Читать книгу A Penny for your Thoughts - E.D. Squadroni - Страница 3

Like this helps. I can’t see a thing. Mom, why did you make me color the glass with marker? Mom? Mom!

BANG!

“MOM!”

“Brixton! I told you to watch for me!”

BANG!

“Open the door, quick!”

Brixton fumbled to unbolt the locks. Once he unlatched the first, his hands moved faster than he ever thought they could. In almost one swoop, they all unlocked and he flung open the door. It opened with such force, pictures fell off their rusted nails and onto the floor with a shatter. Glass shards bounced then slid across the cement floor. Alarmed, Brixton sprang to the crash site to pick up the broken pieces.

“What are you doing?! Leave that and help me! Run and grab the rest of the load I dropped all over the place.”

He looked over her shoulder at the books scattered along the hallway then headed toward them. That must have been the bombs dropping sound.

“Don’t walk…run!”

Sonu’s forceful demands brought back the anxiety he had just gotten over once he saw her blurry figure through the peephole. Never had he been so afraid, startled, excited, and confused in all his life. He sprinted down the hallway and grabbed all the stragglers. Sonu already threw her load over the broken pieces of glass. She waited for him; one hand on the handle the other on the largest of the bolts. Brixton raced through the door and plopped the remainders on the table. A few slid off and landed with more bomb bangs on the floor.

“What took you so long? You’ve been gone for hours!” he gasped.

“Just a minute…let me catch my breath...are the blinds shut?"

“Yeh, you pinned them shut,” Brixton lied.

“Okay good. Don’t touch um.”

“What was that? Mom, what happened out there? Why do you have so many books?” he asked while fumbling to pin the curtains back up without being noticed.

“They’re going to burn it down.”

“Burn what down?”

“The…the library.”

“Who is?”

“Who do you think? The…Fatalities,” she said still trying to catch her breath. “A week from tomorrow. I had to go the long way around so they wouldn’t see me.”

“So who wouldn’t see you?”

“The Fatalities. I just told you.”

“How did you find that out?”

“I had to do this, Brix. You can-NOT tell anybody that we have these. Anybody. Do you understand?”

“How did you find out so far ahead of time? Who told you?”

“Anybody, Brix.”

“Yes, don’t tell anybody. How did you hear about this?”

His patience grew weary. Sonu had hardly answered any of his questions. He felt concerned for his mother and started to question her sanity. Had she gone mad? Was she making this up? How could she have possibly heard about something like this?

“I’m going again tonight. I’ll go before the spotlights turn on. Please be on a better lookout next time.”

“This is absurd! We can’t keep all these books!”

“You would rather see them turned to ash?”

“No. But we’ll get caught. They’ll kill us on the spot.”

“They’re already killing us, Brix. Without these.” She picked up a book that slid onto the floor and placed it back on the table. Her gentle touch soothed the books as if they were living things. The room felt calm again. “Our minds will surly turn to mush.”

“How did you find out about this?”

“Never mind that. Just remember this, Brixton Bex.” Sonu’s voice was calm now as well. “There is a small door on the side of the library where no cameras reach. It’s in the alleyway. A door opens up to the basement. Go up the winding stairs until the main lobby opens up on to the second floor. That’s how you get to the books from here on out.”

“They’re going to burn down the library in a week?” It had finally sunk in and became clear to Brixton what she had just said. He felt as if a part of him had died.

“Yes. They’re calling it The Burning Ceremony. Real original, I know. Like it’s some big celebration; a “cleansing of the mind”.” A tear streamed down her already glowing face from sweat.

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they can. They feel threatened. That’s what they do.”

“Feel threatened? By who?”

“By us. All of us who go to that library. All of us who still know how to read. All of us who have an opinion and who care about that place. They’re trying to stop us.”

“From doing what though? We aren’t doing anything.”

“Not yet we aren’t, Brix. But someday we will and that’s what scares them.”

“What, like rebellion to go against them?”

