The Giver of Stars Page 3

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  So, what the Sam Hill is a traveling library, anyway?” Alice was startled out of her reverie with a sharp nudge from Bennett’s elbow.

  “They got one in Mississippi, using boats,” called a voice near the back of the hall.

  “You won’t get no boats up and down our creeks. Too shallow.”

  “I believe the plan is to use horses,” said Mrs. Brady.

  “They’re gonna take horses up and down the river? Crazy talk.”

  The first delivery of books had come from Chicago, Mrs. Brady continued, and more were en route. There would be a wide selection of fiction, from Mark Twain to Shakespeare, and practical books containing recipes, domestic tips and help with child-rearing. There would even be comic books—a revelation that made some of the children squeal with excitement.

  Alice checked her wristwatch, wondering when she would get her shaved ice. The one good thing about these meetings was that they weren’t stuck in the house all evening. She was already dreading what the winters would be like, when it would be harder for them to find reasons to escape.

  “What man has time to go riding? We need to be working, not paying social calls with the latest edition of Ladies’ Home Journal.” There was a low ripple of laughter.

  “Tom Faraday likes to look at the ladies’ undergarments in the Sears catalog, though. I heard he spends hours at a time in the outhouse reading that!”

  “Mr. Porteous!”

  “It’s not men; it’s women,” came a voice.

  There was a brief silence.

  Alice turned to look. A woman was leaning against the back doors in a dark blue cotton coat, her sleeves rolled up. She wore leather breeches, and her boots were unpolished. She might have been in her late thirties or early forties, her face handsome and her long dark hair tied back in a cursory knot.

  “It’s women doing the riding. Delivering the books.”

  “Women?”

  “By themselves?” came a man’s voice.

  “Last time I looked, God gave ’em two arms and two legs, just like the men.”

  A brief murmur rippled through the audience. Alice peered more closely, intrigued.

  “Thank you, Margery. Over at Harlan County they’ve got six women and a whole system up and running. And, as I say, we’ll be getting something similar going here. We have two librarians already, and Mr. Guisler has very kindly lent us a couple of his horses. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for his generosity.”

  Mrs. Brady motioned the younger woman forward. “Many of you will also know Miss O’Hare—”

  “Oh, we know the O’Hares all right.”

  “Then you will be aware that she has been working these last weeks to help set things up. We also have Beth Pinker—stand up, Beth—” a freckled girl with a snub nose and dark blonde hair stood awkwardly and sat straight back down again “—who is working with Miss O’Hare. One of the many reasons I called this meeting is that we need more ladies who understand the rudiments of literature and its organization so that we can move forward with this most worthy of civic projects.”

  Mr. Guisler, the horse dealer, lifted a hand. He stood up and after hesitating a moment, he spoke with a quiet certainty: “Well, I think it’s a fine idea. My own mother was a great reader of books, and I’ve offered up my old milk barn for the library. I believe all right-minded people here should be supporting it. Thank you.” He sat down again.

  Margery O’Hare leaned her backside against the desk at the front and gazed steadily out at the sea of faces. Alice noted a murmur of vague discontent moving around the room, and it seemed to be directed at her. She also noted that Margery O’Hare seemed supremely untroubled by it.

  “We have a large county to cover,” Mrs. Brady added. “We can’t do it with just two girls.”

  A woman at the front of the hall called: “So, what would it mean? This horseback-librarian thing?”

  “Well, it would involve riding to some of our more remote dwellings, and providing reading materials to those who might not otherwise be able to travel to the county libraries, due to, say, ill-health, frailty or lack of transportation.” She lowered her head so that she could see over her half-moon spectacles. “I would add that this is to aid the spread of education, to help bring knowledge to those places where it might currently be sadly lacking. Our president and his wife believe this project can bring knowledge and learning back to the foreground of rural lives.”

  “I ain’t letting my lady ride up in no mountain,” came a call from the back.

  “You just afraid she won’t come back again, Henry Porteous?”

  “You can have mine. I’d be more’n happy if she rode off and never come home!”

  A burst of laughter traveled across the room.

  Mrs. Brady’s voice lifted in frustration. “Gentlemen. Please. I am asking for some of our ladies to contribute to our civic good and sign up. The WPA will provide the horse and the books, and you would simply be required to commit to at least four days a week delivering them. There will be early starts and long days, given the topography of our beautiful county, but I believe there will be huge rewards.”

  “So why don’t you do it?” came a voice from the back.

  “I would volunteer, but as many of you know I am a martyr to my hips. Dr. Garnett has warned me that to ride such distances would be too great a physical challenge. Ideally we are looking for volunteers among our younger ladies.”

  “It ain’t safe for a young lady by herself. I’m agin it.”

  “’Tain’t proper. Women should be looking after the home. What’s next? Women down the mines? Driving lumber trucks?”

  “Mr. Simmonds, if you can’t see there’s a world of difference between a lumber truck and a copy of Twelfth Night, then Lord help Kentucky’s economy, for I don’t know where we’ll be headed.”

