“Never live your life according to the idiots’ rules. Because they’ll drag you down to their level, they’ll win, and you’ll have a damned awful time in the process.”
When a red pickup pulled up outside, she got quickly to her feet and told herself not to act like an idiot. They don’t know you, she reminded herself. To them, you’re just a stranger who knows nothing about them, about Amy or the town. The thought made her smile. The man who stepped out of the car wasn’t Andy; she was certain of that. There was something tense and reluctant in his movements that didn’t tally at all with the warm voice on the phone or with the descriptions in Amy’s letters. “Tom,” he said. “Sara,” she replied automatically, blinking at him in confusion. There was a web of fine laughter lines around his eyes, but he wasn’t smiling. His eyes were the same deep grayish-green color as the sea in November, and they were radiating about as much warmth. His body language exuded distance and irritation. She didn’t know what she could have done to make him dislike her already, but there was no doubt about it. Dislike her he did. For a moment, her world was thrown off-kilter, just like it had been with Jimmie Coogan Street. Only by a few degrees—enough to make everything seem distorted and unreliable, but not enough that she could put her finger on exactly what had changed. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, which made her gray pants seem ridiculously inappropriate. She was no longer under any illusion that her pants made her legs look in any way elegant. They were back to their usual, scrawny selves, and she was back to being utterly plain. This has happened before, Sara, she told herself. If you were stupid enough to think that things would change just because Amy’s youngsters were involved, then it’s your own fault. Mascara! You idiot. She found a certain consolation in that, or she was used to it, at least. “Andy asked me to give you a ride,” Tom said, as though it was, in some way, her fault. “I could’ve walked.” “Sure.” She thought about turning around and heading back inside. She didn’t think she would be able to cope if Andy turned out to be this unfriendly too. But Tom had already opened the car door, and now he gave her arm a gentle boost to help her up into the seat. “So you’re Sara,” he eventually said. He sounded tired, but apparently he still believed in trying to make polite conversation. Small talk was not something Sara excelled at. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she stayed silent. Without realizing it, she was clutching her jacket pocket, where she had shoved a paperback just to be on the safe side. She didn’t think she could really take it out, even though Tom obviously had no desire to talk to her. People were strange like that. They could be completely uninterested in you, but the moment you picked up a book, you were the one being rude. As soon as they turned out of the little lane that led to Amy’s house, the cornfields appeared again. She couldn’t decide whether they were protective or threatening. “Sara who likes reading.” For a second, she wondered if he could read her mind. “You’ve got a book hidden in your pocket.” He was sounding more and more dismissive. “People are better in books,” she muttered. She said it so quietly she didn’t think he could have heard her, but when she stole a glance at him, she thought she could see one of his eyebrows twitch. “Don’t you agree?” she asked defensively. “No,” he said. She knew that most people would disagree with her. “But they’re so much more fun and interesting and…” Friendly, she thought. “Safer?” “That too.” She actually laughed. But then he seemed to lose interest again, both in the conversation and her. “But they’re not real,” he said, as though that would put an end to the discussion. Real. What was so great about reality? Amy was dead, and Sara was stuck here in a car with a man who clearly disliked her. With books, she could be whoever she wanted, wherever she wanted. She could be tough, beautiful, charming; she could come up with the perfect line at the perfect moment, and she could…experience things. Real things. Things that happened to real people. In books, people were charming and friendly, and life followed certain set patterns. If a person dreamed of doing something, then you could be almost certain that, by the end of the book, they would almost certainly be doing that very thing. And they would find someone to do it with. In the real world, you could be almost certain that person would end up doing absolutely anything other than what they had dreamed of. “They’re meant to be better than reality,” she said. “Bigger, funnier, more beautiful, more tragic, more romantic.” “So in other words, not realistic at all,” said Tom. He made it sound as though she had been talking about some romantic schoolgirl fantasy about heroes and heroines and true love. “When they’re realistic, they’re more realistic than life. If it’s a story about a meaningless, gray, normal day, then it’ll be much more meaningless and gray than our own gray, meaningless days.” Sara thought he seemed to be struggling not to laugh. But then his smile vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. “The books you got Amy to order arrived two days before her funeral,” he said, and with that, the conversation was definitely over. Just