Book of Mercy Page 10

  Irene said in exasperation. “Have you read some of this trash?”

  Antigone lifted her shoulders. “Probably not.”

  “Then I suggest you do a little research before you pass judgment,” Irene retorted

  Antigone’s hand tightened on the stone. She looked down, took a deep breath, then lifted her head. “I would, Irene, but you see, I can’t read.” It was as if someone had sucked the air from the room. Irene’s mouth dropped open, then quickly snapped shut. “I’m dyslexic. I may not know everything about the books on the banned list, but I know about censorship. I’ve lived with it all my life. Words on the page move when I try to read them. Sometimes I can get the dancing words to behave, and sometimes they defeat me. I depend a lot on Sam.”

  She looked at her husband. “I’ve always been at the mercy of others to help me because I can’t easily access all the different opinions and pieces of information out there. I don’t want my child to be limited—whether by a disability or by someone else’s idea of what makes good literature.”

  Antigone looked from the school board to the people crammed into the auditorium. “You don’t realize what gifts books are. They set you free. Doesn’t it mean anything that even though I sometimes hate books—and believe me, they’ve caused a lot of misery in my life—I’m still standing here defending them?”

  Irene stammered for a moment then recovered. “We have the right to decide what our children will read.”

  “What your child will read, Irene, but not mine,” Antigone said.

  Antigone could hear the whispers growing all around her.

  She can’t read? I never knew.

  But she runs all those businesses . . .

  She doesn’t have children yet; she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

  My Johnny has a reading disability. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

  Antigone closed her eyes, trying to shut out the remarks seeming to grow louder and crowding in on her. When she opened them, Sam was pushing his way to her side. In the balcony, she saw Ryder stir, making his way toward the exit.

  Irene banged the gavel again.

  Kalinda the artist said, “I think Antigone’s right. We can’t go around banning books.”

  The students began chanting again and thrusting fists in the air: “Keep America cool, keep America cool, keep America cool!”

  “Order! Order!” Irene shouted. The crowd wasn’t listening. The whispers grew into arguments all over the auditorium.

  We’re not Nazis, for gawdsakes.

  Then stop acting like one.

  Hey, I’m Jewish.

  Then you ought to know better.

  Better than what? Lighten up, lady. We’re talking about a few dirty books.

  Who says they’re dirty?

  Who decides what’s indecent anyway?

  We do. It’s our community.

  This isn’t supposed to happen in America. We don’t do censorship.

  It happens more than you think.

  Wait until the press gets a hold of this.

  Gary, the chamber president, cast an anxious glance in Dash Morgan’s direction. “Now, we don’t want to get a reputation for being close-minded. Book banning is bad for the community’s image.”

  Irene raised her chin in disdain. “I’d rather be a little close-minded and keep our children’s minds from rotting with disgusting ideas than worry about our image, Gary. This is our town. We decide what we will or will not tolerate.”

  “No, Irene,” Antigone said, “the Constitution decides. I have to tolerate your ideas—even though they’re wrong—and you have to tolerate mine. Because we live in a democracy.”

  Irene exploded, “Don’t go waving a flag in my face, Antigone Brown, you and your strange animals and vegetarian food!”

  “I’ve known you to order tofu take-out,” Antigone said.

  The crowd laughed.

  Irene gasped, “That’s for Arthur.”

  Hank placed his hand over the microphone in front of Irene, but Antigone could still hear him. “For crissakes, Irene, what have you gotten us into? Throw the issue to the review committee and be done with it.”

  He turned to the auditorium and said with a placating smile, “We’ll turn this matter over to the review committee. In the meantime, I move for adjournment. It’s bedtime.”

  TWO HOURS AFTER THE crowd shuffled out of the auditorium, Nancy Sandhart woke with stabbing pains in her chest.

  She clawed at Bob snoring beside her. “My heart! My heart!”

  Her husband peered at her through one eye and said, “What?”

  “Hospital! Hospital! Now.”