“Exactly.”

Brixton looked around the designated dining room. Books lie scattered across the floor and table. They were everywhere. And she was going to get more?

“What are we going to do with all of these?”

“We’ve got one week and a lot of rearranging to do. I’m going to need your help.”

“Where do we start?”

Brixton could tell that she was in fact telling the truth. She hadn’t lost her mind. Somehow, someway, Sonu found out what the Fatalities planned to do to the library books. She was creative, but there was no way she would have gone this far with a made-up story. To risk getting caught stealing books? She would never do that just for fun.

In a way, he was kind of happy she didn’t tell him the whole story. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to learn how she found out. It had to be from someone on the inside and the thought of his mother in close contact with someone like that scared him. Maybe it was best he didn’t know.

That night, Brixton could hardly sleep. The thrill of going against a Fatal had his stomach churning for hours. If they could sneak in unnoticed with the library and take the books, what else could they do? Would it be possible to do the same with the store? He hadn’t had a decent dessert in years and the cupcakes he saw citizens with when they walked down the streets looked heavenly. His mouth watered every time he saw the swirled frosting and the moist, crumbling cake. Or possibly a glazed ham oozing with juices would be divine.

Of course, his mother would never allow for them to sneak into the store. They were stealing the books for a good reason. They weren’t stealing for the sake of stealing.

Robin Hood and his merry men, he thought. Except my merry men consists of just my mother. Or would she be more like Robin Hood and I’m the merry man?

One good robbery would have to do. What he liked most about taking the books was that it meant he would never have to sneak past the headquarters again. All the questions and the stares made him too nervous. Even just one day without having to walk past that black brick building made this whole escapade worth it.

The days passed and they began to fall into a steady routine. His mother made all of the back and forth trips, while he organized them into categorized piles. Brixton forgot all about that headquarters building and who lurked behind the doors and windows of it.

Each trip became easier. By far that was the easy part. Finding a place to put them was the hard part. Things quickly shifted from an exciting rush to a tortuous day in and day out chore. Every imaginable muscle in his body begged for an end that was nowhere in sight. Blisters erupted like miniature volcanoes of puss all over his hands. When they sat down to rest, neither he nor his mother could sit up in their chairs. Their bodies fell limp and surrendered to the soft cushions of the tufted chairs every evening.

Sonu accumulated so many bruises that she reminded him of a cheetah or some other spotted animal roaming around in the wild.

It kind of felt like that, he thought. Mom does roam the empty streets; ready to pounce on anything that so much as moves a millimeter.

The temptation to celebrate overpowered both Brixton and his mother when she decided they had saved enough books. It was perfect timing too. They hardly had enough space to walk around or sit comfortably without fear the slightest movement would send a book falling into their laps.

In the one week they had, they managed to convert every bit of available space into bookshelves. The walls made of plaster were easy enough to carve into. Those shelves cascaded from floor to ceiling. They wrapped around corners and into doorways. Sonu chiseled at loose bricks in the walls to form smaller cubby holes. Some of the cubbies housed one book while others crammed three or four. It all depended on how many bricks fell out. She only worked on the already loose ones to make sure the structure of the house wouldn’t cave in and crush them. She figured if they were already loose, they weren’t doing much good anyway.

Hardly any visible wall space stood in some places. During that Robin Hood time, they acquired thousands of novels. They had so much that many of them became furniture. Sonu stacked the older, sturdier encyclopedias on the floor. She then found a large recycled piece of glass at the junkyard and placed it on top. They now had end tables by the sofa and the window seat.

The fireplace, packed with shelves and books, seemed slightly ironic to Brixton. That would be the last place he would put them. One spark from the wood burning fireplace and all their hard work would go into flames. The carved whales’ teeth made for excellent bookends for the ones that held the honored position on the mantel.

Good thing we never use the fireplace anyway.