at the same moment, Sara was feeling selfish enough to think, So where are they, then? Her thirteen books wouldn’t last long at all. Especially if she continued going through them at the rate she had been. • • • The Square was a large, bulky building surrounded by empty parking spaces. Twenty minutes outside of town, it rose in lonely majesty above the asphalt. Tom stopped the car and looked around as though he too was seeing the bar for the first time. Then he shook his head and opened the door for her. “Maybe I should warn you about Andy and Carl,” he said. “They’re…well, they’re together. Everyone’s very understanding. We don’t talk about it.” “I know,” she said. Tom raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. There were only two other customers in the entire bar. One appeared to be sleeping, and the other, with a John Deere cap on, was eating nonstop from a bowl of peanuts. Sara hadn’t realized that people in the United States actually wore hats that advertised tractors, but when she turned around to comment enthusiastically, Tom looked so unimpressed she decided now wasn’t the right time. He gestured for her to keep going and followed her over to the bar. She climbed carefully up onto one of the bar stools, and he pulled out the one next to her and sat down in a single relaxed movement. When he caught sight of Andy, Tom smiled the first real, genuine smile she had seen from him. It made him look younger. Andy didn’t look at all like she had imagined from Amy’s letters. The only similarity was the boyish glint in his eye, which somehow suggested he still expected life to be full of adventure. He grinned at her as though he was sure they would get along, a grin that was impossible to resist. Then he looked back and forth between Tom and Sara in a way which made her cheeks burn and Tom straighten his stool so he ended up farther away from her. “Welcome to the Square,” said Andy. “A piece of history, a constant source of alcohol, a gathering point in Broken Wheel long before I was here.” He gestured around him. Sara blinked. “I only took over”—he looked questioningly at Tom—“seven years ago? Can it really have been that long? When Abe departed this life. By then, he’d become worryingly obsessed with female country musicians.” Sara felt increasingly relaxed the more obvious it became that she wasn’t expected to take part in the conversation. Andy seemed to be doing fine on his own. He leaned forward across the bar. “His wife left him. And it wasn’t Cash or Williams or Nelson he turned to for comfort but Dolly, Emmylou, Patsy, Loretta, and Tammy. For five years, their lovesick, miserable voices put a downer on things here in the Square, right until the Dixie Chicks put a stop to all that.” “Oh, for God’s sake, Andy.” Tom had clearly heard this story one too many times...
~~~
.jfif)
In this age of world-wide communication, we meet two women of different ages who became friends through letters... Sara lives in Sweden and Amy lives in Iowa. Their mutual interest was books and they discussed various books during each of their letters to each other... Amy did not share her actual health issues but spent all of her time sharing with Sara her love of her home town, Broken Wheel... So much so that Sara had become so interested, and, as well, needing to break from the tedium of her life as an assistant in a bookstore, that when Amy invited her to visit and they talked about it, Sara had decided to grab the adventure that she would never have, at least she thought, if she didn't take this opportunity...
Everything in the planning stage went well, except that, on the day that Sara was to arrive, most of the town was empty as they were attending the funeral and burial...of Amy!
But Amy had many friends and was a revered member of this little community. So much so, that all of the leading business owners and town leaders had known that Sara was coming. Soon, that entire group would take on the role of greeting, meeting and doing as much as possible to ensur Sara did not feel that she was caught in an impossible situation and think she must immediately return home...
Everybody agreed that she would stay in Amy's home just as was planned... And every place that Sara would visit, she was not charged for food or drinks, just as it would have been while visiting with her friend. Everybody knew that Sara's letters had become an important part of Amy's last months before she died. And never saying a word to Sara about the real situation of her health.
Sara was even more of a fanatic reader than I've ever been. She carried books and brought one out, moving into the story no matter where she was... Sara was an introvert and had never found it easy to participate in small talk... She found it hard to be in a home where there was only the belongings of her friend, Amy, knowing that she had only her memories of her letters since they would never meet...
But when Sara got brave enough, or one of the hosts or appointd drivers came to her door to drive her to anywhere she wanted to go, she began to see Broken Wheel as it was in the present. Things that had been described to be sure to see by Amy was no longer as she had been told. Many of the storefronts were boarded up or the glass windows broken, even a street no longer had appeal as had been described... Amy had been sharing of the town she once lived in...
