The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (18 page)

Caroline had been on her way over to Sara to say a few nice words about the name she had chosen for the shop when something – she wasn't quite sure what – had forced her back into the safety of the edge of the group.

Maybe it was the laughter, the way that everyone, even the usually nervous Sara, seemed so relaxed and self-assured, but Caroline had suddenly felt as though she was seventeen again: wearing her best dress, even a little make-up, she'd been forced to sneak out so that her mother wouldn't see, on her way to make a fool of herself, and tragically expectant at the thought of it. Expectant and vulnerable.

Charcoal.

It was the smell of beer and fire which had taken her back to that evening, she realised as a gust of wind blew the smell over to her side of the street again. The force of the memories struck her like a slap in the face. Completely unexpected, and more humiliating than painful.

Pull yourself together, Caroline, she thought, but even her inner voice sounded shaky.

It's just a party, she thought.

But that was the problem. She didn't belong at parties. She wasn't someone who let her hair down at them. She was the one who fixed the problems they created. None of her friends had ever come to her for advice when they were happy. They had married off left, right and centre without taking the slightest bit of notice of what she thought, and it was only once they ran into trouble that they came to her. An endless stream of women with husbands who had lost their jobs, who drank or cheated, husbands who hit them or their mistresses, or both.

But that didn't mean she couldn't go over and join the group right now. Make small talk with Sara, that was all. Ten minutes. Just because she was passing by.

What are you so afraid of, Caroline?
she demanded of herself before straightening her back, swallowing and heading straight towards the group with as much dignity and self-confidence as she could muster.

Sara saw Caroline coming over to her, but all she could really think about was Tom. He was talking to a woman who had just turned up. The woman looked tired and had dark circles beneath her eyes, and she was dressed in an unflattering uniform. Despite that, she was pretty in the kind of tough, fiery way that only reminded Sara how dull and colourless she was. The woman was slightly overweight but radiating a kind of confident, calm sensuality which, even from a distance, overwhelmed Sara and made her feel like moving further away, so that the difference between them wasn't so obvious.

Part of her was relieved when Caroline interrupted her thoughts. Maybe it was the glow from the street lights, but it struck Sara that she looked more human. Her posture was still poker-straight and military, but her gaze was softer, and something in her seemed to relax when she reached Sara. She was wearing jeans and a black coat, and Sara could see a hint of a soft, cream-coloured sweater beneath.

‘I'm chair of the Association for the Preservation of Oaks,' Caroline said, without bothering with the usual greetings. ‘I wanted to thank you in person for supporting our cause by naming the place Oak Tree Bookstore.'

Perhaps she should have told Caroline that it hadn't been entirely for Iowa's sake that she had chosen the name, but she wasn't sure she could dare to. It was part of an acknowledgement in an obscure book about machine learning in computer science. The authors, Forsyth and Rada, wrote that many people, not just the author, contribute to the making of a book, from the person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing. It wasn't customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, they went on, even though their commitment was total.

‘Ah,' said Sara. ‘Actually, it's –'

‘It'll get people to pay more attention to our work.' Caroline smiled. ‘It's nice that someone who isn't from Iowa can see the importance of the oaks to our state. Do you have any books about oaks?'

Tom laughed at something the red-haired woman said, and Sara was forced to look away. She cursed herself for it. She couldn't fall for someone like him. She knew what she was, and she knew her limits. She might be able to cope with opening a bookshop, but she would never survive falling in love with someone like Tom.

If she even was falling for him. It felt more like falling ill.

‘I can order some,' Sara answered.

Eventually, Caroline was replaced by the woman Tom had been talking to.

‘So,' she said, ‘you're the one they've been trying to pair Tom up with, are you?' She placed a slight emphasis on
trying to
. ‘Claire,' she said, smiling with amusement. ‘Yep, ‘
That
Claire. Teenage pregnancy.'

‘That … I mean, that's not what I was thinking.'

Claire nodded towards Tom. ‘You should,' she said coolly. ‘He was great when Lacey was a kid,' she continued. ‘Lacey, my daughter. More than a few people thought he was the father.'

Amy had never thought that. Still, Sara couldn't help but ask: ‘Is he?'

Claire laughed. She walked away without answering, and Sara remained where she was at the edge of a group which, somehow, she had managed to gather. It was a strange feeling. People were smiling at her and raising their beers in improvised toasts, patting her on the shoulder as they passed, but she wasn't really there. Country music was playing somewhere in the background. She couldn't hear the words, but the tunes brought a feeling of memory and history; not quite nostalgia, but firmly rooted in the past.

For a moment, she was convinced that she could sense Amy in the cool evening air, in the smell of hamburgers and cold beers. But it wasn't Amy, not really. Maybe she was out there somewhere, but it wasn't just her. It was as though the town itself was present, a kind of collective deposit of the lives and memories of various generations. The facades of the buildings which, just a few days ago, had seemed like dull backdrops, were now playful spirits. Between Andy and Carl and Tom – who was talking to Claire again – she could almost see Miss Annie speeding past on her cargo moped, and there was a quiet murmur of long-forgotten stories hanging over the entire scene.

When Tom finally came over to her, she was much too distracted to be able to say anything. They stood next to one another in silence, shoulder to shoulder, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body and the slight pressure of his arm. She couldn't help but steal a glance at him, and the comforting presence of the past was replaced by a racing pulse and a cold sweat.

‘So how does it feel?' he asked.

For a few seconds, Sara worried that he really had read her thoughts this time, and she stared at him in confusion. ‘F-feel?' she stammered.

‘The bookstore.' He made a sweeping gesture over the illuminated window, strangely empty and deserted despite all the life around it.

