Episode Four: Things are Bouncing My Way!

With her precious penny in hand, an encouraged Sarah popped out of her bedroom and followed the familiar smell of blueberry pancakes and sizzling bacon down the hall.

Saturday.

Sometimes, when Mom was working on one of her projects and Wayne had the kitchen to himself, he sang songs from one of his silly musicals. All week in the car he'd been listening to the soundtrack from Gypsy, some ancient movie with Natalie Wood and Rosalind Russell.

This morning, as Sarah reached the kitchen doorway, Wayne was standing at the stove, spatula in hand, flipping pancakes and mildly singing along.

“Everything's comin' up roses…”

Sarah laughed out loud.

Wayne turned and caught her standing there. He immediately lowered his voice and went back to the pancakes as though she'd just caught him doing something terribly embarrassing.

“Don't stop on my account.”

“I wasn't singing.”

“Of course not.”

“I was checking the acoustics.”

Sarah grinned and slid sideways into her chair.

Wayne tried very hard to be an adult most of the time. Sarah knew why.

He didn't want Mom thinking Sarah wasn't getting a sufficiently serious upbringing whenever she wasn't around.

Mom worried about things like that.

Her dad had been different. Footloose and fancy free was what Mom sometimes called him. Sarah’s mom had the organized mind of an engineer. There was a place for everything, a time for everything, and preferably a plan written down somewhere explaining both.

Dad had been the guy who could turn an ordinary Tuesday into an adventure.

And sometimes Sarah worried that Mom was afraid she'd inherited too much of him.

The funny thing was that after losing one fun guy, Mom had somehow managed to marry another one.

What did she think was going to happen?

Wayne seemed to understand the problem, though. He was trying to be both men at the same time—the responsible grown-up Mom needed him to be and the ridiculous guy who sang show tunes while making blueberry pancakes.

That created a problem Sarah hadn't figured out yet.

She was trying very hard to protect the things that belonged to her and Dad.

Their jokes. Their adventures. Their stuff.

Sometimes liking Wayne felt dangerously close to giving some of that away.

Which wasn't fair.

Especially because Wayne was becoming increasingly difficult not to like.

Sarah looked down at the penny she'd placed beside her plate.

At least today was Saturday.

The tablet sitting on the kitchen counter had been playing the morning news mostly to itself. Sarah hadn't been paying attention until something the woman on the screen said caught her ear.

“...California's older public libraries…”

Sarah looked up.

The reporter was talking about a proposal being considered by the state to renovate or replace older library buildings throughout California. The idea, at least according to the smiling people being interviewed, was to bring aging community libraries up to modern standards.

New technology. Standardized facilities. Updated collections. Uniform services. Approved designs that could be adapted for communities throughout the state. There were pictures of bright new buildings. White walls. Open spaces. Matching signs. Rows of computers. And, as the word descriptions of the details of the building remodeling were appearing on the tablet screen, they mentally seemed to get louder as they appeared.

Everything looked clean. Everything looked new. Everything looked exactly like everything else.

Sarah stopped eating.

“What does that mean?”

Wayne turned from the stove.

“What does what mean?”

“That.”

She pointed at the tablet.

Wayne listened for a few seconds.

“Oh, that.”

“Are they talking about our Library?”

Mom had walked into the kitchen just in time to hear the question.

“They're talking about a proposal, Sarah. Nothing's happening tomorrow.”

“But they could change it?”

Mom poured herself some coffee.

“Some of those old buildings probably need work. They're expensive to maintain, and libraries have changed a lot.”

Wayne slid another pancake onto the stack.

“Yeah. God forbid two libraries should look different.”

Mom gave him a look.

“What?” Wayne lifted his shoulders almost all the way to the top of his ears

“You know what.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I just don't understand why improving something always seems to require making it look like everything else.”

Sarah looked back at the screen.

Words describing the changes began appearing across the bottom of the screen.

MODERNIZATION.
STANDARDIZATION.
APPROVED COMMUNITY DESIGN.

Somehow, each one seemed louder than the one before it.

The pictures bothered her in a way she couldn't quite explain.

Nobody on television knew about Railroad Bob.

Nobody knew about aisle G.

Nobody knew about the Book.

And nobody knew what happened when a little girl dropped an Indian Head penny into an old box and heard the clink that meant Saturday had really begun.

They were talking about square footage and technology and modernization.

Sarah was thinking about something entirely different.

What happened to magic when somebody remodeled the room where it lived?

The subject followed them into the car. Unfortunately, so did Mom.

Wayne had apparently been saving up opinions.

