Sam nodded. 'That's just how Mr Price treated her in the article he wrote about the Library. The one I was reading when you put your hand on my shoulder and took about twelve more years off my life. It also explains why your mother was so mad at me when I mentioned her name Saturday night.'
Naomi glanced at him, startled. 'That's what you called about?'
Sam nodded.
'Oh, Sam - if you weren't on Mom's s-list before, you are now.'
'Oh, I was on before, but I've got an idea she's moved me up.' Sam laughed, then winced. His stomach still hurt from his fit on the steps of the newspaper office, but he was very glad he had had that fit - an hour ago he never would have believed he could have gotten so much of his equilibrium back. In fact, an hour ago he had been quite sure that Sam Peebles and equilibrium were going to remain mutually exclusive concepts for the rest of his life. 'Go ahead, Naomi.'
'Most of what I've heard I picked up at what AA people call "the real meeting," ' she said. 'That's when people stand around drinking coffee before and then again after, talking about everything under the sun.'
He looked at her curiously. 'How long have you been in AA, Naomi?'
'Nine years,' Naomi said evenly. 'And it's been six since I had to take a drink. But I've been an alcoholic forever. Drunks aren't made, Sam. They're born.'
'Oh,' he said lamely. And then: 'Was she in the program? Ardelia Lortz?'
'God, no - but that doesn't mean there aren't people in AA who remember her. She showed up in Junction City in 1956 or '57, I think. She went to work for Mr Lavin in the Public Library. A year or two later, he died very suddenly - it was a heart attack or a stroke, I think - and the town gave the job to the Lortz woman. I've heard she was very good at it, but judging by what happened, I'd say the thing she was best at was fooling people.'
'What did she do, Naomi?'
'She killed two children and then herself,' Naomi said simply. 'In the summer of 1960. There was a search for the kids. No one thought of looking for them in the Library, because it was supposed to be closed that day. They were found the next day, when the Library was supposed to be open but wasn't. There are skylights in the Library roof -'
'I know.'
' - but these days you can only see them from the outside, because they changed the Library inside. Lowered the ceiling to conserve heat, or something. Anyway, those skylights had big brass catches on them. You grabbed the catches with a long pole to open the skylights and let in fresh air, I guess. She tied a rope to one of the catches - she must have used one of the track-ladders that ran along the bookcases to do it - and hanged herself from it. She did that after she killed the children.'
'I see.' Sam's voice was calm, but his heart was beating slowly and very hard. 'And how did she ... how did she kill the children?'
'I don't know. No one's ever said, and I've never asked. I suppose it was horrible.'
'Yes. I suppose it was.'
'Now tell me what happened to you.'
'First I want to see if Dave's at the shelter.'
Naomi tightened up at once. 'I'll see if Dave's at the shelter,' she said. 'You're going to sit tight in the car. I'm sorry for you, Sam, and I'm sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion last night. But you won't upset Dave anymore. I'll see to that.'
'Naomi, he's a part of this!'
'That's impossible,' she said in a brisk this-closes-the-discussion tone of voice.
'Dammit, the whole thing is impossible!'
They were nearing Angle Street now. Ahead of them was a pick-up truck rattling toward the Recycling Center, its bed full of cardboard cartons filled with bottles and cans.
'I don't think you understood what I told you,' she said. 'It doesn't surprise me; Earth People rarely do. So open your ears, Sam. I'm going to say it in words of one syllable. If Dave drinks, Dave dies. Do you follow that? Does it get through?'
She tossed another glance Sam's way. This one was so furious it was still smoking around the edges, and even in the depths of his own distress, Sam realized something. Before, even on the two occasions when he had taken Naomi out, he had thought she was pretty. Now he saw she was beautiful.
'What does that mean, Earth People?' he asked her.
'People who don't have a problem with booze or pills or pot or cough medicine or any of the other things that mess up the human head,' she nearly spat. 'People who can afford to moralize and make judgments.'
Ahead of them, the pick-up truck turned off onto the long, rutted driveway leading to the redemption center. Angle Street lay ahead. Sam could see something parked in front of the porch, but it wasn't a car. It was Dirty Dave's shopping-cart.
'Stop a minute,' he said.,
Naomi did, but she wouldn't look at him. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her jaw was working. There was high color in her cheeks.
'You care about him,' he said, 'and I'm glad. Do you also care about me, Sarah? Even though I'm an Earth Person?'
'You have no right to call me Sarah. I can, because it's part of my name - I was christened Naomi Sarah Higgins. And they can, because they are, in a way, closer to me than blood relatives could ever be. We are blood relatives, in fact - because there's something in us that makes us the way we are. Something in our blood. You, Sam - you have no right.'
'Maybe I do,' Sam said. 'Maybe I'm one of you now. You've got booze. This Earth Person has got the Library Police.'
Now she looked at him, and her eyes were wide and wary. 'Sam, I don't underst -'
'Neither do I. All I know is that I need help. I need it desperately. I borrowed two books from a library that doesn't exist anymore, and now the books don't exist, either. I lost them. Do you know where they ended up?'
She shook her head.
Sam pointed over to the left, where two men had gotten out of the pick-up's cab and were starting to unload the cartons of returnables. 'There. That's where they ended up. They've been pulped. I've got until midnight, Sarah, and then the Library Police are going to pulp me. And I don't think they'll even leave my jacket behind.'
6
Sam sat in the passenger seat of Naomi Sarah Higgins's Datsun for what seemed like a long, long time. Twice his hand went to the door handle and then fell back. She had relented ... a little. If Dave wanted to talk to him, and if Dave was still in any condition to talk, she would allow it. Otherwise, no soap.
At last the door of Angle Street opened. Naomi and Dave Duncan came out. She had an arm around his waist, his feet were shuffling, and Sam's heart sank. Then, as they stepped out into the sun, he saw that Dave wasn't drunk ... or at least not necessarily. Looking at him was, in a weird way, like looking into Naomi's compact mirror all over again. Dave Duncan looked like a man trying to weather the worst shock of his life ... and not doing a very good job of it.
Sam got out of the car and stood by the door, indecisive.
'Come up on the porch,' Naomi said. Her voice was both resigned and fearful. 'I don't trust him to make it down the steps.'
Sam came up to where they stood. Dave Duncan was probably sixty years old. On Saturday he had looked seventy or seventy-five. That was the booze ' Sam supposed. And now, as Iowa turned slowly on the axis of noon, he looked older than all the ages. And that, Sam knew, was his fault. It was the shock of things Dave had assumed were long buried.