Four Past Midnight

It is not accepted at all.

'I suppose,' he said, 'that I'm a little nervous about my speaking debut. And I was up late last night working on this.' He smiled his old good-natured Sam Peebles smile and hoisted the briefcase.

She stood down - a little - but her eyes were still snapping. 'That's understandable. We are here to serve, and, of course, we're always interested in constructive criticism from the taxpayers.' She accented the word constructive ever so slightly, to let him know, he supposed, that his had been anything but.

Now that it was over, he had an urge - almost a need - to make it all over, to smooth it down like the coverlet on a well-made bed. And this was also part of the businessman's habit, he supposed . . . or the businessman's protective coloration. An odd thought occurred to him - that what he should really talk about tonight was his encounter with Ardelia Lortz. It said more about the small-town heart and spirit than his whole written speech. Not all of it was flattering, but it surely wasn't dry. And it would offer a sound rarely heard during Friday-night Rotary speeches: the unmistakable ring of truth.

'Well, we got a little feisty there for a second or two,' he heard himself saying, and saw his hand go out. 'I expect I overstepped my bounds. I hope there are no hard feelings.'

She touched his hand. It was a brief, token touch. Cool, smooth flesh. Unpleasant, somehow. Like shaking hands with an umbrella stand. 'None at all,' she said, but her eyes continued to tell a different story. 'Well then . . . I'll be getting along.'

'Yes. Remember - one week on those, Sam.' She lifted a finger. Pointed a well-manicured nail at the books he was holding. And smiled. Sam found something extremely disturbing about that smile, but he could not for the life of him have said exactly what it was. 'I wouldn't want to have to send the Library Cop after you.'

'No,' Sam agreed. 'I wouldn't want that, either.'

'That's right,' said Ardelia Lortz, still smiling. 'You wouldn't.'

5

Halfway down the walk, the face of that screaming child

(Simple Simon, the kids call him Simple Simon I think that's very healthy, don't you)

recurred to him, and with it came a thought - one simple enough and practical enough to stop him in his tracks. It was this: given a chance to pick such a poster, a jury of kids might very well do so ... but would any Library Association, whether from Iowa, the Midwest, or the country as a whole, actually send one out?

Sam Peebles thought of the pleading hands plastered against the obdurate, imprisoning glass, the screaming, agonized mouth, and suddenly found that more than difficult to believe. He found it impossible to believe.

And Peyton Place. What about that? He guessed that most of the adults who used the Library had forgotten about it. Did he really believe that some of their children - the ones young enough to use the Children's Library - had rediscovered that old relic?

I don't believe that one, either.

He had no wish to incur a second dose of Ardelia Lortz's anger - the first had been enough, and he'd had a feeling her dial hadn't been turned up to anything near full volume - but these thoughts were strong enough to cause him to turn around.

She was gone.

The library doors stood shut, a vertical slot of mouth in that brooding granite face.

Sam stood where he was a moment longer, then hurried down to where his car was parked at the curb.

CHAPTER 3

Sam's Speech

It was a rousing success.

He began with his own adaptations of two anecdotes from the 'Easing Them In' section of The Speaker's Companion - one was about a farmer who tried to wholesale his own produce and the other was about selling frozen dinners to Eskimos - and used a third in the middle (which really was pretty arid). He found another good one in the subsection titled 'Finishing Them Off,' started to pencil it in, then remembered Ardelia Lortz and Best Loved Poems of the American People. You're apt to find your listeners will remember a well-chosen verse even if they forget everything else, she had said, and Sam found a good short poem in the 'Inspiration' section, just as she had told him he might.

He looked down on the upturned faces of his fellow Rotarians and said: 'I've tried to give you some of the reasons why I live and work in a small town like Junction City, and I hope they make at least some sense. If they don't, I'm in a lot of trouble.'

A rumble of good-natured laughter (and a whiff of mixed Scotch and bourbon) greeted this.

Sam was sweating freely, but he actually felt pretty good, and he had begun to believe he was going to get out of this unscathed. The microphone had produced feedback whine only once, no one had walked out, no one had thrown food, and there had only been a few catcalls - good-natured ones, at that.

'I think a poet named Spencer Michael Free summed up the things I've been trying to say better than I ever could. You see, almost everything we have to sell in our small-town businesses can be sold cheaper in bigcity shopping centers and suburban malls. Those places like to boast that you can get just about all the goods and services you'd ever need right there, and park for free in the bargain. And I guess they're almost right. But there is still one thing the small-town business has to offer that the malls and shopping centers don't, and that's the thing Mr Free talks about in his poem. It isn't a very long one, but it says a lot. It goes like this.

''Tis the human touch in this world that counts.

The touch of your hand and mine,

Which means far more to the fainting heart Than shelter and bread and wine;

For shelter is gone when the night is o'er, And bread lasts only a day,

But the touch of the hand and the sound of a voice

Sing on in the soul always.'

Sam looked up at them from his text, and for the second time that day was surprised to find that he meant every word he had just said. He found that his heart was suddenly full of happiness and simple gratitude. It was good just to find out you still had a heart, that the ordinary routine of ordinary days hadn't worn it away, but it was even better to find it could still speak through your mouth.

'We small-town businessmen and businesswomen offer that human touch. On the one hand, it isn't much ... but on the other, it's just about everything. I know that it keeps me coming back for more. I want to wish our originally scheduled speaker, The Amazing Joe, a speedy recovery; I want to thank Craig Jones for asking me to sub for him; and I want to thank all of you for listening so patiently to my boring little talk. So ... thanks very much.'

The applause started even before he finished his last sentence; it swelled while he gathered up the few pages of text which Naomi had typed and which he had spent the afternoon amending; it rose to a crescendo as he sat