Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [233]
Sam let the bookjacket flutter out of his fingers and walked slowly back to his car. He had an errand to run, and it was fitting that he should run it at the dinner hour.
It seemed he had some crow to eat.
CHAPTER 6
The Library (II)
1
Halfway to the Library, an idea suddenly struck him - it was so obvious he could hardly believe it hadn't occurred to him already. He had lost a couple of library books; he had since discovered they had been destroyed; he would have to pay for them.
And that was all.
It occurred to him that Ardelia Lortz had been more successful in getting him to think like a fourth-grader than he had realized. When a kid lost a book, it was the end of the world; powerless, he cringed beneath the shadow of bureaucracy and waited for the Library Policeman to show up. But there were no Library Police, and Sam, as an adult, knew that perfectly well. There were only town employees like Ms Lortz, who sometimes got overinflated ideas of their place in the scheme of things, and taxpayers like him, who sometimes forgot they were the dog which wagged the tail, and not the other way around.
I'm going to go in, I'm going to apologize, and then I'm going to ask her to send me a bill for the replacement copies, Sam thought. And that's all. That's the end.
It was so simple it was amazing.
Still feeling a little nervous and a little embarrassed (but much more in control of this teapot tempest), Sam parked across the street from the Library. The carriage lamps which flanked the main entrance were on, casting soft white radiance down the steps and across the building's granite facade. Evening lent the building a kindness and a welcoming air it had definitely been lacking on his first visit - or maybe it was just that spring was clearly on the rise now, something which had not been the case on the overcast March day when he had first met the resident dragon. The forbidding face of the stone robot was gone. It was just the public library again.
Sam started to get out of the car and then stopped. He had been granted one revelation; now he was suddenly afforded another.
The face of the woman in Dirty Dave's poster came back to him, the woman with the platter of fried chicken. The one Dave had called Sarah.
That woman had looked familiar to Sam, and all at once some obscure circuit fired off in his brain and he knew why.
It had been Naomi Higgins.
2
He passed two kids in JCHS jackets on the steps and caught the door before it could swing all the way closed. He stepped into the foyer. The first thing that struck him was the sound. The reading room beyond the marble steps was by no means rowdy, but neither was it the smooth pit of silence which had greeted Sam on Friday noon just over a week ago.
Well, but it's Saturday evening now, he thought. There are kids here, maybe studying for their midterm exams.
But would Ardelia Lortz condone such chatter, muted as it was? The answer seemed to be yes, judging from the sound, but it surely didn't seem in character.
The second thing had to do with that single mute adjuration which had been mounted on the easel.
SILENCE!
was gone. In its place was a picture of Thomas Jefferson. Below it was this quotation:
'I cannot live without books.'
- Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to John Adams)
June 10th, 1815
Sam studied this for a moment, thinking that it changed the whole flavor in one's mouth as one prepared to enter the library.
SILENCE!
induced feelings of trepidation and disquiet (what if one's belly was rumbling, for instance, or if one felt an attack of not necessarily silent flatulence might be imminent?).
'I cannot live without books,'
on the other hand, induced feelings of pleasure and anticipation - it made one feel