Chapter 5
Five
The last week of April brought a visitor.
“Just twenty minutes, Lovett.” The guard stood close by as I sat at a table while Doc gave me the news of Loretta’s death. Despite her being ninety-two, it still came as a shock. My dearest patron and friend in those hills was gone. Honey was left without a guardian.
“Since the child no longer has one, the lawyer is seeking her emancipation,” Doc continued.
“Emancipation?”
Doc squeezed my hand. “Jackson has given his permission. Honey’s doing well. She’s back at the Carter homestead and has a reputable job with the library. So we’re hoping the judge grants it.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, a headache taking hold as I tried to learn more.
“No need to worry,” he chatted on. “I’m keeping an eye out for Honey, along with Devil John and others.”
“Could you give her a letter from me, Doc?”
He snapped at the guard, demanding paper and pen.
The officer returned with a Big Chief writing tablet and a stubby pencil.
I looked around for a calendar.
Doc glanced at his wristwatch and then over to the locked and barred door, growing uncomfortable. “April twenty-six.” His eagerness to leave rested in his shifting posture.
I didn’t blame him. He wanted to rip off the collar of prison as soon as possible and hightail it far away from here.
“Five more minutes,” the officer announced.
Quickly, I dated the paper, let Honey know I was well, and added a word about my new job as prison librarian.
Doc stood, patted my shoulder, and called me by nickname: “Bluet, it’s sure good to see that you’re better than when I saw you last. Any female troubles since they performed the”—he lowered his voice and smoothed his disheveled shirt—“surgery?”
“No, sir.” I flushed but not from embarrassment, only a gnawing bitterness.
The guard stepped up to our table. “Visiting time is over.”
Doc grabbed the letter and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, turning toward the door. He looked back with sympathetic eyes and said, “Take care of yourself. I’ll stay on the governor about your pardon. I promise.”
***
Two weeks went by, and book donations and reading materials began to trickle in.
At the end of May, more arrived, and Buttermilk built new ladders that he put in storage until the painters could come.
Each time, I’d carried a folded letter in my prison dress and tried to build up the courage to ask him to pass it for me.
At the end of the day, the note would still be in my pocket, wrinkled from my talking, damp hands as fingers fidgeted over the page.
When I finally poured some starch into my bones, I asked, “Buttermilk, would you give my husband a note from me?” I lifted the crumpled paper from my dress and held it out to him.
He stared at me long and hard, then shook his head.
“Mademoiselle Coosee, I’m searched each time I go back over to the men’s, and if I’m caught, I wouldn’t be able to come back.
I would be locked in the hole for this. Tell me instead what you want me to tell your fine man, and I will get word to him. ”
Embarrassed for asking him to risk his freedom, I could only say, “Please tell him I miss and love him and am doing well.”
“Coosee, he asks of you each time, and I tell him what words have not been spoken but I see in your heart. He knows you are well and he is loved and missed.”
I’d been too bold, and I quickly thanked the gracious handyman, apologizing for my misstep.
Over the days, Buttermilk replaced shelves on several bookcases. Another morning, he brought in an old-world globe and installed an American flag on the wall. Last week, he’d built a bookcase after putting in new windowpanes inside Warden’s office. As always, his work was precise and detailed.
It started to feel more like a library, and I grew fond of his visits, enjoying our conversations, with him sometimes teasing out sentences in French.
Me, reminiscing about the old lessons and songs from my youth; him, regaling me with tales of medieval fortresses, abbeys, Normandy history and food, and the hint of a young French woman who’d stolen his heart but he’d regrettably left behind.
Buttermilk confided that, after the war, he’d become a prisoner of the bottle and it had made him short tempered. Drunk, he had fought a lawman and it landed him behind bars.
Today, Buttermilk taught me a few more words in French. He was working on a busted file cabinet while I organized stacks of books, when Warden Sanders stopped by unexpectedly, interrupting our light conversation in French.
“Je vois que vous avez combattu non loin de la Normandie, Monsieur Sullivan. J’avais un frère qui a débarqué à Utah Beach,” she said.
“You don’t say, Warden. I don’t recall running into a Sanders serving over there. I hope your brother has at least a few fond memories like me.” Buttermilk grinned.
