Chance of a Lifetime (2 page)

F
EBRUARY
3, 2012
H
ARMONY
C
OUNTY
L
IBRARY

H
UNDRED-YEAR-OLD ELMS CAST SPIDERWEB SHADOWS FROM
a dry creek bed to the brick corners of Harmony County Library as Emily Tomlinson closed the blinds over the back window of her office. Night was coming. Time for her to move to the front desk. Grabbing the black sweater, which always hung on a hook beside her desk, she pulled it over her plain cotton blouse and charcoal trousers.

From now until closing, she’d feel wind blow in every time the library doors opened. It would stir her curly brown hair and scatter papers across the main desk, but she didn’t mind. Emily loved every hour of her time at work, even the last one on Friday night. Her short curls could take the wind and she welcomed everyone who dropped by.

Before she could settle, winter’s frosty breath reached her. For once, she didn’t look up. Though she wondered who might be coming in just before closing, she didn’t want to
see the night beyond the doors. She might be in her early thirties, but the child in her still feared that the night just might look back.

Sam Perkins leaned on his broom and whispered, “You didn’t make it out before dark, Miss Tomlinson. You want me to walk you to your car when you lock up? Ain’t no other staff here tonight and that wind is liable to carry a slim little thing like you away.”

The janitor’s voice sounded rusty in daylight, but at night it turned haunting. Sam Perkins had missed his calling as a narrator for ghost tales on a midnight radio show.

Emily didn’t like the possibility that everyone who worked in the Harmony County Library knew of her fears, even the janitor. “No, I’ll be fine. Who just came in? I was too busy to notice.”

Sam shrugged. “Some guy in muddy boots and a cowboy hat worn low.”

Emily laughed. “That describes half the men in this town.”

The janitor moved on, having used up his ration of conversation for the evening. He wasn’t friendly, smelled of cigars most of the time, and had never read a single book as far as she knew, but he was the best janitor / handyman they’d had in the ten years since she’d accepted the post of head librarian. The others had been drifters or drunks, staying only long enough to collect a few weeks’ wages to move on, but Sam never missed a day’s work.

Emily closed her log and locked the cash drawer for the night. She had a pretty good idea who the cowboy with dirty boots was—he’d come in on Fridays for as long as she could remember. Most of the time he didn’t say a word to anyone but her.

Walking around the worn mahogany desk, she crossed to the beautiful old curved staircase that climbed the north wall. Cradled beneath the arch of the stairs were all the new magazines and day-old newspapers from big towns across the state.

Emily had bought comfortable leather chairs from an estate sale so the area looked inviting, even though few visited. Most days, the wall of computers drew all the attention.

Sure enough, Tannon Parker was there. His big frame filled the chair and his long legs blocked half the walk space. His worn gray Stetson was pushed back atop black hair in need of cutting.

“Evening, Tannon,” Emily said with a grin. “How’s your mother?”

“About the same,” he said as he looked up slowly. “She didn’t know me. She called me by my dad’s name tonight.”

For a second, she remembered him as a little boy and not the man before her. He’d been quite like her, an only child with a love for books since birth. The boy she knew seemed a long way from the powerful man before her. He ran a successful business and some say breathed work.

Emily didn’t see that man now. He might be a tall man in his prime, but he seemed to carry the weight of the world tonight. She was tempted to reach out and touch his shoulder in comfort.

But she couldn’t touch him. They weren’t friends anymore—not the way they’d once been. She’d known him all her life, could name every member of his family, but one mistake one night had passed between them years ago and neither knew how to build a bridge over it. He’d told her he would be there and he hadn’t been. She’d said she would wait and she didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Emily managed to whisper, “about your mom. I’ll never forget those great cookies she used to make.” A memory of fifteen years past drifted back to her. She and Tannon had both been juniors on the high school newspaper staff. The night before the paper came out everyone always worked late. Tannon’s mother would tap on the school window and hold up a tray of cookies. Kids knocked each other down to open the door for her.

“Yeah.” Tannon looked toward the front desk as if he didn’t know what else to say.

Or maybe he was remembering something else neither would ever forget. A memory that had more to do with pain and blood than cookies.

She straightened, feeling a little like she’d been dismissed. “We’ll be closing in twenty minutes. I’ll let you know when I have to lock up.”

She moved away and began collecting books left scattered on tables. When she climbed the stairs to where walls in a once huge old home had been removed to allow for long aisles of books, she saw a shadow leaning against the corner window.

“Franky, you still here?”

A girl’s giggle reached her before a boy of about fifteen stepped out tugging his partner-in-crime by the hand. “Is my dad here for me?” the kid asked.

Emily noticed the girl had pink lipstick smeared across her mouth. She was staring at Franky like he was a rock star.

“If you two want to check out anything, you need to hurry.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Franky winked at the girl. “We’ve already checked out.”

The girl giggled and ran down the stairs, joining her friends who were clustered around one of the computers. When she was too far away to hear, Emily whispered to Franky, “How long until you get a car?”

“Fourteen more months,” he said with a grin. “I can’t wait.”

“Me neither.” She laughed. “Did you get your homework done?”

“It’s Friday, Miss Tomlinson. No one ever does homework on Friday. What if the end of the world came or something and you’d wasted your last few hours doing math or English. Monday morning I could be out fighting zombies or aliens for the last food on the planet and I’d be thinking, Great! At least I got my homework done.”

Emily saw his logic. “I hadn’t considered that,” she said as she walked with him down the stairs.

“Don’t people like you worry about that kind of stuff?”

“People like me?”

