The Librarianist

The sheriff was sweating, though it wasn’t hot. He looked over at Bob, then nudged him. “Roll down that window, kid, will you?” he said, and Bob rolled down his window and the sheriff breathed the ocean air in and out through his nose. “That’s all right. Thank you.” He looked at Bob again. “Well,” he said, “how many days did you make it? How long since you been gone?”

“Four days.”

The sheriff ticktocked his head back and forth. “That’s not so long, I guess. But the truth is that most kids don’t get through the night, so actually you made a pretty good showing. Also, I’d say you made a very good showing in terms of distance traveled. How’d you get all the way out here, anyway? Did you hitch? Hitchhike?” The sheriff held up a thumb.

“A train and a bus,” said Bob.

The sheriff whistled. “Nothing to be ashamed of, there. Very good showing.” There was the sound of the patrol car’s tires rolling over the gravel. The sheriff said, “Speaking generally, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the kid who doesn’t run away that you’ve got to worry about. I did it when I was your age.” He pointed at Bob and Bob hit the switch. The crowd was pressing in, and some were slow to move out of the way of the patrol car and so were nudged by the car’s bumper. A man and woman were dancing in tight little circles on the sheriff’s side; as the patrol car passed them by the man leaned toward the open window and asked, “How would you rate that riot, Sheriff?”

“Pretty shabby, buddy. No passion of intelligence in those boys. Just drunks on a mean streak, really. They did some fair bit of damage, I’ll give them that, but altogether I can say they made a poor overall impression.” The dancing man waved and wheeled away with his partner. “One fellow,” the sheriff told Bob, “I got him in my car to run him in and he told me he’d give me a hundred dollars to drop him back at the camp. Said he had the cash on him and that I was welcome to it and he wouldn’t ever tell a soul anything about it. I said, ‘What about all your pals?’ And he said, ‘Well, what about them?’ And I said, ‘You’re not going to leave them to hold the bag while you skip off to bed, are you?’ And this bird said to me, looking out the window he said, ‘Everyone goes his own way in this world, no matter what they tell you.’ I thought about that a minute, then told him, ‘Mister, you know what your problem is? It’s that you’ve got yourself a morbid point of view.’” The sheriff shook his head and spit out the window and pointed at Bob and Bob hit the switch. A group of noisy soldiers began slapping on the hood of the patrol car and the sheriff told them over the PA, “Do not slap the sheriff’s automobile.” Then he said to Bob, “You don’t talk much, kid, do you?”

Bob shook his head that he didn’t.

The sheriff said, “Well, you want to know how many days I ran away for? However many days it’s been from then to now, that’s how many days. Because I never did go home. What do you think of that?”

Bob shrugged. He was enjoying the sheriff.

“You think they still set a place for me at the dinner table?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe not,” said the sheriff. “But, what about you? Think your folks’ll be glad to see you, or mad, or what?”

“Glad, I guess.”

“Not mad?”

“Maybe a little mad.”

The sheriff glanced at Bob. “Reason I’m asking is. If there’s something really wrong going on there, you don’t have to go home. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m saying you can talk to me.”

“There’s nothing wrong.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

The sheriff said, “Okay. That’s okay. That’s good. But you let me know if you think of something that’s the matter, all right?”

They were almost to the highway and Bob was looking out at the crowd when he saw June and Ida standing off and to the right of the patrol car. He saw them only briefly, but with such close-paid attention that the visual became like a photograph in his memory: they stood facing each other, and Ida’s expression was pained, her cheek red and damp from crying, while June was staring at her with a loving look, petting her hair and dabbing her face with a handkerchief and saying kind little things to her. Bob felt himself leaning toward them in his mind, but now the patrol car was pulling onto the highway, past the crowd, and accelerating upcoast. Bob spun around and to his knees to watch out the rear window as the crowd and town became smaller and smaller. The last thing he could see of Mansfield was the weathervane rising crookedly from the tilted tower; after that was gone from view he turned to sit, facing forward now.