When he reaches the edge of the bushes, he looks out like a small hunted animal. He sees kids crossing the lawn. He doesn’t see the Library Cop, but of course this doesn’t matter; the Library Cop sees him. From today on, the Library Cop will always be close.
At last the lawn is empty. A small, dishevelled boy, Little White Crawling Sam, wriggles out of the bushes with leaves in his hair and dirt on his face. His untucked shirt billows below him. His eyes are wide and staring and no longer completely sane. He sidles over to the concrete steps, casts one cringing, terrified look up at the cryptic Latin motto inscribed over the door, and then lays his book down on one of the steps with all the care and terror of an orphan girl leaving her nameless child on some stranger’s doorstep. Then Little White Walking Sam becomes Little White Running Sam: he runs across the lawn, he sets the Briggs Avenue Branch of the St Louis Public Library to his back and runs, but it doesn’t matter how fast he runs because he can’t outrun the taste of red licorice on his tongue and down his throat, sweet and sugar-slimy, and no matter how fast he runs the Library Wolf of course runs with him, the Library Wolf is just behind his shoulder where he cannot see, and the Library Wolf is whispering Come with me, son … I’m a poleethman, and he will always whisper that, through all the years he will whisper that, in those dark dreams Sam dares not remember he will whisper that, Sam will always run from that voice screaming Is it paid yet? Is the fine paid yet? Oh dear God please, IS MY FINE PAID YET? And the answer which comes back is always the same: It will never be paid, son; it will never be paid. Never. Nev CHAPTER 14
The Library (III)
1
The final approach to the dirt runway which Stan called the Proverbia Airport was bumpy and scary. The Navajo came down, feeling its way through stacks of angry air, and landed with a final jarring thump.
When it did, Sam uttered a pinched scream. His eyes flew open.
Naomi had been waiting patiently for something like this. She leaned forward at once, ignoring the seatbelt which cut into her middle, and put her arms around him. She ignored his raised arms and first instinctive drawing away, just as she ignored the first hot and unpleasant outrush of horrified breath. She had comforted a great many drunks in the grip of the d.t.’s; this wasn’t much different. She could feel his heart as she pressed against him. It seemed to leap and skitter just below his shirt.
‘It’s okay. Sam, it’s okay – it’s just me, and you’re back. It was a dream. You’re back.’
For a moment he continued trying to push himself into his scat. Then he collapsed, limp. His hands came up and hugged her with panicky tightness.
‘Naomi,’ he said in a harsh, choked voice. ‘Naomi, oh Naomi, oh dear Jesus, what a nightmare I had, what a terrible dream.’
Stan had radioed ahead, and someone had come out to turn on the runway landing lights. They were taxiing between them toward the end of the runway now. They had not beaten the rain after all; it drummed hollowly on the body of the plane. Up front, Stan Soames was bellowing out something which might have been ‘Camptown Races.’
‘Was it a nightmare?’ Naomi asked, drawing back from Sam so she could look into his bloodshot eyes.
‘Yes. But it was also true. All true.’
‘Was it the Library Policeman, Sam? Your Library Policeman?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered, and pressed his face into her hair.
‘Do you know who he is? Do you know who he is now, Sam?’
After a long, long moment, Sam whispered: ‘I know.’
2
Stan Soames took a look at Sam’s face as he and Naomi stepped from the plane and was instantly contrite.
‘Sorry it was so rough. I really thought we’d beat the rain. It’s just that with a headwind -‘
‘I’ll be okay,’ Sam said. He was, in fact, looking better already.
‘Yes,’ Naomi said. ‘He’ll be fine. Thank you, Stan. Thank you so much. And Dave thanks you, too.’
‘Well, as long as you got what you needed?’
‘We did,’ Sam assured him. ‘We really did.’
‘Let’s walk around the end of the runway,’ Stan told them. ‘That boggy place’d suck you right in to your waist if you tried the shortcut this evening. Come on into the house. We’ll have coffee. There’s some apple pie, too, I think.’
Sam glanced at his watch. It was quarter past seven.
‘We’ll have to take a raincheck, Stan,’ he said. ‘Naomi and I have to get these books into town right away.’
‘You ought to at least come in and dry off. You’re gonna be soaked by the time you get to your car.’
Naomi shook her head. ‘It’s very important.’
‘Yeah,’ Stan said. ‘From the look of you two, I’d say it is. Just remember that you promised to tell me the story.’
‘We will, too,’ Sam said. He glanced at Naomi and saw his own thought reflected in her eyes: If we’re still alive to tell it.
3
Sam drove, resisting an urge to tromp the gas pedal all the way to the floor. He was worried about Dave.
Driving off the road and turning Naomi’s car over in the ditch wasn’t a very effective way of showing concern, however, and the rain in which they had landed was now a downpour driven by a freshening wind.
The wipers could not keep up with it, even on high, and the headlights petered out after twenty feet. Sam dared drive no more than twenty-five. He glanced at his watch, then looked over at where Naomi sat, with the bookshop bag in her lap.
‘I hope we can make it by eight,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know.’
‘Just do the best you can, Sam.’
Headlights, wavery as the lights of an undersea diving bell, loomed ahead. Sam slowed to ten miles an hour and squeezed left as a ten-wheeler rumbled by – a half-glimpsed hulk in the rainy darkness.
‘Can you talk about it? The dream you had?’
‘I could, but I’m not going to,’ he said. ‘Not now. It’s the wrong time.’
Naomi considered, this, then nodded her head. ‘All right.’
‘I can tell you this much – Dave was right when he said children made the best meal, and he was right when he said that what she really lived on is fear.’
They had reached the outskirts of town. A block further on, they drove through their first light-controlled intersection. Through the Datsun’s windshield, the signal was only a bright-green smear dancing in the air above them. A corresponding smear danced across the smooth wet hide of the pavement.
‘I need to make one stop before we get to the Library,’ Sam said. ‘The Piggly Wiggly’s on the way, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but if we’re going to meet Dave behind the Library at eight, we really don’t have much time to spare.
Like it or not, this is go-slow weather.’
‘I know – but this won’t take long.’
‘What do you need?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘but I think I’ll know it when I see it.’
She glanced at him, and for the second time he found himself amazed by the foxlike, fragile quality of her beauty, and unable to understand why he had never seen it before today.
Well, you dated her, didn’t you? You must have seen SOMETHING.
Except he hadn’t. He had dated her because she was pretty, presentable, unattached, and approximately his own age. He had dated her because bachelors in cities which were really just overgrown small towns were supposed to date … if they were bachelors interested in making a place for themselves in the local business community, that was. If you didn’t date, people … some people … might think you were (a poleethman)
a little bit funny.
I WAS a little funny, he thought. On second thought, I was a LOT funny. But whatever I was, I think Pm a little different now. And I am seeing her. There’s that. I’m really SEEING her.
For Naomi’s part, she was struck by the strained whiteness of his face and the look of tension around his eyes and mouth. He looked strange … but he no longer looked terrified. Naomi thought: He looks like a man who has been granted the opportunity to return to his worst nightmare … with some Powerful weapon in his hands.
She thought it was a face she might be falling in love with, and this made her deeply uneasy.
‘This stop … it’s important, isn’t it?’
‘I think so, yes.’
Five minutes later he stopped in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly store. Sam was out at once and dashing for the door through the rain.