarily, I mean. I'm traveling to Scotland. But I'm resting here a while. Fresh water and shelter. All of that good stuff.”

“How do I know you're not a caveman?” Bobby asked, half a mind still on the Stig.

“How do I know
you're
not a caveman.” He laughed like Bobby was meant to join in, forgetting that it was Bobby's joke in the first place, even though it wasn't meant as a joke at all.

“Because I have my own mobile library.”

“Bobby!” Val said. She clasped her hands across his chest. “I think we should leave the man alone now to get on with his camping.” She didn't usually speak to Bobby like he was a child.

“I don't mean to scare your kids,” Joe said.

“I'm her friend,” Bobby said.

“Well, all the same.”

“Not at all,” Val said, “we were just out for a walk.
We
didn't meant to disturb
you
.”

“You didn't.” The man picked Bert up, holding him in a sort of headlock and rummaging around inside his ear with a knuckle. Bert's tongue lolled out of his mouth and flapped around, rippling with an intense pleasure humans shall never experience. “Is this your dog?”

“His name is Bert,” Rosa said.

“Bert's a nice name for a dog. Is your name Bert too?” Rosa rewarded him with her warmest, most affectionate giggle. Bobby wanted to cuff her around the back of the head.

“My name is Rosa. Rosa Reed,” she said, pulling her notepad from her pocket and writing down the stranger's name next to her own.

“And is Bert your dog?”

“Yes. Bert Reed. And this is Val Reed and this is my best friend Bobby Nusku.” The man extended to his full height, slowly, and was approaching twice the size any of them had imagined him to be when he was still sitting in the hole.

“Val, huh?” he said.

“That's right,” Val said. A pause, nothing but the trickle of water.

Joe, suddenly aware that his size might intimidate the woman and the two children, folded slightly at the belly. It had been a long time since he had seen another person, let alone looked them in the eye, and he had forgotten his own considerable dimensions, or even what he looked like. He pictured the clean-shaven army lines and buzz-cut hair, the standard-issue licks with which he knew himself best. Only the scratching of his beard against his chest, or now, meeting others, seeing the way they flinched when he moved, reminded him with a jolt that the truth was very different.

“Val,” Joe said, “I think your dog might have eaten my socks.”

“No,” Val said, “they're in one piece. Actually, better than that, I've washed them.” Joe's evident delight showed it had been some time since he had worn clean socks. To Bobby this seemed like another reason not to trust him. Bobby hadn't met a man he trusted immediately or fully in his entire life.

“That's very kind of you,” Joe said. “If I'd have known Bert was a laundry dog, I might have given him a whole bag of my clothes.” Val laughed.

“Well, again, I'm sorry if we disturbed you. We should let you have some peace.” She held out her arms and Joe passed Bert to her. A low grumble and the lazy kick of an errant hind leg let his discontent be known.

“And the socks?”

“I'll have Bert bring them to you.”

“Let him keep them,” he said. “It'd be an honor.”

“Goodbye,” Rosa said.

“Goodbye.”

They walked back through the woods in silence to the mobile library, where Bert went and sulked in Romantic Fiction. Even a chocolate bone couldn't tempt him to join the others on the rug.

“Nobody ever lives in the woods,” Bobby said.

“We live in the woods,” Val said.

“We live in the mobile library. It's different.”

“The man is traveling. Some people are travelers. That's what they do.”

“Like who?”

“Alice from
Alice in Wonderland
. She's a traveler. And Gulliver from
Gulliver's Travels
. I told you. In every book is a clue about life.” Bobby sighed.

“We should move,” he said.

“I don't think we can move at the moment. You know that there will be people looking for us? Hunting for us? Your father. The school. The police.”

“We could go to Sunny's house. He's a cyborg. He can take care of us.”

“It's too far,” she said.

“No,” Bobby said, “I don't think it is. Not so long as we're all together.”

A ringing hung in the air like the distant buzz of insects. The sound was far enough away that at first Bobby thought it an effect conjured in his brain by the words in the book he was reading. Sometimes, when characters he adored got scared, he could hear their hearts flutter. When they made a joke, their laughter came from his mouth. They moved with his hands, walked with his legs and saw with his eyes. He experienced their stories not with them, but for them, their fortune in that moment his own. Today he was Jonathan Swift's Gulliver, prisoner of the citizens of Lilliput. Their tiny knives and spears nicked his belly open. Bobby clutched the wound, raised a bloody hand and together he and Gulliver begged for their freedom.

It sounded like a bell. Not a big bell from the clock tower in the village, a small bell, elfin, fragile, Lilliputian. Roused, he placed his book back on the shelf and searched the library. Nobody else was there. Val was sleeping in the cab. Outside, Rosa was trying to persuade Bert to roll over with the offer of a biscuit, which he'd decided he'd get to eat eventually whether he performed for her or not.

Again Bobby heard the sound, but slightly louder this time, and for longer, as if the bell's clapper had come loose inside its chamber. He looked up to the tops of the trees and briefly searched the long grass.

