“No, and I hope I never do.”
She laughed. “You mean ‘not yet.’ It’s just the way things are. And deer season starts on Saturday. When those rifle hunters get out in the woods, the deer will start moving around.”
I wasn’t going to worry about that, either.
Denise was looking around, checking out the wooded roadside. “I wish I had my book with me, that one listing where all the town and county names of Michigan came from.”
“Why’s that?”
“We’re in Peck Township, right? If I had my book with me, I could look it up and see if I have any notes on it.”
“A note?” I asked.
“Well, yeah. I make notes in a lot of my books. Reminders, mostly.”
“You write in your books?”
Denise snorted. “Don’t go all Miss Librarian on me. What, I can’t do what I want with my own property? It’s not like I’m not marking up a library book.”
No, but it seemed . . . wrong, somehow.
“It helps me remember things,” Denise was saying. “Especially the long historicals. Authors just load up on the characters in those. If I didn’t make notes about who was who, I’d forever be flipping around to figure things out.”
Knowing that she was marking up works of fiction was somehow even worse than knowing what she was doing to nonfiction. Yes, they were her own books and, yes, she had the right to do what she wanted to them, but it still made me squeamish. I mean, if a person could write in a book, what else might she be capable of doing?
A road sign flashed past. “Our first stop is coming up,” I said. “Ready?”
“You bet!” Denise grinned.
Well, at least she was enthusiastic. I glanced over at Eddie. He’d shoved himself up against the side of the carrier that was the farthest possible distance from Denise and pointed his hind end in her direction.
No. I was not going to use a cat’s sleeping position as any kind of omen, good or bad.
Eddie opened one eye, used it to look up toward Denise, then closed it again. His sides heaved as he sighed.
Cats, I told myself, cannot foretell the future. This is going to be fine.
“You know,” Denise said, “what this bookmobile needs is a decent stereo system. It’s almost Thanksgiving; we should be playing Christmas songs. I just can’t get enough of ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,’ right?” She sang the chorus and tried to start the first verse, but got stuck on the words and went back to the chorus.
I gave Eddie a quick look, but he’d already turned himself around so that his hind end was facing me.
* * *
At the end of the day, I couldn’t decide what I’d wanted to do more: hug Denise or put her out by the side of the road.
She’d been both amazingly helpful and incredibly annoying. Once she’d been both at the same time, a feat I hadn’t known was possible.
“This was fun,” she said.
“I’m glad you thought so.” For a moment, I considered launching into the story of the bookmobile’s origin, how Stephen, my boss and the director of the Chilson District Library, had closed the smaller satellite libraries around the county in the name of financial savings, because now that the library offered e-books, he’d said there was no need for the branches’ existence.
I’d felt differently, and had floated the idea of a bookmobile to the library board. They’d smiled at me indulgently, said it was a fine idea, and if I could come up with the money, they’d be glad to approve the program.
A few months later, I had a hefty check in hand from an extremely generous donor, and the surprised board approved the program. Stephen wasn’t so thrilled. And though it was clear he thought that the bookmobile was a waste of my time and the library’s resources, he had little choice but to go along with the board’s decision.
At the time I thought I’d won a great victory. Now reality was setting in. Stephen was continually giving me more to do at the library, a strategy I suspected was designed to take me away from the bookmobile. If I didn’t have time to drive the bookmobile, no one would drive it anywhere, because we had no funds to hire a driver, and then Stephen could sell it and pocket the check in the library’s bank account.
I sighed and decided to keep it all to myself. If Denise was excited about the bookmobile, let her keep that emotion. Maybe she’d spread it across the land, where it would seep into Chilson’s community psyche, and money would fall from the sky. Stranger things had happened, hadn’t they?
“Next left,” Denise said. “We’re the third house on the right. That’s it.”
The week before, I’d told her I could drop her off on the way back into Chilson, since the day’s return route went right past her road. It was a neighborhood of two-story homes on lots that my friend Rafe would call too big to mow and too small to farm. Denise’s husband had dropped her off at the library that morning, and it was easy enough to make a short side trip, especially since her road ended in a cul-de-sac that fit the bookmobile’s turning radius.
“See you Saturday morning,” I said.
“Bright and early.” She unbuckled her seat belt and reached forward to give Eddie a scratch through the wire door. “See you later, Eddie-gator.”
When she was gone, I looked over at my cat companion. “So, what do you think?”
His yellow eyes blinked in slow motion, but he didn’t say anything.
“That’s exactly how I feel.” I tried blinking the way Eddie did, but blinking slowly was a lot harder than I thought it would be. After two tries I gave it up and dropped the bookmobile’s transmission into drive.
“On the plus side,” I said, “we don’t have to think about her again for four days. So let’s not, okay?”
Eddie’s mouth opened and closed silently, which, since I wanted to think he was agreeing with me, I did.
“Then we’re settled. Time for a new subject.” We moved on down the road, and when we were on the two-lane county highway, I said, “How about what season is best in northern lower Michigan? Spring, summer, fall, or winter?”
I studied the countryside that lay before us. The morning’s snow had long since turned to rain and melted away the half inch of white stuff. Trees that in summer had been covered with leaves were now skeletons, revealing things that were invisible in warmer months. Houses appeared where you hadn’t realized they existed, long views of lakes and hills emerged, and a whole new layer of the world was coming into view.
“It’s like the skin is peeled back,” I said. “In a couple of weeks, the snow will come and cover everything up again, just like in summer the grass and trees cover things. But now, and in early spring before things turn green, the bones are showing.”
I was proud of my insight. It was almost poetic, really. Eddie, however, was snoring.
Until Eddie, I’d never known that cats were capable of snoring. Now I knew better. At least once a week I’d wake from a deep sleep to hear the not-so-dulcet tones of Felis eddicus, the species I’d decided was unique to Eddie.
There was still a short drive to town, so I went back to thinking about the seasons. Silently this time.
Winter was fun because of skiing and the sheer beauty of snow. Spring was fun because of watching the world turn green. Summer was fun because of the breathtaking freedom of being outside in shorts and a T-shirt, plus all my marina friends were back and the boardinghouse was full of new people to meet. And then we were back to fall, which was easy to love for its stunning colors and crisp mornings.
“Hey,” I said, waking Eddie. “You know what? I don’t have to decide which season I like best. I don’t have to choose. I can like them all!”
Eddie sneezed and licked his face. “Mrr,” he said.