The Book Lady

Lily was slow on her bike that day, letting the other kids circled her as they tore paths through the yellow, early autumn leaves.

“Keep up, slow poke!” One of the boys yelled as he lapped her.

“Forget her. She’s jus’ moping because the Book Lady died,” another said.

One of the boys, wearing a stained blue shirt and riding a steel-frame red bike, screeched to a halt next to her. “What’s there to mope about? She was a freak, only every comin’ to town for the library or to buy popcorn. Killed her daddy, too.”

Lily clenched her fists on her bike’s handlebars. “Don’t talk about Kat like that!” She shouted. “She was good, and she didn’t kill nobody!”

The boys laughed and jeered, mimicking Lily’s words. They were all bigger than her, older than her.

Lily’s face flushed hot, and she turned, starting to peddle away furiously, black braids flying out behind her. Just before she was out of earshot, she yelled, “She didn’t! And I’ll prove it!

No one in Cumberland Creek was truly surprised when Charlie Dale’s body, blue and bloated, washed up on the banks of the river. He was a drunk, a wife beater, and a general nuisance. Luckily for the residents of Cumberland Creek, he’d only stumble into town twice, maybe three times a month to blow his unemployment check at the local dive bar. Occasionally he brought his daughter with him.

A missing chunk in the back of Charlie’s head pointed to foul play, forcing the police to investigate. It was tedious work; Cumberland River had a habit of washing away evidence.

Eventually Charlie’s corpse coughed up a tortoiseshell button, and it was enough for the police to get a warrant. They trekked deep into the hills until they found Charlie’s humble abode, a moss-covered log cabin that leaned to the left and had torn mesh screens instead of glass windows. When they knocked, a girl, maybe ten or eleven, answered. She was Charlie’s daughter, and the cardigan she was wearing was missing a tortoiseshell button.

One of Kat’s first, and happiest, memories was of reading with her mother, held safely in her lap as they sat on a log or in front of the fire. Her mother had been an English teacher, instructing Kat on how to read before she could do much else. She also taught Kat to sew, raise chickens, and make a mean bowl of popcorn. The smell of her soap or the feeling of her hair brushing against Kat’s cheeks warmed Kat from the inside out.

But the feeling never lasted long. Eventually, Kat’s father would barge into the cabin, pissed off and drunk. Her mother shuffled Kat behind her or instructed her to hide, to take a book far away from the cabin and wait. Sometimes Kat would wait all night, only to return home and find her mother battered and bruised, tears streaking her puffy face. Sometimes she couldn’t hide Kat fast enough, and both of them suffered for it.

It was a night in early summer after the fireflies had emerged, unbearably humid, when Kat’s mother disappeared. They’d been in front of the stove, popping popcorn in an old cast iron skillet and weaving stories. The screen door slammed open then, and Kat’s father, reeking of sweat and liquor, stormed in. He was already yelling about something, calling Kat’s mother a whore, a bitch, an idiot, so distracted by his own tirade that he didn’t see Kat’s mother shoo her out the door, book in hand.

The yelling and screaming blended with the sound of crickets and owls as Kat ran deeper into the forest, only stopping when the cabin was no longer visible through the trees. She found a log, good for sitting, and began to read, the moonlit letters slowly calming the bubbling fear in her chest. When the sky shifted from black to gray and birdsong replaced the chirps of crickets, Kat went back to the cabin.

Inside, it smelled like burnt popcorn, and almost every book was thrown from the shelves and torn to shreds. Her father sat on the couch, swirling a glass of whisky in one hand and holding an ice pack to his temple with the other. A bottle of bleach and a bundle of dirty rags sat in front of the kitchen sink. Kat’s mother was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s momma?” Kat asked. She rarely spoke to her father, and it was obvious in the tremble of her voice.

“That bitch is long gone,” he said, and took a sip from his glass. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t ask about her no more.”

Kat looked again at the shredded books, and the bottle of bleach in front of the sink. She’d never liked her father, but now she hated him.

A bell chimed as Lily entered Cumberland Creek’s library, a small, dank building at the end of one of the town’s only paved roads. The librarian looked up, her white hair tinged yellow by the overhead incandescent lights. “Ain’t you already read every chapter book in here?” She said, sounding put-upon.

Lily approached the desk, and stood on her tiptoes to get a better look. “Not yet, Mrs. Harlowe. But I’m not here for that. I want to know what books the Book Lady has been readin’.”