  “Families should be reading the Bible. Nothing else. Who’s going to keep an eye on what they’re putting out there, anyhow? You know what they’re like up north. They might spread all kinds of crazy notions.”

  “It’s books, Mr. Simmonds. The same you learned with when you were a boy. But, then, I seem to remember you were more keen on tweaking girls’ pigtails than you were on reading.”

  Another burst of laughter.

  Nobody moved. A woman looked at her husband, but he gave a small shake of his head.

  Mrs. Brady raised a hand. “Oh, I forgot to mention. It is a paid opportunity. Remuneration will be in the region of twenty-eight dollars a month. So, who would like to sign up?”

  There was a brief murmur.

  “I can’t,” said a woman with extravagantly pinned red hair. “Not with four babies under five.”

  “I just don’t see why our government is wasting hard-earned tax dollars dishing out books to people who can’t even read,” said Jowly Man. “Why, half of ’em don’t even go to church.”

  Mrs. Brady’s voice had taken on a slightly desperate note. “A month’s trial. Come on, ladies. I can’t go back and tell Mrs. Nofcier that not one person in Baileyville would volunteer. What kind of place would she think we were?”

  Nobody spoke. The silence stretched. To Alice’s left, a bee bumped lazily against the window. People began to shift in their seats.

  Mrs. Brady, undaunted, eyed the assembly. “C’mon. Let’s not have another incident like the Orphans Fundraiser.”

  There were apparently many pairs of shoes that suddenly required close attention.

  “Not a one? Really? Well . . . Izzy will be the first, then.”

  A small, almost perfectly spherical girl, half hidden among the packed audience, raised her hands to her mouth. Alice saw rather than heard the girl’s mouth form the protest. “Mother!”

  “That’s one volunteer. My little girl will not be afraid to do her d
uty for our country, will you, Izzy? Any more?”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Not one of you? You don’t think learning is important? You don’t think encouraging our less fortunate families to a position of education is imperative?” She glared out at the meeting. “Well. This is not the response that I anticipated.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Alice, into the silence.

  Mrs. Brady squinted, raising her hand above her eyes. “Is that Mrs. Van Cleve?”

  “Yes, it is. Alice.”

  “You can’t sign up,” Bennett whispered urgently.

  Alice leaned forward. “My husband was just telling me that he believes strongly in the importance of civic duty, just as his dear mother did, so I would be happy to volunteer.” Her skin prickled as the eyes of the audience slid toward her.

  Mrs. Brady fanned herself a little more vigorously. “But . . . you don’t know your way around these parts, dear. I don’t think that would be very sensible.”

  “Yes,” Bennett hissed, “you don’t know your way around, Alice.”

  “I’ll show her.” Margery O’Hare nodded to Alice. “I’ll ride the routes with her for a week or two. We can keep her close to town till she’s got a nose for it.”

  “Alice, I—” Bennett whispered. He seemed flustered and glanced up at his father.

  “Can you ride?”

  “Since I was four years old.”

  Mrs. Brady rocked back on her heels in satisfaction. “Well, there you are, Miss O’Hare. You have another two librarians already.”

  “It’s a start.”

  Margery O’Hare smiled at Alice, and Alice smiled back almost before she realized what she was doing.

  “Well, I do not think this is a wise idea at all,” said George Simmonds. “And I shall be writing to Governor Hatch tomorrow to tell him as much. I believe sending young women out by themselves is a recipe for disaster. And I can see nothing but the foment of ungodly thoughts and bad behavior from this ill-conceived idea, First Lady or not. Good day, Mrs. Brady.”

  “Good day, Mr. Simmonds.”

  The gathering began to rise heavily from its seats.

  “I’ll see you at the library on Monday morning,” said Margery O’Hare, as they walked out into the sunlight. She thrust out a hand and shook Alice’s. “You can call me Marge.” She glanced up at the sky, wedged a wide-brimmed leather hat onto her head, and strode off toward a large mule, which she greeted with the same enthusiastic surprise as if it were an old friend she had just bumped into on the street.

  Bennett watched her go. “Mrs. Van Cleve, I have no idea what you think you’re doing.”

  He’d said it twice before she remembered that this, in fact, was now her name.

  TWO

  Baileyville was unremarkable among the towns of southern Appalachia. Nestled between two ridges, it comprised two main roads of a stuttering mixture of brick and timber buildings, linked in a V, off which sprouted a multitude of winding lanes and paths that led at the lower level to distant hollers, as the small valleys were known, and at the higher, to a scattering of mountain houses across the tree-covered ridges. Those houses near the upper reaches of the creek traditionally housed the wealthier and more respectable families—it being easier to make a legitimate living on the flatter lands, and easier to hide a liquor still in the wilder, higher parts—but as the century had crept forward, the influx of miners and supervisors, the subtle changes in the demographics of the little town and its county, had meant that it was no longer possible to judge who was who simply by which leg of the road they lived on.