“Too much attention with the smoke and all,” Sonu would say. Only on rare occasions did they use it. When the temperature dropped down to unbearable where coats and blankets wouldn’t suffice, she lit up the wood. On those particular days, nobody would be outside anyway so they hardly worried about anybody spotting the smoke.

Even the space in between the stairs provided the perfect cozy little unit for smaller paperbacks. They literally swam in a sea of hard bounds, textbooks, and volumes of adventure. Their open loft gradually made its way to feeling like a small shoebox that smelled like tarnished leather and mildew.

Although the smell was strong at first, they quickly got used to it and began to like it. It permeated through the kitchen and into his bedroom upstairs.

Oh, his room. Even that received a story-fest makeover. He was curious to know if Sonu stole the books to save them or to use them for her decorating purposes. Of course, they needed to be saved, but his mother did enjoy a good renovation. She rearranged all the books in delectable patterns. His room looked the best of all. They spent a day and a half on his alone.

Only certain squares were chipped away on the old painted plaster wall so when she put the dark books in their cubbies, the entire wall looked like a giant chessboard. Squares she didn’t chip out were already white from the image he could no longer tell what it was.

On the wall with the giant circular window, Sonu allowed admittance for a tree to extend its winding arms through it. The branches begged for freedom to burst through for years as it grew. She took great pleasure in finding the biggest hammer she could to bust out the glass when really she only needed to unclip the hinges and it would have popped out.

He knew he’d miss that window. It’s massive size stretched out to a 15-foot diameter making it an excellent tool for his mother to teach him geometry and geography.

When he was still in school, Sonu borrowed a marker from his teacher and drew out the map of the world on his window. She included the equator and all the degrees of longitude and latitude. He was the only one in his class to learn the different continents before the school shut down.

After the marker wore off, the window began to remind him of an oversized submarine ship. To pass the time without school, he found a deflated bicycle wheel and pretend that he was captain of the giant ship. He spent endless nights fighting slimy sea urchins and evil pirates in his rustic war sub. That was probably when he developed such a fascination with war and war machines in particular.

“I’ve wanted to do that for years,” Sonu said as she twirled the hammer in her hand. “What a great stress reliever.”

Brixton laughed at his mother. He found it funny that a person so small could feel such strength and power. Even if it was only glass.

“Yeh, except now we have a huge mess to clean up.”

“Oh Brix, live in the present for once. We needed this.”

“Says the woman who won’t cook or turn on any electrical device because it sucks in too much attention.”

They both laughed at that. He was only telling the truth. They hadn’t used heat since the schools shut down. The Fatalities’ main concerns were those who used the power, so he and his mother went without. Sonu figured if they only paid attention to those with it then they wouldn’t get any attention and that was a good thing to her. Brixton always guessed it was a good thing for him too. Up until now, he didn’t see that there would be a problem if they didn’t have all the things that the other children had. But he wouldn’t have minded getting checked-up on by the Fatalities. They never did anything wrong anyway; not entirely. Now, was a different story. They’d kill him and his mother on the spot if they found out about the books. For once he was thankful they didn’t have a reason for Fatals to come knocking on their door.

Usually, they did just fine during the cold winter months. They had plenty enough wool blankets. However this year, he planned to sleep elsewhere once the first frost came due to the fact that his mother felt the need to obliterate his window leaving a gaping hole in his room. He would have to take advantage of every ounce of fresh air for the next month or so. Soon it would be unbearable once the snow came through. The window would be missed, but the twisting branches creeping in didn’t bother him at all. They intertwined and fit into his room as if they belonged there all along.

Once the limbs loosened up after the jerking and twisting, it felt like the building was built around the tree instead of it being planted after the building was built.

How can trees live so long and we can’t even survive a day on our own? He would always ask himself.

With the month of October in full stride, the leaves glowed as if on fire. Bright red and orange illuminated his bedroom in the mornings. The crisp flames crackled until they let loose of their grip and fell to the ground. Brixton stomped around his room, crunching the fallen leaves. He pretended they were the enemy in some epic battle. He stood towering over them as if they were his victims.

