42

The school was an old one, built in 1929, according to the date carved in stone over the front entrance. Barbara thought it looked like a temple to education, a church of enlightenment. Though it was only five blocks from their home, she and Sam hadn’t yet noticed it in their evening walks. Libby Woodrum was seated on a bench underneath a tree awaiting her arrival.

“What a beautiful building,” Barbara said, by way of greeting.

“One of the oldest elementary schools in continuous use in the state,” Libby said. “Big and drafty, but abounding with good spirits, including one ghost, or so our janitor claims.”

“Ooh, a ghost! I hope it’s a nice one.”

“A bit less intense than when she was alive. It’s Mrs. Helton. She taught here nearly fifty years. She approached education like war, a one-woman campaign against sloth and ignorance. When she retired, we said this place wouldn’t be the same without her. So when she died, she apparently decided to return. Our janitor sees her at night, in the teachers’ lounge, grading papers.”

“Well, at least she’s keeping busy,” Barbara said. “Nothing worse than a ghost with time on its hands.”

“Yes, they stir up all kinds of trouble, don’t they!”

They made their way inside to Libby’s office.

“I would like you to be our new librarian,” Libby Woodrum said. “It won’t be easy. Our former librarian did not distinguish herself, so now I have five hundred children who are scared to death of books.”

“I would love to be your new librarian, but shouldn’t you interview me first?”

“I did better than that. I asked my daughter Janet about you. She thinks you’d make a fantastic school librarian. Her endorsement is good enough for me.”

“When did you want me to start?”

Libby glanced at her watch. “How about in five minutes?”

“I can do that.”

“I’ll get the paperwork going, but right now I’ll give you a tour of the school and introduce you to the teachers. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Barbara. The library has long been a concern of mine, and I think with you in there, we can turn it around.”

“Thank you for your confidence in me,” Barbara said. “I will do my absolute best.”

She excused herself to phone Sam and tell him the good news, then walked with Libby through the school, meeting the teachers and staff, who were delighted to meet her, which made her think the previous librarian had been a terror.

The library was stately, high-ceilinged, but had not been well tended. Books were stacked haphazardly on the shelves, dust had accumulated in the corners, and a musty odor permeated the place. Judging by the stale air, the windows hadn’t been opened in years.

It took her a half hour to wrestle the windows open. She lubricated the sashes with a bar of soap she carried in her purse, being the mother of two sons, and within a short time had the windows gliding smoothly up and down. Fresh air did wonders for the place. She made her way to the basement for a can of Pledge and a box of dust rags, which the custodian seemed reluctant to hand over until she pointed out that he was free to dust the library if he wished.

“And I’ll need a clean mop and a bucket of hot water with Murphy’s Oil Soap,” she said. “And a dust mop. Don’t forget a dust mop.”

The children would be arriving in two weeks, and she was going to be ready for them, come hell or high water.

She worked through the day, then left for home, where she found Sam lying on the couch, a heating pad on his forehead, brooding.

“I think I made a mistake,” he said. “I called Miriam Hodge this afternoon and they’re going to let Paul Fletcher go. They want me back. Even Bea and Opal Majors said they might have acted too hastily. I was wrong to leave. I wanted to avoid a church fight over homosexuality, but now I think we should have faced the topic head-on. They’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later. I was wrong to leave. I should go back.”

“When did you decide all this?” Barbara asked. “Because when you left this morning, you were headed to a hardware store in a wonderful mood, glad to be here.”

“I found out why they lost all those members,” Sam said. “Hank Withers told me.”

“Why?”

“They wanted to save money so they kicked out their inactive members so they wouldn’t have to pay an assessment on them.”

“Well, that makes sense. They’re a small church; they don’t have the money to pay for a bunch of deadbeats cluttering up the church rolls. At least they did something. Heck, Harmony wouldn’t take people off the church rolls even after they’d died. Don’t you remember that? We kept Fern Hampton’s mother on the rolls for five years because Fern threw a fit when we pointed out her mother could no longer be a member since she was dead. Now you have a church with the guts to toss out the loafers and you get melancholy and want to go home.”

“I think I might have acted too hastily, that’s all.”

“I knew this would happen,” Barbara said.

“You knew what would happen?”

“I knew once you got away from there, you would start finding reasons to go back. That town has a grip on you. When you’re there, you complain about how it drives you crazy, but when you’re not living there, you want to move back. I don’t know what to do with you, Sam Gardner.”

“I want to move back.”

“I’m staying here.”

“You can’t be serious,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t go with me?”

“Sam, I have followed you around all our married life. We went to Illinois to a church that didn’t work out. Then we moved to your hometown. I’ve been caring for our sons all this time, and never had the chance to do what I went to college to do. When I got a job in Harmony, I had to leave it. Now I have a job here, and you’re asking me to quit. I’m not going to do it.”

“This church only has twelve people. How we can make it here?”

“You knew that from the start, but you accepted the job anyway. Now stop moping, get off your butt, and get busy pastoring.”

“I don’t have the energy to start all over.”

“You’d better find the energy. These people are depending on you and you promised them you could help them. Now get off the couch, take a shower, and put on some clean clothes. We’ve been invited out to eat with the Woodrums. Hank and Norma are coming, too.”

Sam jumped up from the couch. “The Woodrums? Did you invite them or did they invite us?”

“They invited us. Apparently, Hank and Norma cleaned the flower beds at school and Libby wanted to take them to dinner as a thank-you. We’ve been invited along.”

“Well, that’s a good sign,” Sam said, momentarily forgetting his fatigue. “What should I wear?”

“Khakis and a dress shirt. We’re going to Bruno’s.”

“The guy who wants to kill me?”

“That’s the one.”

Sam plugged in the iron and began pressing his shirt.

“I bet the Woodrums will end up joining the meeting,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Yes, I do like my new job,” Barbara said. “Thank you for asking.”

“What do you mean? I didn’t ask.”

“My point exactly. It would have been nice if you had,” Barbara said.

“Oh, I get it. How did your new job go today?”

“It was wonderful, I—”

“Where’s the starch?” Sam yelled.

“—think it’s going to be a wonderful experience.”

“Well, that’s great, honey. I’m proud of you. Say, do you think if the Woodrums join the meeting, they could maybe bring in some people from their old church? If the Woodrums are unhappy, there might be others wanting to change churches, too.”

You can tell men wrote the laws, Barbara thought. If women had written them, a wife would be forgiven the murder of her husband. Not just forgiven, but understood and sympathized with.

“There, there,” the judge would say at her trial, “don’t be too hard on yourself. He had it coming.”