Mobile Library (11 page)

•  •  •

Bored but keen not to show it, the younger of the two policemen, standing in the corner of Mrs. Pound's office, cradled his hat in his hands. The older of the two had turned his chair to face Bobby's. Occasionally their legs touched and the static in his uniform rushed across his thighs. His own children had grown up years ago. Dealing with kids now seemed an alien task, one with which he was wholly uncomfortable, though his wife would have argued that little had changed.

“Son,” he said. Thick black hairs hung from his nostrils, levers moving when he spoke. “You'd be advised to talk to me if you have any interest in fixing the situation you've found yourself in.”

The plastic denatured alcohol bottle was perched on the edge of the desk, curving the sunlight inside it. Mrs. Pound squeezed a stress ball, the shape of a banana.

“I'd like to apologize on Bobby's behalf,” she said.

“I'm not sure an apology will settle this,” he said. “Those boys are in the hospital. What Bobby did was very serious.”

Mrs. Pound walked around the desk and stopped behind Bobby, gently laying her hands on his shoulders. “Bobby,” she said, “perhaps you'd like to wait outside.”

Though they lowered their voices to a funereal hush, the smallness of the room and the glass panel in the door meant he could still hear every word they said, amplified, almost as if it was inside his head. All he could think about was a time in the near future when he was somewhere, anywhere, that wasn't here.

“Bobby is a pupil to whom we pay special attention,” she said. “He's had a lot of trouble making friends, and the only friend he did have moved away over the summer.”

“Mrs. Pound,” the policeman said, “we're investigating what amounts to assault with a toxic substance. Amir Kindell might be lucky to keep his vision.” Bobby pushed his ear more firmly against the wall, the spidery shadow cast by a plant in the corner climbing across his face.

“I appreciate that.”

“Then you'll appreciate the importance of us getting his parents here as quickly as possible so that we might get the matter resolved.”

“We've been trying, we can't get through.”

“Then we'll go to them, if you'd kindly supply us with an address. You have that, don't you?”

“Well that's just what I'm getting to . . .”

With his knees bent, hoisting it first onto his lap, and then standing to let it rest against his chest so that he might net his fingers on its underside, Bobby picked up the plant pot, a hulking great thing fired in clay. Before he'd even exhaled he had it up to neck height, and from there, with every ounce of push his arms had left in them, he threw it through the glass panel of the door.

He could hear Mrs. Pound screaming as he ran down the corridor to the staircase, gliding along on the freshly polished floors.

•  •  •

Gleaming with sweat, beads on his neck stuck to the coldness of a fast-dampening collar, Bobby arrived at Val's house to find her standing outside, facing the front door so that she did not see him approach. He stood behind her, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. In her shabbiest clothes, and a tattered apron, Val scrubbed spray paint from the door's dark wood with a stiff-bristled shoe brush. Tinted pink water ran off the bottom, a mazy trail down the path to the drain. Hints of the letters, where the red paint was sprayed most thickly, still remained, a now indistinguishable and patently unwanted legend. Val had found it that morning as she'd stepped out into the street clutching another letter, the third that week, wondering who would have the gall or motive to pen such a blatantly hurtful untruth, and post it through her door. She was none of the things they accused her of being, but the more she read them, the more she felt as dirty as they made her out to be. At her most desperate she wanted to scrub herself with the brush, scrub until nothing but a shiny pile of bones remained. Perhaps that might satisfy them. All of the books in the mobile library could not have prepared her for words as unspeakable as these.

“What did it say?” Bobby asked. Val knocked over the lathery bucket and the wash hit his shoes, where it broke into two foamy arcs.

“You can't be here.”

“I am here.”

“But you can't be.” Val looked one way down the street and then the other. “Quick,” she said, “come inside.”

In the light of the kitchen, Bobby could see paint-stained fingertip tracks trailed across Val's face. The glare of the bulb searched the sunken wells in her cheeks, shifting as she sobbed into her hands. “They're talking about us,” she said.

“Who are?”

“Everyone. They're saying the most awful things.”

“But nobody knows us.”

“Yes. And that's the problem.”

