Signs and Wonders Read online

  “All in favor, so signify by the raising of your hand,” Owen said.

  Three hands went up around the laundry table.

  “That settles it,” Owen said. “I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

  He walked over to the meetinghouse the next morning. Sam was in his office. Owen sat down across from him. “Sam, the Library Board met last night, and we think a man with your leadership ability is just what we need for our board.”

  “No thanks,” Sam said. “Not interested. I’ve got too much to do already.”

  “Well now, Sam, that’s just what I told them, that you were too busy. But they said for me to ask you anyway, because you, being a minister and all, knew how important it was for people in the church to be active in their community and that you’d be eager to set a godly example for your congregation. You do want to set a godly example, don’t you, Sam?”

  And that’s how Sam came to be the fourth member of the Library Board. The first meeting he attended, they elected him president. Then Owen made a motion that Miss Rudy be fired. It passed three votes to one. Then Lorraine Belcher made a motion that Sam be the one to tell her, which also passed three to one, which is how Sam found himself at the library one Wednesday evening in late May, helping Miss Rudy get ready for the annual spring book sale.

  He wasn’t sure when he’d tell her she’d been let go, but when he walked into the basement and saw the boxes of donated books, he decided to wait until after she’d unpacked the boxes and priced the books.

  It was just Miss Rudy and Sam. He did the lifting, while she marked the prices.

  It took him an hour to work up the courage to ask her how long she’d been the librarian.

  “Forty-three years,” she said. “I was thirty-two when I moved here. I had a rather late start. My mother died and I had to take care of my father. I was their only child and they had me late in life. After Daddy died, I went to library school and here I am.” She pointed to a stack of books. “Could you please set those books over here?”

  Sam moved the books. “I bet you’ll be glad when it’s time to retire. It must be hard work keeping this library going.”

  Miss Rudy laughed. “Retire? Now why would I do that? What else is there for me? Books are all I have. No, I’ll never retire. Oh my, Sam, look at this.” She held up a book. “Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter. I remember the first time I read this. I got it for my ninth birthday. My mother gave me her copy. I still have it.”

  She clutched it to her chest. “Sam, I know it’s silly, but sometimes it feels like these books are the closest thing I have to a family.”

  “That’s not silly, Miss Rudy.”

  “Thank you for saying so, Sam.”

  They unpacked more books.

  “Sam, I have a question to ask you, and I need an honest answer.”

  “What is it, Miss Rudy?”

  “The board’s against me, aren’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t say they’re against you. They respect you a great deal.”

  Miss Rudy chuckled. “Oh, Sam, you’re such a diplomat. But I know what they’re saying. That I’m too old, too set in my ways. That I can’t raise money. Well, maybe that’s true. But I never thought the purpose of a library was to show a profit. I always believed we had a higher calling.”

  “I guess times are changing, Miss Rudy.”

  “Well, I don’t like it.”

  She pulled a book from the bottom of a box and read the title. “You might appreciate this, Sam. It’s an old Bible.”

  She handed it to Sam. He read the cover. “The Queen Victoria Bible. Huh? I never heard of that Bible.” He opened it to the first page. “Printed in the Year of Our Lord 1851 by the Authority of Her Royal Highness Queen Victoria.”

  Sam turned to the table of contents, then leafed through the book. “Where do you suppose it came from?”

  “Probably someone’s attic. We get a great number of books that way. You can have it if you want, Sam.”

  They spent another hour sorting books and marking prices, then called it a night. Sam walked Miss Rudy down the sidewalk to her home next to the library. She took his arm, leaning into him as they climbed the steps to her door. “Thank you for your help tonight, Sam.”

  “It was my pleasure. You take care now.”

  He walked home through the alley. He could see the lights on in the houses and people moving about. He thought about Miss Rudy, alone in her house, married to her books.

  The phone rang as he came through his front door. It was Owen Stout. “So how’d she take it?”

  “I didn’t tell her.”

  “Aww, geez, Sam.”

  “I couldn’t do it. Besides, I think she’s doing a fine job.”

  “Sam, we’ve gone over that. We need someone who can raise money.”

