The Town Page 10

  There were two other women in the library. Patrons. A blond woman approximately her own age standing next to the best-seller rack and reading the dust flap of a new Stephen King book, and a gray-haired old lady sitting at a table with a stack of sewing magazines in front of her.

  The library smelled deliciously of old books, the deep, resonant fragrance that had all but disappeared from the climate-controlled environments of most modern libraries. Breathing the familiar, half-forgotten scent took her back to her childhood.

  This would be a good place to work.

  She was glad she’d come, and she vowed to see it through. She needed to see it through. As much as she hated to admit it, she had not been prepared to win the lottery, and she understood now that she was one of those people who required imposed structure in her life, for whom adversity and necessity were motivators. Coming into money was the worst thing that could have happened to her.

  She walked up to the front desk, and the overweight woman smiled up at her. “May I help you?”

  Julia nodded. “I’d like to volunteer. I don’t know if you need anyone to work here—”

  “Honey,” the woman said, “we always need volunteers.” She stood up with some difficulty. “What’s your name?”

  “Julia. Julia Tomasov.”

  “Molokan, huh?”

  Julia nodded, not sure if there was disapproval in the woman’s voice or just simple recognition.

  “I don’t remember seeing you before.”

  “We just moved back to town. Or rather my husband moved back. He’s from here. I was born in L.A.”

  The woman nodded. “I’m Marge Lindsey. The librarian. I have no paid assistants or aides, so everyone else here is strictly volunteer. You ever work at a library before?”

  Julia almost gave the librarian her true résumé, but at the last minute she simply nodded and said, “Yes.” She didn’t want to appear to be competing or engaging in any sort of one-upmanship, and she had the feeling that in a place like McGuane, any prior experience would be seen as a threat. This was the woman for whom she would be working, and she was determined to remain on the librarian’s good side.

  “Good. We can use all the help we can get. As I said, I’m the only paid staff member here. The library’s county-funded, and in addition to the money for my salary, we receive only a small stipend for purchases each year, so anything beyond that is strictly volunteer. Most of our acquisitions are from donations, and our volunteers are the ones who sort and catalog and index and repair the books. They also shelve, and sometimes check in and check out.” Her eyes swept Julia’s face to gauge her reaction, and Julia smiled pleasantly.

  Apparently satisfied, the librarian called out to the two patrons, “Deanna? Helen? You’re not in any rush, are you? I’m going to take our new volunteer back and introduce her.”

  Both the old woman at the table and the younger woman with the King book nodded their acknowledgment, and Julia followed Marge through the open doorway behind the front desk into a surprisingly large work area. There were two middle-aged women sitting at a long table in the center of the room, stacks of books piled in front of them, boxes of additional books on the floor under the table. A few volumes were arranged at one end of the otherwise empty metal stand-alone shelves behind them, and two handcarts were situated against the far wall, next to a small refrigerator and a sagging couch.

  The women looked up as they entered.

  “Alma?” Marge said. “Trudy? This here’s Julia Tomasov, our newest volunteer.”

  The two women nodded, smiling.

  “Alma here is in charge of acquisitions. She’s been with us for six years now—”

  “Seven,” Alma said.

  Marge looked surprised. “Seven? It’s been that long?”

  “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

  All three of them laughed, and Julia smiled politely.

  “Anyway, Alma’s in every day, and she’s sort of my right-hand woman. Trudy’s been volunteering for about a year, and she comes in a couple times a week. I don’t know what you had in mind, but we can use you whenever you’re available. An hour a day, once a week, whatever.”

  “I was thinking about Tuesdays and Thursdays at first. Maybe . . . ten to two?”

  “That’d be fine,” Marge said. “That’d be great. As you can see, we’re processing donations right now. We got a pretty big gift from the estate of one of our ex-mayors a few months ago, but we were in the middle of a remodeling project, and we haven’t been able to get to it until now. We sort of let that slide. But processing these books is now our top priority.” She looked at Julia. “Were you planning to start today?”

  Julia nodded.

  “Great, great. You said you worked in a library before, so you can probably pick up on this pretty quick.” She motioned toward an empty seat next to Trudy. “The girls’ll show you the ropes. If you have any questions they can’t answer, just pop up front and I’ll be more than happy to help you.”

  Marge remained a few minutes longer, helping her to get settled, then excused herself and walked back out front to check on the patrons.

  “Molokan?” Alma asked, handing her a stack of blank accession cards.

  Julia nodded.

  “My first husband was a Molokan. Drunk bastard.”

  She remained silent, not sure where this was going.

  “Your husband Molokan?”

  “Yes,” Julia said.

  “He ever beat you?”

  She laughed. “No.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “They’re not all wife beaters,” Trudy said.

  “I know.”

  “And not all wife beaters are Molokan.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  Trudy smiled sympathetically at Julia, giving her a quick she’s-not-so-bad-when-you-get-to-know-her look.