“Everything we make clean they will dirty.” Clumps of tissue the size of snowballs built up on the table by her side. Bobby scooped them into the bin. “I got them for you,” he said.

“Got who?” Her grip tightened around his arms.

“Those boys.”

“What boys?”

“The boys who hurt Rosa.”

Val paused. “What did you do?”

“I got them. That's all. They won't hurt her again.” He could feel movement in his chest, as if his heart had become a bird and started beating its wings.

“Bobby,” she said, weeping. “Go.”

“What?”

“Go. You have to go.”

“Why?”

“Go!” Val slammed her hand on the sink. Teacups trembled on the draining board. He buckled with the punch of it. She put her arms around the middle of his body and squeezed. He winced, not just with his face but with a shudder that traveled the length of his body and ended as a twinge in his toes. “Oh God,” she said, “did I hurt you?”

“No,” he said, his forehead creased with pain.

“I did. I know that I did.” The rings around her eyes were dark but colorful, like cross-sections of strange fruit. She lifted his sweater and untucked his shirt. A bruise, much bluer than it had been, the lightness of a clement sky, curled from a third of the way down his back to the top of his waistband. On closer examination she could see the mark of his father's left hand. Val unbuttoned his trousers and rolled down his underpants. The bruise's persistent stain continued, breaking up on the bow of his buttocks. Three fingerprints and one thumbprint fading.

Val didn't share Bobby's mother's approach to packing. Fumbling for the opening, she handed Rosa a bin liner.

“Rosa,” she said, “cram as many of your clothes into this bag as you can.” Bobby filled Rosa's rucksack with pens and paper.

“Thank you, Bobby Nusku,” she said. Val instructed them to take all of the food they could find in the cupboards, including the stuff they didn't recognize or particularly like to eat. Bobby piled it all inside an empty sports bag, making sure to take a tin opener, then filled four side pockets with cans of dog food for Bert, adding the squeaky chew toy in the shape of a pork chop for which he had only ever shown a grumpy disdain. Val emptied a box of Rosa's old toys and packed it with toiletries. By the time they were finished the house looked as though it had been ransacked, which in a way it had.

“Where are we going?” Rosa asked. Val paused, though only briefly.

“We have our own mobile library, and there are many books to be delivered.”

“Like the elephant and the donkey?”

“Exactly. Like the elephant and the donkey.” Rosa and Bobby danced around one another. “Now hurry, we're going to need to leave soon.” Dizzy, they leaned against the living room wall and waited for the floor to catch them up.

“We can go past my house on the way,” Bobby said. Val pulled the zip on the bag so hard it almost came loose in her hand.

“No we can't,” she said.

“But we have too. I need to pick up my files.”

“I'm afraid you're missing the point, Bobby. If your father finds out we're going he won't let you come with us.” Outside it was early evening, but dark clouds already gave the illusion of night. He picked up a kitchen knife, with a long blade as slender as it was sharp.

“It's okay,” he said, “I have a plan.”

•  •  •

Parked in its usual space, vinyl stickers displaying his name and number peeling from the rust on the side, Bruce's van was a sorry wart on a hog-faced street. The rubber on the tires was worn, so the knife glided through them with ease, just like it had in the movies Bobby had seen in Sunny's attic. They hissed a final, desultory wheeze.

Bobby lifted the flap of the letterbox and put his ear to the slot. He heard his father and Cindy laugh at the television, and the tinny speakers on the box rattled by a blown bass channel. Bobby slipped the knife into his sock, then slid the key into the hole as quietly as possible.

Taking extra care not to let the front door slam behind him, he tiptoed into the hallway. At the end was a small wooden box containing trip switches, meters and dials he was forbidden to touch, now they were urgent and irresistible. He gripped the handle of the knife, held it above his shoulder as if about to throw a spear, and rammed it into the center of the box. A brief flurry of sparks glowed and then perished as the house was cast in darkness with a thump.

