Chapter Three: The Route Nobody Counted
On Saturday I drove to Briar County before sunrise.
I did not tell Laura where I was going.
We had slept in separate rooms, and we had not spoken beyond matters concerning the house.
The Marigold bookmobile was parked behind the county maintenance shed when I arrived.
Its driver, Inez Calder, was securing a box of returned books with an elastic strap.
She recognized my name and did not offer her hand.
“You’re one of the people trying to park my bus.”
“I’m one of the people who signed a bad assumption.”
“That sounds more polite.”
“It isn’t meant to.”
I told her I wanted to ride the route and observe without interviewing anyone on camera.
She crossed her arms.
“You can ride if you carry boxes and don’t ask people to perform gratitude for your report.
”
“Agreed.”
I climbed aboard and found a narrow aisle lined with shelves, a tiny desk, and a heater that rattled on every turn.
There were children’s novels with cracked spines, seed catalogs, large-print mysteries, and instruction books for repairing farm equipment.
A paper calendar near the driver’s seat had hand-drawn stars marking visits to Pine Hollow, Mercer Junction, and the Red Mill senior apartments.
“My model shows nineteen appointments at Pine Hollow last month,” I said.
Inez snorted.
“I carried ninety-seven books off this bus on the last visit alone.”
“Are those separate borrowers?”
“Some are.”
“How many?”
“You can count while I work.”
At Pine Hollow, the bus stopped beside a former grocery store where the asphalt had grown grass through its cracks.
A line had formed before the doors opened.
An elderly man returned a stack of western novels tied with twine.
A teenager collected examination guides for a nursing program.
Two sisters selected picture books and argued over which one could carry the heavier bag.
A woman in a work uniform asked Inez to print a housing application because her phone would not display the form.
The online appointment system counted only the teenager, who had reserved her guides through the county portal.
The other visitors used paper cards or arrived without reservations.
“How many people got served?” I asked when we left.
“Thirty-one,” Inez said.
“The dashboard would count one.”
“The dashboard never helped anybody put a book in a child’s hands.”
At the next stop, an older resident named Mr. Fenwick needed a large-print cookbook with recipes suitable for his dietary restrictions.
Inez found two options and explained why the simpler one might work better with his equipment.
He did not use the digital catalog because the county’s website required a password he had forgotten months earlier.
At Red Mill, a mother picked up books for three children while her infant slept against her shoulder.
She described how the bus’s weekly visits had helped her oldest child catch up after struggling to read aloud in class.
“The school library closes before I finish work,” she told me.
“Are you the consultant?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should come when it’s raining.”
“Why?”
“Because people wait anyway.”
By late afternoon I had counted eighty-six individual visitors, but only eleven had appeared in the online appointment record.
The route was not efficient by a narrow calculation of digital consultations per mile.
It was indispensable by almost every measure the community used to describe it.
Inez parked the bus at the maintenance yard and watched me gather my notes.
“Do you understand why I’m angry?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think you do.”
She opened a locker and removed a binder filled with handwritten attendance sheets.
“They asked us to record names and visits, so we did.”
“Did you send these to Westbridge?”
“Every Friday.”
“Who received them?”
“Your client experience people.”
She showed me an email address, and I recognized Laura’s team distribution list.
“Those totals weren’t included,” I said.
“I know.”
“Did anyone explain why?”
“One young man told me our numbers weren’t verifiable because they were handwritten.”
“What man?”
“Adrian something.”
Inez closed the binder.
“He offered to arrange a digital demonstration so the county could see how outdated our work looked.”
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the November wind.
“When is the demonstration?”
“Wednesday afternoon.”
“The day before the vote.”
“That’s what he said.”
On my drive home, I called Nadia and described the attendance sheets.
She did not interrupt until I reached the planned demonstration.
“Michael, our presentation has a slide about the demonstration.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“It’s in a version your account apparently approved Friday night.”
I had been on the road Friday night, buying groceries and trying not to look at Laura’s empty side of the bed.
“I didn’t approve anything.”
“Then we have a bigger problem.”