  Julia smiled back, understanding, and the conversation soon settled into the usual biographical chitchat. Alma had indeed had a hard life, and Julia was amazed by the soap-opera quality of her troubles, from her string of marriages to various losers and layabouts to the recent arrest of her eldest son on drug charges. Trudy, by contrast, had been married to the same man since she was sixteen, an insurance salesman and an elder in the Mormon church. Both women seemed simple and honest and refreshingly free of pretensions, and when Julia thought about what her day would have been like had she remained at home, in the house, she was very glad that she’d come here this morning.

  After that, the conversation took a turn for the worse. It was Alma who steered the talk away from the personal and toward the political.

  “The government’s lying to us again,” she said.

  Trudy did not respond, and Julia followed her lead, saying nothing and continuing to fill out the accession card on the book in front of her.

  “There’s a comet that’s going to crash into the earth, and the government knows about it, but they’re keeping it a secret.”

  Julia could not help smiling. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Joe Smith.”

  “Who’s Joe Smith?”

  “He’s on the radio. From midnight ’til four on the Wilcox station. Last night, he said that there’s a comet heading directly for Earth that’s going to crash somewhere on the West Coast and kill millions of people but they’re not telling people because they don’t want them to panic.”

  Julia shook her head. “Don’t you think if that was true, we would’ve heard about it before? We would’ve seen it on the news or read about it in the paper?”

  “That’s because the government’s keeping it a secret.”

  “And even with all the big news organizations and everyone who has a telescope, no one’s heard of this except the nighttime radio guy in Wilcox, Arizona? Sorry. I don’t buy it.”

  Alma squinted, looked at her suspiciously. “You’re not some kind of liberal, are you?”

  “Alma’s right,” Trudy said. “Joe Smith tells the truth t
he government doesn’t want you to hear. Joe Smith’s not even his real name. It’s just the one he uses so the government can’t track him down.”

  She had considered Trudy an ally in this, but now she looked at both of them as though they were crazy.

  She was reminded, absurdly, of American Graffiti, where the characters all invented elaborate stories surrounding the Wolfman, their favorite disc jockey, some claiming that he was broadcasting from a ship in the ocean in international waters, others believing he was illegally broadcasting from Mexico into the United States, when the truth was that he was a local guy working in a cramped studio at the edge of town.

  She didn’t feel like continuing the discussion, and she made the decision to ignore it, let it slide, and concentrate on the work before her. She was being arrogant and elitist, she knew, reverting to her old ways, but she put their opinions down to ignorance and a lack of sophistication. She assumed that the fundamental differences of opinion and diverging worldviews were due to the fact that Alma and Trudy had grown up here and had, at the most, high school educations, while she had grown up in Los Angeles and graduated from college. In her mind, she agreed that they would disagree and vowed to avoid the subjects of politics and religion entirely.

  “You’ll see,” Alma said firmly. “When the comet hits California, then you’ll believe it.”

  Julia refused to respond.

  “The government lies to us all the time. They didn’t tell the truth about Oklahoma City or the bombing of Flight 800. They won’t even acknowledge helping to train the UN troops.”

  Trudy nodded. “The government’s like that. That’s why we need our own militias, to protect America.”

  Julia couldn’t resist. “A militia’s not going to do much good against a comet,” she pointed out.

  Alma squinted at her. “What are you? A traitor? Can’t ever tell with you Russians—”

  “Leave her alone,” Trudy said. “It’s not her fault. She’s just been brainwashed by the media.”

  Marge walked through the door into the back room. “Girls, girls, girls . . .” She smiled tolerantly. “We can hear you all the way out front. I came back to tell you to keep it down. You’re disturbing the patrons.”

  “Sorry,” Trudy said.

  The librarian’s voice dropped. “Also, I heard what you all were talking about, and I couldn’t just let it slide. Julia, believe it or not, our country does face some mighty big problems and some serious choices about the future. There are threats confronting America that our government just will not or cannot respond to. The United States is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, and sometimes the people just have to take matters into their own hands. That’s why we have the Second Amendment. So that we can form militias, so that we can respond when America’s freedom is threatened.”

  Julia met Marge’s eyes. “Who’s threatening our freedom?”

  The other woman backed off. “I’m not going to get into a political discussion here. I just came to tell you all to keep it down. After all, this is a library.” She smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Come on, now. Back to work. You may be volunteers, but I’m in charge here, and there’s a lot that needs to be done.”

  Julia watched the librarian walk through the door to the front of the library.

  They were all loonies, she realized.

  She returned to the pile of donated books in front of her, not looking at either Alma or Trudy. Silently, she filled out another accession card.

  She left at lunch.

  She did not return.

  3

  Jim sat on the edge of the unmade bed, head in his hands, elbows on his knees. He was tired, fatigued, and his head was pounding. He’d been sitting like this for nearly twenty minutes, wanting to get up, intending to get up, but for some reason unable to do so. It felt like a hangover, the pain in his head and the lethargy in his body, but he had not gotten drunk in a long time, and he knew that could not be the cause.