  He flung the blanket aside, fell out of bed, and snatched up jeans, a shirt, and the car keys. Helping Nancy into a robe and slippers, the barefooted Bob then carried his wife to the car. The Sandharts lived in the country on a farm where Bob grew up. The hospital in Mercy was fifteen miles away. He figured he could make better time than the EMTs. He ignored stop signs and hit an opossum. He didn’t stop. As he tore through the dark night at eighty miles per hour on crazy narrow county roads, his wife slumped in the passenger seat, clasping her chest and praying, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”

  After running a battery of tests, the doctor put Nancy on oxygen and gave her a shot to calm her. The young Pakistani doctor, pulling his second twelve-hour shift in emergency, diagnosed that Nancy’s heart was not turning against her. She had had an anxiety attack.

  “But it felt so terrible,” Nancy trembled.

  “Are you sure?” asked Bob uneasily. “Maybe we need a second opinion.”

  The doctor gave them a weary, boyish grin. “I assure you, Mr. Sandhart, I’m not worried about your wife. I know this is a scary feeling. But all the tests check out normal. She needs some peace and quiet. No worries. Does she have a stressful job?”

  “Incredibly stressful,” Nancy said.

  “Well, it’s not brain surgery,” Bob growled.

  The doctor glanced at the chart. “Let’s keep you overnight, Mrs. Sandhart. Just to be safe. Once again, this is nothing to worry about. It’s just a sign to take it easy. Do something soothing. Be kind to yourself. Take a bubble bath. Read a book.”

  “Don’t talk to me about books,” Nancy moaned.

  Two days later Nancy Sandhart, who had been an employee of the Mercy school system for ten years, gave in to her husband’s nagging and resigned from her position as librarian of the Mercy High School Media Center.

  Now, she told herself, she could smoke all day if she wanted. She wondered why that didn’t make her happier.

  Chapter 15

  The Day the Words Wouldn’t Stop

  RYDER WAS MAD. HE’D grabbed a hammer from Sam’s tool bench, and now, standing by the junked shell of a Honda Accord in the field behind the garage, he was swinging. His breathing became fast and sweat popped out on his forehead and still he pounded. With each dent, he swung harder. His arms began to ache, and still he swung.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Sam roared over the noise, approaching through the tract of weeds, metal sculptures, and half-destroyed cars.

  Ryder kept hammering.

  “Ryder!”

  “I hate this,” Ryder yelled back.

  “What?”

  “This shit with Antigone,” Ryder whacked the hood. “I can’t freaking believe it. Why didn’t her parents do something? Why didn’t they help her?” Ryder stopped to catch his breath. His arms trembled. He took a step back and bumped into one of Sam’s pieces of junk art. He didn’t know what it was supposed to be—letters whirling to the sky like some exploding alphabet soup.

  Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. “They tried. Some cases of dyslexia are worse than others. Antigone’s is pretty bad.” Sam shrugged and stared at him. “She’s got her tricks to survive.”

  Ryder knew about survival and the tricks you played on yourself and others.

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Sam told him some of An
tigone’s tricks: learning the alphabet by shaping the letters in clay, listening to audio books, using tape recorders, taking oral school exams. “Actually, she can read; it just takes concentration and time. The letters are always jumping around on the page.”

  “We should never have let her get up in front of those people,” Ryder said.

  “It was her decision.”

  For some reason, Ryder imagined he saw the Professor’s face in the reflection of the dented hood. He stepped forward and began pounding again. “I told him: look out for numero uno. She’s got no more sense. I was always pullin’ him out of shit, too.”

  “Who?” Sam asked.

  Ryder ignored him.

  From the moment they met in a New York movie house on a cold January day, Ryder had looked out for the old man known only on the street as the Professor. Ryder had been there to get warm; the Professor had been there for the show. The Marx Brothers. They’d both slipped in through a back door with a faulty latch. It was a day that changed Ryder’s life. He made his first friend during that twenty-four-hour festival of eyebrow wagging, horn honking, and cigar wiggling that held Ryder spellbound. He liked the way Groucho and his brothers were always pulling something over on somebody. They swam in silliness—a pool that didn’t exist in Ryder’s harsh world.

