The Book Man Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  THE BOOK MAN

  © 2020 Jason Henderson

  All rights reserved.

  Castle Bridge Media

  Denver, Colorado, USA

  castlebridgemedia.com

  Cover composite by In Churl Yo

  Photo by Elwynn/Shutterstock, illustration by Poi Natthaya/Shutterstock

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author, except as provided by U.S.A. copyright law.

  Chapter 1

  Brutal things happen on the most beautiful days.

  The sun no longer beat down on Moro Ridge Road at 6:15 in the afternoon, instead hanging over the ocean to the west, glaring at intervals from behind jutting ridges of bleached rock and gnarled coastal scrub. Crystal Cove State Park was empty because it was Easter Sunday, and Frances Cohn—Frannie to Noreen Swail, her only companion today—figured they were the luckier for it. If they made bikes that could go off the concrete road and up into the rocks she would have veered off with Noreen and zoomed down the ridges, zipping around scrub like a skier around trees. She pictured the descent, the jolt of rocks and the swoop of tiny hills and valleys and picked up her pace. It was their twenty-fifth mile.

  Maybe Noreen was getting tired, but probably not. Every Sunday, the Laguna Beach Girls Cycling Club rode thirty to forty miles, starting at the Laguna Beach High School and heading up Ocean Highway, past giant cars swaying with their own bulk on the road, then up into the park, as far as the paved road would take them. Noreen was one of LBHS’ strongest athletes, and Frannie competed with her for who got winded the least.

  Cycling was the most.

  Usually there were ten or twelve girls, but for Easter everyone had begged off except Noreen. “Believe me, Frannie,” she had said. “By the afternoon I’ll be wanting to get out of there.” Noreen had five little brothers and a forty-mile ride was just the thing after a day of Easter egg hunts and decorating.

  “So, what about egg soup?” Frannie asked.

  “What?” Noreen asked, pulling closer. The wind was picking up, unseasonably hot, flying in from the Mojave, the Santa Ana winds that made the hairs on Frannie’s arms itch as the sweat boiled right off.

  “Do you do egg soup?”

  “No, for Pete’s sake. All the eggs are boiled.”

  “So egg salad.”

  “Egg salad, absolutely,” said Noreen. “Come over tomorrow and I’ll give you a couple casserole dishes of it.”

  “Deal.” Frannie gave her pal a thumbs-up sign and dropping into 4th gear as the road pitched up for a quarter mile. She had a Passover meal with her folks and her uncle, but she’d make a stop at Noreen’s somehow.

  At home, Frannie thought, her mom probably had a whole feast for her pop and his students from the University who were all over to talk about literature—he had been waving around a gray canister of The Golem, a crazy old silent movie he loved to show, and she figured he would show it and talk legends. She had been to a couple of these parties. About now, in the old movie, the old wizard would be asking a risen devil to breathe life into a big lump of clay, to make a hero to protect the chosen people.

  Not a foolproof plan, unless the old wizard wanted a big clay Frankenstein lumbering around scaring people.

  Frannie preferred a ride over a movie any day. “I’ll have my mom send a bunch of knishes.”

  “Well, I knew we let you in the club for something.”

  Frannie laughed and thanked God that they had let her in the cycling club. She had been in California for two months and this was her reason for living now, riding the hot mountains with girls on bikes.

  They turned right as they topped the ridge and a rabbit zoomed across the road, daring them to flatten it. “Thank you for coming out today,” Frannie called, watching the white tail disappear behind some rocks.

  “You talking to the rabbit or me?” Noreen called.

  “Both.”

  A state park truck, a white Ford Ranger with a California seal, appeared far below and started moving up the road towards them. Noreen pulled in front then, making a single file on the right side of the road.

  “Ah, I wouldn’t let you do it alone.” Noreen pumped those legs of hers that made her so famous at school and that would surely do her even prouder on the beach. Frannie had never seen a California beach in summer with all that entailed. She wasn’t looking forward to it. She felt like a living scarecrow next to Noreen, skinny and small. Thank God for friends who didn’t care about that jazz.

  Without Noreen, Frannie wouldn’t have known what to do in a school that was so different from Brooklyn that she may as well be on Mars. For a moment Frannie looked out at the concrete road, long and blank and waiting. Like it was nothing until she rode over it, like her life was blank and it could be miserable and alone or a friend could walk in and then it’s full of adventure and sun.

  Whiteness filled her vision and she blinked it away.

  A deep mechanical bleating burst through the air and Frannie looked down the hill to see a motorcycle come flying over a hill, looking to connect with Moro Ridge Road. Frannie saw the rider’s brown helmet and arms wobbling as he entered the road and the state pickup veered left instead of right.

  Noreen gasped and went off the road and hit a rock and for a moment Frannie saw Noreen tumble headlong. A split second’s image of blood, flying in a spattering arc. Frannie felt a surge of shooting empathetic pain, her skin tingling under the hot wind. She tore her eyes back to the road, too late. She had a brief moment to brake and then she was partly stopped and partly flying.

  The white hood of the truck filled her vision, blankness stretching endlessly before her body came to a sudden halt.