Between the entrance to the lounge and the bottom of the stairs were seventeen mini steps, taken in a half crescent to circumnavigate the sofa. Bobby moved through the room in night mode, undetected, as Bruce and Cindy argued over which of them should find their way to the fuse box. Losing, Bruce leapt up, knocking over the hairdressing chair and smashing it into the television with a loud crash. Bobby was close enough to feel the hot, angry spray of his father's spittle fall like drizzle onto his cheek. He was close enough to let his fingers hover over his father's shirt where his heart was meant to be as he stumbled around, glass crunching underfoot, yelping every time he moved. He identified a quiver in his father's voice. A peculiar, jittery cadence, it was one he'd heard already today. Fear. His father was scared. To be lost inside his own home was a terrible discombobulation with which his wife might once have sympathized. Bobby hoped that it would swallow his father whole and change him forever, just as it had her.

He savored it for a few more seconds, then took two stairs at a time without stumbling and entered the bedroom. The smell had faded. It was still his mother's, but from a distance, carried on the wind. Sidestepping along the near wall he approached the head of the bed, where he felt for the large box in which Cindy stored handbags she never used. He tipped them out and filled the empty box with his files. The jars of hair, the notes, everything. The complete sum of his work. He packed it as well as his mother taught him to.

Downstairs, Bruce was still trying to make his way to the fuse box. He banged his knee on the coffee table, and fell again when he stubbed his toe on the armchair.

“I can't see!” he shouted, unaware that his son was passing right by his side.

Bobby walked thirteen steps across the room to the far corner, ducking halfway to avoid the lampshade. He remained there for a moment as his father flailed through the dark, before creeping up behind him, just an inch from his ear.

“Boo!”

Blind and terrified, Bruce dived to the floor, shrieking as he hit the shelf where a picture of Bobby's mother had once taken pride of place. He landed on Cindy's hairdressing scissors, implanted in the soft flesh of his thigh, the sound of a melon being spliced. Bobby stepped over his father's prone body and left the house unseen. He was followed by screams into the night.

•  •  •

Val, Rosa and Bobby loaded the suitcases and boxes into a dented wheelbarrow from the garden. Rosa carried Bert, Val locked the door, and they made it to the mobile library without seeing a single other person. As quickly as they could they stacked everything into the back of the truck. Bobby ditched the wheelbarrow in an adjacent allotment, stealing some earthy potatoes and a fistful of carrots in case they came in handy.

He had never been in the mobile library's cab before, and was surprised by how big it was on the inside. It even had a bed, set back above the seats, and Bobby, outstretched, couldn't reach both ends at the same time. Val turned the key in the ignition and the dashboard lit up with a wave of tiny lights so that it looked like a city in the distance. Cracks webbed the leather seats, as gnarled as the skin on an old man's hands. Protruding from the center of the cab's floor was the swan's-neck bend of a silver gear stick. Val ran her fingers around the glossy black plastic coat of the steering wheel. It would test the full span of her arms to turn it. A furry green monster hung from the rearview mirror on a frayed elastic cord. Rosa gave it to Bert to chew.

“Okay,” Val said to herself.

“Have you ever driven something this big?” Bobby asked.

“I haven't driven anything one-sixteenth this big.”

Nothing could prepare them for the dragon belly roar of the engine firing when she pushed the button. Vibrations throbbed through the seats. Bert held his paws around his muzzle. Bread crumbs hopped along the dash. Val wrapped her fingers around the hand brake and exhaled.

“Are we ready?” she said, not having any idea what they should be ready for.

Bobby clipped Rosa's seat belt into its buckle, then took care of his own. A click, and the headlamps blasted the shadows in front of them. They moved out onto the road, as white as a blank page, and he watched in the wing mirror as the back of the mobile library tore the gate from its hinge, then ripped the fence from its joist and dragged it across the grass.

“Shit,” Val said. Bobby covered Rosa's ears a second too late. He could see that Val was already beginning to sweat. She put the truck into reverse and it beeped a loud warning. Lights switched on in the windows of surrounding houses. A woman emerged, annoyed at having had her evening interrupted by this unexpected racket. Finding a better position to attempt the turning circle, Val edged the library forward and narrowly avoided crushing the woman's car. Newly applied, the woman's lime-green face pack set in surprise.