Brooke ‘Bookeeper’'s Arc

Chapter 29 of 32

Morning came and the survivors had not left. They sat in clusters around the library steps, packs unrolled into small homes. A few had dragged crates into rows and planted herbs from their packs in the dirt beside them. Hand-painted signs marked each plot with a name. They were staying. And they had nowhere to read. Brooke counted the chairs inside. Twelve. She counted the people waiting to sit. Far more. The line wrapped past the donation box. A woman with a coffee cup stood beside a man in a dusty jacket, both holding books they could not open without a place to set them down. She walked to the back shed and dragged out the old canvas tarp she had saved for winter. She called the clerk. She called the nine. She called three of the new survivors who looked strong. A bearded man in an apron, the kind who hauled crates for the merchant, stepped forward and lifted the heavy center pole without being asked. They raised the canvas in the lot beside the library. Brooke ran a rope pulley from the ridge to a lamp she scavenged from the back room. The clerk's daughter carried out wooden planks and braced them into shelves along the inside walls. By noon the tent stood open on both ends, lined with books, a warm yellow bulb swinging above a swept plank floor. Four rough-looking men carried a bench inside. A woman dragged a stool. Someone brought a folded blanket and spread it flat for the children. The line moved. People sat. People opened their books. Brooke watched a man read a page, then turn it, then turn it again. By dusk the tent was full and quiet. The garden beds outside had been watered. The chalkboards still stood in the dirt with every name. Brooke locked the library door behind her and left the tent lamp burning. The hundred had a place now. They would not drift. The books would stay in Rust.