62 - Brooklin, Maine
Despite having sailed a small boat across the Atlantic Ocean, despite having escaped from a nuclear disaster in his homeland, Levi was terrified at the thought of driving on American roads to an American city. That he had no U.S. driver’s license was the least of his concerns. He’d long since abandoned his Israeli license on the assumption that being caught with no license was safer than being stopped with an Israeli license.
It was American drivers who scared him.
His only experience with American drivers was in occasional trips on the back roads near Brooklin. These roads were narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass in either direction, and heavily crowned in the center so snow melt would run off and not accumulate to freeze when the temperature dropped.
Undeterred, Mainers drove as if they were on eight-lane superhighways, tailgating anybody cautious enough to dawdle within ten miles per hour of the speed limit. He insisted that Reuben accompany him on a test drive before he felt confident enough to take off on his solo odyssey to Boston.
Since they were out of the house anyway, Reuben suggested stopping at the Blue Hill Co-op Grocery Store in the next town over from Brooklin. Reuben stocked up on organic produce, whole grain bread and free range, symphonic music-listening chickens’ eggs while Levi waited in the car, growing increasingly apprehensive about driving to Boston to meet with people he did not know.
When Reuben returned to the car, she offered to drive the ten miles back to Brooklin to let him rest before heading out to Boston. He accepted her offer and sat in the right hand seat for most of the half hour drive without saying a word, lost in his thoughts.
Levi was jerked from his reverie by Reuben’s exclamation.
“Who the hell is that?” she asked as the car slowly drove past the wood frame building containing the Brooklin Public Library. Levi saw a black Ford Navigator SUV parked in front of the library. Two obviously upset men in nearly matching black suits, white shirts and dark ties were walking quickly out the door toward the car. One man reached inside the car through the open driver’s window and pulled out a microphone on a coiled cord. He spoke into it, then tossed it angrily back through the window into the car.
The other man looked up and surveyed the Honda Accord as Levi and Reuben drove slowly past the library. His head swiveled to follow the car as it drove down the road out of town.
The two men were so obviously out of place, neither tourists, summer people, nor locals, the only varieties of people to come to Brooklin, that seeing them left Levi with an unsettled, apprehensive feeling. He glanced at Reuben quickly. She was turning her head to follow the men. Her eyes met his as she turned back to the road. Neither voiced the thoughts they obviously shared about the two men.
Levi had loaded a backpack with clean underwear and a toothbrush before they set out on their drive. Reuben stood outside the car while Levi retrieved his bag. When he returned to the car, one strap of the backpack over his shoulder, Reuben was leaning against a tree, a hand resting on the thick trunk. Levi walked up behind her, wrapped his arms around and pressed his chest against her back, pulling her tightly against him. He wiped one hand briefly across her right breast, a privilege he felt he’d recently earned.
She swiveled around in his arms.
“I am so, so tired of worrying about when disaster is going to strike us,” she said quietly. “How do I know I’ll ever see you again? How do I know soldiers won’t be dropping from the sky to lock me up for the rest of my life as the worst murderer of the Twenty-first Century? I have the feeling that things are closing in on us, that something is going to happen.
“And those two men at the library. Who do you think they were? They looked so serious, so angry. Chaim, I am so afraid of losing you. I love you so much, yes I’ll say it even if you won’t. I love you so much. And I’m so afraid of losing you.”
“I love you, too, Debra.” He tightened his arms to hold her snugly against his chest, bending his head forward to kiss the top of her head. “I’m not afraid to say it one bit. I love you. And because I love you, I’ll be extra careful. Of course, I’m coming back to you. I’ll be back here tomorrow.”
She lifted her face and kissed him on the lips.
“Deal,” she said, opening the car door for him. As he was about to get into the driver’s seat, Levi sprang back upright and ran to the basement door.
“Almost forgot,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Abram’s going to have me do some heavy lifting. I’d better bring work gloves.” He went into the basement and emerged a moment later with the bright orange rubber gloves. “Guess these will have to do,” he said, tossing the gloves onto the back seat as he got behind the wheel and started the engine.
Reuben leaned in through the driver’s window and kissed Levi again, then pulled her head back and said sternly, “You damn well better come back here tomorrow. That’s an order, lieutenant.”
“Yes sir, ma’am,” he said, tossing a mock salute. “But don’t think you’re my first female commanding officer. It was the Israeli Navy I was in, you know.”
Reuben stood in the middle of the gravel driveway and watched the car disappear. You better come back Lieutenant, she thought, her mind drifting to what was hidden in the basement. Not wanting to dwell on those thoughts, however, she decided on the spot to walk to the library, hoping to catch some gossip about the two men. Besides, she thought, I want to get back on the internet. Whatever we end up doing with that thing, she thought, it would be damn stupid to accidentally kill ourselves in the process.
The walk to the library through the chill air and bright sunshine raised Reuben’s spirits. By the time she arrived at the white front door with the date 1912 over it, Reuben felt ready to launch herself back into her research project just as she used to do as an investigative reporter, back when the world was sane. Fortunately, the same computer she’d used the day before was again available. She sat at the machine and renewed her Internet hunt.
Despite her absorption in her research, Reuben could not help but overhear the excited conversation the librarian was having with two other women.
“They barged right in and started ordering me around,” Jo-lene Dodge said, her voice infused with enthusiasm, and a tinge of pride. “They waved their wallets at me and kept on saying, FBI, FBI, as if I couldn’t read. Right, as if a town would have an illiterate librarian, even here in Maine.”
Reuben perked up at hearing the ominous repetition of those initials, FBI, FBI. She could barely keep her eyes directed at the screen to conceal her eavesdropping. She didn’t want them to move their conversation to some place more private.
