The Giver of Stars, Page 5

  Alice would arrive at the library shortly after seven in the morning, the dew still thick on the grass, waving aside Bennett’s offer to drive her in the motor-car and leaving him to breakfast with his father. She would exchange a greeting with Frederick Guisler, who was often to be found talking to a horse, like Margery, and then walk around the back where Spirit and the mule were tethered, their breath sending steam rising into the cool dawn air. The library shelves were almost finished now, stacked with donated books from as far away as New York and Seattle. (The WPA had put out a call to libraries to donate, and brown-paper parcels arrived twice a week.) Mr. Guisler had mended an old table donated by a school in Berea so that they had somewhere to lay the huge leather-bound ledger that listed books in and out. The pages were filling quickly: Alice discovered that Beth Pinker left at 5 a.m., and that before she met Margery each day, Margery had already done two hours’ riding, dropping books at remote homesteads in the mountains. She would scan the list to see where she and Beth had been.

  Wednesday 15th

  The Farley children, Crystal—four comic books

  Mrs. Petunia Grant, The Schoolmaster’s House at Yellow Rock—two editions Ladies’ Home Journal (Feb, April 1937), one edition Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (ink marks on pages 34 and 35)

  Mr. F. Homer, Wind Cave—one edition Folk Medicine by D. C. Jarvis

  The Sisters Fritz, The End Barn, White Ash—one edition Cimarron by Edna Ferber, Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas (note: three back pages missing, cover water-damaged)

  The books were rarely new, and were often missing pages or covers, she discovered, while helping Frederick Guisler to shelve them. He was a wiry, weather-beaten man in his late thirties, who had inherited eight hundred acres from his father and who, like him, bred and broke horses, including Spirit, the little mare Alice had been riding. “She’s got opinions, that one,” he said, stroking the little horse’s neck. “Mind you, never met a decent mare that didn’t.” His smile was slow and conspiratorial, as if he wasn’t really talking about horses at all.

  Every day that first week Margery would map out the route they would take, and they would head out into the still morning, Alice breathing in the mountain air in heady gulps after the stifling fug of the Van Cleve house. In direct sun, as the day wore on, the heat would rise in shimmering waves from the ground, and it was a relief to climb into the mountains, where the flies and biting creatures didn’t buzz relentlessly around her face. On the more remote routes Margery would dismount to tie string to every fourth tree so that Alice could find her way back once she was working alone, pointing out landmarks and notable rock formations to help her. “If you can’t work it out, Spirit will find the way back for you,” she said. “She’s smart as a tack.”

  Alice was getting used to the little brown and white horse now. She knew exactly where Spirit would try to spin, and where she liked to speed up, and she no longer yelped but leaned forward into it, stroking the horse’s neck so that her neat little ears flicked back and forth. She had a rough idea now of which trails went where, and had drawn maps for each, which she tucked into her breeches, hoping she could find her way to each house on her own. Mostly she had just begun to relish the time in the mountains, the unexpected hush of the vast landscape, the sight of Margery ahead of her, stooping to avoid low branches, pointing out the remote cabins that rose up like organic growths amid clearings in the trees.

  “Look outwards, Alice,” Margery would say, her voice carrying on the breeze. “Not much point worrying what the town thinks about you—nothing you can do about that anyway. But when you look outwards, why, there’s a whole world of beautiful things.”

  For the first time in almost a year, Alice felt herself unobserved. There was nobody to pass comment on how she wore her clothes or held herself, nobody shooting her curious glances, or hovering to hear the way she spoke. She had started to understand Margery’s determination to have people “let her be.” She was pulled from her thoughts as Margery slid to a stop.

  “Here we go, Alice.” She jumped off by a rickety gate, where chickens scratched in a desultory way in the dust by the house and a large hog snuffled by a tree. “Time to meet the neighbors.”