Located deep in the Kentuckian Appalachia, the literacy rates in Cumberland Creek were low compared to the rest of the country, and the number of library visitors per day could be counted on one hand. For a woman who wasn’t very busy, Mrs. Harlowe looked exhausted by Lily’s unique request. She stood, and began rifling through the file cabinet behind her. Being quite old and underfunded, the Cumberland Creek library didn’t use library cards. What books were checked out and by whom was all recorded by hand.

Mrs. Harlowe dropped a manila folder, aged and overstuffed, in front of Lily. “Here. Just don’t make a mess.”

Lily snatched the folder and headed towards the stacks.

Kat was arrested for her father’s murder, but the police never gathered enough definitive evidence for a proper trial. She spent a week in the jailhouse before she was released, but it was just enough time for rumors to permeate the town.

The tortoiseshell button. A path from the family’s cabin to the river. The missing axe.

As the daughter of local Appalachian trash, Kat’s reception was already chilly in Cumberland Creek. After her arrest, it grew even colder. She saw the dirty looks people gave her, and heard the whispers, when she went to the general store or browsed for books at the library. Her trips to town grew shorter, less frequent, hopeful that the rumors and animosity would fade with time. Years later, when her story had morphed into urban legend, she was still hoping.

Kat knew all the sounds of the hills: the birdsong, the rush of the river, the crunch of leaves, the not-so-silent silence of nature. She startled, dropping her bucket of chicken feed, when a child’s piercing cry broke that silence.

Kat went to investigate, cautious of town kids perhaps playing a prank. She followed the noise, rounding a cluster of trees. There in the clearing, crouched in a pile of leaves, was a little girl no older than eight. She had two black braids hanging over her shoulders, and a small green schoolbag on her back.

Kat’s voice was hoarse from disuse. “Hello? Are you lost?”

The little girl looked up. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. “N-no. ’m running away.”

Forgotten fear raced up Kat’s spine. How many times had she wished to run away, when she was little? She moved closer to the girl, suddenly feeling protective. “Why? Is someone hurting you?”

“N-no…I failed my reading test, and momma will be mad,” the girl said, sniffling. “I can’t read like the other kids can. Don’t get it.”

“I’m sure you can. Maybe you just need more help,” Kat suggested, kneeling down in the leaves. “What’s your name, hon?”

“Lily,” she responded. Rubbing her eyes, Lily seemed to see Kat clearly for the first time. “Are you the Book Lady?”

Kat ruffled Lily’s hair in a way she hoped was comforting. “I am. And I’m gonna help you read.”

Slowly, the pair formed a routine. Once or twice a week, Lily would hike out to Kat’s cabin, and the two worked through Lily’s reading homework while munching on popcorn. As the books Lily brought grew longer and more complex, Kat felt herself grow lighter. When Lily left for the day, she’d call over her shoulder, “bye, Book Lady! Thanks for the popcorn!”

When Lily said it, Kat found she didn’t mind the nickname.

Lily collected every book that was listed in Kat’s file, and spread them across a dusty desk in the library’s basement. The proof was here. She was certain of it.

“Reading is vital, Lily,” Kat had told her once. “If you can’t read, you can’t use books. And books hold the answer to everything.”

So Lily got to work, pouring over numerous titles, from anatomy textbooks to fashion magazines. She made note of every dog-eared page and underlined sentence until the letters blurred together and Mrs. Harlowe came to kick her out. Lily returned the next day and repeated the process.

Finally, a pattern emerged, and Lily felt her guts twist.

From a nature guide: The Cumberland River flows westward, draining into a basin in northern Tennessee.

From an anatomy textbook: Severing the spinal cord between the occiput of the skull and the C2 vertebrae is an always-fatal injury.

From an herbology journal: Poison hemlock, a species native to Kentucky, can cause paralysis and even death if ingested.

From a crime novel: The body, left in the water so long, was bloated beyond recognition. Poor bastard.

And finally, from Hamlet: Revenge should have no bounds.

Lily struck a match and let it fall onto the crumbled-up shreds of paper below, kindling for a fire. She was outside Kat’s cabin, now abandoned, alone in the fading light of dusk. Hopefully no one in town would see the smoke.

The pages went up in flames, the fire devouring words and Kat’s darkest secret. Books really did hold the answer. Sitting on a nearby log, Lily opened a bag of popcorn and watched everything burn.