  The Baileyville WPA Packhorse Library was to be based in the last wooden cabin up Split Creek, a turning on the right off Main Street and a road that contained white-collar workers, shopkeepers and those who made a living mostly by trading what they grew. It was squat on the ground, unlike many of the lower buildings, which were set on stilts to protect them from the spring floods. Cast into part-shadow by an oversized oak to its left, the building measured approximately fifteen strides by twelve. From the front it was entered by a small flight of rickety wooden stairs and from the back by a wooden door that had once been wide enough for cows.

  “It’ll be a way for me to get to know everyone around town,” she had told the two men over breakfast, as Bennett yet again questioned his wife’s wisdom in taking the job. “Which is what you wanted, isn’t it? And I won’t be under Annie’s feet all day.”

  She had discovered that if she exaggerated her English accent, they found it harder to disagree with her. In recent weeks she had begun to sound positively regal. “And, of course, I will be able to observe who is in need of religious sustenance.”

  “She has a point,” said Mr. Van Cleve, removing a piece of bacon gristle from the side of his mouth and placing it carefully on the side of his plate. “She could do it just till the babbies come along.”

  Alice and her husband had studiously avoided looking at each other.

  Now Alice approached the single-story building, her boots kicking up loose dirt in the road. She put her hand to her brow and squinted. A newly painted sign proclaimed “USA PACKHORSE LIBRARY, WPA” and the sound of hammering emerged in staccato bursts from inside. Mr. Van Cleve had indulged a little too freely the previous evening and had awoken determined to find fault with whatever anyone happened to do in his house. Including breathing. She had crept around, wrenched her way into her breeches, then found herself singing softly on the half-mile walk to the library, just for the joy of having somewhere else to be.

  She stood back a couple of paces, trying to peer in, and as she did, she became aware of the low hum of an approaching motor, along with another, more erratic sound she couldn’t quite distinguish. She turned to see the truck, noticing the shocked expression on the driver’s face. “Whoa! Look out!”

  Alice spun around just as a riderless horse came galloping down the narrow road toward her, its stirrups flapping, reins tangled in its spindly legs. As the truck swerved to avoid it, the horse shied and stumbled, sending Alice sprawling into the dust.

  She was dimly aware of a pair of overalls leaping past her, the blare of a horn and a clatter of hoofs. Whoa . . . whoa there. Whoa, fella . . .

  “Ow.” She rubbed her elbow, her head ringing with the impact. When she finally sat up she saw that a few yards away a man was holding the horse’s bridle and running a hand down its neck, trying to settle it. Its eyes rolled white, and veins popped on its neck, like a relief map.

  “That fool!” A young woman was jogging down the road toward them. “Old man Vance tooted his horn on purpose and he bucked me off in the road.”

  “You okay? You took quite a spill there.” A hand reached out and helped Alice to her feet. She stood, blinking, and regarded its owner: a tall man in overalls and a checked shirt, his eyes softening in sympathy. A nail still protruded from the corner of his mouth. He spat it into his palm and shoved it into his pocket before offering a handshake. “Frederick Guisler.”

  “Alice Van Cleve.”

  “The English bride.” His palm was rough.

  Beth Pinker appeared, panting, between them and snatched the reins from Frederick Guisler with a growl.

  “Scooter, you ain’t got the damn brains you was born with.”

  The man turned to her. “Told you, Beth. You can’t run a Thoroughbred out of here at a gallop. It gets him wound up like a spring. Take the first twenty minutes at a walk and he’ll be good for the day.”

  “Who has time to walk? I got to get to Paint Lick by midday. Shoot, he’s put a hole in my best breeches.” Beth tugged the horse over to the mounting block, still muttering under her breath, then turned abruptly. “Oh. You the new girl? Marge said to tell you she’s coming.”

  “Thank you.” Alice lifted a palm, before picking at the selection of small stones embedded in it. As they watched, Beth checked her saddlebags, cursed again,
wheeled the horse round, and set off back up the road at a sideways canter.

  Frederick Guisler turned back to Alice, shaking his head. “You sure you’re okay? I can fetch you some water.”

  Alice tried to look nonchalant, as if her elbow wasn’t throbbing and she hadn’t just realized that a fine layer of grit was decorating her upper lip. “I’m fine. I’ll just . . . sit here on the step.”

  “The stoop?” He grinned.

  “Yes, that too,” she said.

  Frederick Guisler left her to it. He was lining the walls of the library with rough pine shelves, beneath which stood boxes of waiting books. One wall was already filled with a variety of titles, neatly labeled, and a pile in the corner suggested some had already been returned. Unlike the Van Cleve house, the little building held an air of purpose, the sense that it was about to become something useful.

  As she sat rubbing dirt from her clothes, two young women walked past on the other side of the road, both in long seersucker skirts and wide-brimmed hats to keep off the worst of the sun. They glanced across the road at her, then put their heads together, conferring. Alice smiled and lifted a hand tentatively in greeting, but they scowled and turned away. Alice realized with a sigh that they were probably friends with Peggy Foreman. Sometimes she thought she might just make a sign and hang it around her neck: No, I didn’t know he had a sweetheart.