Warden turned to me. “My, aren’t we full of surprises, Coosee. A hillbilly who can speak French.” She threw back her head and laughed.
“Fille de la montagne,” I corrected, switching out the insulting word with mountain girl.
“Hillbilly,” she quipped.
If she was surprised that a hillbilly like me could learn French, I was just as flabbergasted by her unpolished tongue.
The word came from those who’d never been born here—never set foot in Kentucky.
Instead, it had been harvested from the mirth of stick-throated foreigners in their newsprint, advertisements, and drawings.
Pa’d taught me as a child and then told me never to repeat the ugly word, not even in jest.
She raised a brow, threaded with a hint of contempt that had me stepping back. “Have you visited France, Coosee?”
“I was schooled as a child, ma’am. Though it seems I’ve forgotten the lessons. But, Warden, you speak as if you grew up there.”
“DC,” she said haughtily and turned back to Buttermilk. “Well, I don’t know what we’d do without you, Mr. Sullivan.” Warden clasped her hands. “The library is really shaping up nicely thanks to all your hard work. Warden Alton just needs to send the painters over here, and it will be done.”
The older gentleman’s face flushed, and he thanked her in French.
I watched them bandying compliments back and forth, mystified by the warden’s behavior around the man.
She spun the globe and looked around. “Impressive, Mr. Sullivan.” Then: “Looks like you’ve got everything you need for your library, Lovett.” Her hand trailed down the soft fabric of the flag. “Except readers.”
Readers. She’d surely see my failure and fire me.
Buttermilk cast quizzical glances between us and cleared his throat.
“Warden, I still need to switch out a few more dead electrical outlets I’m waiting on to come in from the hardware store deliveryman.
Can’t chance a shock. I also need to get the last of the ladder shelving together and replace several rungs.
And I’m almost done building the library catalog chest; just need to get those brass pulls.
The painters have been running behind. Be ready for visitors soon enough, ma’am. ”
She glanced at her wristwatch and gestured to me.
“Have Waldeen fix Mr. Sullivan a dinner tray and bring it to my office. Make sure he gets a generous helping of those apple dumplings she whipped up this morning. And a tall, cold glass of buttermilk,” she added pleasantly enough.
“Mr. Sullivan, I hope you’ll join me. I’d like to discuss our latest trouble with the boiler? ”
***
I darted my eyes between the door and calendar, still waiting for my first patron, willing a reader to step inside. Fretting the day, hour, or minute when the warden would send me back to Laundry. Worse, lose her funding, dismiss me, and shut down the library.
I’d soon found myself avoiding her whenever she’d happen into the cafeteria or inspect a wing.
Another week had gone by, and nary a soul had graced the door. I lingered by the light switch, watching the second hand slip into another lost minute on a rainy Saturday, knowing I could do a lot of things, but I couldn’t stop the fear and repulsion the inmates regarded me with.
Couldn’t stop the ones I needed from not needing me.
I turned off the lights and rested my head against the wall in the darkness.
Mindless, I switched the light on and off.
My moods tangled between the soft clicks, the courage laddering and descending into a rumbling rhythm.
Stepping over to the library catalog case Buttermilk had built, I admired the tiny drawers full of index cards and his fine workmanship on the beautiful oak piece.
I thought about the hundred miles I’d traveled each week to reach my patrons. The thousands of books and reading material I’d dropped onto time-worn porches over the years, and how desperate the mountainfolk had been for any printed word.
It’d been a risk in the beginning. And Pa’d fought me every step of the way.
Some back home didn’t warm to the Pack Horse librarian program, and the foolish books and coaxing notions they might invite, any more than they trusted the meddling government, visiting missionaries, or predatory rich from far off.
Others greedily fed their souls with hungry bellies, reaching for hope outside the hills.
And with the violent unrest of the bloody coal mine wars, starvation, influenzas, and the Depression taking their toll on the Kentucky man, it could be downright deadly trying to grow readers in those Troublesome parts.
There had been moonshiner Devil John, a fire tower lookout, young Timmy and his mama, the Moffits, and many others.
The ones I’d won over.
Quietly, I moved over to the shelves and sat on the floor, poring over the titles, flipping through pages.
Hours later, I gathered a stack of books and index cards.
There weren’t no other way.
I know’d what to do.
But I know’d it would be risky and downright dangerous if I failed.