Still, Sara soon found peace and quiet when she allowed herself to explore Amy's home and discovered a major library that was full of more books than she could read in a lifetime! So she was able to enjoy being able to choose any book that claimed her attention and, when finished, move on to a new one immediately. But, Sara began to feel that she could not continue to live in a home without paying rent or accept food without paying for it. She began to feel guilty and ill at ease as to what she could do to starting paying her way...
Sara found she was enjoying meeting the people who were still in this "almost" ghost town. But it did bother her when she would walk down the main street and see a group of men standing on the corner watching her. Not in a bad way, but, she realized, in a way that she began to realize that this little town was barely making it... Many had left when land was sold to grow corn as the major product, so that the entire community was shut off from sight as miles of nothing but growing corn engulfed the town...
Sara began to take walks from Amy's home into town and noticed a building that drew her attention... It started her thinking. Wouldn't that make a wonderful cozy booknook... Once she knew how she could do it, she started asking how to get approval to open a shop... And, as they say, that was the beginning...
Maybe this shop had her attention because its windowpanes were still intact or because it didn’t seem to have been treated quite as badly as the others. It was dirty, but only with two, maybe three years’ worth of dust. “When did this shop close?” she asked George as soon as he came out. She leaned in toward the window and rubbed a circle to look through. There was a counter in the middle of the space and a couple of shelves against the walls. Two chairs had been left behind, and both seemed to be in one piece. The lighting consisted of a lone naked bulb, and though the sun was managing to make it through the dirt on the windows, it was hard to tell what color the walls and few furnishings were. “Amy’s?” he asked. “This is Amy’s shop?” Was, she thought, but he didn’t seem to notice that she’d used the wrong tense. “Yeah,” he said as he fiddled with his car keys. He looked around as though he was worried someone might hear them. “Her husband bought it. It was never much of a success while he was alive, but I guess it kept him away from her for a couple of hours a day at least.” The expression on his face was uncharacteristically grim. “She closed it as soon as he died. Not a day too soon.” It wasn’t clear whether George meant the shop closing or Amy’s husband dying. “When was that?” “Almost fifteen years ago, but she kept on cleaning it. I don’t really know why. I don’t think she thought she’d be renting it out. She stopped, of course, when…when she got worse.” Sara could just picture Amy cleaning her dead husband’s shop year after year. Neat and tidy. “What kind of shop was it, when it was open?” George looked even more disapproving. “A hardware store.” Then he said nothing more about it. He drove her home in silence. • • • That evening, Sara sat in the kitchen enjoying the first warm meal she had made for herself since arriving. She had one of Amy’s books wedged beneath the edge of her plate so that she could eat and read at the same time. The warm food gave Sara renewed courage. She didn’t even bother to go around and switch on all the lights before it got dark. The light in the kitchen was the only one she needed. She was starting to feel like she might manage, like she might get her reading holiday, her stories and her adventure, after all. She had told people at home she was going to Broken Wheel to get away for a while, to have a real holiday, to read and to meet Amy, but that hadn’t been the whole truth. She had wanted to experience something…big. To be able to say to people, though she didn’t quite know who, that she had once spent two whole months in a small town in America. “Amy,” she said, “did you know that over three hundred thousand new books are published in the United States every year? And now here I am.” Regardless of how it all turned out, she would have done something for once. Two hours later, she had spread Amy’s books out on every available surface and was sitting contentedly in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, a forgotten cup of coffee by her side. She had three books on her lap but wasn’t reading any of them. She was listening to the sounds of the evening breeze playing in the old house. Somehow, her discovery of Amy’s books had changed the atmosphere of the place. It was as though it had become Amy’s once again, and Sara her guest. The constant noises had made her nervous those first few days, but now they were a comforting addition to her evening. The branches rapping at the window upstairs made her feel less alone, like the tree and the window were keeping her company. The rattling pipes, the constantly creaking wood—it seemed like something was still present in the house, as though it would never be completely empty, even once she had gone back home.
~~~
Sara's quiet, but friendly interaction was compelling. Soon volunteers and furnishings were donated... But when it was done and opened, nobody came, except to say hello or bring her a tea or coffee from next store...
Until one day, two young boys stopped in front of the shop. Sara was sitting in an armchair reading. She didn't notice the boys, so they kept watching her, wondering how long she would sit there reading without stopping... Soon other neighbors came to see what was going on and stood there watching...
