The Reading Lessons (16 page)

She tapped a pencil on Lucinda’s list. “I’ve noticed you’re very fond of the red books.”

Hadley went back to checking for important stuff in his pockets. “Red books?” 

“It’s a coding system we have. Our director, Abby Bowman, says that we need to carry the red book titles if we wish to be a progressive institute of learning. They’re thinking of using it at the big branch, too,” she said. “Some folks say it’s shameful to have these kinds of books in a library, but I’m with Miss Bowman. I admire the fact that you are unafraid to check out our red books, Mr. Crump.”

“They’re not for me,” Hadley said, pulling a balled-up
Cherry Chase
wrapper from his pocket and examining it as though it were just the thing he most hoped to find.

“I’m sorry?” she said. “You’re not Mr. Hadley F. Crump?” She held up Hadley’s borrower card. 

He wadded the candy wrapper in his fist. “Just get the book for me,” he said. “I don’t got time for talking.”

###

Hadley cracked the door for the umteenth time only to discover that the little book-checking woman was still behind her desk. He’d already stood around for forty-five minutes waiting for someone else to take her place. It was Wednesday. She should have been sitting on the bench across the street with a flowered napkin on her lap eating a lettuce sandwich like she always did at eleven o’clock on Wednesdays. It was now eleven forty-eight. At twelve o’clock, Hadley was to fetch Tilly from the confectionary. If he left this second, he’d be ten minutes late.

This week, Edith Wharton was on the list. Something called
House of Mirth.
He could only imagine what that nosey little librarian might have to say about Edith Wharton. “Horsefeathers!” he muttered to himself. There was nothing to be done about it. If Lucinda had her heart set on Edith Wharton, he’d have to get it from the nosey woman. 

He flung open the COLEREDS door a shade too hard, marched up to the desk, and tossed the list down on her desk. “That’s right,” he said. “Another red book. It’s banned in Boston too, I hear. I want it anyway.”

The librarian removed a pencil from between her teeth and smiled. “Miss Bowman says that being banned is just about the best thing that can happen to an author these days.” She looked at Lucinda list. “Your Mr. Crump is a very fast reader. I wish he’d come in himself some time. I’d love to hear his thoughts on
The Awakening
.”

Hadley fought the urge to search his pockets. “He liked it very much,” he said. “Especially the perverse parts.”

That shut her up. She delivered his red book with trembling fingers, and that was the end of that.

###

Hadley handed her the list. 

1)
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. 

2)
Moll Flanders.
 

3)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
. 

“Good morning,” he said. After the last visit, he’d decided he was done working around the lettuce sandwiches. They were too unreliable.

She started toward the bookshelf but stopped midway. “Could I say something to you, sir?” 

No, Hadley thought, but he didn’t say it out loud, so naturally she didn’t wait for real permission. 

“I just want to apologize to you. I think I made you feel bad about picking up the red books for Mr. Crump, and I never meant to do that. Personally, I think it’s wonderful, him reading all those books. Sure, he’s not bold enough to come get them in person, but still, the man dares to read what he wants to read. I hate all the censorship going on lately. You want to hear something really sad: No one has ever checked out
Moll Flanders
before. You’ll be the very first. Well, I mean, Mr. Crump will.
Moll Flanders
has done nothing except sit on the shelf collecting dust for two months now. So bravo, Mr. Crump, wherever you are. I applaud you.” She clapped her hands excitedly. Then blushed. “Oh dear. Have I embarrassed you again? Your ears are very red.”

“Would you like to go for a walk in the park sometime?” Hadley heard himself say.

“When?”

“This Sunday.”

“Okay.” She slid her pencil behind her ear. ”I’m Flora, by the way. Flora Gibbs.”

“Flora? Like a flower?”

“I reckon.”

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Gibbs,” Hadley said. “I’m Hadley Crump.”

The minute he was out the door, he smacked himself in the head with Moll Flanders. “What did I just do?” 

Seeing how he’d never had the nerve to peek at her for more than a few seconds at a time, he could hardly even recall what Flora Gibbs looked like. “I’m an idiot,” he said. He glanced woefully at the door, wondering if it was too late to wiggle out of the walk in the park. 

Frances Bacon’s words were over the front door here, same as at the big library only they weren’t written in stone. Someone had scratched them with a black pen in the weathered gray paint.

