Lending a Paw(81)

I looked at the back end of the bookmobile. The right rear tire was flat. I looked at the front end. “Oh, jeez . . .” The right front tire was flat, too. How on earth could both tires have gone flat at the same time?

A motor-ish sort of noise came from behind me and I saw the hunched figure of a guy on a four-wheeled ATV, a quad, roar across the road and up a narrow trail. The driver wore dark pants and a dark hooded sweatshirt. Sticking out behind the driver was a rifle strapped to the vehicle’s carrier rack.

A rifle.

I shrank back behind the bookmobile, but poked my head out to see the quad wind up the hill and disappear into a thick tree line. The engine’s roar faded to a dull buzz; then that, too, disappeared.





Chapter 16


I climbed back aboard the lamed bookmobile and pulled my cell phone from my backpack. I studied the screen, sighed, and put the useless thing away. There was a certain inevitability to the fact that there was no signal.

The last house we’d passed had been at least a mile back and it had had that abandoned look houses get when they’re unoccupied. I didn’t remember the road ahead well enough to know how close the nearest house might be, but there wasn’t one in sight.

In the cabinet behind me was the emergency road manual, but since I could recite the entire contents from memory, I knew without looking what it said about a situation like this. “Call for assistance.” So helpful. It also said, “Use your best judgment when dealing with emergency situations.”

Well, that would have to do.

I turned on the four-way flashers and kissed the top of Eddie’s head. “I’ll be outside, okay?” He started a light and steady purr. Which wasn’t truly helpful, but it did make me feel a little better.

I headed out and rummaged around for the battery-operated emergency lights I’d bought myself and stored in an outside compartment. Set one on its small tripod stand a little ways in front of the vehicle, set another one a little way behind.

Then I used my hand to brush dust off the front bumper. Sat down, crossed my legs at the ankles, and started waiting.

Waited some more.

Tried to enjoy the sounds of early evening.

Recrossed my legs and realized that summer evening sounds were really the sounds of bugs.

Waited. Thought about going inside and getting a book. Didn’t.

Waited.

At long last, I heard the hum of a vehicle.

I jumped to my feet and stood, a happy and expectant smile on my face, formulating the words of thanks with which I’d shower my rescuer.

The vehicle came closer, closer, and suddenly there it was, small and silver and moving fast. I waved my arms high in the air, flagging the car down, calling for help. The convertible zoomed past. BMW Z4, I was pretty sure, since I’d admired one in the marina’s parking lot all last summer.

I gave its taillights the meanest, nastiest glare I could glare. “Jerk!” I yelled to the driver. “You’re nothing but a big jerk!” The driver hadn’t even looked at me. He’d just ignored me and the poor bookmobile and zipped on his merry way.

People.

I plomped myself down on the bumper.

Waited.

Roughly a year and a half later, a rattletrap of an SUV appeared. I’d heard the sputtering muffler long before it came around the long curve, so I was already standing in the middle of the road, feet spread across the centerline, hands out in a Stop! gesture by the time it came into view.

This time, everything was different. The driver’s window rolled down and a blond head poked out. “Miss Minnie? What’s wrong with the bookmobile?”

I walked up to the ancient Jeep Cherokee. It was Surfette, the young woman who’d been on the bookmobile twice, hunting for a book she wouldn’t let us help her find. “Hi,” I said. “Two flat tires and I’m not getting any cell coverage.”

“Oh, wow. What can I do?”

And they say the youth of today is self-centered. I wanted to hug her. “I don’t want to leave the bookmobile, so if you could find a phone and call our mechanic, that would be a lifesaver.” I gave her the name of the garage that did the bookmobile maintenance.

“You bet. I know the people who live a couple miles up the road. I’ll be right back.”

She took her foot off the brake, but I waved at her to stop. “There’s another phone call to make.” While I didn’t want to scare her, this had to be done. “I need you to call the police.”

“What?” Her mouth dropped open, showing perfectly white teeth. “Why? What happened?”

I gave her as brief a description of the event as possible, and her reaction wasn’t anything close to fear. “Some rotten kid, I bet,” said the girl who couldn’t be much more than twenty. “Stupid jerks. Some of them have nothing better to do than take potshots at anything that moves.”