But that afternoon, she was sitting in one of the armchairs, and her reading caused two of the town’s children to pause outside the window. They were on their way home from the school bus and in no hurry at all to start their homework. From the street, Sara looked like part of the window display. The name of the bookshop was painted on the window, and she was sitting directly beneath the welcoming yellow letters that spelled out the words Oak Tree Bookstore in a broad arc. Her hair fell like a curtain around her face as she sat curled up with a book in her lap, an enormous pile of books on the table next to her. Her long, slender fingers were turning the pages so quickly that the two boys wondered how she had time to read them. It made them stay standing there. At first, they had stopped only in the hope that she would nod to them or shoo them away, but now an hour had passed and she hadn’t even noticed that they were there. When George appeared, the younger boy was amusing himself by making a face at Sara, his nose pressed against the window. Even that didn’t lead to any obscenities or a weary request for them to leave. Strange. “What’re you up to?” George asked. He was slightly overprotective when it came to Sara. “We’re seeing how long she can read in one go,” said the elder. “She hasn’t even noticed us,” said the younger. George leaned forward and peered in through the window, curious despite his better nature. “How long have you been standing here?” “An hour.” “And she hasn’t looked up once?” “Nope.” The younger joined in. “Even though I’ve been making faces.” George frowned at him and moved back from the window, in case Sara looked up at that moment and thought he was part of the whole thing. “We’re gonna stand here till she looks up,” the younger said confidently. “We’re gonna time her. Right, Steven?” His big brother nodded. “I’m going to anyway. Go home if you want.” He said it in that nonchalant tone big brothers resort to when they know their younger siblings are going to copy them anyway. If they had known that Sara had just settled down with Douglas Coupland’s All Families Are Psychotic, they might have chosen a different day for their experiment. A day when she was reading a weighty biography, for example, or something else that made breaks seem more necessary. As things stood, she just kept reading. Every now and then she laughed or smiled to herself. Their group grew steadily as the afternoon wore on. By the time Jen and her husband came by, ten people were standing there. Her husband had decided to go with her to visit the tourist his wife was always talking about, and she had graciously taken him along to do so. She wasn’t the slightest bit amused to find a crowd blocking her way into the shop. Once the children had told her everything, she threatened to ruin the entire thing by going inside and telling Sara. “It’s not good manners,” Jen said. Whether she meant standing outside, watching Sara like she was a circus animal, or preventing her from going into the shop was unclear. George agreed, but he couldn’t help suspecting that Jen’s disappointment stemmed partly from the fact that she hadn’t come up with the idea herself. Her husband announced that he intended to stand there and watch too. Jen, on the other hand, still seemed prepared to march in and alert Sara. She loved her husband, of course, but that wasn’t the same as letting him decide what she should do. She put a hand on the door. “Wouldn’t this be something to put in the newsletter?” her husband asked. Jen paused. She stood for a few indecisive seconds before turning around to go and fetch her camera from the house. “Wait here,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere. If Sara looks up while I’m gone, stand here till I get back. I mean, just let me get my camera and we can always take a posed picture.” But when she got back, everyone was still there, and Sara was still reading. Jen immediately took a photo of Sara sitting in the window with her book. “Who the hell wants to watch someone reading?” Grace asked from the doorway of her diner. She had lit a cigarette, but it was more an excuse to see what everyone was up to. “What else is there to do?” asked Steven. “That’s true, I suppose,” Grace admitted after a moment. “You’re gonna need food,” she said. “Help me carry the grill out from the backyard and I’ll cook you all hamburgers.” As she was getting everything she needed ready, she realized that while food was good, it would be even better with beer. She made a quick call to Andy, who came straight over with Carl, some crates of beer, and their regular customers. • • • Tom saw the crowd of people before he saw the bookstore, since the group gathered in front of it had, by that point, completely hidden the shop from view. He had been on the way home from work when he saw everyone. For a moment he was determined to drive straight past them, but he suddenly found himself stopping and parking his car without really having made a conscious decision to do so. He could feel the tension from work lessening with each step he took toward the shop, and that bothered him. For some reason, he seemed to relax when he was around Sara. He had felt it the first time they were in the car together, when she had demonstrated so clearly that she wasn’t expecting anything of