  “She’s having a book sale this weekend. That oughta help.”

  “Big money, Sam. We need big money.”

  The book sale was held that Saturday in the library basement. In the days before television, when people read more, the spring book sale was a big affair. People had to park in the funeral-home parking lot across the street. But these days, it’s mostly Miss Rudy sitting in a folding chair in the basement, waiting for someone to show. The people who do come in talk with Miss Rudy about downloading books from the Internet and how one day there won’t even be books. In twenty years, we won’t even need libraries, they tell her. That’s why she won’t allow computers in the library. That, and the dirty pictures people would look at on the Internet.

  Sam stopped by a little after nine. Miss Rudy poured him a glass of punch and offered him a cookie. “I made them myself. I thought if I had refreshments it might attract more people, but I guess not.”

  “It’s still early, Miss Rudy. Don’t give up yet.”

  He drank three cups of punch, ate nine cookies, and bought a book on antiques and collectibles. He sat next to Miss Rudy, thumbing through the book. “Boy, I can’t believe how much some of this stuff is worth.”

  “Have you ever watched Antiques Roadshow?” Miss Rudy asked.

  “Yeah, Barbara and I really like that show.”

  Flipping through the pages, the word Victoria caught Sam’s eye. He turned back a page.

  “Say, Miss Rudy, this is interesting. Remember that Bible you gave me? Here’s a picture of one just like it.”

  He looked closer, then blinked his eyes and looked again.

  “What’s it say, Sam?”

  “It says it’s worth forty-eight thousand dollars.”

  He read further. “Only eleven known copies exist…Printed in 1851…Had disappointing sales…All the surplus copies lost in a warehouse fire in 1852.”

  That was on Saturday. On Monday, Sam and Miss Rudy drove up to the city and on Wednesday phoned Owen Stout to tell him the spring book sale had generated forty-eight thousand, fifteen dollars and ninety-three cents. Then they called Bob Miles at the Herald, who brought his camera and took a picture of Miss Rudy and Sam standing in front of the library.

  “So what’s the story?” Bob asked. “How’d you raise so much money?”

  Miss Rudy told him about the Queen Victoria Bible, how they’d sold it to a rare-books dealer for forty-eight thousand dollars. Bob didn’t seem nearly as excited as they thought he’d be. Then again, it’s hard to impress a journalist who’s been at it as long as Bob.

  “Yeah,” Sam said, “the funny thing is that the board wants to let Miss Rudy go. Says she doesn’t know how to raise money. Can you believe that? Maybe you oughta mention that in your article, Bob.”

  “Won’t that get you in trouble with the board?” Bob asked.

  “So what if it does. What’s the worst they’ll do? Throw me off the board?”

  Well, they wanted to, but they didn’t. You don’t just throw the Quaker minister off the Library Board. Not unless you want the members of the Friendly Women’s Circle phoning your house asking what it is you have against the Christian faith. So they kept Sam, and
they kept Miss Rudy, too.

  She thought of retiring anyway, just to teach them a lesson, but then decided against it. How can a person retire when so much needs to be done? Instead, she took the money and hired Ernie Matthews to move the Ora Crandell Memorial Bookcase out of the ladies’ rest room and set it across from the front door. She had the high-school art teacher make a clay bust of Ora Crandell. That was a little tricky since no one knew what Ora Crandell looked like. “Make her beautiful,” Miss Rudy said. “I bet she had a beautiful soul, and I’m sure it showed in her face. Make her beautiful.”

  So the art teacher made her beautiful, and Miss Rudy displayed the bust on top of the memorial bookcase next to a plaque that read: Ora Crandell, Pioneer Librarian—She Died That We Might Read. It’s the first thing people see when they come into the library.

  Then, just to show she could keep up with the times, Miss Rudy bought four computers, hooked them up to the Internet, and posted a sign that read: Persons Caught Looking at Dirty Pictures Will Have Their Names Published in the Newspaper.

  Because she is a Christian, she forgave the other board members. Because she is also a Quaker, she gave them a lecture first. Then she asked for a raise. “Somebody with my fund-raising experience can get twice as much somewhere else.”