  Chapter 2

  She saw the Golem of Prague.

  Frances Cohn soared across a space of white, endless and undulating. She cast a shadow that flowed over the whiteness and made visible recesses, the shadows licking letters into view, lines of writing she could not read, until the meaningless writing went away and one word floated, white on white: Emet, truth.

  A figure, the golem, rose up in her vision, gray and crackling like old film, standing in the sea of white. He was a man of clay, his arms wide, and the word Emet shone on his forehead and his eyes burned and spewed out curls of white smoke.

  Here to save us, she thought, here to guard us, here to lead us out of the darkness. The golem watched her, and she began to tumble, drifting. The sea of white had an edge now and she was sliding towards it.

  Come back, the golem said. Come back to the truth. Can you hear me?

  She felt her feet hit the white ocean and she was sliding, sliding towards the edge, reaching back to grab on to nothing and the edge was coming fast, nothingness.

  Another voice: your story is done. There is no shame in closing the book when the story is done.

  But the golem was still in her view, reaching down, the whiteness splashing around his giant clay hands. That voice lies. That voice fools. Come back to the truth. Come back to Emet.

  Can you hear me?

  Frannie, can you hear me?

  And she awoke.

  Chapter 3

  “Frannie, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you.” Frannie blinked and rubbed her eye, wincing as the stitches on her forehead throbbed. She focused on her mother at the edge of the hospital bed and turned a little away from the sun pouring through white window shades. The calendar and
the clock on her nightstand saw that it was Tuesday, two weeks after the accident. “I was just sleeping.” She cast her eyes over her mother. “Your blouse is pretty.”

  Sally Cohn pursed her lips in an apologetic half-smile, smoothing down her cream silk top. “I’m supposed to give a lecture later.” Mom reached out a thin arm and brushed back a few strands of Frannie’s hair. “Oh, that’s looking good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “I don’t…” it was fading, fading into white. She had no idea what she had been dreaming about, but now, as usually happened, she was thinking again of the white truck, and of Noreen going end-over-end by the road. “Noreen.”

  “Oh, Frannie. You do remember.” Her mother brought her hand to her mouth. “Right?”

  “I… No, I do.” Frannie said, all of reality washing back in her mind.

  She had even seen Noreen’s mother, briefly. The woman had come in and sat by her bed and hadn’t said a word. That had actually happened, hadn’t it? Frannie felt tears come to her eyes.

  “Hey. They’re going to release you.” Mom sat on the edge of the bed, filling the space in Frannie’s mind where Noreen’s mom had sat a few days earlier. Her mother couldn’t stop touching her, her eyes searching, inspecting the land that was Frannie. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  Frannie sniffed. “I saw her mom. Noreen’s mom was here.”

  “Don’t think about that.” Her mother nodded, squeezing Frannie’s hand. “Did you hear what I told you? They’re gonna let you out. Tomorrow. Do you feel good?”

  Frannie drank some water, fighting away the thought of Noreen’s blood. “I feel fine.”

  She did feel ready. She was wasting time here. She needed to get out. To stop reading and staring out the window and get some strength back. She wanted to get out and hit the road, get some distance. Maybe not get on a bike. She searched her thoughts and that one waved back at her defiantly. Yeah. Maybe not a bike. But she had to get out.

  “How’s your vision, still bleary?”

  “I see fine.” For the first few days she had had blurred vision, but the doctor had said that was the least of her worries. That she had survived without breaking her neck was a miracle. She had bounced off the hood of the truck and come this close to getting crushed under the wheels as it screeched to a halt. She ran her hand down her side, feeling along an agonizing roadmap on her hip, knees, elbows, where she’d skinned herself so fiercely that they were warning her about persistent scars. Contusions. sprains and a hairline fracture to her thigh where she’d gone under the bike. And for all that she was the lucky one.

  Her mom kissed her forehead. “I have to get to the University,” Mom said. “summer physics; I don’t know why I bother getting dressed. The students are all asleep. But your pop will be in later. Then tomorrow you can come home, okay?”

  Frannie nodded. Hell yes that would be okay.

  “Your uncle’s here,” Mom said as she moved off, touching Frannie again. “The old fantayzor brought you some books.”

  “Oy,” Frannie said, looking towards the door to see a short, powerfully built bald man come into view. Mom patted Uncle Saul’s shoulder as she passed him on the way out. Frannie called to her uncle, “You’re killing me here.”

  “What, you don’t have time to read? What else ya gonna do in here?” Uncle Saul wore a pair of gray slacks and a black t-shirt that showed off his biceps. He took the chair next to the bed and reached into a leather bag he carried. “You look good.”

  “A man should watch his lies when he reaches a certain age.”

  “Ah. Here.” Saul produced a small stack of books and lay them on the bed next to her, then snapped up the stack on her nightstand. “You done with these others?”

  “I finished the Connie Blair mysteries. I could use more,” Frannie said, indicating the mystery novels in the stack. “And the Bullfinch Mythology, that was kind of fun.”

