He took a slug of bourbon. “He’s just trying to spook you. But his men wouldn’t hurt a woman. Even those thugs of his. They’re bound by the code of the hills.”

“What about the ones he’s bringing in from out of state?” said Fred. “You sure they’re bound by the code of the hills, too?”

Sven didn’t seem to have an answer for that.

* * *

• • •

Fred taught her how to use a shotgun. He showed her how to balance the stock and pull the butt against her shoulder, how to factor in the hefty kick backward when she lined up her sights, reminding her not to hold her breath but to release the trigger as she breathed out slowly. The first time she pulled the trigger he was standing close behind her, his hands on hers, and she bounced so hard against him that her face stayed pink for an hour.

She was a natural, he told her, lining up cans on the fallen tree at the edge of Margery’s land. Within days she could pick them off, like apples falling from a branch. At night, as she secured the new locks on the doors, Alice would run her hands along the barrel, lift it speculatively to her shoulder, firing imaginary rounds at unseen intruders coming up the track. She would pull the trigger for her friend; she had no doubt of that.

Because something else had changed too, something fundamental. Alice had discovered how, for a woman at least, it was much easier to feel anger on behalf of someone you cared about, to access that cold burn, to want to make someone suffer if they had hurt someone you loved.

Alice, it turned out, was no longer afraid.

FOURTEEN

   Riding all winter, a librarian would wrap up so heavily it was hard to remember what she looked like underneath: two vests, a flannel shirt, a thick sweater and a jacket with maybe a scarf or two over the top—that was the daily uniform up in the mountains, perhaps with a pair of man’s thick leather gloves over her own, a hat rammed low as she could get it, and another scarf pulled high over her nose, so that her breath might bounce back and warm her skin a little. At home, she’d strip off reluctantly, revealing only the swiftest slice of bare skin to the elements between shedding undergarments and sliding, shivering, under her blankets. Aside from cloth-washing, a woman working for the Packhorse Library could go for weeks without seeing her body much at all.

Alice was still locked into her own private battle with the Van Cleves although, thankfully, they seemed to have gone quiet for now. She could most often be found in the woods behind the cabin practicing with Fred’s old gun, the crack and zing of bullets hitting tin cans echoing through the still air.

Izzy could be seen only in glimpses, trailing her mother miserably around town. And there were only intermittent appearances from Beth, the one person who could be relied on to notice these things, or joke about them, and she was mostly preoccupied with her arm and what she could and couldn’t do. So nobody observed that Margery had put on a little weight, or thought to comment upon it. Sven, who knew Marge’s body like he knew his own, understood the fluctuations that occurred in the female form and enjoyed all of them equally, and was a wise enough man not to say anything.

Margery herself had become accustomed to being bone-tired, trying to double up on routes, fighting every day to convince the disbelievers of the importance of stories, of facts, of knowledge. But this and the constant air of foreboding left her struggling each morning to lift her head from the pillow. The cold was etched into her after months of snow, and the long hours outside had left her permanently, ravenously hungry. So a woman could be excused for not noticing the things that other women might have picked up on faster, or if she did, for sweeping the thought away under the larger pile of things she had to worry about.

But there is always a point at which these things become impossible to ignore. One night in late February Margery told Sven not to stop by, adding with deceptive casualness that she had a few things to catch up on. She helped Sophia with the last of the books, waved Alice off into the snowy night and bolted the door behind her until it was just her alone in the little library. The log burner still glowed warm because Fred, God bless him, had packed it full of logs before he, too, disappeared to eat, his mind full of someone else entirely. She sat in the chair, her thoughts hanging low around her head in the darkness, until eventually she stood, pulled a heavy textbook from the shelf and flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Brow furrowed, she scanned the information carefully. She absorbed it, then counted off her fingers: one, two, three, four, five, five and a half.

And then she did it a second time.

Despite what people might have thought around Lee County about Margery O’Hare’s family, about the kind of woman she must surely be, given where she came from, she was not prone to cursing. Now, however, she cursed softly once, twice, and let her head sink silently into her hands.

FIFTEEN

   The small town bankers, grocers, editors and lawyers, the police, the sheriff, if not the government, were all apparently subservient to the money and corporate masters of the area. It was their compulsion, if possibly not always their desire, to stand well with these who had the power to cause them material or personal difficulties.

• THEODORE DREISER, introduction to Harlan Miners Speak

Three families who wouldn’t let me so much as hand over a book unless we read Bible stories, one slammed door up by those new houses near Hoffman, but Mrs. Cotter seems to have come back round now she understands we’re not trying to tempt her into the ways of the flesh, and Doreen Abney says can she have the magazine with the recipe for the rabbit pie as she forgot to write it out two weeks ago.” Kathleen’s saddlebag landed with a thump on the desk. She turned to look at Alice and rubbed dirt from her hands.

“Oh, and Mr. Van Cleve stopped me in the street to tell me that we were an abomination and the sooner we were gone from this town the better.”

“I’ll show him abomination,” said Beth, darkly.

By mid-March, Beth had returned to work full-time, but nobody had the heart to tell Kathleen she was no longer needed. Mrs. Brady, who was a fair woman if a little unbending, had declined to draw Izzy’s wage since she had gone, and Margery simply handed the little brown paper packet directly to Kathleen. It was something of a relief, as she had been paying her out of her own pocket with the few savings she had hidden since her father’s death. Twice Kathleen’s mother-in-law had come by the library to bring her children and show them what their mama was engaged in, her voice filled with pride. The children were great favorites among the women, who showed them the newest books and let them sit on the mule, and there was something in Kathleen’s slow smile, and the genuine warmth of her mother-in-law toward her, that made everyone feel a little better.

Realizing Alice would not be budged on the matter of returning to the house, Mr. Van Cleve had taken a new tack, insisting she leave town, that she wasn’t wanted here, pulling alongside her in his car as she headed out on her early-morning rounds so that Spirit’s eyes rolled white and she pranced sideways to get away from the man bellowing out of the driver’s window.