  Ryder always thought the Professor would have been good in a Marx Brothers movie. He was the perfect mark—born unsuspecting. No, that’s not right. The Professor knew shit happened, but he chose not to see it. He lived in the here and now, dragging around that sorry sack of books wherever he went, embracing each moment as if he were experiencing it for the first time.

  Pushing thoughts of the Professor aside, Ryder stopped hammering. “I don’t understand her,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll look after Antigone,” Sam said, digging through his pockets and offering a handful of Froot Loops to Ryder.

  The boy hesitated, threw the hammer on the hood, then scooped up the cereal. “Well, you’re doing a piss poor job of it.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Sam said. They stood, munching cereal and staring out at the rusting sculptures.

  EACH DAY THE ROUTINE that was Ryder’s life became more a part of him. Once, the unexpected was the norm—a drugged-out mother’s slap, a push by a cop when he didn’t get the answer he wanted, somebody on the street harassing him about one bullshit thing after another. Now, the unforeseen took him by surprise. This was not good, Ryder knew. Complacency (last week’s vocabulary word) made a man weak and vulnerable. It made him worry about a woman who couldn’t even read yet stood up for a bunch of stupid books. He knew the dangers of relaxing, of getting comfortable, of becoming involved, and yet he continued on—going to school; hanging out with Star and Ben; taking care of the deer; looking after Antigone. She was seven months pregnant, and Sam and Ryder refused to let her lift anything heavier than a toothbrush.

  That was why he had begun to hate the books kids were bringing to Antigone. Kids, sitting around the dinner table, listening to their parents talk about the school board meeting and the banned books, were scared. They were afraid that their own book collections were next on the Study Club’s list. So, they had begun dropping off books, even some from their parents’ bookshelves. The books were everywhere at the O. Henry Café and Deer Farm, in Antigone’s house, in Star’s room. Star called the stacks of books growing higher each day, Antigone’s Bookhenge. “Like Stonehenge,” she told him. “Only made of books. Stonehenge, that’s in England, is probably full of all kinds of cool vibes. Stonehenge is a mystery.”

  Ryder wasn’t a fan of mystery. In fact, it bugged the hell out of him. The other day as he was stepping out the front door, he nearly tripped over a kid, stooped, carefully setting a book on the porch. He was the most miserable excuse for a kid that Ryder had ever seen: not a muscle in his body, freakish red hair that stood out in every direction, thick glasses held together at one corner with duct tape.

  “What do you want?” Ryder snapped.

  “Um, I’m Stanley,” the kid said.

  “So?”

  “I want you to keep my book with your books. Star’s in my class, and she said it was okay.”

  “She did, huh?”

  Stanley held out his book. It was as sorry looking as the kid. Its pages were three-hole punched and tied together with dental floss. The cardboard cover was made from a cereal box. The front was decorated with crayoned moons and stars; “Too Many Words by Stanley” was printed in lousy handwriting. Ryder didn’t want to touch it.

  Still, Stanley shoved it at him, and before he could say, “no way,” the kid was gone. Stanley was faster than he looked.

  Ryder marched over to Star’s house and picked up a stone to toss at her window. He and Star never knocked on doors. Before he could wind up, she flung open the window, leaned out, and smiled. “Hey.”

  “Don’t hey me,” Ryder said. “Get down here. Some squirrelly kid left this, and I sure as hell don’t want it.” He flung the book on the ground.

  A few moments later, Star came running out of the house. She picked up the book and stared at the cover. “Stanley?”

  “Skinny, carrot top.”

  “That’s Stanley.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell the whole world they could dump their shit at Antigone’s. She’s got enough crap to deal with.”

