Lending А Paw

Chapter 2

I blinked. Had I heard what I thought I’d heard? No. Absolutely not. Insanity was far preferable. “Eddie?” I asked tentatively.

He sat up, yawning, revealing himself from where he’d been lying behind the backpack I’d tossed onto the passenger’s seat.

“Eddie, what on earth are you doing here?” I was almost shouting. “How did you . . . ?” Then I remembered. I’d left the houseboat door open when I’d run back inside to make my lunch. And I remembered that Tom had been looking behind me when he’d tried to say hello. And that I’d left the bookmobile door open while I’d run through the preflight check, giving Eddie plenty of time to sneak aboard.

“You are a horrible cat,” I told him. “What am I supposed to do with you? I don’t have time to take you home.”

The dashboard clock ticked forward. Now it was two minutes past eight.

Eddie and I glared at each other. At least I glared. He looked bored.

I glanced at the bookmobile’s interior. Custom shelves and cabinets contained everything a miniature library could want. Two desktops, one front and one back, held laptop computers for checking out books. There was a wheelchair lift behind swinging bookshelves. A carpeted step that ran along the base of the shelves for stepping and sitting. An adorably cute refrigerator and even tinier microwave behind a fabric corkboard. Electric heaters. Roof-mounted air conditioners. Pop-up skylights for cross-ventilation. All that, but no room anywhere for an extraneous cat.

Three minutes past eight.

I scowled at Eddie. “You haven’t left me much choice. But you’d better be good today.”

He closed one eye and slowly opened it again. Though I’d been a cat caretaker less than two months, I knew what that wink meant. It meant he was a cat and he’d do whatever he pleased, when he pleased, and if I didn’t like it, that was just too bad.

I dropped the gearshift into drive and put my foot on the accelerator. The Chilson District Library Bookmobile began its maiden voyage. Me, three thousand books, one hundred DVDs, a dozen jigsaw puzzles, two laptop computers—and one Eddie.

• • •

For forty-five minutes, as I drove to the east side of the county, I ignored the lake-filled and hilly countryside in favor of imagining what was going to happen to me when my boss found out I’d brought a cat along on the bookmobile. The most likely scenario was that Stephen would fire me for . . . for feline interference.

I mentioned this to Eddie, who was sleeping on the passenger seat, rounded into a big Eddie-ball. If his snores were any indication of his concern, he didn’t seem to think it likely. I’d never known cats could snore, let alone snore as loud as Eddie. The first time his raspy breaths woke me up, I’d been sure there was an intruder in my bedroom, breathing hard through his face-covering ski mask. But, no. It was just Eddie.

“What happens, wise guy,” I asked him now, “if I get demoted? What if I have to take a pay cut? What if I have to work longer hours?”

Eddie opened his eyes briefly.

“Sure, I already work weekends and lots of evenings, but that’s because . . . because there are things to do.”

Eddie started snoring again. It was easy to see why. There was no way his nasal passages could be happy in that position. How any creature could find it comfortable to be half upside down and half right side up with his face smushed into the side of my backpack, I had no idea, but what did I know about being a cat?

Then again, maybe I could learn a lot from cats. Eddie didn’t seem to worry about anything and I hadn’t come across anything that disturbed his sleep. There was a definite lesson here somewhere, but if it required a diet of cat food, I wasn’t sure I wanted to sign up for the course.

Eddie’s snores faded to a dull roar. Four minutes to nine and we were still miles from where I was supposed to be meeting Suzanne Slade, the library volunteer who’d gone all giddy at the chance of riding along with the bookmobile. “Oh, it’ll be such fun!” Her white-blond curls had bobbed as she’d clapped. “Going on the first voyage. What a treat!”

I’d pushed aside my concerns of spending hours with that much perkiness in what was essentially a very small room, and we’d made arrangements to meet Friday morning in a church parking lot. Suzanne would get a ride back with a friend who worked in Chilson. “It’ll work out wonderfully,” she’d said.

I hoped Suzanne wasn’t allergic to cats. For that matter, I hoped that no one who was going to board the bookmobile was allergic to cats. Or afraid of cats. Or mean to cats.

The GPS unit I’d bought came to life and said my destination was one quarter mile away. I could see the white steepled church, and I could also see an empty parking lot.

I steered into the large gravel space, which was big enough that it eliminated the need to back up the bookmobile. We were a little late. Could Suzanne have grown tired of waiting and gone home? I tapped the steering wheel, slid open the side window for some fresh air, and watched the clock tick away two more minutes.