him. It had actually seemed more like she wanted him to just leave her alone. And later, when they had been sitting outside Amy’s house, he had felt an almost physical sensation of peace. He hadn’t been thinking about work or about John or about anything else that should have been on his mind. That was what made Sara’s company so unsettling. He swore he wouldn’t make the same mistake again this evening. He would just go over and see what was going on. Nothing more. Five minutes, tops. There was something subdued about the scene. Everyone seemed to be straining to whisper. Andy sought him out as he reached the edge of the group, giving him a beer and taking him to the front. It was already dark, but the light from Amy’s shop was spilling out onto the street. Sara was curled up in an armchair holding a book, her eyes fixed on it. She turned the page. At one point, she pushed a strand of hair from her eyes. It felt strangely private, seeing her read. Like watching her when she sleeps, he thought. She was so obviously unaware of their presence. At least there were no tears this time. Thankfully. Beside him, Andy was whispering loudly. Tom caught fragments of it, but he wasn’t really listening. “Reading…” “Been waiting here since this afternoon…” “Changed the book but didn’t look up…” “Got a sandwich with the book still in her hand…” Sara smiled. Her expression was so comical that Tom found he was intrigued despite himself. Her face was open and expressive when she thought no one was watching, warm and friendly and disturbing to his peace of mind. She had never smiled at him like that. Maybe you need a book to coax that kind of smile out of her, he thought, even though he had never bothered trying to make her smile. Maybe I’ll actually try it sometime, he found himself thinking. He forced himself to look away. Next to him, Andy was still talking. “Shouldn’t you be at the Square?” Tom asked him. Andy laughed. “No point. It’s all happening here tonight. Grace called us, so we packed a couple crates of beer, closed up, and came over. Everyone’s here tonight.” “Why…?” “To watch Sara read, obviously.” Andy explained the backstory. “Incredible, right? She started a new book two hours ago, but she’s barely looked up. Like a relay, you know?” Tom shook his head. Sara continued to read. • • • Until she didn’t. She read the last line, smiled as though at an old friend, and closed the book. She unfurled her legs and stretched. When she finally saw the crowd outside, she stood up suddenly and went confusedly out to them.
“My friends!” Steven shouted when she stepped through the door. “That was exactly five hours and thirty-seven minutes.” Sparse applause broke out. The smell of charcoal, grilled meat, and beer filled the air, and empty beer bottles littered the ground. There was a spontaneous party atmosphere to the whole thing, and people began talking more loudly now that they no longer had to worry about Sara hearing them. Sara blushed and blinked at them. She had never been good at being the center of attention. • • • It happens occasionally. Certain groups seem to exist only to make one person, the one we are meant to see, appear more clearly. It rarely happens like it does in movies, where rooms filled with people unconsciously part to give the heroine a glimpse of the hero, or the other way around. And yet for some people, there are similar moments of insight when they turn to a group of people and instead see only one. For Sara, it was when she stepped out of the bookshop that evening and found herself faced with betting and crowds and beer and hamburgers. It was that evening when, for several confused moments, all she saw was Tom. Someone had thrust a beer into her hand and she drank it gratefully while Grace and Jen talked away next to her. “For God’s sake, woman, don’t you have anything better to do with your time than read?” Grace asked. “What were you reading? Can I have some book tips for the newsletter?” Jen asked. Her camera flashed before Sara had a chance to reply. It was as though all previous thoughts of avoiding Tom had vanished. She was acutely aware of exactly where he was the entire time. As though quietly murmuring radar, placed high in her chest, was keeping track of where he was standing and who he was with. She wanted both to avoid him and for him to come over to her. Every time she saw him talking to someone else—and he seemed to be determined to talk to everyone except her—she found herself thinking that he should be talking to her instead, standing next to her, smiling at her.
~~~
This is clearly a character-driven drama. In addition to the main character, we watch as a number of those that have lived in Broken Wheel all of their lives, find themselves involved in rethinking--and acting--upon their lives as they have lived it. Issues of sexuality, race, religion, divorce, and more wind up being explored as the town of Broken Wheel becomes more loving and kind as they come together... Especially several love stories including for Sara!
The ending is, simply, a communal love reaction to what residents had seen since the "tourist" came to town and brought her love of books and the wonderful stories to be found when a book is found for each of the residents... Heartwarming and joyous!
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