  Alice followed her lead, dismounting and throwing the reins over the post by the front gate. The horses immediately lowered their heads and began to graze and Margery lifted one of her bags from the saddle and motioned to Alice to follow. The house was ramshackle, the weatherboarding drooping out of place like a wonky smile. The windows were thick with dirt, obscuring the interior, and an iron wash kettle sat outside over the embers of a fire. It was hard to believe anybody lived there.

  “Good morning!” Margery walked halfway toward the door. “Hello?”

  There was no sound, then the creak of a board, and a man appeared in the doorway, a rifle cocked on his shoulder. He wore overalls that had not troubled a washtub in some time, and a clay pipe emerged from under a bushy mustache. Behind him two young girls appeared, their heads tilted as they tried to peer at the visitors. He gazed out suspiciously.

  “How you doing, Jim Horner?” Margery walked into the little fenced-off enclosure (it could barely be called a garden) and closed the gate behind them. She appeared not to notice the gun or, if she did, she ignored it. Alice felt her heart race a little, but followed obediently.

  “Who’s this?” The man nodded at Alice.

  “This is Alice. She’s helping me with the traveling library. I wondered if we could talk to you about what we got.”

  “I don’t want to buy nothing.”

  “Well, that suits me fine, because we ain’t sellin’ nothing. I’ll take just five minutes of your time. Could you spare a cup of water, though? Sure is warm out here.” Margery, a study in calm, removed her hat and fanned her head with it. Alice was about to protest that they had just drunk a pitcher of water between them not half a mile back, but stopped. Horner gazed at her for a moment.

  “Wait out here,” he said eventually, motioning to a long bench at the front of the house. He murmured to one of the girls, a skinny child with her hair in plaits, who disappeared into the dark house, emerging with a bucket, her brow furrowed with her task. “She’ll get you water.”

  “Would you be kind enough to bring some for my friend here, too, please, Mae?” Margery nodded at the girl.

  “That would be very kind, thank you,” said Alice, and the man startled at her accent.

  Margery tipped her head toward her. “Oh, she’s the one from Engerland. The one married Van Cleve’s boy?”

  His gaze switched impassively between them. The gun stayed at his shoulder. Alice sat gingerly on the bench as Margery continued to talk, her voice a low, relaxed sing-song. The same way she spoke to Charley the mule when he became, as she called it, “ornery.”

  “So I’m not sure if you’ve heard from town but we got a book library going. It’s for those who like stories, or to help your children get educated a little, especially if they don’t go to the mountain school. And I came by because I wondered if you’d like to try some books for yours.”

  “I told you they don’t read.”

  “Yes, you did. So I brought some easy ones, just to get ’em going. These ones here have got pictures and all the letters so they can learn by themselves. Don’t even have to go to school to do it. They can do it right here in your home.”

  She handed him one of the picture books. He lowered his gun and took the book gingerly, as if she were handing him something explosive, and flicked through the pages.

  “I need the girls to help with the picking and canning.”

  “Sure you do. Busy time of year.”

  “I don’t want them distracted.”

  “I understand. Can’t have nothing slowing the canning. I have to say it looks like the corn is going to be fine this year. Not like last year, huh?” Margery smiled as the girl arrived in front of
them, lopsided with the weight of the half-filled bucket. “Why, thank you, sweetheart.” She held out a hand as the girl filled an old tin cup. She drank thirstily, then handed the cup to Alice. “Good and cold. Thank you most kindly.”

  Jim Horner pushed the book toward her. “They want money for those things.”

  “Well, that’s the beauty of it, Jim. No money, no signing up, no nothing. Library just exists so people can try a bit of reading. Maybe learn a little if they find they have a liking for it.”

  Jim Horner stared at the cover of the book. Alice had never heard Margery talk so much in one sitting.

  “I tell you what? How about I leave these here, just for the week? You don’t have to read ’em, but you can take a look if you like. We’ll come by next Monday and pick them up again. If you like them, you get the kids to tell me and I’ll bring you some more. You don’t like ’em, just leave them on a crate by the fence post there and we’ll say no more. How does that sound?”