That's when he realized what was coming. Or rather, who. His mother.

She had worn a bell-shaped pendant. Nestled at the apex of her bosom, jingling as she moved, he remembered it now. It was there, in the photograph of them standing by the car, him toying with it, the bell, precious in his hand, its mellow gold reflection on her skin.

He ran back into the library and hunted through his files, slipping the bottle of her hair down the front of his trousers and sliding as many of her rings onto his fingers as would fit. Her bracelets fell from his wrists too easily, so he threaded his feet through and yanked them up his ankles. He filled his pockets with the slivers of material cut from her dresses, and stuffed the clippings from her pictures deep into his sleeves. Finally, he sprayed himself with her perfume so that it followed him around as a sweet sticky mist.

Leaving the clearing, Bobby skipped through the veil of trees to the edge of the woods by the road. Here the sound of the bell was much louder than before. She was close. The road bent in both directions, and because of the wind he could not ascertain from which end the sound was coming. He climbed the tree closest to the path for a better view. Halfway up its aged trunk, brittle bark breaking to the touch, a swarm of thick black flies dangled in midair. Bobby held his breath as they bumped against his ears and nostrils. He climbed until they stopped, then shimmied out onto a sturdy branch and scanned the horizon with his binoculars. There, set against the green of dormant fields and the undulating yellow rapeseed, he spied a figure in a bright red coat.

Woolen, soft, he remembered it now. She had been wearing it in the photograph too. Parallel columns of brass-colored buttons and pockets almost elbow deep into which he would bury his hands. It had been her favorite coat, one she'd always hung carefully to stave off the creases.

Such was the feeling swelling in his chest, he had to cling extra tight to the branch in case his heart thumped hard enough to launch him into the sky. He wanted to shout her name but there wasn't the air. He breathed deeply and as best he could twisted the lens into focus. When he saw the figure clearly his heart cramped.

The man in the red windcheater beckoned his dog, the bell on its collar tinkling.

The rush of excitement dancing down Bobby's back quickly turned to pins and needles. The man and the dog were walking in his direction. He had to warn Val, to protect her.

Bobby slid down the trunk through the swarm, forgetting to close his mouth. Flies thick as raisins rode his tongue. Halfway down, where they gathered, he lost his grip and fell, landing on the bottle tucked into his waistband, which smashed on impact. Glass fragments scored his belly. Blood stuck his mother's hair to his skin and pooled in the cradle of his underpants. There was no time to stop, or to let the pain sneak in. Pinching his tongue between his teeth, Bobby made it back to the clearing and banged on the door of the cab. Val peered out of the window, one eye crusted with sleep. Blood roses bloomed on Bobby's shirt. He pulled his jacket closed to hide them. The wounds began to burn. He did not wince. This, he reasoned, is what a man would do.

“Someone is coming,” he said. Panicking, Val ushered Rosa and Bert into the back of the mobile library and told them to be as quiet as they could. Rosa buried her head beneath a pillow and gave Bert the remainder of the biscuit, as a reward for his obedience, making him believe he'd been right all along.

Bobby followed Val to the clearing's edge where they lay down behind a brush of golden Alison on a mound of dirt, somewhere they wouldn't be easily spotted. They were just in time. The man was close enough for them to see the vinegar-colored patches of sun-bleached skin on his arms. The dog, a chestnut Irish setter, had waded through the flowers and was sitting on the mound above them, nostrils quivering at the scent of Bobby's blood.

“Shoo,” Val said. “Shoo!”

“Come along, Lola,” the man said in an accent that sounded clear and rich, no more than ten feet away. Had he deigned to look up for more than a second he'd have noticed them there, Val and Bobby, lying in the grass like guilty lovers. The dog offered a derisive snort, somehow in on the joke.

“What will we do if he comes this way?” Bobby asked.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Well, don't worry. I'll protect you.” She gripped his hand.

The man toyed with the bluish glow of the mobile phone he was holding. This far outside the village he couldn't get a signal. Doubting that anyone was trying to reach him, he still felt compelled to return to a place where bars appeared on the phone's display, as if he were a whale who needed to break the ocean's surface now and again to breathe.

“Come along,” he said once more, causing the dog to moan and then retreat.

Bobby and Val waited until they couldn't hear the bell any longer. Then, pain besting him, Bobby groaned and rolled over onto his back. When Val saw the blood on his shirt she put her hand to her mouth and grimaced as if she'd taken a bite of a rotten apple.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I cut myself,” he said, “by accident.” She unbuttoned his shirt. Glass and grit twinkled in the wounds, his chest smothered in whorls of hair and deep red. Val jumped to her feet. Guilt consumed her in an instant. She felt no more capable of protecting Bobby from harm than his father had been. It was writ large in blood on his skin. She did not know that reaction to suffering, not wont to mete it out—is how good people are defined.

Bobby tried to stand but felt faint and faltered. Val carried him back to the mobile library. He reclined on the steps while she frantically searched the drawers beneath the desk. Rosa, seeing the blood, started to cry.