Parts of the tree that grew closer together became more space for books. The ones further apart made steps for Brixton to climb. He climbed to the top and placed all of his sacred adventure books on the rafters and in between the pipes. Being up high like this provided a safe haven for his most cherished collection of sorts.

All the classics made themselves at home up there. Tom Sawyer, Boo Radley, and Gandalf all lived simultaneously amongst the splintered rafters with the autumn leaves brushing against their tattered bindings. In this light, it seemed almost as if the worn out novels gained a newfound strength. They stood taller, glistened brighter, and brought life to the before barren and lifeless room.

“Don’t worry about the window, Brix. We’ll get it fixed on the day of the ceremony,” mentioned Sonu at dinner.

“It doesn’t bother me. I like the breeze that comes in.”

“You say that now, but wait until gusts of freezing cold wind come barreling through. You won’t say that then.”

“Won’t it look obvious if we try and cover up a tree growing through our house? I mean, do you think they’ll notice?”

“The Fatals only see what they want to see. We did get lucky though that your room is in the back and off the street.”

“That’s true.”

“Plus that old tree has been there for so many years, you can’t even tell that it goes through the building. They’ll never notice a few missing branches.”

“Once again, very true. But why the day of the ceremony? What makes that day so special?”

“If we do it then, everybody will be so frantic at the library, they won’t pay any attention to someone hanging outside the building putting in a window.”

“Do you even know how to put in a window?”

“No, but you forget. I too read. I can figure it out easily enough. It’s getting the supplies that will be the harder part. Besides,” she took a bite of fresh lettuce from the garden and cheese from a woman she traded with, “I have an idea.”

“Well, we’ve only got two days to do it.” He knew by now not to question Sonu’s ideas. Even if he did, she’d do them anyway.

“Good thing we finished ahead of schedule. I don’t think I could carry another book. Let alone another load of them.”

“And you made sure to grab all of the good ones?”

“Yes, Brixton. I had to leave a lot behind so they wouldn’t be too suspicious, but I made sure to grab all your favorites. The ceremony is supposed to be a book burning. How are they to do that when there aren’t any books?” she laughed.

“I still don’t see why you never let me make a trip.”

“I couldn’t sit here and wait for you to get back if I let you do it. I would have worried way too much. I’m faster anyway,” she said the last part under her breath with a smile.

“Oh please,” he smiled back. “But I am old enough to take care of myself. I would’ve been fine.”

“Well, it’s over and done with. Your carpentry skills are impeccable too by the way. I’m very impressed with the window seat.”

As Brixton took a bite of broccoli and carrots, an even bigger smile drew across his face. He did do a pretty good job. With few supplies and even fewer bits of hardware, Brixton managed to take a rusted neon “O” from the junkyard down the street and bolt it in front of the window seat. The “O” had an outside ring and then a smaller ring lined the inside of it. This made a perfect place to store books. Once in place, he established sections for the books. Brixton and Sonu both were amazed that the bulkiness of books could flow so gracefully within the “O”. It brought the room together.

“You can let me go to an old landfill packed with all sorts of dangers that could get me into trouble but not to a safe library where the most that could happen to me would be a paper cut?”

“There’s a difference and you know it, Brix. Everybody takes things from the dump. The Fatals don’t care about garbage. They would care if they saw a teenage boy making multiple trips to the library with loads of books in his hands each time.”

“Yeh well, I could’ve done it.”

They ate the rest of their dinner in quiet peacefulness. Their home invited a new feeling for them both. Warmth surrounded and covered them like all the wool blankets they had tucked away in an old cedar crate. Brixton sunk into his bed that night with great relief.

No more decorating. Tomorrow is also Monday.

He put his hands behind his head and watched the leaves trickle down like golden rain. If he listened close enough, their rustling actually did sound like a gentle creek flowing through his room.

“Tomorrow will be great,” he said with a sigh.