By the time they'd driven three blocks, he had already redesigned the entire state government, fired several people he'd never met and explained why anybody who used the phrase uniform community standards should be prohibited from owning a clipboard.

Mom wasn't impressed.

Sarah barely heard either of them.

She held the penny tightly in her hand.

She wanted to get to the Library.

More importantly, she wanted to get to Bob.

He would know.

He had to know.

When they finally arrived, Sarah was out of the car almost before Wayne had finished parking.

She headed inside.

Bob was where Bob was supposed to be.

For some reason, that alone made her feel better.

“Bob!”

He looked up.

“Sarah.”

“Did you hear?”

“Usually.”

“About the Library!”

Bob waited.

“They're talking about changing all the old libraries. They might close them and rebuild them and make them all the same.”

Bob considered this.

“Apparently they're going to improve us.”

Sarah stared at him.

“Aren't you worried?”

“Terrified.”

She couldn't tell whether he meant it.

“Really?”

“Last time somebody improved something around here, I couldn't find the stapler for six months.”

“Bob!”

He looked at her.

For just a moment, the joke disappeared.

Not fear. Not even worry exactly. Just Bob looking at Sarah as though he understood that she wasn't really asking about walls and shelves.

Then he glanced down at the penny in her hand.

“Seems to me you've got somewhere to be.”

Sarah wasn't satisfied. But Bob clearly wasn't going to give her the answer she wanted.

She placed the penny where it belonged.

Clink.

At least that still sounded the same. For now.

The Book was waiting.

Sarah grabbed the book, settled into her chair and opened it, expecting to find Mungie somewhere around the age she'd left him, plotting some dangerous, yet entertaining adventure.

The first words on the page stopped her.

I was twenty-eight years old when my father died.

Sarah stared at the sentence.

Twenty-eight?

She actually turned back a page to make sure she hadn't missed something.

Then she turned forward again.

The words were still there.

“I really don't know what to expect from this trip, Ronnie.”

“I know. Me neither.”

Mungie kept his eyes on the freeway.

“I'm not looking forward to it, really.”

Ronnie didn't answer.

“We don't know anybody who's going to be there.”

“I know.”

“And they don't know us.”

Another silence.

“What are these people expecting from us?”

Ronnie looked out the passenger window.

Mungie tightened his hands slightly on the steering wheel.

“We've seen him what—half a dozen times in our entire lives?”

Something close to that.

Twenty-eight years of being somebody's son, and Mungie could count the encounters with his father without running out of fingers. There had been occasional phone calls. A visit here. Another there. Bits and pieces of a relationship that never quite became one.

Now they were driving to his funeral.

“He's our dad,” Mungie finally said. “And I don't know anything about him.”

There wasn't much Ronnie could say to that.

The cemetery was near Boyle Heights, and on that Friday morning in 1980 they were heading south on the 5 Freeway through Burbank. It was about 8:45. Morning rush hour was beginning to loosen its grip. The tightly packed traffic was opening into spaces, and those spaces were immediately being filled by drivers eager to make up for whatever time they'd lost during the commute.

Mungie and Ronnie continued talking, about their father. About the funeral. About the relatives waiting for them whom they wouldn't recognize. About what exactly two sons were supposed to feel when the man they were going to bury had barely been part of their lives.

Neither of them noticed anything unusual about the big rig ahead of them.

Not at first.

Then something moved.

Mungie saw it.

Ronnie saw it.

As the 18-wheeler on their right hit a rut in the road, the spare tire that rides under the big rig belly had come loose from the truck.

For the next few seconds, everything seemed to happen much more slowly than it actually did.

The wheel hit the pavement.

Then it launched. Not a little bounce. It climbed impossibly high into the air.

For an instant Mungie could see it hanging there ahead of them—a full truck wheel and tire, hundreds of pounds of rubber and steel that suddenly had no connection whatsoever to the truck it had belonged to.

Then it started coming down. Toward them. There wasn't enough time to have a plan. There wasn't even enough time to be properly afraid.

Mungie held the wheel.

Ronnie watched.

The tire came down alongside the pickup.

SCRAPE.

It caught the right rear quarter panel.

That was all.

A foot one way or the other and the story could have been very different.

Instead, the wheel ricocheted away from the pickup and continued careening through the freeway traffic behind them.

Mungie kept driving.

For several seconds, neither brother said anything.

Then Mungie looked at Ronnie.

Ronnie looked back at him.

No words were necessary.

They both knew what had just happened. They were on their way to bury their father.

And they had just missed joining him.

Sarah sat very still.

Twenty-eight. She had almost forgotten about it while she was reading.