“You know,” I told Eddie, who, judging from the way his ears were rotating, was at least partially awake, “I should check my phone and see if she’s left a message. Excuse me, okay?” Gently, I rearranged parts of his black-and-white fuzziness—which started purring—and reached into the backpack for my cell phone. I’d been commanded by Stephen not to use it while driving upon pain of death (or words to that effect) and hadn’t even turned it on that morning.

Just then a sedan sped into the parking lot and came to a sliding stop right in front of the bookmobile. Suzanne flung open the driver’s door, jumped out, and came over to my open window.

“I’m so sorry I’m late.” She sounded weepy and distraught. “Minnie, I hate letting you down like this, I’m so sorry.”

“Well, we’re only a few minutes late.”

“No, no,” she cried. “It’s my mother. Downstate. A tree fell on her house. I have to go help sort things out—there’s no one else. I’m so sorry—she called just half an hour ago and I had to pack and I’m so sorry to abandon you like this.”

I hurried outside and came around to Suzanne. “We’ll be fine,” I said, giving her a big hug. “Don’t worry about it. Your mom is what’s important right now.”

She sniffed and gave me a weak smile. “You’ll manage?”

“Sure. Will you?”

“I’ll be okay.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I may look a mess, but I have a long drive to pull myself together.”

I watched as she sped away and hoped she’d be all right. Another volunteer was scheduled to start next week, but still . . .

“Mrr!”

I whipped around. Eddie was poking his face out from where I’d opened the window. No, not just his face. A white foot was sneaking out, then the elbow. . . .

“Eddie!” I marched over to the window and stood on my tiptoes to push—in a nice way, of course—his various parts back inside. “Now stay there.”

By the time I got in the bookmobile, he was half out the window again. I grabbed him by the midsection, pulled him inside, and shut the window. “What’s with you, anyway?” I rubbed his fuzzy head and sat down with him on my lap. “I thought you were going to be a good cat today. And no purring. You know how that makes me forgive you anything.”

He purred and snuggled his head into my armpit. I rubbed his ears. “You truly are a horrible cat.” I picked him up, feet dangling, and deposited him onto the passenger seat. “If you stay at this level of horrible, we’ll be fine. But if you—”

My phone rang. I looked at the screen. “It’s Stephen,” I told Eddie. “Think I should answer?”

Eddie had no opinion, so I took the call.

“Good morning, Minnie. How is it going so far?”

“Oh, not bad.” Certainly things could be worse. I could have run out of gas. Or hit a deer. Or made a wrong turn that ended two miles later in a dead end with no way to turn around the thirty-one-foot bookmobile.

“I would have hoped that by now you’d be on the way to your first stop, but since you’re answering the phone, I know the bookmobile is stationary.”

“Just ready to leave this minute.”

“And you have a volunteer with you?”

“Volunteer? Well, about that . . .”

“Minnie, you can’t be out there by yourself,” he said. “The library board was quite insistent that you not be alone on the bookmobile.”

“I know.” I knew all about the board’s concerns, issues ranging from insurance costs to liability to maintenance responsibilities. I’d done the research on running a bookmobile; I’d found grant money to pay for the first year of operations; I’d even convinced one of the richest men in town to contribute money for the purchase of this grand vehicle.

Through it all, Stephen had been looking over my shoulder, quick to point out the smallest flaw in my plans. And through it all, I’d known perfectly well that a sizable minority of the library board supported each of his criticisms. If this maiden voyage went wrong in any way, the minority could become a majority and that didn’t bear thinking about.

“Tell me you aren’t alone on the bookmobile,” Stephen said.

I looked at Eddie. “I’m not.”

“Then why . . . ? Never mind. You’ll tell me when you come in.” He hung up and I turned off the phone. There wouldn’t be decent coverage in most of the places I was going, anyway.

“Mrr.” Eddie had draped himself over my backpack, his two front legs spread wide.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” I said. “I would have figured a way out of the two-on-the-vehicle thing if you hadn’t been here.”

“Mrr.”

“Would too.”

“Mrr.”

Cats. They always had to have the last word.

• • •

The morning sun sent shafts of sunlight between the maple leaves and onto the two-lane road. Driving through the dappled light, I kept my eyes moving, looking for wildlife, checking the mirrors to make sure I was staying in the middle of the lane, eyeing the dashboard gauges, trying to remember everything I’d been taught about driving the bookmobile.

Twenty minutes later I saw a cluster of homes around a small school. The school’s library budget had been slashed to the bone a few years ago. For a while they’d borrowed new books from a nearby branch of the Chilson District Library, but budget cuts had closed that down tight. It was the closing of that much-loved library that had spurred me to assemble an ad hoc committee, its purpose a feasibility study of a Chilson bookmobile. Which had ended up to be a committee of me, but everything had turned out just fine.

