It’s almost a mile from our stand to the gas station and Duck-Thru Food Store, owned by Mr. Anton Jones. Mr. Anton is about as tall as a tree, with great big reddish-brown hands that are always stained with gasoline or motor oil. He’s one of the nicest grown-ups in town, and usually has a little treat for me and Mylie whenever we go with Daddy to gas up.
Arden and I climbed out as Daddy pulled the truck around to one of the gas pumps. A black boy I’d never seen before, maybe sixteen or seventeen, stood on the curb by the gas station, sinking the pole of what looked like the world’s strangest birdhouse into the dirt that ran between the parking lot and the highway. The birdhouse was bigger than the boy’s head, with a glass door and a shelf inside it, and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t figure out how the birds would get into it. Arden and I watched him for a long minute, neither of us brave enough to ask what he was doing.
Finally, he looked up and saw us. His smile was like the first time you glimpse a seedling coming up from the ground—bright and happy and made me feel happy, too, just seeing it. His eyes were the color of a crayon I’d had once called umber, such a deep, rich brown it felt like I might get dizzy just looking at them.
“Mornin’, ladies,” he said, and came over and stuck out his hand for us to shake, just like we were all grown up. His accent was a lot lighter than most folks in Maryville; Miss Amanda, who was from Boston and talked like she was holding her nose closed, said that the Maryville accent was “thick enough to stuff pillows.” The new boy talked more like Arden: halfway between North and South, some words sharp and some words twanging.
Arden glanced up, her eyes squinting against the sunlight. “It’s more like afternoon now.”
The stranger laughed. “Guess you’re about right. My name’s Thomas Bradley. Anton’s my uncle. Me and my mama just moved into town last night.”
“I’m Arden Hawthorne. This is Della Kelly, though I guess she forgot how to talk.”
“Did not,” I said, but I said it quietly. “What are you putting up over there?”
“It’s a library,” said Thomas, and I couldn’t keep my jaw from dropping down just a little. Maryville might not have a library of its own, but I’d been to the library in Windsor plenty of times, and it was a lot bigger than a birdhouse.
Thomas smiled. “A little library. A box library, I guess. Or it will be, once it’s got some books in it.”
Just then, the bell over Mr. Anton’s shop door jingled and a woman came out, Mr. Anton walking beside her. Both of their arms were filled with books.
“See?” Thomas said. “Here come the books now. This is my mama, Lorena Bradley. Mama, this is Arden here, and Della.” Thomas took the stack of books from his mama and lined them all up neat and tidy in the box library.
“I confess I wasn’t very happy about moving to a town where you’ve gotta drive nearly half an hour to get to a library,” Mrs. Bradley said. She was younger than Mr. Anton, with warm brown skin and tight curls that reached to her chin and looked touched with amber in the sunlight, and when she said that bit about the library being so far away, she gave a sly little grin in Mr. Anton’s direction.
He chuckled. “Took me quite a while to convince my baby sister to come live here in the middle of nowhere. She and her boy, they’re city folk from up Norfolk way.” He wrapped an arm around Mrs. Bradley’s shoulders and squeezed. “I finally wore ’em down. It’ll be nice, having some company in that lonely old house.”
Mrs. Bradley patted the book box. “This was my way of making myself feel a bit better about the library situation. Thomas built it for me.”
“But how does it work?” I asked, my voice timid in my own ears. My face heated, and it wasn’t just from the sun beating down on us all.
“It’s an honor system,” said Thomas. “Anyone who wants can take a book out or put one in. It’s not a real library, but it might have something different than what you’ve already got at home.”
“Would you like to look at what we’ve got in there now, sugar?” Mrs. Bradley asked, looking at me with eyes that seemed to see all the way into my bones.
“My favorites are these,” Thomas said, tapping the books at one end. There were three of them, each one thick, with pages that were all ruffled, like they had been read lots. “The Lord of the Rings. I just got new copies, so I figured I’d donate these here.”
“They’re kind of . . . long,” I whispered.
“Go on,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Look what else we have.”
The box library smelled like sawdust and sunlight, and the glass door was heavy on its smooth hinges as I opened it wider, so I could see everything in there. I had to turn my head sideways to read all the titles—some I’d seen before or even read in school, like The Crossover, and some I’d never heard of, like Akata Witch. My favorite was a tiny little book with a sky-colored spine that just said POEMS in big letters and Emily Dickinson in small ones. I put up a finger and touched it, tentative as a feather. The jacket was cool and soft.
“Y’all going to get those Popsicles?” Daddy asked, coming up behind Mr. Anton and Mrs. Bradley.
“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to let the book go.
“You wanna take that with you, Della?” Mrs. Bradley asked.
Without even meaning to, I slipped the book out of the box library and held it in my hands, looking down at it. “Yes,” I whispered, and then cleared my throat.
“I mean, yes, ma’am, Mrs. Bradley,” I said again, louder this time. “If that’s all right, I’d like to borrow it. When do I gotta bring it back?” Mama and I used to drive to the library plenty, but we hadn’t been a single time since Mylie was born. I didn’t read anywhere near as much as Mama did, but something about having a brand-new book I’d never seen before wrapped up in my arms felt like coming home.
“Please, go on ahead and call me Miss Lorena. Bring it back whenever you’re done. There’s no hurry. And if you find you want to keep it, just bring us another one to trade.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll be fast, I promise.”
“No need,” said Miss Lorena, smiling. I could see where Thomas got his springtime smile from; Miss Lorena’s liked to light up the whole town. “You take your time, honey—that one’s an especially good one.”
“By the way,” Daddy said, sticking his hand out for Miss Lorena and then Thomas to shake it. “I’m Miles Kelly. Della’s daddy. Anton mentioned yesterday he had family coming to stay—I guess that’s you two?”
Miss Lorena nodded.
“Actually, Miles,” said Mr. Anton, clapping a hand on Thomas’s back. “Remember how you was telling me you might be on the lookout for some help this summer? I imagine there’s not many kids around here who aren’t busy helping their own daddies. But Thomas mentioned last night he’d be looking for a summer job.”
“I can’t say I know a single blessed thing about farm work,” Thomas said, “but I’m game to give it a try.”
“You sure?” Daddy asked.
“It’d keep him out of trouble this summer,” Miss Lorena said with a grin.
“Probably four or five days a week,” said Daddy. “Mostly mornings. You could start tomorrow, if you like. Anton knows my address.”
“Cool,” said Thomas. “I’ll see you then, Mr. Kelly. And you too, probably, Della,” he added, looking right at me.
I hugged the Emily Dickinson book to me, feeling it hard against my chest just like a second heart, and tried not to let my cheeks flame as red as the cherry tomatoes dripping off the vines in the garden out behind our house.