“FBI, well glory be,” one of the librarian’s audience members exclaimed. “What in the world did they want?”
“They came right out and told me what they wanted,” the librarian responded. “They damn well wanted everything we have right here. They pulled out this piece of paper and said it was some sort of Patriot Act warrant and they wanted to search the library’s computerized list of books people had checked out, and they wanted to look at our computers, see what people had been looking at on the Internet.
“Well, I laughed right in their faces at that one. ‘Where do you think you are, Bangor?’ I asked them. "We don’t have any computerized list of books folks check out.” The librarian laughed and pointed at a varnished set of oak cabinets containing dozens of small drawers. “I pointed over at those drawers and said, that’s our computer check-out system, fellas. It was donated by the Post Office.
“I laughed in their faces.”
Then the librarian’s voice took on a serious tone.
“I asked to see that warrant. I looked at the front. I looked at the back. I kept turning the thing over and all round. Then I handed it back to one of the fellas and said, I don’t see any judge’s signature on that warrant you boys have there. That’s what I said to them, you know.”
“Why’dja say that, Jo-lene?” the other woman asked. “How do you know anything about judge’s signatures and search warrants?”
“How do I know?” the librarian responded. “I’ll tell you just like I told those FBI boys. I told them I’m not just the librarian in this little town, but I’m also part of law enforcement hereabouts. I said right to them that I am the only clam warden between Sedgwick and Blue Hill. When it comes to the clam flats, I am the law around here, more than those sheriff’s deputies who’d take an hour-and-a-half to get here if you called and said the library was being robbed.
“I know all about warrants. They have to be signed by a judge or else they ain’t worth, well, ain’t worth the time a day to print ‘em up.”
“I think the FBI sort of outranks the Brooklin clam warden, dee-yah,” the first woman said, guessing, correctly, that the story of the librarian-slash-clam warden’s encounter with the FBI would be told and retold throughout the winter. “Why did you give those gentlemen such a hard time, Jo-lene. You’ll give Brooklin a sour name.”
“I didn’t like their high and mighty attitude,” she replied. “Besides, I’ve read all about those Patriot Act warrants in Modern Library magazine. I owe a responsibility to my patrons.” She stopped and gave a sweeping gesture incorporating the three fourth graders working on a project about immigration, a housewife looking for the latest Harlequin romance, and Debra Reuben, nuclear terrorist.
“I told them they could come back with a piece of paper autographed by a judge and I’d show them whatever they wanted to see, but until then, they should mind the step at the front door on the way out.”
“Jo-lene, you’re going to get into serious trouble for that, you better watch out, you know,” the second woman said. Then she laughed and added, “I don’t know where you find the gumption to stand up to the FBI that way. I could never do that.”
The librarian chuckled. “A couple of city boys in suits,” she said. “Heck, you ought to try telling some 300 pound clammer in rubber boots up to his armpits bent over with his ass crack smilin’ above the top a his jeans at 3 o’clock in the morning with the rain fallin’ and the tide rising’ that he can’t be where he is doin’ what he’s doin’. Now, that takes a taste of gumption, all right. But tellin’ the FBI off? Nah, that was downright fun.”
“Do you think that’s the end of them?” one woman asked, an awestruck look on her face as she gazed at the librarian, who had always seemed just another small town fixture. The Day Jo-lene Tossed the FBI From the Library was going to make its way around town within hours.
“No,” the librarian said. “They made a point of saying they’d be back tomorrow with a warrant. And that they would look through every damn card in our files and check every computer in the building. Oh, but they were a might upset when they left.”
“So what did you say when they said they’d be back?” the second woman asked, dreading the effect the answer would have on the town’s reputation in the nation’s capital.
“I looked that black-suit wearin’ falla in the eye and told him he’d be hearing from my lawyer if he wanted to invade my patron’s privacy that way. So he says, and who would your lawyer be, lady? He was only pretending to be polite.”
“You don’t have any lawyer, Jo-lene, you know that,” her questioner interrupted.
“Oh yes I do,” the librarian said. “I told those two men, big men they were too, standing right in front of me like that. I told them my lawyers were with the law firm of A, C, L and U.
“They just stormed right our of here after that, never saying a please or thank you. But I expect they’ll be back.”
Reuben quickly stood up from her computer, nodded at the three women and walked out the front door. She returned home at a half jog. Chaim, what the hell do I do now, she wondered to herself.
Reuben came to a conclusion by the time she arrived at the house. She had to get away from there, get away from Brooklin entirely. She thought about trying to hide the bomb but drew a blank as to where she could put it. She decided she had no choice but to take it with her, wherever she went. As for how she would get away, she saw only one way to do that, too.
She ran to the telephone as soon as she returned to the house, dialing frantically. The phone was answered on the second ring.
“Sarah, thank God you’re home,” Reuben said. “Sarah, you have to come up here, right away. Today. I have to get out of here. Please, Sarah, can you come today?
“Debbie, of course. I understand,” Goldberg said. “But the march, you know I have to leave for D.C. tomorrow for the march. But if you tell me to drive up and get you today, of course I will.”
“Yes, please, now,” said Reuben, calming slightly. “Hurry. The FBI, they’re here, in town, in Brooklin. They’ll be back soon, and they’ll find out who was doing Internet research on safe handling of ...”
Reuben paused.
“Sarah, we have something very important to discuss when you get here, please hurry.”
“I’m on my way,” Sarah said. Debbie Reuben always panicked easily, Sarah thought, remembering one college ski trip that ended in tears when Debbie realized she’d packed two left gloves as part of her new pink ski ensemble.