Mostly.

I flicked the turn signal and looked at Eddie. Though I couldn’t tell for certain over the road noise, I was pretty sure he was snoring again. “First stop, coming up,” I said loudly.

Slightly left we went, Eddie, the bookmobile, and me. Then a slow, wide sweeping right turn into the weed-infested gravel parking lot, a gentle braking to a soft stop, and we were there. The inaugural stop of the Chilson District Library Bookmobile had begun.

I slid open the side windows, then rotated the driver’s seat to face the computer desk, and stood. I pushed the one-step stool from its home behind the passenger seat and stood on it to reach the fan installed into the ceiling. I’d turn on the air-conditioning if I had to, but that would mean turning on the generator and that was a dull roar I’d just as soon do without.

“And now what do I do with you?” I asked my cat. After this stop we’d take a short break at a county park just down the road. I’d get him some water and a nice out-of-the-way, sandy spot for him to do anything he needed to do, but for now . . .

“Mrr.” Eddie half closed his eyes and settled into a comfortable slouch.

For now, what was I going to do with him? In the time between leaving Chilson and arriving here, I’d come up with zero ideas. There was no cat carrier for him, I wasn’t wearing a belt that might be turned into a leash, and I was not about to take off my bra and fashion it into an Eddie restraint.

Knock knock.

No time to think, no time for anything but action. “Just a minute!” I opened the cabinet door that held a tidy arrangement of filing and cleaning supplies, gathered them up, dropped them onto the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, grabbed Eddie, shoved him in the cabinet, and shut the door. “Sorry, pal,” I whispered. “I’ll let you out as soon as they’re gone.”

I hurried down the length of the bookmobile, almost tripped in my rush to maneuver the steps, and pushed open the door.

A small group of children stood outside. “Hi, come on in. Welcome to the bookmobile!”

The six kids ranged from age five-ish to ten-ish, three boys and three girls. They stood there, glancing at one another, shifting from foot to foot. None of them made a move.

I grinned, made waving come-on-in motions, and did my best carnival barker imitation. “We have books, all sorts of books. We have Curious George, we have Hardy Boys, we have Amelia Bedelia, we have Indians in the cupboard, we have books about horses, we have books about baseball, we have books about cats and kittens. We have books with stories about far-off lands and castles and dragons and princesses and kings and queens and—”

“Princesses?” a girl asked, her eyes big and round. “You have princess books?”

I smiled at her. “We sure do. Come aboard and I’ll show you.”

She ran up the two outside steps, jumped onto the first stair on the bookmobile and turned around. “I’m going to get princess books,” she told her compatriots. “I’m going to be first to get a bookmobile book.” She whirled back around and bounced up to my side, her face bright and shiny. “Can I see them now? Where are they?”

“They’re right over—”

My words were lost in the pandemonium of five children trying to get up into the bookmobile simultaneously. In no time at all, I’d guided the smallest to the picture books, and shown others the locations of biographies, nature books, and, of course, princess books. While I was guiding one of the girls to the Boxcar Children, a deep male voice boomed up into the bookmobile. “Hey, you kids! You were supposed to wait for me!”

They froze. Except for the princess-fixated girl. She was so focused on the golden-haired pictures on her lap that she probably wouldn’t have heard lightning strike the ground next to her.

A big, bearded man came up the steps and glared at the kids one by one, starting with the oldest boy. “Trevor. Rose. Cara. Patrick. Emma. Ethan. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“It was here, Dad,” the smallest child said. “And you were going to be on the phone a long, long time.”

Dad glanced at his watch. “Five whole minutes is indeed a long time.” He sent me an amused look. “But you knew you were supposed to wait for me.”

“It was here,” the princess girl said. “And look!” She brandished the book at him, a cover of pinks and purples and gold.

“Again with the princesses.” He shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”

“It’s good!” She pulled the book to her chest. “It’s my favorite!”

He patted his daughter on the head and held out his hand to me. “Chad Engstrom. And, yes, they’re all mine. Three sets of twins, what are the odds?”

“Minnie Hamilton,” I said, shaking his hand. “They were hesitant to come on the bookmobile. Now I think I understand.”

“Kids,” he said, sighing. “Can’t live with them, can’t leave them out on the street for someone else to take.”

“You’re stuck with us,” Trevor said, his nose buried in a biography of Thomas Edison.

Chad made a deep, menacing, growly noise. “And you’re stuck with me. What do you think of that?”

“We think we love you,” they chorused.

