CHAPTER 42
Despite having sailed a small boat across the Atlantic Ocean, despite having escaped from a nuclear disaster in his homeland, Levi was terrified at the thought of driving on American roads to an American city. That he had no US driver’s license was the least of his concerns. He’d long since abandoned his Israeli license on the assumption that being caught with no license was safer than being stopped with an Israeli license.
American drivers scared him.
His only experience with American drivers was in occasional trips on the back roads near Brooklin. These roads were narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass in either direction, and heavily crowned in the center so snowmelt would run off and not accumulate to freeze when the temperature dropped.
Undeterred, Mainers drove as if they were on eight-lane superhighways, tailgating anybody cautious enough to dawdle within ten miles per hour of the speed limit. He insisted that Reuben accompany him on a test drive before he felt confident enough to take off on his solo odyssey to Boston.
Since they were out of the house anyway, Reuben suggested stopping at the Blue Hill Co-op grocery store in the next town over from Brooklin. Reuben stocked up on organic produce, whole grain bread, and free-range, symphonic-music-listening chickens’eggs while Levi waited in the car, growing increasingly apprehensive about driving to Boston to meet with people he did not know.
When Reuben returned to the car, she offered to drive the ten miles back to Brooklin to let him rest before heading out to Boston. He accepted her offer and sat in the right-hand seat for most of the half hour drive without saying a word, lost in his thoughts.
Levi was jerked from his reverie by Reuben’s exclamation.
“Who the hell is that?” she asked as the car slowly drove past the Brooklin Public Library. A black Ford Navigator SUV was parked in front of the library. Two obviously upset men in nearly matching black suits, white shirts, and dark ties walked quickly toward the car. One man reached through the open driver’s window and pulled out a microphone on a coiled cord. He spoke into it, then tossed it angrily into the car.
The other man looked up and surveyed the Honda Accord as Levi and Reuben drove slowly past the library. His head swiveled to follow their course.
The two men were so obviously out of place—neither tourists, summer people, nor locals, the only varieties of people to come to Brooklin—that seeing them left Levi unsettled and apprehensive.
Levi had loaded a backpack with clean underwear and a toothbrush before they set out on their drive. Reuben stood outside while Levi retrieved his bag. When he returned, Levi walked up behind, wrapped his arms around her and pressed his chest against her back, pulling her tightly against him. He wiped one hand across her right breast, a privilege he felt he’d recently earned.
She swiveled around in his arms.
“I am so, so tired of worrying about when disaster is going to strike us,” she said quietly. “How do I know I’ll ever see you again? And those two men at the library. Who do you think they were? They looked so serious, so angry. Chaim, I am so afraid of losing you. I love you so much. Yes, I’ll say it even if you won’t.”
“I love you, too, Debra.” He tightened his arms to hold her snugly, bending forward to kiss the top of her head. “I’m not afraid to say it one bit. I love you. And because I love you, I’ll be extra careful. Of course I’m coming back to you. I’ll be back here tomorrow.”
She lifted her face and kissed him on the lips.
“Deal,” she said, opening the car door for him. As he was about to get into the driver’s seat, Levi sprang out and ran to the basement door.
“Almost forgot,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Abram’s going to have me do some heavy lifting. He said to bring work gloves.” He emerged a moment later with the bright-orange rubber gloves. “Guess these will have to do,” he said, tossing the gloves onto the back seat as he got behind the wheel and started the engine.
The walk to the library through the chill air and bright sunshine raised Reuben’s spirits. By the time she arrived at the white front door with the date 1912 over it, Reuben felt ready to launch herself back into her research project, just as she used to do as an investigative reporter back when the world was sane. She sat at the same computer she’d used the day before and renewed her Internet hunt.
Reuben could not help but overhear the excited conversation the librarian was having with two other women.
“They barged right in and started ordering me around,” Jo-lene Dodge said, her voice infused with enthusiasm. And a tinge of pride. “They waved their wallets at me and kept on saying FBI, FBI, as if I couldn’t read. Right, as if a town would have an illiterate librarian, even in Maine.”
Reuben perked up. She could barely keep her eyes directed at the screen to conceal her eavesdropping. She didn’t want them to move their conversation to someplace more private.
“FBI, well glory be,” one of the librarian’s audience exclaimed. “What in the world did they want?”
“They came right out and told me what they wanted,” the librarian responded. “They damn well wanted everything we have. They pulled out this piece of paper and said it was some sort of Patriot Act warrant and they wanted to search the library’s computerized list of books people had checked out, and they wanted to look at our computers, see what people had been looking at on the Internet.
“Well, I laughed right in their faces at that one. Where do you think you are, Bangor? I asked them. We don’t have any computerized list of books folks check out.” The librarian laughed and looked at a varnished set of oak cabinets containing dozens of small drawers. “I pointed over at those drawers and said, ‘That’s our computer checkout system, fellas. It was donated by the post office.’I laughed in their faces.”
Then the librarian’s voice took on a serious tone.
“I asked to see that warrant. I looked at the front. I looked at the back. I kept turning the thing over and all round. Then I handed it back to one of the fellas and said, ‘I don’t see any judge’s signature on that warrant you boys have there.’That’s what I said to them, you know.”
“Why’dja say that, Jo-lene?” the other woman asked. “How do you know anything about judges’signatures and search warrants?”
“How do I know?” the librarian responded. “I’ll tell you just like I told those FBI boys. I told them I’m not just the librarian in this town. I’m part of law enforcement hereabouts. I said right to them that I am the only clam warden between Sedgwick and Blue Hill. When it comes to the clam flats, I am the law around here, more than those sheriff’s deputies who’d take an hour and a half to get here if you called and said the library was being robbed. I know all about warrants. They have to be signed by a judge or else they ain’t worth—well, ain’t worth the time’a day to print ’em up.”
“I think the FBI sort of outranks the Brooklin clam warden, dee-yah,” the first woman said, guessing, correctly, that the story of the librarian-slash-clam-warden’s encounter with the FBI would be told and retold throughout the winter. “Why did you give those gentlemen such a hard time, Jo-lene? You’ll give Brooklin a sour name.”
“I didn’t like their high-and-mighty attitude,” she replied. “I told them they could come back with a piece of paper autographed by a judge and I’d show them whatever they wanted to see, but until then, they should mind the step at the front door on the way out.”
“Jo-lene, you’re going to get into serious trouble for that. You better watch out, you know,” the second woman said. Then she laughed and added, “I don’t know where you find the gumption to stand up to the FBI that way. I could never do that.”