  Star grinned. “You’re such a grouch. Come on.” She led him inside and up to her room. They sat down on the floor, under the window, their backs against the wall. All around them in Star’s room were stacks of books. Bookhenge. “Stanley’s a worrier. He’s afraid his mom will take his books away.”

  “Fool. Like who’d want this?”

  “Stanley’s a good writer,” she said. “Read it to me.”

  “I ain’t readin’ this. I don’t do out loud.”

  “Please, Ryder,” she said, her hand settling on his arm. She probably didn’t realize that she held him chained to her with the lightest touch. In that moment, he flashed to an alley on a cold night, to the Professor and his powerful voice building a fire of words to keep them warm through the night. That night the words had come from James Fenimore Cooper telling the story of Indians and honor. The Professor had loved that book.

  “Get comfortable,” Ryder said gruffly. Star didn’t hesitate to wiggle into a cozy position. He watched her close her eyes. He began, his voice winding out of the canyons of Bookhenge.

  One day I woke up, and there were too many words. Words tumbled out of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop them. I hurled words all day long. My mom said, “Stanley, we can’t have this. There are words all over the carpet.”

  “I can’t help it,” I cried. I spewed words all over my mom. She screamed and ran to change her clothes. She took me to the doctor. The doctor examined me. He performed all kinds of tests. He said he’d never seen anything like it. I was a medical mystery.

  The doctor wanted to give me a pill to stop the words. He wasn’t happy with me. The words had filled up the waiting room, and the other mothers were complaining. He said there may be one side effect from the pill: It may stop the words completely. Like never talk again. Like wordless forever.

  I said I didn’t want the pill. But my mom said, “It’s for the best.”

  “Why?” I said. “What’s wrong with words?”

  My mom and the doctor said too many words are dangerous. Uncontrollable is not good, they said. “What if everyone just said whatever popped into their heads?” my mom said. “It could get messy.”

  I refused to take the pill. And because I am taller than both my mom and the doctor, they couldn’t make me. My mom said, “We’ll see what your father has to say about this,” and took me home.

  By the time my dad got home, the house was full of words. They were spilling out of the windows. They had flattened the door. My mom said, “I can’t breathe around all these words.” My dad was not too happy either. People had been throwing words at him all day at work. He was ti
red of it. He said, “That’s it, young man,” and tossed me a sleeping bag. He sent me to the backyard.

  And still the words came.

  The neighbors called the police. The police said, “Sorry.” They didn’t want to fill up their jail with words. “It wouldn’t be good for the other prisoners,” the officers said.

  On the second day, the talk show hosts and news anchors came. They wanted to interview me. “No,” I said, sitting on my sleeping bag in the backyard. So instead they interviewed my mom and my dad. And my doctor. And my first grade teacher. And some expert on vocabulary diseases.

  On the third day, the religious people came. They called me a prophet. “Come be on our evangelical show,” they said.

  “Why?” I said. “I’m just a regular boy.”

  On the fourth day, everyone left me alone. I was tired and hungry. I couldn’t eat because the words wouldn’t stop. My voice was nearly gone. I sat on my sleeping bag and began to cry. The words used my sobs like sleds, and I wanted to die.

  By the seventh day, I began to feel light-headed. I listened to the birds. I think my words were flying with them. My words rose into the trees and sat in the branches. They floated to the sky. And I began to feel light of heart, too. The words slowed. They hugged me. They made a shield around me. I was no longer tired or hungry or unhappy.

  At last, I knew. The words were not the disease. They were the cure.

  RYDER CLOSED THE BOOK. Star was silent. “Well,” Ryder said, “it ain’t The Last of the Mohicans.”

  Chapter 16

  I Read Banned Books

  MORE AND MORE OFTEN these days, Irene Crump woke up tired. Dragging herself from the king-size bed, she went over the day’s schedule in her mind. Alice, her seven-year-old daughter, had soccer practice then dance lessons. Heaven knew what Art Junior was up to today in that black behemoth with the roaring motor and the roll bar that reminded his mother, by its very existence, how fragile life is and how invincible young drivers believe themselves to be.