I laughed out loud. A scene like this would never have happened inside a library. If this was what driving a bookmobile was going to be like, I was hooked.

A hand tugged at the hem of my cropped pants. “Do you have a book about a puppy?” A girl—Cara? Or was it Emma?—looked up at me, her small face full of hope and expectation.

“You bet,” I said promptly. For two months I’d done little except get ready for this day. I knew every inch of the bookmobile. I knew how many steps it was from front to back, I knew the mechanical systems inside and out, and I knew every single book on the shelves. “Right over here.”

As soon as she was settled, another hand tugged at my pants. Big blue eyes filled with question marks looked up at me.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Miss Minnie. What’s your name?”

“Ethan.”

“Hi, Ethan. How can I help you?”

“My dad said you’d show me the bookmobile.”

“Absolutely,” I said just as a quiet thump came from inside Eddie’s cabinet. “Why don’t we start at the back?”

I showed Ethan and his father the wheelchair lift, spent some time over the strapped-in book carts that I’d soon be wheeling into senior centers and day cares, and told him how the books and DVDs and CDs and magazines were arranged. The top half of my brain was engaged with being a bookmobile librarian. The bottom half, however, was running around in frantic circles. How long could Eddie stay in the cabinet undetected? I knew he’d survive the day if he didn’t eat anything, but by noon he’d start complaining that he was starving to death. Loudly.

“What’s in there?” Ethan pointed at the critical cabinet.

“Storage,” I said. “Paper towels. Glass cleaner. Nothing interesting.”

Eddie gave the door a thump. I gave it a light whack, hoping the child would think I’d made the noise both times.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

“Shhh,” I whispered.

“Sorry?” Chad asked.

“Shoot,” I said quickly. “I forgot to bring a book your children might have enjoyed.”

“Oh? What?”

Four years of undergraduate work in library science, two years of graduate school, nine years of working in libraries, college summers working in a children’s bookstore, not to mention my own book-filled childhood, and my brain was dry of any suggestions. I gave a sheepish smile. “Afraid I can’t remember the title. I’ll try to—”

“Dad, look!” Ethan pointed. “The cabinet’s moving!”

“Leveling,” I said, putting my heel firmly against the door. “The bookmobile must not be completely level, so the door is opening on its own.” Or it would have, if there hadn’t been magnets holding the door closed, but there was no need to bother these nice people with that little point. I braced my heel against the bottom of the door, trying for a casual pose. “Do you have any other questions?”

His brother Trevor, sitting on the carpeted step at the base of the shelves, snorted. “Bet he has more than one.”

“Answering questions is why I’m here,” I said. “What do you want to know, Ethan?”

He pointed to the driver’s seat. “Why does the library have a steering wheel?”

“Because this library is on wheels. You saw me drive up, remember? And if something has wheels, you need a way to steer it.”

He nodded, then pointed to a shelf of books. “If the library moves, why don’t those fall on the floor?”

“You have bookshelves at home, right? And I bet yours are flat, like this.” I held my hands out in front of me. “If books on the bookmobile were like that, they would fall off when we hit bumps on the road.” My hands made bouncing motions. “But these shelves are different. Do you see how?”

Ethan looked at my hands, looked at the shelves, and frowned deep enough to put crinkles in his forehead.

Trevor sighed heavily, but otherwise kept quiet.

Finally, Ethan pursed his lips and nodded firmly. “They tip.”

His father clapped him on the shoulder. “Way to go, kiddo! You figured it out all by yourself.”

But Ethan wasn’t done asking questions. He pointed at the laptop computer on the counter behind the driver’s seat. “What’s that for?”

I moved away from the cabinet and showed him the RFID scanner and the wiring connecting it to the computer. “We use these to keep track of where all the books are.”

Ethan was roaming, running his fingers over the shelves, his intelligent eyes hunting for things he didn’t understand. More questions were clearly imminent.

Chad watched his son. “You’ve done a great thing here.” His other five children had piles of books at their feet.

“Thanks,” I said. “We had a generous budget, but even a great big pile of money runs out at some point.”

“That’s right, you had a donation.” Chad snapped his fingers. “I remember reading about it. Some guy who grew up around here?”

I nodded, smiling as I thought of my elderly friend. “Stan Larabee. He’s about seventy now. He moved away after high school and got into Florida real estate development. When he retired a few years ago, he moved back up here and—”

There was a click that sounded a lot like the click the cabinet doors made when being opened. I looked up. Froze solid. Half a nanosecond later, my mouth started to open, but I was far, far too late.

“Hey, look!” Ethan said, pointing.

Princess jumped to her feet. “It’s a kitty cat!”

“Mrr,” said Eddie.