The Last Stop on My Book Route

On the second Thursday of October I missed Delmer’s lane.

I had been in that lane a thousand times. I drove right past it, past his mailbox, which I could not make out, and a mile down the road I pulled over onto the shoulder and turned off the motor. I sat. A grain truck went by and blew its horn at me, and I did not know where I was.

I did not know where I was for about four minutes, on a county road in the middle of my own township. The land was flat and gold in every direction and nothing in it would hold still.

I said out loud, “Lord, I would like to know where I am.”

And somewhere in the second minute I did, and it frightened me worse than not knowing had.

I finished the route that day, which shows you what kind of fool I can be. I went to Delmer’s, turned around, and did the rest of it with both hands on the wheel at fifteen miles an hour. I put on my sunglasses to hide that I was crying, which fooled nobody because there was no sun. The last stop, I read Emil eleven pages, and I could see nothing on them. I read half from the page and half out of what I remembered of having read it before.

I phoned Dr. Amundsen’s office from Delmer’s kitchen, and they squeezed me in on the Friday. She measured what was left. She was kind. She sat down on the rolling stool and she said, “Verna, I would be failing you if I let you drive that route another week.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

I said it that easily. If I had had one more minute to think, I would have argued.

Lori drove over from Grand Island that evening. She put the keys in the drawer under the phone book, and I let her.

The Monday I called them

I do not take help well. That one weekend, three women from church telephoned to offer casseroles, and I sent every one of them away with a story about having too much in the freezer. I’d decided to stop the route clean, with no fuss, the way you take off a bandage.

Golda, now the head librarian at fifty-six, came out on the Saturday. She sat at my kitchen table with her purse in her lap. She asked if she could carry the crates herself, on Tuesdays, after the library closed, if I would let her. She said she had been waiting years to be asked. I said I couldn’t ask. She said, “Then I’m asking you, Verna,” and I gave her the crates, the recipe box, and the green notebook.

I called the riders on a Monday, one at a time, in the order I drove them. I had a sentence ready. It said, This is Verna, my eyes have gotten too bad to drive, and from now on Golda Pfeifer will bring your books on Tuesdays. I said it six times.

Thelma said, “Well, that’s a shame,” in the voice you use for weather.

Ruby Ann said, “Golda can’t pick a mystery to save her life.” Then she said, “You’ll be missed,” and hung up quickly, which is how she says the things she means.

Delmer said, “Do I still get my horses?”