  They raised her pay three thousand dollars, which Miss Rudy donated to the Librarian Hall of Fame in Topeka, Kansas.

  “That’ll teach ’em not to mess with librarians,” she told Sam.

  She had Uly Grant down at Grant’s Hardware Emporium make a copy of the library key, which she gave to Sam. “Guard it with your life,” she told him. “These books are more valuable than you could ever imagine.”

  All things considered, it hasn’t been a good year for Bob Miles. Losing four million, forty-eight thousand dollars has quenched his zeal for life. Some people turn to God in times of trouble; Bob turned to the Coffee Cup Restaurant. He goes there each morning, around six-thirty, just as Heather Darnell is coming into work for the day.

  He sits in the rear booth, his back to the wall, so he can watch Heather pour coffee and take breakfast orders. He orders three eggs, four pieces of bacon, a slice of ham, and an order of biscuits and gravy. From six-thirty to seven, it isn’t all that crowded. Sometimes Heather sits across from him, and they visit.

  Heather does most of the talking. She tells Bob about her boyfriend, how she doesn’t think it’ll work out, how he’s only interested in one thing—basketball.

  “I don’t like basketball,” Bob says. “Maybe I could be your boyfriend.”

  Heather laughs when he says that, like he’s joking, even though he isn’t. He dreams about Heather. He thinks of her while he’s putting the newspaper together. He started a new feature in the Herald called “Folks Around Town.” His idea was to take pictures of people working. But so far all the pictures he’s run in the column have been of Heather—Heather pouring coffee, Heather serving up a plate of meat loaf, Heather tying on her apron at the start of the day, Heather restocking the salad bar with bacon bits and sunflower seeds.

  “There are other people in this town besides Heather,” his wife, Arvella, said one day.

  Bob pretended he didn’t hear her.

  Then one afternoon in early June, after a long lunch at the Coffee Cup, he was sitting at his desk when he felt chest pains. He let out a little burp, which he thought might help, but it didn’t. In fact, it made things worse. Now there was a tight pressure, like a band of steel cinched around him. He tried to remember the symptoms of a heart attack. He recalled something about numbness in the extremities. His arms did feel a little tingly. He broke out in a sweat, then felt chilled.

  Arvella was in the back room.

  “Arvella, come up here a minute, could you?”

  By the time she got there, he was slumped in his chair.

  It took twenty minutes for Johnny Mackey to get there with his ambulance and another thirty minutes to make it to the hospital in Cartersburg. The bad thing about the funeral-home owner driving the ambulance is that he has no incentive to hurry. Arvella rode in the back, holding on to Bob with one hand and smoothing his hair with the other. Tears were streaming down her face.

  “Don’t die, honey. Don’t die. Don’t leave me.”

  Looking up at her, Bob was wracked with guilt for ever thinking about Heather. How could I have even thought of another woman? he reflected. I need to ask Arvella’s forgiveness.

  “Arvella,” he said in a weak voice.

  “Yes, sugar.”

  “I need to ask your forgiveness for something I’ve done.”

  “No you don’t. Everything’ll be fine. You just worry about getting better.” She kissed his forehead.

  “I just want you to know that after I’m gone you might hear things about me and that Heather girl from the Coffee Cup. I just want you to know that you’re the only woman I really ever loved.”

  Arvella reached down to hug him. “Oh, Bob, I love you, too. And don’t you worry about what other people are saying. All that matters to me is that you get better.”

  Just then Johnny Mackey pulled up to the emergency entrance. The doors swung open, and two men lifted Bob out of the ambulance and wheeled him inside. They asked Arvella to sit in the waiting room. She called her sister, who came and sat with her. It took hours of testing to find out Bob hadn’t had a heart attack after all. What he’d had was lunch at the Coffee Cup—two bowls of chili, three cups of coffee, and a piece of chocolate pie.

  “Worst case of heartburn I’ve ever seen,” the doctor told Arvella and her sister out in the waiting room. “We gave him some antacid, which ought to calm things down well enough for him to go home. Still, it’s a good thing you brought him in. A man his age, you can’t be too careful. It wouldn’t hurt him to watch his diet and start exercising a little.”

