Serenity got to her feet and wiped her sweating palms on her dress.
“Mr. Mayor.” She cleared her throat. “I’d like to speak on the point.”
Bentley rolled his eyes. “Serenity, girl, I explained this to you in my office this afternoon.”
“Yes, sir. You did. I’d just like the opportunity to present a few points to the council as a whole.”
Mayor Johnson looked at Bentley. Bentley waved his hand like he was swatting a fly.
“Make it fast. Game starts in thirty minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” She held her index cards up and tried to focus, but her hands were shaking.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Under this proposed budget, our library will have to close its doors. We can’t—”
She tried to shuffle to the next card and the stack got loose and exploded out of her hands and fluttered down to the carpet like a white cloud of wayward birds. She gasped and dropped to her knees and tried to scrape the cards together.
Bentley’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Let me help you, Serenity. If your library is unable to support itself, then we can take the funding we allocated last year, and use it to open our citizens up to the biggest library of all—the internet. A place with more books than any library can ever have. Our citizens can have discounts at sites like Amazon and iTunes. Every citizen will have his own library in his own living room.”
She gave up on the cards, stood up, and pointed at the cards.
“The internet is like those cards on the floor: lots of information, and no accountability. When your children go to the internet, they may find what they need. They may not. Or, as our police will tell you, they may find much, much worse. And when they are discouraged or hurt or lost, the internet does not care, and does not help.
“Our library—your library—is the only place where anyone, anytime can consult with a professional for free. We have knowledgeable professionals hired by the city to help; and they are accountable to help and inspire all of us.
“Maddington is in a battle with other cities for high-tech firms and startups that are too small to afford a full-time research staff. That battle is between the forces of knowledge and the forces of rumor and guesswork.”
She turned to one of the council.
“Councilman Jacobs, you’re our lead recruiter for new businesses. What would it mean to you if you could take potential businesses to the new library and tell them that Maddington is a city built on books and knowledge, tell them that when they have questions—technical questions, legal questions, business questions—they can come to the library and have professionals research answers in minutes?”
“We would kick ass,” Jacobs sighed. “I get tired of being asked what’s special about Maddington, having to tell them we’ve got a Walmart and a Burger King.”
A couple of the councilmen nodded. Jacobs looked at the nodding heads and said, “You know, the funding Ms. Hammer requested is really not that much. Not for what we get.”
Bentley shook his head. “Low taxes. That’s what companies want.”
Jacobs said, “We’re talking pennies here, Mr. Bentley.”
Bentley’s voice boomed. “That’s how it starts, a penny here and a penny there.”
Jacobs said, “You know, we do have another unannounced project. Maybe we could divert some of that funding.”
Bentley pulled back from the microphone and hissed at Jacobs. “That money is earmarked. And off the books.”
Bentley nodded to his crowd. A man stood up and yelled, “No more spending.” Others took up the chant.
The two nodding councilmen stopped nodding.
Bentley smiled sweetly. “Serenity, girl, we don’t need to waste the people’s money on books when we have the internet. Books don’t matter to people anymore.”
“Books don’t matter?” Serenity shouted at Bentley. “Where do you think all these ideas you think are so original came from? Books are our connection to all the wisdom of the world. Books let people from hundreds of years ago and a thousand miles away enrich our lives.
“Books. Books and people. And that’s all our library is. A junior high school boy, sitting next to volumes of Shakespeare and Hemingway, writing his first story—that’s our library. A girl reading a book on electronics and a book on music and coming up with a new component for the music industry—that’s our library. Books and people—libraries—keep this city alive. I beg of you, don’t take our library away from our city.”
Jacobs said, “I move that we restore the library funding requested by Ms. Hammer.”
Bentley shook his head. “We will punish any politician who tries to increase spending.”
His crowd chanted. “No new spending.”
The motion never received a second.
Serenity stood there, alone and awkward. Then she looked at the crowd and shook a finger. “I will never let you take away our library.”
“Ms. Hammer,” Bentley smiled down on her like a father lecturing a wayward child. “We aren’t the ones taking your precious plaything away from you. Your library—and all of these so-called community programs—are in danger of dying because people like you act like government bureaucrats, and insist on running your toys by your government bureaucrat rules. Your rules are what’s killing you.” He pointed a finger. “Someday soon, in typical government bureaucrat fashion, the pot of money that you have mismanaged will run out, and you will find a bill that you cannot pay. You will come back to us and beg, like the bureaucrat that you are, for more money. And on that day, we will shut your outdated library down and sell your precious books by the pound.”
Serenity turned her back on them and stomped out. Let them have it. Let them have it all and take their precious city to the hell it deserved. If they don’t care, I don’t care.
Joe followed her out to the lobby. “Honey, you can only fight so much. I think that’s probably the best way to end it.”
She swung at the air violently, missed and hit Joe in the face.
“Oh, honey,” she said and reached out to apologize. He was standing hard and still as stone, pretending it didn’t happen or didn’t hurt or didn’t something,. So, she respected his macho and pulled back and blamed his swelling eye on the men inside, along with everything else. She stomped back into the council chambers. From the back of the hall she shouted: “You. Will. Not. Take. Our. Library!”
twelve
maybe i can shoot somebody
SUNRISE ALWAYS FELT like a new book to Serenity, ready to be opened so all the good words could spill out.
Friday morning, all she wanted to do was keep this book shut.
She had been sitting on the darkened deck since she got home, curled up on the glider in her Crimson Tide sweats and wrapped in a blanket. Next to her was a notebook for ideas.
The page was blank.
The door opened and Joe came out and sat two coffee cups on the glider arms and sat down beside her. She scooted to her side and pulled the covers around her tighter.
He studied her. “Today, right?”
She ignored him but picked up the cup and took a sip.
“Pretty sunrise,” he said.
“If you like sunrises.”
“I’m guessing you’ve got no ideas?”
She turned quickly and sloshed coffee. “None.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Mr. Law-and-Order Cowboy?” She snorted. “Shoot somebody, maybe.”
“Tell me who.”
“You don’t have enough bullets.”
“Maybe you can be a books-only library with no internet and almost no money.”
“Kind of like a one-legged man running a marathon,” she said. “Half the people will have questions we won’t be able to answer, and they’ll have nowhere else to go. And, the city council will shut us down as soon as they find out.”