“You know, older people.” Franky shook his shaggy hair. “You should. Tomorrow you could just open your front door and find yourself in a fight for your life.” He looked around. “Come to think of it, nobody would probably come in here. No food or weapons or medicine. That’s what we’ll all be fighting over when the end comes.”

She played along. To the boy, she must seem as old as this building. “Zombies don’t read?”

He shook his head as if she was beyond dumb. “Miss Tomlinson, I fear you’re a goner. Zombies don’t do nothing but run around looking for live people to eat. They’ll rip your arm off, beat you to death, and then have you for dinner. Maybe you should think about getting a gun or a man to protect you.”

When they reached the desk, she handed him a book on the life and works of Hemingway. “Thanks for the advice, Franky. Here’s a book that might help with that English assignment that’s due Monday. Just in case the world doesn’t end.”

He looked at her with raised eyebrows. “How’d you know about that?”

Emily winked. “A zombie told me.”

Before he could ask more, a horn honked and he darted for the door. “Thanks,” he yelled back. “That’s my dad.”

The girls over by the computer wall all giggled and waved at him. Then, like a gaggle of geese, they all hurried out.

The library was suddenly silent. Emily began turning off the computers and closing doors. It had been a long twelve-hour day, but she had nowhere else to be. Friday nights were like every night for her. She’d go home, eat supper, and read until ten, and then, as if the clock lost all time, she’d open a spiral notebook she kept hidden away and write a few lines.
In her mind, scenes would come to her like blinks of lightning in a dark sky. Not a book. Not even a story. But short little plays covering sometimes only moments.

People would be surprised, maybe even shocked, to know her secret hobby, but certain moments had changed her life in the real world, and now she collected fictional ones to piece together for her dreams.

As she tugged on her coat and reached for her keys, she noticed Tannon Parker waiting.

He held the door for her and she thanked him as he checked to make sure the lock clicked solid. She thought of walking on to her car but waited. He might not be much for company, but Tannon was steady and safe. Whatever waited in the darkness wouldn’t appear if he was beside her.

For once, he broke the silence. “The zombies wouldn’t come after you if the end came like the kid said. They’d go straight to the bakery across the street. The Edison sisters would keep them in food for weeks. Last month I heard they had to move the counter out a foot because the sisters could no longer get behind it to wait on customers.”

Emily laughed. “That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“Just stating a fact. By the time the zombies finished with the third sister, they’d all be diabetic.”

“Then they’d cross the street to the library and eat me. Maybe I should buy a gun to fight them off.”

“I’d come get you long before then if there were trouble.”

She glanced up at him, remembering a time when she had been in trouble and he had not been there. With a quick nervous move, she pulled her car door open and jumped in. Her thank-you was lost in the slam of her door.

A few seconds later, she looked back at him in her rearview mirror. He was standing in the empty parking lot. He looked solid as an oak with his feet wide apart and his hands shoved deep into his western-cut leather jacket. The stoplight caught her at the corner. She watched him as he turned and walked across the street to where he’d parked his pickup in front of the bakery.

It was Friday night and Tannon Parker was headed the same place she was.

Home alone.

Emily smiled, knowing that after ten o’clock she’d write a moment when Tannon would reach for her hand and smile. It would never happen in real life, but she’d collect it anyway for her journal.

A
FEW BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE
H
ARMONY
L
IBRARY
, B
EAU
Yates finished the last song in his first set at Buffalo Bar and Grill. He ended with an old Gordon Lightfoot song from the seventies called “Sundown.”

Beau didn’t know why he loved the song. Some of it didn’t even make sense to him, but it had a special kind of magic that made folks who heard it stop and sing along. When he finished the final chord, the crowd went wild with applause.

“You did it again.” His partner in the band, Border Biggs, laughed. “I swear, man, you’re getting better and better and all these drunks know it.”

Beau shook his head letting a few strands of his dark hair escape the tie that held it. He couldn’t see the gift everyone kept telling him he had. He just followed where the music took him. He knew he was good and liked to perform, but in truth, he played more for himself than the people beyond the cage. Border, on the other hand, played for the fun of it.

Six months ago, when his dad heard that he was playing at a bar, the old man waited in the parking lot one night and preached at full volume about how his only son was wasting his life and shaming his upbringing. At one point he even thanked the Lord for taking Beau’s mother so early so she wouldn’t feel the humiliation.

Beau might have cared if he’d remembered his mother. He wasn’t even sure she was dead, she could have just left. His dad had a way of stating wishes as if they were facts. But Beau just stood there, as he had all his life, and listened to the preaching like his old man was a carnival barker pulling souls in for the next show.

Border Biggs, true friend that he was, had stood beside Beau until his old man got tired and drove off. Then, as if they’d just been delayed a minute, Border said, “How about one of them steaks at the truck stop? I’ve been hungry for so long my stomach is starting to gnaw on my ribs. Now that my brother is spending all his time over at his girlfriend’s house, we may starve to death.” He patted his stomach just to prove he was two hundred pounds of hollow.

“Maybe Big thinks we should feed ourselves.” Beau grinned remembering how Border’s huge older brother had been complaining about just that for months. “Maybe we should even buy the food. After all, we’re old enough to vote and at least you’ll be old enough to drink next week. Think about it, Border, your brother’s got a right to his own life and his own food. We can’t keep waiting until he goes to sleep, then clean out the refrigerator.”

Border shook his shaved head. “I was afraid something like this would happen if he ever found a female who smiled at him. I knew it wasn’t likely, but I guess I’d better get used to the idea that at least one woman on the planet finds three hundred pounds of dumb muscle cuddly. She’s got him not even thinking straight. Last time he came home, all he brought was a gallon of milk and Froot Loops. I hate Froot Loops. If you ask me only clowns should eat them things.”