  “Not the Norman Mailer?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Eh, we try,” Saul said. Uncle Saul had opened a new place, a coffee shop sort of like the old Café he used to run farther up the coast. Frannie hadn’t seen that one because it was closed by the time her family moved here. “You gotta see the new place, Frannie. It’s a great spot. You can throw a baseball and hit the beach if you don’t bean one of the jokers in the hotel across the way. And we got books.”

  “People read books on the beach, huh?” Frannie was looking at the new stack. She saw a couple more Connie Blairs—so Saul did know her poison now—and some science fiction.

  She grimaced. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”

  “Science fiction not your thing?”

  “Not last I checked.”

  “I mean, your pop would like it; he’d say it’s actually about communism.”

  “He thinks everything is about communism.” Frannie came to a black book without a title. “What’s this?”

  Saul was flipping through the Norman Mailer book and looked up. “Huh?”

  She held it up. “No title.”

  Saul froze for a second, his brow knitting under his tan cue ball head. “Uh… here, lemme see that.”

  “Sure,” she said, and Saul took it—snatched it, really. She sat up a little more as her uncle’s demeanor shifted, getting stiffer, and he turned slightly away, flipping the book open just a crack. He mumbled under his breath. “How the hell?”

  “Uncle Saul, what is it?”

  “It’s nothin’.” He forced a smile. “I don’t know how this got in there. Somebody ordered this.” The book was already back in his bag.

  “You sellin’ illegal books in that place?” Frannie asked. “That something you’re supposed to keep in a plain brown wrapper?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Saul said. He brought the leather strap of the book bag over his shoulder and rose, going to the window. He stared out of it for a while, his hand on one of the strands of the blinds.

  “Thanks for the mysteries,” she said. “I’m getting out tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Saul said quietly. Now he looked like he was searching the outside, squinting into the sun. He clapped his hands and turned back to her. “Good—come to the café when you’re out. I’ll fix you up with something nice.”

  “You got a deal.”

  She got out of bed and watched at her window as Uncle Saul got to his car in the parking lot. Watched him look in every direction, even up at the roof. Watched him quickly make the sign of the kina hora and drive away.

  Kina hora: the evil eye.

  Chapter 4

  At 9:30 in the evening, the North Texas air swam with humidity and heat. Sunlight had soaked into the concrete and the metal of cars all day, and hours after sundown, Verna Brody's cotton blouse stuck fast to her back and shoulders and perspiration beaded at her temples and brow. God, if it was like this in the building, what would it be like outside?

  She locked up the Nu-2-U consignment shop at the Lancaster Town Square Market with a jangle of keys and an unconscious humming she’d picked up from the shop radio.

  Verna liked to stay after hours doing the books and puttering around rearranging blouses. The shop was her life’s dream and at sixty-seven years old, it was a lover she hated to leave. Now the last song of the evening stayed with her as she left by the front entrance of the two-story, red-brick building. Verna’s baby-blue sedan was the only car in the lot.

  The car door was still warm and the seats sticky. The heat would keep pouring on as she drove home, she knew, driving itself up from the ground, and it would do so until 5:30 or so in the morning, when finally having exhausted itself, heat would finally give way to cool—just in time to greet the sun.

  Verna Brody drove out of the Town Square past the closed cafes and the limestone bank building. Bonnie and Clyde had rousted the place when she was a little girl, and she smiled at the idea though she had no memory of it. She drove past live oaks that gave shade but no respite, singing the l
ast song, a Johnny Cash number about fire.

  The fire itself started like a mouse at home, tiny and snuggled, a beating heart of life that breathed shallow and grew slow for many hours. It began deep within the wall behind the consignment shop. By 11:30 on May 1, 1958, Verna was two hours gone from the place, and it was hidden but well underway.

  The Book Man knew the fire was coming so clearly that he might as well have set it himself.

  He knew it was coming because his whole body—this strange body, really just a skin he had acquired and was now only somewhat used to—prickled with the anticipation of what food would fuel it.

  The Town Square Market Building boasted plaster floral arrangements in an arch around the entrance and a central court where one could enter and choose a store or take an elevator or flight of stairs up to even more. The fire started on the second-floor northeast corner with an electrical short in the walls.

  At 11:30, three men—the brothers Dave and Dicky Lome, plus their high school soccer coach, Tom Hoag, were entering the Tri-Arms Sporting Goods store on the first floor, northwest corner, putting them a story down and a floor across from a fire they did not know was there.

  As the Book Man smelt the fire on the wind, the ridges of his fingers sharpened and vibrated. His nostrils flared. He turned the wheel of the grey, stolen Morris Minor pickup, with its pinched nose and wide-mouthed, hungry face, and pulled over on the shoulder, considering it, the fire and what the fire would be. He was twenty miles away.

  He whipped the pickup around and sat for a moment at the intersection, the red light above him swinging in the wind like a condemned man. Condemned. The building would be condemned, the Book Man realized, as he held his hand out the window, his flesh rippling with the wind. He could taste the fire and more. He waited until the light turned green and began to roll.

  The three men entered the sporting goods store through a metal door and stood nervously in the golfing section. “We should get golf clubs,” Tom said, because he was ten years older than the other two and had a notion of the value of golf clubs.