  Ordinarily, he would have been at the church hours ago. It was nearly midmorning, the sun hot and high in the sky, and he should have already finished sweeping out the dust and cleaning the kitchen, and started preparing his sermon for Sunday. But he just hadn’t been able to do it.

  Perhaps he was sick.

  No. It was not his body that was troubling him.

  It was not even his mind.

  It was his heart.

  It was Agafia.

  He did not know why, not specifically, but his heart ached when he thought of her. This should have been the happiest time of his life. His prayers had finally been answered, and Agafia had returned to him free and unencumbered. She had apparently forgiven and forgotten, and she seemed more than willing to take up where they’d left off.

  But . . .

  But something was wrong.

  She’d changed.

  Yes, she had. That was to be expected, of course. Only saints and fools walked through life without reacting and adjusting to the circumstances of their surroundings, without learning from their mistakes. But in Agafia’s case, it was different. She hadn’t changed all that much in her attitude or outlook, and on the surface she seemed to be the same as always, only older. But there’d been a subtle shift in the core of her being, and there was now something about her that made him uncomfortable.

  He did not like being around her.

  That was why his heart was so heavy. The woman he loved, the woman of his dreams, frightened him.

  Frightened him?

  Yes.

  The thought occurred to him that it might not be her doing. She might be under the influence of an evil spirit, a neh chizni doohc.

  Jim sighed. He was overreacting, obviously worked into a state by his concern for her, by his love, and by his inability to understand the ambiguity of his feelings. Agafia was the same religious woman she had always been. She was a good Molokan, and it was beneath him even to think otherwise.

  Wasn’t it?

  He thought of what had happened in Russiantown all those years ago, and he closed his eyes, shivering.

  He’d always assumed—no, he’d always known—that everything God did was good. God was all good and was incapable of doing something that was not good. So the Bible, God’s word, was inherently pure, supremely incorruptible, the closest thing to perfection on this earth. Yet when he’d gone over to Agafia’s home yesterday, when he’d looked at the big family Bible on top of the bureau in her dining room, he’d felt a vague sense of unease. He tried to tell himself that it was the room, the house, but that was not true. It was the Bible itself that was wrong. The black-leather binding looked ominous, the gilt lettering garish and almost obscene. There was about the volume a subtle air of decadence and corruption. He never would have thought such a thing possible, but the Good Book did not seem at all good. It seemed bad. Evil.

  He was afraid of it.

  He was a man of God. How could he be afraid of a Bible? He didn’t know, but he was, and as Agafia talked, he had gently urged her into another room, away from the horrid book.

  The Bible a horrid book?

  Maybe it wasn’t her at all, he reasoned.

  Maybe it was him.

  Maybe it was the house.

  That was the most likely explanation. After what had happened at that location, it was more than realistic to assume that evil lived at that address. He had not yet asked Agafia whether she knew what had transpired in her house, and though he had not wanted to bring it up before, had not wanted to taint her homecoming, he now thought the time had come to tell her of the massacre, assuming she did not already know.

  If she had not said the proper prayers, perhaps all of the church members could go over to her home and attempt to cleanse it. If she had done everything correctly, then they could still put their heads together and, with the combined power and goodness of all their wills, drive out whatever had taken root at that spot.

  And if it wasn’t the house?

  He didn’t know
. But whatever the problem, whatever the cause of his unease, he still loved her.

  He would always love her.

  His head was still pounding and he felt like going back to sleep, but he forced himself to stand. He walked into the bathroom, wet a comb, and ran it through his tangled white hair. He rinsed with Listerine and grabbed yesterday’s pants and shirt from the top of the hamper, putting them on before going into the kitchen and grabbing a handful of crackers to snack on.

  He walked down to the church.

  And sensed immediately that something was wrong.

  He walked slowly through the open room, his footsteps echoing on the dusty wooden floor. The windows were shut, the doors securely locked, nothing appeared to have been touched, but he could tell that he was not alone. He could feel it. The church looked empty, but it wasn’t, and it was with trepidation that he approached the darkened doorway of the kitchen.

  “Zdravicha!” he called. Hello.

  There was no answer.

  He tried to tell himself that kids had broken in or that he was worried about robbers and vandals, but there was no sign of a break-in, there was nothing to steal, and nothing had been vandalized.

  And the truth was, it was not human intruders that concerned him.

  It was neh chizni doohc.

  He flipped on the kitchen light, looked quickly around. Nothing.

  There were only the stove, the sink, an empty counter, and the metal rack holding pots, pans, and various cooking utensils. At the opposite end of the room was the closed door of the storage closet, and Jim said a quick protective prayer as he walked across the kitchen and yanked the door open.

  Again . . . nothing. Only brooms and tools and buckets and cleaning solvents.

  He closed the closet door. That was it. There were no other rooms or spaces inside the church. He had looked everywhere and found nothing. He sighed heavily. He should have been able to relax, his fears allayed, but the feeling was still there, as strong as ever, that he was not alone, that someone—something.