Reading maketh a full man
the scratchy handwriting said.

“Horsefeathers,” Hadley said. If he’d learned nothing else in his short life, he’d learned it was unwise to spend time with any girl interested in dirty books.

###

Mama was pleased as all creation to hear that Hadley wanted to cancel their weekly walk so he could walk with Flora Gibbs instead. She kissed the lucky penis bone she kept in her pocket and cried, “Amen!” 

“I wouldn’t go amening about it just yet, if I were you,” Hadley said. “Suppose she asks if I got a white daddy? Colored people always ask if I got a white daddy.”

They were on their way to visit a sick parishoner before services. Mama was carrying a loaf of soda bread. Hadley was carrying a pot of beef tea. “I don’t see any white daddy hanging around, do you?” Mama said. “You just tell Miss Flora Gibbs that you got a black mama, and that’s it. End of story.” She broke a bite off the corner of the soda bread and popped it in her mouth. “What’s her ears like, Hadley? That ought to tell us if she’ll be trouble or not.”

“Gosh Mama. I don’t know what any part of her is like, much less her ears.”

“Well give them a check when you see her, will you? I can’t help you otherwise.” She pointed to the tumbled down clapboard on the corner of Holy Water Avenue. “Here’s Parthula’s place. Just set the soup there on the step and go get us a pew. I wouldn’t want you catchin’ a germ on your big day.” She reached into her pocket and rummaged around. “Kiss this before you go,” she said, offering the lucky bone. “Just to be on the safe side.”

###

Hadley might never have recognized Flora Gibbs had she not brought along
The Beautiful and the Damned
. He was waiting on the bandstand when a woman in a yellow dress looked at him and waved. She ran up the steps brandishing the book as though it were a trophy. “I thought my boss was gonna paddle me for checking this out on Friday,” she said. “Usually I’m not a very fast reader, but look – I’m almost half-way through it.” Her face was lit up like a peony. 

It was a pretty face, too. Not as noticeably pretty as Lucinda’s. Flora Gibb’s face was more interesting than that. For one, her eyes were so big it appeared that nothing could possibly hide behind them. And they were the same satin-black as the hair ribbon Mama gave him to use as a bookmark after the Robin feather he used to use blew off in the wind. “To keep your place,” she’d said when she laid it in the crook of his Bible. 

Definitely bookmark-black. 

Whereas Lucinda stood two or three inches taller than Hadley and had curves everywhere a man looked, Flora was nicely short and she was trim as a ballerina. In fact, standing next to Flora Gibbs, Hadley was taller than he’d ever been before. 

“Mr. Crump?”

“Hm?” He was looking at her ears. He wanted to memorize their shape for Mama. They looked small and sweet, like two apple slices.

“Have you read it yet?” she asked, waving the book around again.

“Of course.” 

She smiled up at him. Up! “I was hoping you’d say that, Mr. Crump!” 

“If you’re going to call me Mr. Crump, I’m going to feel like I need to paint something for you, or chop your firewood.”

“Why?”

“Because the only one who calls me by my last name is my employer, and that’s what I do. I chop his firewood and paint his stuff.”

“All right, Hadley. And I’d like to just be Flora, too, if you don’t mind?” 

“I don’t mind,” Hadley said.

“What do you think about a woman reading F. Scott Fitzgerald?”

“Oh I’m used to it,” he said as they started to walk toward the river. “The lady I work for likes the red books as much as I do. She was the one who taught me to like them.”

“Really? I didn’t know ladies read such things.” A butterfly fluttered around the crown of Flora’s head, attracted by her yellow dress. It was a butterfly he recognized called a Confused Cloudywing, which seemed appropriate since it couldn’t decide whether to have a walk on Flora’s hair or simply hover over the teeny yellow bow that was tied on the end of her braid. 

He said, “You can’t tell no body else about this, but ladies aren’t such ladies once you get to know them. I mean, from what I’ve seen.” 

Flora smiled. “I like your ears. They’re very honest.” 

He put his hands over his burning ears. He thought she was laughing at him and it made him mad. 

