7. 1960
Catherine had been working at the Colville Public Library for almost three weeks when she stumbled upon the copy of A Farewell to Arms.
Of all the books that moved through the shelves in this town, Hemingway’s works were some of the most popular. According to Mrs. Peters, the woman who’d hired her and who treated all her employees as if they were attending a wayward school for fallen women, it was because Hemingway was one of the greats.
“A master of restraint,” she’d intoned in the pompous, ceremonial drawl that was already starting to work its way into Catherine’s dreams. “It’s what he doesn’t say that says the most.”
While Catherine agreed with this literary analysis, she suspected that Hemingway’s true popularity had more to do with his subject matter. Anything war or military related was beloved in these parts. When a town’s entire economy revolved around the local military base—and when almost every social activity involved the hundred or so single men who worked there—that kind of interest was inevitable. All Quiet on the Western Front and The Red Badge of Courage enjoyed equal popularity.
As did the numerous young men who wandered inside the library to check out books, kill time and, more often than not, ogle the librarians.
“Don’t look now, but William McBride is giving you googly eyes from the nonfiction section,” said a low, hissed voice from behind Catherine. “That makes the fourth time he’s come in this week.”
“The fifth,” Catherine said with a sigh. She ducked out of the way so as not to fall under the direct gaze of those googly eyes. “You weren’t here yesterday, but he came in right before closing to look up something about Egyptian sun goddesses.”
Lonnie groaned. She was one of the four other part-time librarians on staff and rapidly becoming Catherine’s favorite person in the whole of Colville. Catherine had already witnessed the gorgeous Native American girl put several patrons in their place when they questioned her knowledge of all things bookish—and she did it with such a bland, unassuming smile that they had no idea how quickly she’d shown them to be the narrow-minded fools they were.
“Don’t tell me,” Lonnie said, laughing. “He told you that if you couldn’t find anything in the archives, he’d worship you instead.”
Catherine decided right then and there that Lonnie was, in fact, her most favorite person in the whole of Colville. Possibly even the entire West Coast.
“That’s pretty close, actually,” Catherine admitted. “Is it just me, or does he have an abnormal amount of teeth? I swear, when he smiles, it’s like looking at the Cheshire cat.”
“From what I understand, his parents paid a fortune for those teeth. You should learn to appreciate them better.” Lonnie glanced over her shoulder at where Second Lieutenant William McBride stood lurking. He held a book open in his hands as though deeply enthralled, but Catherine could tell that his eyes weren’t moving across the page. “Poor guy. He’s besotted with you.”
Catherine pulled a face and turned her back on the young officer. Even with all the teeth, he was a handsome enough young man, his features proportionate, his hair perfectly slicked back, his uniform in a state that she was pretty sure would have her father salivating with approval.
Unfortunately, she’d met his like before. She was always meeting his like.
He’d be faultlessly polite to her father, flatteringly impressed by her mother, and patronizingly protective of her. Their first date would be to the local diner and maybe a movie at the drive-in a few miles north of town, where he’d have a flask of gin ready and waiting to keep them warm. He’d try to slide his hand up her leg. She might even let him. But at the end of the day, he’d take her safely home again.
Yes, sir. No, sir. It’s an honor to take your daughter out, sir.
And underneath those bland nothing-sayings would be the unspoken part she always felt simmering under the surface.
I’d be happy to take her out again, sir. Shall we discuss it over my next promotion?
“He’s besotted with the idea of becoming a first lieutenant,” Catherine said. She grabbed the returned copy of A Farewell to Arms she was supposed to be shelving and sighed. “Unfortunately for him, I’m not stupid enough to fall for it.”
She wasn’t sure what caused her to flip through the pages of the book in her hand, but she suspected it was partly due to the googly-eyed attentions of William McBride, and partly due to the tidy square of a handkerchief she carried tucked into her favorite bullet bra. It had taken her mother three washings to get the blood out, but Catherine had wanted to return it to her bicycle savior in good condition. After the initial shock of her accident had worn off and she’d settled her nerves inside the library, she’d realized how unpleasant she’d been to the poor guy. Giving him his handkerchief back was secondary only to the apology she owed him.
But first a week had gone by without seeing him. Then another. Now she was on a third. If it weren’t for the light pink scars on the palms of her hands, she might have even suspected she’d imagined the whole thing.
“Except I was right,” she breathed as her gaze landed on the quote she was looking for. “It is from Hemingway.”
“What is?” Lonnie popped up to read over Catherine’s shoulder. The girl’s light lavender scent tickled her nose; yesterday’s perfume had been more like an overdose of orange peel. Apparently, Lonnie had ambitions to sell Avon products, and this was her testing phase. “Why did someone underline the words, ‘Your blood coagulates beautifully’? And what does it say in the margin next to it?”
Catherine’s heart gave a small stutter as she glanced at the message. The words were written in a scratchy hand, but she could still make each one out.
I didn’t mean to scare you. I hope there was no lasting damage.
“Uh-oh,” Lonnie said. “Don’t let Mrs. Peters see that. One time, a kid practiced his letters inside a copy of Charlotte’s Web, and she made us track down the culprit and force his mom to pay for the damages.”
Catherine flipped through a few more pages, searching for another message, but there was none to be found. Just those two sentences sent off into the void—two sentences meant for her and her alone.
“Do you know what it means?” Lonnie asked. “The message?”
“Oddly enough, yes. I do.” Catherine grabbed the yellow borrowing card from the front and read it. “The last person to check this book out is someone named Jasper Holmes. Do you know who that is?”