Almost.

The tire had scared her. The thought of Mungie and Ronnie watching that enormous wheel coming toward them with nowhere to go had made her stomach tighten. But something else had bothered her from the first sentence.

Mungie was twenty-eight.

He wasn't supposed to be twenty-eight. At least Sarah didn't think he was. She looked down at the Book.

Last Saturday Mungie had been a boy.

She reached toward the edge of the page almost automatically, then stopped. She knew better.

There was no going back. There was no going forward either. The Book gave her Saturday. One Saturday at a time.

That was the deal.

Still... Twenty-eight? Sarah stared at the page. She had one question.

Usually she knew what she wanted to ask. Or at least she thought she did. Today she had about twelve.

She wanted to know about the tire. She wanted to know why Mungie's father hadn't been around. She wanted to know what it felt like to go to the funeral of somebody who was supposed to be important to you but was almost a stranger. And she wanted to know how Mungie had suddenly grown twenty years between Saturdays.

That one won.

Sarah thought about it for another moment. Then she asked.

“Why are you twenty-eight?”

The letters appeared.

Because that's how old I was when my father died.

Sarah waited. Nothing else appeared. She waited a little longer. Still nothing.

“No. That's not what I—”

She stopped. One question. Sarah stared at the answer.

“Oh, come on.”

Nothing.

She leaned closer to the Book.

“You know what I meant.”

Apparently, the Book did not care what she meant. Or maybe Mungie didn't know what she meant. Sarah dropped back against the chair and folded her arms. She had wasted it. Her one question.

Gone.

She looked at the page again, hoping perhaps the Library might take pity on her. Nope.

“Fine.”

Sarah closed the Book. Not gently.

Bob heard her coming before he saw her. Sarah emerged from the aisle with the determined walk of someone who had been personally wronged by a piece of furniture.

Bob watched her approach.

“Good visit?”

“No.”

Bob raised an eyebrow. Sarah stopped in front of him.

“I asked the wrong question.”

Bob nodded. “That'll do it.”

Sarah waited for more.

There wasn't any.

“I only get one, Bob.”

“I've heard rumors.”

“I asked him why he was twenty-eight.”

“And?”

“He told me because that's how old he was when his father died.”

Bob nodded again.

“Seems reasonable.”

Sarah stared at him.

“That's not what I was asking!”

“What were you asking?”

“I wanted to know why he was twenty-eight!”

Bob waited. Sarah heard herself. Her shoulders dropped.

“You know what I mean.”

“I probably do.”

“Then why didn't he?”

Bob leaned back slightly. “Maybe you didn't ask him.”

Sarah opened her mouth. Closed it. That was irritating. Mostly because Bob might be right.

“I wanted to know why the Book suddenly made him twenty-eight. He was a kid before. Now he's all grown up. What happened to everything in between?”

Bob considered that.

“Sounds like a pretty good question.”

“It was supposed to be.”

“No. The other one.”

Sarah glared at him.

Bob didn't seem particularly wounded.

“Can I go back and ask it?”

“Nope.”

“Tomorrow?”

“What day is tomorrow?”

“Sunday.”

“There you go.”

Sarah sighed loudly enough to make certain he appreciated the magnitude of the injustice. Bob did not appear sufficiently devastated. She reached for her things. Then something occurred to her.

“Bob?”

“Hmm?”

“Did the Book make a mistake?”

That almost got him. Sarah saw the smallest change in his face. Then Bob looked toward the aisle she'd just come from.

“No.”

Sarah waited. That was it? She narrowed her eyes.

“That wasn't my question for Mungie.”

“Nope.”

“So you could tell me more.”

“I could.”

Sarah waited. Bob smiled. He wasn't going to.

“You're annoying.”

“I've worked very hard at it.”

Sarah started toward the door, then stopped and looked back.

“Bob?”

“Sarah?”

“What happens if they change this Library?”

This time Bob didn't answer immediately. He looked around the old room. At the shelves. At the tables. At all the things Sarah was suddenly afraid somebody with a clipboard might decide needed improving. Then he looked back at her.

“It's Saturday, isn't it?”

Sarah frowned.

“Yes.”

“And you're here.”

“Yes.”

Bob gave her a little shrug.

“Seems like the Library is doing all right today.”

It wasn't an answer. Sarah was beginning to suspect Bob was very good at those. She walked over and hugged him anyway. Bob hugged her back. As Sarah headed toward the door, she was still irritated about wasting her question.

But now she had another problem.

Next Saturday, she already knew exactly what she wanted to ask.

She just wasn't sure which one she could wait a whole week to ask.