Mildred glared at the boy, who stared dumbly back. Her first impression was unfavorable. He was not a cute child. Barely presentable, in fact. It was impossible to see him and imagine a mother who found him to be adorable, who was proud of him. His head was large and blocky. He had stiff brown hair on his head pushed up in a coxcomb, no doubt by the wind. It made him look like a cartoon figure plummeting from a great height, or theatrically frightened. His skin was pallid except for brown freckles on his cheekbones and over the bridge of his nose. The nose was wide, the tip flat as if someone were pressing a finger against it. The mouth was likewise wide, and a half-inch scar running at an upward slant from the right corner gave him an ironic look, although there was nothing ironic in his eyes. They were a watery blue, hooded under heavy brows. Only his chin might lay claim to cuteness, in Mildred’s opinion. It was a perky little dome of fat that jutted out and sported a small dimple. His body was stocky, and he held himself stiffly, hands fisted at his sides. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, checked blue and white, buttoned up all the way to his throat and tucked into jeans, the bottoms of which were turned up in four-inch cuffs. The black Keds, torn and sand-stained, were off-putting to Mildred.
He was not a child whose mother dressed him thoughtfully. He was a child dressed quickly and dismissed, gotten out of the house to play after school, so the mother could have time to herself. That was the way it looked.
Imagining motherhood. It was something that Mildred often did when there were no patrons in the library, which was the norm. She occasionally imagined how other women must feel about their children, but that was only for contrast. Her imagination more often conjured a child she herself would have one day. Sometimes it was a girl, whom Mildred could dress up and share confidences with. Sometimes a boy, whom she could prepare for college and brag about.
This boy was not her sort. Not at all. He was unpromising. Mildred understood that intelligence could hide behind all kinds of faces. Even so, he did not look very bright. He just stood there, lumpish as slag.
Nonetheless, Mildred put on a little smile for him. She always encouraged the young to read. It was part of her job as the county librarian, but beyond that she believed in the power of literacy to improve the young, believed in it more than anything, except maybe for her belief in marriage and children in her future. That was only a matter of time. For now, she relished introducing a child to books. This boy was obviously in need of it.
“Are you looking for a book?” Mildred asked the boy.
He took a long time before nodding, yes. His eyes stayed vacant, but they also stayed on Mildred, unwaveringly. She grew uneasy.
“Can you read?” she asked, a little sharply. The boy nodded again, but Mildred was unconvinced. “How old are you?” In a gesture too babyish for his age, the boy held up one hand, the fingers splayed. Five, thought Mildred, then, startled, did a double take. No, four.
It was a sickening shock. The hand had three fingers and a thumb. He raised his other hand, showing two fingers. He was six.
“What is your name?” she demanded, to cover her disquiet.
It was the only time that Mildred ever heard his voice. He emitted a throaty rasp, as if he were just getting over a bad cold or hadn’t spoken in a long, long time. Mildred made out an m, t, g, n, and s, but it wasn’t at all clear how they went together. She winced. Harshness aside, it did not seem to be a boy’s voice, or not a pleasant boy’s voice. Surprisingly deep for one so young, it was also dry and hollow, like the voice heard on TV in another room. She shivered again—once. A short, sharp clench.
When she asked him to repeat his name, he just gaped at her. She ran through the sounds in her mind, thinking now that the boy was simple and she would have to call the county juvenile officer to come and take care of him. She would need a name to give to the officer. M-t-g-n-s: Several people came to mind whose names had those consonants. She tried them out. He nodded, or appeared to, at the last, Matthew Gans.
It was all very frustrating.
Gans. She knew of the family, of course. Matt Gans was the new auto shop teacher at Mineral County High School, a position that automatically put him in the town’s upper crust. The family had arrived the previous summer, but Mildred did not meet Mr. and Mrs. Gans until December.
It happened at a Christmas party. She was making her way round the crowded, cluttered, loud living room of Michael Callahan, the high school principal, when all of a sudden there they were, face to face, she and Mr. Gans. Immediately, he began chatting, asking about her job and family and prospects. Mildred was charmed. A fine figure of a man, open and dynamic. With an attractive wife, however, who allowed her husband only a short exchange. That was because, Mildred sensed, Mr. Gans displayed interest in her. She imagined the wife seeing a pretty younger woman captivating her husband and being a little jealous. It sent a pleasant warmth through Mildred. Titillating—she permitted herself that word only on rare occasions; the short conversation with Matt Gans was exactly that. About children of Matt and … Misty? … yes, Misty Gans, she could not recall having heard. Although of course a married male high school teacher would have children, she told herself. Didn’t they always, though.
Her eyes refocused on the boy. “Is Matthew Gans your father or your name?”
Maddeningly, the boy nodded again. But it struck Mildred then: he could be Matthew Gans, Junior. With a speech impediment. And shy. Well, she couldn’t hold those against him. A test, though, might establish his identity and whether he could in fact read at the same time. Mildred wrote out the four names she had pronounced to him and held it up for him to read.
“Which is you?” she asked.
Slowly, gently, he reached out and slipped the list from her fingers, and without looking it over held it at shoulder height. Mildred was taken aback. She dismissed the urge to order the boy away, however, or call the juvenile authorities right then and there. Every child deserved a chance. Instead, she became brisk.
A few more questions and a few more nods, and she established that he was not a library member, was willing to become one, and could write his own name on the small beige card with rounded edges that she set in front of him on the very edge of her desk. Hesitating, he laid the list beside it, took the pen that Mildred offered (she nearly lost patience), rested one forearm on the desktop, canted his head at a sharp angle in the opposite direction from his pen hand, and painstakingly filled in two blocky letters on the empty line below “Mineral County Library.” M and G, widely spaced. The letters, if ungraceful, were the same size and on the line, exactly as Mildred liked. Yet as he wrote, the odd notion came to her that the boy was not writing them, but drawing them. Odd, too, that he should set down the capital letters first. She waited for him to fill in the rest of the names. He didn’t, though. He set down the pen and stared at the capitals.
Sweeping the card away and reversing it, she added “atthew” to the M and “ans” to the G: Matthew Gans. After a hesitation, she put in “Jr.,” then assigned him a member number, dated and signed the card herself, and handed it back to him explaining that he was allowed to check out one book for a week from the children’s section. When she asked whether he knew what “check out” meant, he made no sign in response, so she explained how a lending library worked. It became evident to her, after a time, that she sounded high-handed, a little mean even, in giving a long explanation. And she was doing it because the boy was not likable, seemed slow. So she brought the library lecture to a sudden end by asking him what sort of book he would like to check out first.
Atop a low bookshelf next to her desk, the bookshelf she reserved for recent publications that she recommended to patrons, Mildred had propped several volumes for young adults and children. She pointed to the books on the shelf and prompted, “Do you like any of these?” The question made the boy appear suddenly closed, as if his eyes actually retreated into his head. It could have been a trick of the light. When the boy followed Mildred’s gesture and looked at the books, he was also facing away from sunlight flooding in through the high window behind Mildred’s desk and toward the comparatively shadowed area of the bookshelf; the pupils of his eyes dilated. Nothing so mundane and mechanical occurred