Lonnie’s eyebrows flew up. “Jasper? Sure. Everyone knows him. He works for the logging company.”
“Youngish guy?” Catherine prodded. “Tall and loose-limbed, a little rough around the edges?”
“A little rough?” Lonnie shook her head with a laugh. “Jasper Holmes looks like a nineteenth-century fur trapper who accidentally stepped into a time machine. My grandparents say this place used to be lousy with them.”
Based on Lonnie’s description, Catherine felt pretty certain this Jasper Holmes was her bicycle savior. What she didn’t know was why he’d left her a message. Had he known she’d recognize the quote? And that curiosity would compel her to eventually seek it out?
“Wait. Do you think he’s the one who wrote that message?” Lonnie asked. “Because to be honest, I never took him as the writing type. Or the reading type. We get his kind on the reservation all the time. All they want is to hide off in the woods somewhere, alone with their bad attitudes and fishing poles.”
“You remember how my hands were all scuffed up the day I put in my application?” Catherine asked.
Lonnie nodded, her dark eyes rapt as Catherine pulled the handkerchief out.
“Someone sideswiped my bike with their car, and he sort of came to my rescue. He gave me this to stanch the bleeding, quoted that line at me, and then left.”
“He complimented your coagulation?” Lonnie held up a hand, laughter shaking her body. “I take it back. That sounds exactly like something Jasper Holmes would do. Most of the kids in town run to the other side of the street when they see him coming. They think he’s some combination of Bigfoot, the bogeyman, and Jack the Ripper. He’s not exactly known for his charming personality.”
“Poor guy,” Catherine murmured. “He was nice enough to me.”
Lonnie swept an obvious gaze up and down Catherine’s body. Since she was once again dressed in one of her mother’s hand-me-downs, her silhouette a perfectly commercial feminine shape, she interpreted this as it was intended. A hot flush touched her cheeks.
“It wasn’t like that,” she protested. “It’s what anyone who witnessed the accident would have done. My bike was all bent out of shape.”
Lonnie grinned. “And I’ll bet he straightened it right out.” She must have sensed Catherine’s growing sense of discomfort because she dropped the grin and nodded down at the book in her hands. “Are you going to write him back?”
Catherine took her lower lip between her teeth. “Do you think I should?”
“Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Mrs. Peters walked by at that exact moment, her stern face set in a frown. She was a small woman—both of stature and of mind—her beady eyes magnified behind a pair of glasses so thick they outstripped the bottom of Coke bottles everywhere. She liked decorum and dictatorship in equal proportions, and if it weren’t for the fact that she’d given Catherine a job without even bothering to check her references, she’d have found her intolerable.
“Chitchat on your dime, ladies, not the library’s,” she chided in a singsong voice that fooled neither of them. “Time to lean means time to clean.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Peters,” Lonnie said, her eyes brimming with mischief. “We were just discussing whether or not it’s appropriate for William McBride to spend all his time lurking in the back and catcalling the librarians when we walk by.”
“Lonnie!” Catherine gasped, but Mrs. Peters pulled herself up by her virtual bootstraps, gaining a good half inch in the process. They could practically hear her girdle creaking under the sudden strain.
“Is he harassing you girls?”
“Gosh, I don’t want to get him in any trouble,” Lonnie said. “But it makes me feel so embarrassed, knowing how close he’s watching. I can hardly remember my alphabet.”
“I’ll take care of him right now,” Mrs. Peters announced with an increasing air of self-importance. “These young men have to realize that my library isn’t a USO show. We’re here to educate, not fornicate.”
Both Lonnie and Catherine found it difficult to suppress the snorts of laughter this remark elicited, but they managed it. They also moved quickly away so as to avoid the spectacle of Mrs. Peters reducing the young lieutenant to proverbial dust.
“You owe me now,” Lonnie said as she rummaged behind the checkout desk. She handed Catherine a pen and gestured at the copy of A Farewell to Arms. “Write him something short and sweet. Just to see what happens.”
“What’s going to happen is either Mrs. Peters will catch me and give me the sack, or this book will sit on the shelves for a few weeks before some random stranger comes to check it out.”
“Then there’s no harm, is there?” Lonnie countered brightly. She propped her chin on her hand and waited. “You’d better hurry. ‘Time to lean means time to clean.’”
Catherine nibbled the end of the pen for a moment before putting the tip to the page.
I’ll live, which is more than I can say for the poor C in this book. I’ll never understand why all the literary greats insist on killing female characters off in order to redeem a man.
“Oooh, I like it.” Lonnie nodded her approval as Catherine blew a light breath across the page to dry the ink. “Playful yet intelligent. He’ll agonize over that for weeks.”
Catherine felt a spasm of alarm as she closed the book and returned it to the cart for shelving. “I don’t want to agonize him. I just want to…” She let her voice trail off, uncertain what, exactly, she was trying to do.
Start a conversation? A flirtation?
Lonnie forestalled any of Catherine’s attempts to explain herself with a laugh. “Share deep literary analysis with a local logger who rarely strings two words together and whose frown could curdle milk?” She tapped the side of her nose. “Don’t worry, Cath. Your secret’s safe with me. And until then…”
They both glanced over at where Mrs. Peters was leading William McBride out the library doors. The older librarian held her head as proudly as if guiding a prisoner down death row.
“Until then, you can always leave a note or two inside a book about Egyptian sun goddesses,” Lonnie said, still with that laugh on her lips. “It’ll be interesting to see who writes back first.”