“I’ll stay late this week and help you fix them,” Alice said. And then, when Sophia didn’t respond, she added: “That is . . . if you’re coming back?”

“You think a bunch of snot-nosed kids are going to keep me from my job? I’ll be fine, Miss Alice.” She paused, and gave her a tight smile. “But your help would be appreciated, thank you. We have ground to make up.”

“I’ll speak to the Mitchells,” said Fred. “I’m not going to let this happen again.” His voice softened and his body was easy as he moved around the little cabin. But Alice saw how every few minutes his focus would shift to the window, and that he only relaxed once he had the two women in his truck, ready to drive them home.

EIGHT

   Before today, Jody had been a boy, dressed in overalls and a blue shirt—quieter than most, even suspected of being a little cowardly. And now he was different. Out of a thousand centuries they drew the ancient admiration . . . that a man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot. They knew that Jody had been miraculously lifted out of equality with them, and had been placed over them.

• JOHN STEINBECK, The Red Pony

Given the speed at which news traveled through Baileyville, its snippets of gossip starting as a trickle, then pushing through its inhabitants in an unstoppable torrent, the stories of Sophia Kenworth’s employment at the Packhorse Library and its trashing by three local men were swiftly deemed serious enough to warrant a town meeting.

Alice stood shoulder to shoulder with Margery, Beth and Izzy, in a corner at the back, while Mrs. Brady addressed the assembled gathering. Bennett sat two rows back beside his father. “You going to sit down, girl?” Mr. Van Cleve had said, looking her up and down as he entered.

“I’m fine right here, thank you,” she had answered, and watched as his expression turned disapprovingly toward his son.

“We have always prided ourselves on being a pleasant, orderly town,” Mrs. Brady was saying. “We do not want to become the kind of place where thuggish behavior becomes the norm. I have spoken to the parents of the young men concerned and made it clear that this will not be tolerated. A library is a sacred place—a sacred place of learning. It should not be considered fair game just because it is staffed by women.”

“I’d like to add to that, Mrs. Brady.” Fred stepped forward. Alice recalled the way he had looked at her on the night of Tex Lafayette’s show, the strange intimacy of his bathroom, and felt her skin prickle with color, as if she had done something to be ashamed of. She had told Annie the green dress belonged to Beth. Annie’s left eyebrow had lifted halfway to the heavens.

“That library is in my old shed,” said Fred. “That means, in case anyone here is in any doubt, that it is on my property. I cannot be responsible for what happens to trespassers.” He looked slowly around the hall. “Anyone who thinks they have business heading into that building without my permission, or that of any of these ladies, will have me to answer to.”

He caught Alice’s eye as he stood down, and she felt her cheeks color again.

“I understand you have strong feelings about your property, Fred.” Henry Porteous stood. “But there are larger issues to discuss here. I, and a good number of our neighbors, am concerned about the impact this library is having on our little town. There are reports of wives no longer keeping house because they are too busy reading fancy magazines or cheap romances. There are children picking up disruptive ideas from comic books. We’re struggling to control what influences are coming into our homes.”

“They’re just books, Henry Porteous! How do you think the great scholars of old learned?” Mrs. Brady’s arms folded across her chest, forming a solid, unbridgeable shelf.

“I’d put a dollar to a dime the great scholars were not reading The Amorous Sheik of Araby, or whatever it was my daughter was wasting her time with the other day. Do we really want their minds polluted with this stuff? I don’t want my daughter thinking she can run off with some Egyptian.”

“Your daughter has about as much chance of having her head turned by a Sheik of Araby as I do of becoming Cleopatra.”

“But you can’t be sure.”

“You want me to go through every book in this library to check for things that you might find fanciful, Henry Porteous? There are more challenging stories in the Bible than there are in the Pictorial Review and you know it.”

“Well, now you sound as sacrilegious as they do.”

Mrs. Beidecker stood. “May I speak? I would like to thank the book ladies. Our pupils have very much enjoyed the new books and learning materials, and the textbooks have proven very useful in helping them progress. I go through all the comic books before we hand them out, just to check what is inside, and I have found absolutely nothing to concern even the most sensitive of minds.”

“But you’re foreign!” Mr. Porteous interjected.

“Mrs. Beidecker came to our school with the highest of credentials,” Mrs. Brady exclaimed. “And you know it, Henry Porteous. Why, doesn’t your own niece attend her classes?”

“Well, maybe she shouldn’t.”

“Settle down! Settle down!” Pastor McIntosh climbed to his feet. “Now I understand feelings are running high. And yes, Mrs. Brady, there are some of us who do have reservations about the impact of this library on formative minds but—”

“But what?”

“There is clearly another issue here . . . the employment of a colored.”

“What issue would that be, Pastor?”

“You may favor the progressive ways, Mrs. Brady, but many in this town do not believe that colored folks should be in our libraries.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Van Cleve. He stood, and surveyed the sea of white faces. “The 1933 Public Accommodations Law authorizes—and I quote here—‘the establishment of segregated libraries for different races.’ The colored girl should not be in our library. You believe you’re above the law now, Margery O’Hare?”

Alice’s heart had lodged somewhere in her throat, but Margery, stepping forward, appeared supremely untroubled. “Nope.”

“Nope?”

“No. Because Miss Sophia isn’t using the library. She’s just working there.” She smiled at him sweetly. “We’ve told her very firmly she is under no circumstances to open any of our books and read them.”

There was a low ripple of laughter.

Mr. Van Cleve’s face darkened. “You can’t employ a colored in a white library. It’s against the law, and the laws of nature.”