Flora said, “I blush easy myself. Probably because I always blurt the wrong thing. It’s a regular curse, I’m afraid. I’m real good at blurting and blushing.” She touched her peony cheek. “I reckon that’s why I said to you what I said to you at the library about checking out the red books. It’s just a miracle the head librarian, Miss Hazelwood, didn’t fire me on the spot. She said it ain’t none of our affair if a fellow wants to read sinful books or not. She advised me to do like she does and make a mental note of folks who read vulgarities then do your best to keep clear of them outside of the library.” Flora laughed. Unlike that whisper-soft librarian voice of hers, she had a gigantic laugh. It made Hadley feel like laughing, too. 

When they ran out of things to say to each other, he suggested they sit on the bank and read Fitzgerald together. The Cloudywing settled on her sunny sleeve.

Flora blushed all over again. “Goodness, I couldn’t read this with you. I’m still working my way up to being open-minded when it comes to literature. I’m gonna need to read a couple red books on my own before I’m ready to read them out loud with somebody else.”

Hadley wondered that anyone ever read red books by one’s self. He couldn’t see the fun in that. 

Flora said, “Miss Bowman is thinking of getting
Dracula
for the library. Have you read
Dracula
?”

He could have sworn she was staring at the bright, hot scar that ran along the side of his neck. But no. No one would ever guess the truth about that scar. “I’ve read it. The man who gave it to me called it a dangerous book.”

“Is it dangerous?” she asked, her big eyes bigger than before.

“I’d steer clear of
Dracula
if I was you, Flora. You seem too nice for that book.”

“What about you, Hadley? Aren’t you nice?”

“Well, I read the red books, don’t I?” 

She laughed again. “You can’t trick me. You’re a nice man, it’s plain to see. I wouldn’t have met you for a walk otherwise.”

Being a gardener, Hadley had seen more than his fair share of beauty in his time. He’d watched a calliope sip nectar from a patch of coral bells one morning in his hummingbird garden and discovered a tiny purple feather in one of the bells afterward. He’d become submerged to his ankles once when it rained magnolia blooms and was forced to wade home through a sea of pink and white saucers, kicking up creamy lemon perfume with every step he made. He’d watch the rise of Corn Moons and Snow Moons and Beaver Moons, and he’d touched yellow hair with his bare hands. One time, he’d had occasion to eat a full quarter of an orange all by himself. But he had never experienced anything half so beautiful as Flora’s satin eyes. “Have you read any Jack London?” he asked.

“I love Jack London,” she said.

Hadley was quickly smitten. 

###

“Babe tells me she saw you in the park yesterday,” Lucinda said. “With a girl.” Hadley was working in the garden, and Lucinda was checking her windowpanes for streaks to prepare for Daddy Dick’s visit. “Is that true?”

Here it comes, Hadley thought. Three pleasant weeks had passed since he and Flora Gibbs had started meeting in the park. The day before, he’d spotted Lucinda’s friend by the carousel and felt sure that Lucinda would hear all about Flora. 

There wasn’t a soul in Madison County that couldn’t recognize Babe Butternut at a hundred clips. A swizzle-stick thin creature who smoked cheroots in public and wore her blonde hair short and slicked back with a single curl pasted to each cheek, she was the biggest celebrity around. Local legend had it that, as an infant, her father had been so struck by her beauty, he put her picture on the box of his new cereal, Butternut Puffed.
Even babes like Butternut Puffed.
It was still on the box to this day. The baby on the cereal box wore her curls pasted to her forehead and had yet to take up cheroots, yet there remained an eerie resemblance. Hadley had never forgiven her for caving in to fashion recently and binding her breasts. Fortunately, he’d already planned what he would say when Lucinda asked him about his Sunday walks by the river. 

“Mama and I like to go to the park on Sundays.”

It wasn’t a lie, after all, and Hadley said it steady and clear. 

Lucinda licked her finger and wiped a smudge off the window. “Babe says she’s young and mousy as can be. Your mama isn’t young.”

 “Well maybe Babe needs to buy herself a pair of spectacles.”

“And why is that?” 

“So she can see how pretty the young lady is that I meet in the park on Sundays.”

Lucinda marched through his bed of Toad Lilies, flattening spotted blossoms under her heels. “If you think you can make me jealous, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“Good,” Hadley said, and he slapped some of the dirt from his trousers at her. 

“Lovely,” Lucinda said, crushing another hapless flower with her shoe. “Now go down to the library and get me a copy of
Unnatural Bondage
.”