‘No one's bought anything yet,' she said.

He laughed. ‘D'you think they will?'

‘Of course. Why would I have opened it otherwise?' Tom shrugged, and she involuntarily took hold of his arm. ‘They
have to
buy books,' she said. She couldn't have gone through it all, practically laid waste to Amy's room, for the inhabitants of Broken Wheel to refuse to start reading. What would be the point if she didn't even manage to spread stories among Amy's friends?

Tom was spared answering by Andy, who waved for the man nearest the radio to turn it off. ‘A toast,' he said, looking insistently at Sara.

‘To Miss Annie's cargo moped,' she said.

She smiled, half sorrowful, half laughing, at her own private joke.

‘To Miss Annie's cargo moped,' they echoed.

She didn't think anyone knew what she was talking about, and that felt strangely liberating. She might not quite be a part of the town, but she had become a part of its history.

And she swore to herself that she would force books on them before she was done here.

‘You know,' said Tom, who had seen the determination in her eyes, ‘if you're going to get this lot to read, you're going to need to be more cunning.'

 

 

 

 

Broken Wheel, Iowa

October 23, 2010

Sara Lindqvist

Kornvägen 7, 1 tr

136 38 Haninge

Sweden

Dear Sara,

Books or people, you ask. It's a difficult choice, I've got to say. I don't know whether people mean more than books – they're definitely not nicer, or funnier, or more comforting … but still, however much I twist and turn the question, I've got to opt for people in the long run. I hope you don't lose all confidence in me now that I've admitted that.

I can't for the life of me explain why I've got the bad sense to prefer people. If you went purely by numbers, then books would win hands down – I've loved maybe a handful of people in my entire life, compared with tens or maybe even hundreds of books (and here, I'm counting only those books I've
really
loved, the kind that make you happy just to look at them, which make you smile regardless of what else is happening in your life, which you always turn back to like an old friend and can remember exactly where you first ‘met' them – I'm sure you know just what I'm talking about). But that handful of people you love … they're surely worth just as much as all of those books.

Your question got me to start rereading
Walden
. Sometimes, I still long to be in a little cabin in the woods, together with some books, and free from all the strange demands we humans place on one another and ourselves. Maybe we would all benefit from a break from ‘civilization' for a year or two every now and then (that said, there are so few people here in Broken Wheel that we might be more like the village Thoreau fled to, rather than the big city he left. I've never thought that his depiction of the farmers was his strongest suit – he's better when he's aiming higher, but who isn't?).

Walden
is one of those books you simply have to quote from. I haven't even made it through the first fifty pages yet, but John is already bored with it. Maybe that proves I was right about books and people: books are fantastic and probably come into their own in a cabin in the woods, but how fun is it to read a fantastic book if you can't tell others about it, talk about it, quote from it constantly?

‘The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?' Isn't that a wonderful quote? I especially like the idea of good behavior being caused by demons. I'm afraid I was stupid enough to quote the lines above to Caroline. She simply raised her eyebrows – Caroline is someone who can raise an eyebrow without needing to actually say anything – and said: ‘Good behavior?' in a slightly questioning tone. As though she wanted to remind me that that particular demon hasn't affected me especially often but was too polite to say it straight out.

Thoreau also said: ‘Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion,' but I think that's more depressing. I prefer the idea of a wild demon causing us to toe the line over the thought of us doing it ourselves, worrying what others will think even though they're much too concerned with themselves to even give us the slightest thought.

Best,

Amy

THE NEWSLETTER WAS
a big hit when it came out. It was dominated by a picture of Sara reading in the display window, seen through reflections in the windowpane, directly beneath the big yellow letters. Below that was a smaller picture of her in front of the shop, smiling hesitantly and squinting at the camera flash.

The article itself described a party celebrating the two latest additions to Broken Wheel – Sara and Sara's. Though the bookstore was called officially Oak Tree Bookstore (a name to make Iowans proud!), everyone called it Sara's. It was there for anyone who liked to read. No order was too big or too small, and that was lucky, Jen wrote in a barely concealed stab at the neighbouring town, since it was the only bookstore for miles around. The newsletter didn't hesitate to recommend a visit soon!!! (Just to be on the safe side, Jen ended her article with multiple exclamation marks.)

For the first time, the people of Broken Wheel actually read their newsletter. The article was also printed out and pinned up in various places around town.

For the first time, it was also pinned up in Hope.

In Broken Wheel, there were many who said that Hope existed purely to be unkind to them, that it thrived on annoying them. In Hope, the inhabitants weren't quite sure whether Broken Wheel still existed.

Whenever talk of the neighbouring town came up there, it wasn't unusual to hear something along the lines of ‘Didn't that place die out during the nineties?', or something equally smug and condescending.

Hope was a town so modern that it had a butcher, a greengrocer and a bakery, as though supermarkets had never been invented.

It was the kind of small town used in political campaign films, whenever politicians wanted to emphasise traditional, decent, American family values. Iowa's last two governors had done it, and both had won – clearly, according to those who lived there, thanks to those films. The town also straddled party boundaries. It didn't matter whether it was the Democrat Chet Culver or the Republican Terry Branstad, so long as their banners could be seen in public places. Hope was the kind of town where neat, well-ironed American flags could be seen fluttering in the afternoon sun long after the elections were over, even when the country was at peace.

No politicians ever visited Broken Wheel. It didn't find itself being courted by the men and women who governed it even towards the end of tightly fought elections in which, they claimed, ‘every vote counts'. Whether that was because the politicians didn't think the inhabitants voted, or because they didn't even know the town existed, was unclear.