“Which way do you want to go home?” I asked Eddie. “We can take the highway, which is the most direct route, or we can take the lake road, which is longer but a lot prettier.”
Whatever Eddie had intended to say got caught in the middle of his yawn, so his response came out something like “Rrrooorr.”
“That’s right,” I said, nodding. “They repaved the lake road earlier this summer, didn’t they?” The extra miles were worth it to avoid the potholes of the two-lane county highway. “Thanks for reminding me.”
The lake road, officially named Tonedagana County Road 350, curled through glacier-carved hills, first offering up stupendous views of the hilly countryside, then descending to the shores of Five Mile Lake. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop of it fronted real estate that was affordable for mere mortals.
But knowing that I’d never be able to own a lakeside home didn’t take away the pleasure I got from seeing the deep blue waters of the many lakes that graced Tonedagana County. Besides Five Mile Lake, the great Lake Michigan, and the large Janay Lake, we had Lake Mitchell, Dooley Lake, Spear Lake, Rock Lake, Peck Lake, and half a dozen other lakes of various shapes and sizes that provided our county with stunning scenic beauty and a healthy tax base.
“Too bad the library doesn’t get a bigger share,” I told Eddie, but if his closed eyes were any indication, he wasn’t paying attention to my ramblings.
And he was right. On this gorgeous July day, I shouldn’t be thinking about millages and taxable values and operational expenses or anything at all. I should be enjoying the sunshine and the view.
“There are lots of reasons,” I said to my uncaring cat, “that this part of the state is the playground for the downstate folks.” Of which I’d been one, not too long ago, but I didn’t like to be reminded of that fact. “Lots of Chicago people come up here and I bet half the Detroit area has either a family cottage or a hunting cabin in the area.” I paused. Did some quick mental math. “And two-thirds of Dearborn.”
To be fair, the majority of the properties hadn’t been purchased by the nouveau riche. Many cottages had been handed down from generation to generation with hardly an improvement made. Sure, some had been winterized and suburbanized, but many looked just as they had eighty years earlier, one bathroom, three small bedrooms, and a kitchen with no cabinets, only shelves.
Through the flickering sunlight that filtered down through the maple, cedar, and white birch trees, I could see glimpses of water sparkling with bright diamonds. “Too bad you’re a cat,” I told Eddie. “If you weren’t stuck in that cat carrier, you could be up here with me, enjoying the view.”
I heard a sound that might have been, and probably was, a snore.
I glanced over. Eddie was sleeping with one side of his face smushed against the front of the carrier. Tufts of black and white hair stuck out between the squares of wire, as did the tip of one ear.
“You are such a dork,” I said, but I said it quietly and with affection. Eddie was a doofus, but he was my doofus, and I loved him. “You’re lucky I didn’t name you Alonzo.” I had first encountered Eddie in a cemetery, next to the grave site of one Alonzo Tillotson, born 1847, died 1926.
I’d assumed the tabby cat had a home and tried to shoo him away, but he’d followed me all the way down the hill and into Chilson, where he’d done that figure eight thing, purring and turning and twisting around my ankles. If he’d been trying to charm me, it had worked just fine.
Dr. Joe, the vet, had checked him out and told me he was around two years old. I’d tempted fate by running a notice in the newspaper for a lost cat, but even though I’d virtuously run a normal-sized advertisement instead of the tiny one I’d considered, no one had called. Eddie and I had been together ever since.
“Not inseparable, though,” I said. “That would be weird. I mean, I like you a lot, but there’s no need for you to come into the bathroom with me.”
Eddie opened his eyes to narrow slits, then closed them again.
“Or the shower.” I tried to think of other zones that should be Eddie-free. The kitchen counter, certainly. Though I’d never seen him up there, there was paw-print evidence that he’d made the jump. And my closet. Maybe I needed to get a different latch for the door. What he found attractive about curling up on my shoes, I had no idea, but it wasn’t unusual for me to come home and find him sleeping on the floor of my tiny closet. For two weeks he’d preferred my blue flip-flops, but he’d switched to my running shoes. “Hope the flip-flops don’t get lonely,” I told him.
“Mrr.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “Depressed flip-flops are the worst. No flip, no flop, nothing but Eddie hair on them. It’s a—”
“Mrrr!”
I took my gaze off the road for a scant second. “You okay, pal?” He’d sounded a little frantic and I hoped his stomach had settled completely from his lunch of dry cat food and water.
“MRR!” He sprang to his feet. “MRRRR!”
“Okay, bud, okay.” I checked the road for a place to pull over. Nothing but curving asphalt, narrow shoulders, even narrower driveways, and trees. “Hang on a minute, there’s bound to be a spot past this curve. Then we’ll pull over and see what’s up, okay?”
The road was curving sharply and the fact that I’d already started bringing the bookmobile to a stop was the only thing that kept me from hitting the woman who was running into the middle of the road, waving her arms over her head, and shouting.
Chapter 2
Vehicles that are thirty-one feet long and weigh twenty-three thousand pounds loaded do not stop on a dime, but even so, I was surprised at how quickly the air brakes brought us to a halt.
Faster than thought, I unbuckled myself and reached to unlatch the door of the cat carrier. “Eddie? You all right? Sorry about that hard screeching stop.”
He glared at me from the farthest and darkest possible corner of the carrier and didn’t reply. I’d rigged up a way to strap the carrier down, but even so the hard braking would have caused him to slide around inside the carrier.
Since he didn’t look as if he was in dire shape, I left him to his sulk and opened the bookmobile door. I hurried down the steps and ran back to the woman. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”
As we drew closer to each other, I could see that the woman was wheezing with exertion. Her brown graying hair was falling out of its ponytail, and while her cheeks were red with the effort from running, the rest of her face was pale.
“It’s my husband,” she panted.
A black-and-white blur made of one hundred percent Eddie streaked past us, galloped down the road, then made a hard right down a driveway.
The woman paid no attention. “It’s my husband, down at our house. He’s having a stroke, I’m sure of it, and I need to get him to the hospital.” Tears coated her cheeks. “We don’t have a landline. I tried to call nine-one-one on my cell, but I dropped it. The back fell off and the battery popped out, it takes forever to cycle on again, and I couldn’t find my husband’s phone, so I just ran up here. I need help to get him into my car and please, oh, please…”
She grabbed my hands and suddenly no more words needed to be said. I wanted to chase after Eddie, but this came first. I didn’t know much about medicine, but I knew that getting stroke victims to the hospital as soon as possible was critical. It would take an ambulance half an hour to get to this part of the county. Add another half hour to get to the hospital, and that was… way too much time.
I cast aside all of Stephen’s warnings about waivers and insurance papers for anyone who rode along on the bookmobile. “Let’s go,” I said, her sense of urgency infecting me. “No.” I grabbed her sleeve when she turned around. “I’ll drive. It’ll be faster.”