  Alice glanced behind her. A second small face vanished immediately into the gloom of the building.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Tell you the truth, you’d do me a favor. Would mean I don’t have to carry the darn things all the way back down the mountain. Boy, our bags are heavy today! Alice, you finished your water, there? We don’t want to take up any more of this gentleman’s time. Good to see you, Jim. And thank you, Mae. Haven’t you grown like a string bean since I last saw you!”

  As they reached the gate Jim Horner’s voice lifted and hardened. “I don’t want nobody else comin’ up here botherin’ us. I don’t want to be bothered and I don’t want my children bothered. They got enough to deal with.”

  Margery didn’t even turn around. She lifted a hand. “I hear you, Jim.”

  “And we don’t need no charity. I don’t want anyone from town just coming by. I don’t know why you even came here.”

  “Headed to all the houses between here and Berea. But I hear you.” Margery’s voice carried across the hillside as they reached the horses.

  Alice glanced behind her to see that he had raised his gun to his shoulder again. Her heart thumped in her ears as she picked up her pace. She was afraid to look back again. As Margery swung herself onto the mule, she took the reins, mounted Spirit with trembling legs, and it was only when she calculated that they were too far away for Jim Horner to take a shot at them that she allowed herself to exhale. She kicked the mare forward so that she was level with Margery.

  “Oh, my goodness. Are they all that awful?” Her legs, she realized, were now entirely liquid.

  “Awful? Alice, that went great.”

  Alice wasn’t sure she’d heard her correctly.

  “Last time I rode up to Red Creek Jim Horner shot my hat clean off.” Margery turned toward her and tilted her hat so that Alice could see the tiny hole that scorched straight through the top of it. She rammed it back onto her head. “Come on, let’s kick on a little. I want to take you to meet Nancy before we break for lunch.”

  THREE

  . . . and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander, where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.

  • LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women

  Two purple bruises on her knees, one on her left ankle and blisters in places she didn’t know blisters could exist, a cluster of infected bites behind her right ear, four broken nails (slightly grubby, she had to admit) and sunburn on her neck and nose. A two-inch-long graze on her right shoulder from being scraped against a tree, and a mark on her left elbow where Spirit had bitten her when she’d tried to slap a horsefly. Alice peered at her grimy face in the mirror, wondering what people back in England would make of the scabby cowgirl staring back at her.

  It had been more than a fortnight and nobody had mentioned that Isabelle Brady had still not arrived to join the little team of packhorse librarians, so Alice didn’t feel able to ask. Frederick didn’t say much other than to offer her coffee and help her with Spirit, Beth—the middle child of eight brothers—would march in and out with a brisk boyish energy, nodding a cheerful hello, dumping her saddle on the floor, exclaiming when she couldn’t find her goddamn saddlebags, and Isabelle’s name simply failed to appear on the little cards on the wall with which they signed themselves in and out of shifts. Occasionally a large dark green motor-car would sweep by with Mrs. Brady in the front, and Margery would nod, but no words passed between them. Alice began to think that putting her daughter’s name out there had been a way for Mrs. Brady to encourage other young women to come forward.

  So, it was something of a surprise when the motor-car pulled up on Thursday afternoon, its huge wheels sending a spray of sand and grit up the steps as it stopped. Mrs. Brady was an enthusiastic, if easily distracted driver, prone to sending locals scattering as she turned her head to wave at some passerby, or swerved extravagantly to avoid a cat in the road.

  “Who is that?” Margery didn’t look up. She was working her way through two piles of returned books, trying to decide which were too damaged to go out again. There was little point sending out a book in which the last page was missing, as had already happened once. Waste of my time, had been the response from the sharecropper who had been given The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I won’t be reading a book again.

  “Think it might be Mrs. Brady.” Alice, who had been treating a blister on her heel, peered out of the window, trying to remain inconspicuous. She watched as Mrs. Brady closed the driver’s door and paused to wave at somebody across the street. And then she saw a younger woman emerge from the passenger side, red hair pulled back and pinned into neat curls. Isabelle Brady.