  They finally let Arvella in to see him. He was propped up in bed, a slight grin on his face.

  “I guess it was something I ate,” he said.

  “What’s this you were telling me about you and Heather?”

  “Oh, nothing, really.” He tried to change the subject. “The doctor said I’ll be able to go home just as soon as they get the paperwork filled out.”

  “Well, I’m leaving now,” Arvella said. “My sister’s here. She’s going to give me a ride home.”

  “How’ll I get home?”

  “Why don’t you give Heather a call. Maybe she can come and get you. You seem to be pretty good friends, after all.”

  He didn’t call Heather. This wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted getting around the Coffee Cup. He called Sam Gardner instead. Sam was the only one he knew who wouldn’t pry.

  It was dark by the time Sam dropped Bob off in front of his house. The front door was locked, which was odd. They never locked their doors. Bob didn’t even have a key. He walked around to the back door. It was locked, too. Arvella peered through the curtain on the door.

  “Arvella, I’m home. Can you let me in? The door’s locked.”

  “I know. I locked it.”

  “Aww, c’mon, Arvella, let me in.”

  “Maybe you can sleep at Heather’s.”

  “Will you forget about Heather. We didn’t do anything.”

  “Don’t tell me that. I woke up a few weeks ago, and you weren’t in the house. You were off with her. Don’t lie and tell me different.”

  “I was out in the garage, Arvella.”

  “I’ve had it with your lies, Bob Miles.”

  He wanted to tell her about finding the time capsule and sawing it open out in the garage, but he figured that’d just make her more angry.

  “Well, if you can’t let me in, will you at least hand me out my car keys?”

  “You know, Bob, the doctor said you need to exercise more, so why don’t you walk?” Then she closed the curtain and walked away.

  Bob sat on the porch swing, waiting for her to cool down. Around ten o’clock the downstairs lights in the house went off and the bedroom light wen
t on. He stood out in the driveway, watching through the upstairs window as Arvella got ready for bed. A few minutes later, the bedroom fell dark.

  Bob walked the four blocks to his office, where he slept on the floor. He walked back home the next morning. The doors were still locked, so he went to the Coffee Cup for breakfast. Heather was there. He didn’t talk much, and it was busy so Heather didn’t visit with him.

  Dale Hinshaw sat down across from him. “I thought you were in the hospital. I heard from Johnny Mackey that you’d had a heart attack. What’s goin’ on?”

  “No, they thought it was a heart attack, but it wasn’t. I’m okay.” He didn’t tell Dale it’d only been indigestion.

  “Say, Dale, can I borrow your car today? Mine’s not working, and I need to go to the bank in Cartersburg.”

  “Well, sure, Bob. That’s no problem, I guess.” He handed Bob his car keys.

  Bob settled up his bill, nodded good-bye to Heather, then climbed in Dale’s Plymouth, fired it up, and drove to Cartersburg to the bank. He cashed in his thousand-dollar CD, then drove back to Harmony to Grant’s Hardware Emporium.

  The new refrigerators were lined up along the back wall. There weren’t many to choose from. Uly handed him a catalog. “I can order anything in here and have it at your house next week.”

  Bob didn’t think he could sleep on the office floor a whole week.

  “You have anything you can deliver today?”

  “Well, sure, Bob. We got these,” he said, pointing to the refrigerators. “This one’s a nice one. It has an ice maker. The ladies sure like those. And this here is an ice-water dispenser. You just press this little gizmo and cold water comes out.”

  “Say, that’s nice. How much is it?”

  “Nine and a quarter, plus tax. And we’ll deliver it and hook it up for free and take away the old one.”

  “You got a deal.”

  Bob dropped Dale’s car off and walked the five blocks home. He was sitting on the porch swing when Uly pulled up in his truck with the new refrigerator in back. Arvella was still locked inside the house. Bob tapped on the door.

  “Go away, Bob.”

  “Honey, you’ll need to open the door.”