Unofficially called the store’s backstage, the area beyond the doors was a different world altogether, a shambolic cavern of wooden tables and cardboard boxes and ubiquitous piles of books. Lydia had learned early on at Bright Ideas that stepping back here ensured an amplification of both intelligence and surliness. Many of her backstage comrades were bibliophiles who’d been so disappointed by people that they now sought as little human interaction as possible. Other comrades disappeared backstage gradually, one shift at a time, when their faces hurt from smiling too much and they could no longer take responsibility for what they might do to the next person who asked for directions to the bathroom. They were like flight attendants who’d bumped their hips on the seat back one too many times; like English teachers who’d graded one too many essays. Lydia thought someday she might find her own home back here.
She drifted until she spotted Ernest taping boxes closed at a table. She’d only seen him in passing since the night of the hanging, just over two weeks ago, when he’d stood on the stool and unspooled Joey’s noose. He was wearing overalls and a gold nose ring and the kind of puffy plastic earphones that her dad’s library patrons used to plug into record players. The moment he spotted her he tugged the headphones off and looked around to make sure they were alone, then dove right into a hug that was both unexpected and gruff.
When he stepped back he seemed flustered, embarrassed.
“Have you had a wink of sleep?” he said, unabashedly desperate. “I mean since Joey. ’Cause I can’t fucking sleep.”
“It’s been spotty for me, too,” she said. “I’ve been trying to stay occupied.”
“I can’t even go out there,” he said, gesturing to the store. “Fucking Joey. Thanks, dude. What did I ever do to him?”
Lydia gave his shoulder a squeeze.
“What can I help you with, Lydia?”
“I’m looking for books that are missing their labels,” she said. She’d been expecting some skepticism, or a barrage of questions, but Ernest just nodded.
“They’ve been piling up,” he said, talking as he walked her around a large wooden table and pulled a stack of books off a shelf that flanked it. “I’ve been flaking on printing new labels. They’ve been showing up back here all week, one at a time, like debris from a plane crash.”
“More than normal?”
“I don’t know what normal means anymore,” he said.
“Can I see?”
Ernest stepped aside as Lydia studied their spines. In the pile she found four that were from her list—four that she needed to fill in Joey’s cut-up pages.
“I’m going to take these,” she said, lifting them sideways so he could see their spines, a Scooby sandwich of titles, “but I’ll bring them back tomorrow.” As she tucked the books into her satchel, she turned to Ernest. “Joey didn’t mean you any harm.”
“I know,” he said, “but that doesn’t make it go away.” Then he disappeared into his earphones and rested his head atop the table, facedown, as if to stake his claim on this space backstage—as if to prove that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Although Lydia was now over sixty miles southwest of Denver, climbing toward the snowy peaks of the Continental Divide in the rattling Volvo she’d borrowed this morning from Plath, she didn’t sense the usual nourishment brought on by a drive to the mountains. Maybe because all of her focus was on the postcard of Pikes Peak tucked into the defroster vent, right in her line of sight: just if ever you want more, it said.
For the past hour, Lydia had been puttering in the right lane with the truckers and the poor, feeling nostalgic about all the times in her teens and twenties that she’d climbed onto a bus alone with a backpack full of books, bananas, and a change of clothes, eager for the tremble of the road. Back then these journeys had always been about the one-way exit, the awareness that her environment needed to change, that there was substance and freedom in abandonment. But this journey felt like it was leading her straight into those very things she’d always headed away from, and much of the pleasure of the road was gone, replaced by overflowing ashtrays and anxiety. She felt uncertain about what she’d do when she arrived at Moberg’s cabin, but one thing she knew for sure: of all that had been troubling her lately, the detail that made the least sense was learning that Moberg had visited the doughnut shop to quiz Raj about her father. What did her dad have to do with the Hammerman investigation, especially months after they’d gone into hiding in Rio Vista? It didn’t make sense.
As she drove alongside the Platte, watching its currents curl and splash over rocks and logs, Lydia realized that she hadn’t seen Moberg in person in over twenty years. Back then, her father had made arrangements with him for full cooperation in the ongoing Hammerman investigation, as long as Little Lydia didn’t have to make any more trips into Denver. He didn’t want her to be traumatized any more than she’d already been. Luckily, Moberg owned a weekend cabin in Murphy, a small town midway between Denver and Rio Vista that could act as their meeting point. She and her father had only gone to Moberg’s getaway once, when despite her insistence that she hadn’t seen the Hammerman’s face, she’d been called to his cabin to look at yet another album of police department mug shots—lopsided men with facial hair and missing teeth, none of whom she recognized. Moberg had seemed forlorn that day when he sent her on her way.
Her hands were tight on the wheel as she veered through town and up the snowy back roads. She’d just spent twenty minutes at the Murphy Police Department using her postcard and her persistence to convince the cop on duty to give her directions to Moberg’s cabin. When she finally made it up his overgrown road, she recognized the place with the dim glimmer of something only ever seen in a dream, and she knew she never would have found it on her own.
The wagon wheel. The wooden chicken. The rusty wheelbarrow in the snow.
The small cabin, creosote and pine, was built against a steep mountainside. Its windows were blocked by foam panels, and a thin ribbon of smoke rose from the stovepipe.
From the moment Moberg yanked open the door and squinted into the winter sun, wearing black jeans and no shirt, Lydia knew she’d ended up on this splintered porch for a good reason: she was facing the mountain-man equivalent of a BookFrog. She remembered Moberg as massive, well over six feet tall, with corduroy suits, wavy brown hair, and sideburns that spread along his jawline. Now he was entirely bald. No eyebrows, no eyelashes, not a hair that she could see on his chest or belly. An image of Brando playing Kurtz trickled through her mind. His eyes bulged like boiled eggs.
“I would’ve called,” she said, “but your number is unlisted.”
“No shit. What do you want?”
She held up the postcard and said, “More, I guess.”