  “It’s both of them,” Alice said quietly. She tugged her sock back on, wincing.

  “I’m surprised.”

  “Why?” said Alice.

  Isabelle made her way around the side of the car until she was level with her mother. It was then that Alice saw she walked with a pronounced limp, and that her lower left leg was encased in a leather and metal brace, the shoe at the end built up so that it resembled a small black brick. She didn’t use a stick, but rolled slightly as she moved, and concentration—or possibly discomfort—was writ large on her freckled features.

  Alice pulled back, not wanting to be seen to be watching as they made their way slowly up the steps. She heard a murmured conversation and then the door opened.

  “Miss O’Hare!”

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Brady, Isabelle.”

  “I’m so sorry for the delay in getting Izzy started. She had . . . some things to attend to first.”

  “Just glad to have you. We’re about ready to send Mrs. Van Cleve out on her own, so the more the merrier. I’ll have to get you sorted out with a horse, though, Miss Brady. I wasn’t sure when you were coming.”

  “I’m no good at riding,” said Izzy, quietly.

  “Wondered as much. Never seen you on a horse. So Mr. Guisler is going to lend you his old companion horse, Patch. He’s a little heavy but sweet as anything, won’t scare you none. He knows what he’s doing and he’ll go at your pace.”

  “I can’t ride,” Izzy said, an edge to her voice. She looked mutinously at her mother.

  “That’s only because you won’t try, dear,” her mother said, not looking at her. She clasped her hands together. “So what time shall we come by tomorrow? Izzy, we’ll have to take you to Lexington to get you some new breeches. You’ve eaten your way right out of your old ones.”

  “Well, Alice here saddles up at seven, so why don’t you come then? We may start a little earlier as we divide up our routes.”

  “You’re not listening to me—” Izzy began.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow.” Mrs. Brady looked around her at the little cabin. “It’s good to see what a start you’ve made already. I hear from Pastor Willoughby that the McArthur girls read their way through their Bible samplers without s
o much as a prompt from him last Sunday, thanks to the books you’ve brought them. Wonderful. Good afternoon, Mrs. Van Cleve, Miss O’Hare. I’m much obliged to the pair of you.”

  Mrs. Brady nodded and the two women turned and made their way out of the library. They heard the roar of the car’s engine as it started up, then a skidding sound and a startled shout as Mrs. Brady pulled out onto the road.

  Alice looked at Margery, who shrugged. They sat in silence until the sound of the engine died away.

  * * *

  • • •

  Bennett.” Alice skipped up to the stoop, where her husband was sitting with a glass of iced tea. She glanced at the rocker, which was unusually empty. “Where’s your father?”

  “Having dinner with the Lowes.”

  “Is that the one who never stops talking? Goodness, he’ll be there all night. I’m amazed Mrs. Lowe can draw breath long enough to eat!” She pushed her hair back from her brow. “Oh, I have had the most extraordinary day. We went to a house in the middle of absolutely nowhere and I swear this man wanted to shoot us. He didn’t, of course—”

  She slowed, noting the way his eyes had dropped to her dirty boots. Alice looked down at them and the mud on her breeches. “Oh. That. Yes. Misjudged where I should have been going through a creek and my horse stumbled and threw me straight over her head. It was actually very funny. I thought at one point Margery was going to pass out from laughing. Luckily I dried off in a wink, although just wait until you see my bruises. I am positively purple.” She jogged up the steps to him and stooped to kiss him but he turned his face away.

  “You smell awfully of horse, these days,” he said. “Maybe you should wash that off. It does tend to . . . linger.”

  She was sure he hadn’t meant it to sting, but it did. She sniffed at her shoulder. “You’re right,” she said, forcing a smile. “I smell like a cowboy! I tell you what, how about I freshen up and put on something pretty and then perhaps we could take a drive to the river. I could make us a little picnic of nice things. Didn’t Annie leave some of that molasses cake? And I know we still have the side of ham. Say yes, darling. Just you and me. We haven’t had a proper outing together for weeks.”