LITMIR.BIZ

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I needed to get back to the Barn. Scarlet and I had a book art class scheduled and were going to teach seven women how to make book wreaths that I needed to reschedule for the next day. I could not be late. Yet I didn’t want to bring back the smelly books in the back of the truck either. The odor was overwhelming.

      I approached one of the trash trucks and knocked on the driver’s door. He jumped and grabbed his chest before rolling down his window.

      “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

      “No worries, darlin’. I was just waiting for the boss to show up.”

      “Do you mean Dallas Dover?” I asked.

      “That’s right. In fact, that’s him coming across the lot now.”

      I turned around to see a lanky man wearing jeans, a plaid button-down shirt, and a black leather belt with a silver buckle that had two old Mexican coins adorning the front. The black cowboy hat he wore had feathers plastered across the front. The whole outfit showed off his long dishwater-blond hair and a goatee. A pair of dark wraparound sunglasses hid his eyes and reminded me of biker goggles, but he wore a wide, friendly smile as he pulled off his leather gloves.

      He glanced at the trashman and shook his head. “I’ll be with you guys in a minute.” He turned to me and grinned even larger. “How can I help you ma’am?’

      “Are you Dallas Dover?”

      He nodded and led me toward the trailer. “Yes, ma’am. But we’re not open for business yet. Gary at the gate should have told you that.”

      I thought about the man who’d let me in the driveway. Maybe he’d been trying to wave me back. “Sorry. I thought he was just being friendly.”

      Dallas laughed. “I suppose I can’t fault him for that, now can I? Since you’re already here, what can I do for you?”

      “Mayor Calloway sent me to see you.”

      “The mayor’s a good man.”

      I nodded in agreement. “Yes, he is.”

      As we approached the back of my daddy’s truck, Dallas got a whiff of the books and began looking around for the culprit.

      “That smell is my problem. I own the Book Barn Princess in Hazel Rock and a skunk got into the store and sprayed the books.”

      Dallas chuckled. “I was afraid my breakfast burrito was coming back to haunt me in front of a customer.”

      I smiled but thought I was going to die of embarrassment for him, but Dallas didn’t seem to mind talking about bodily functions with a complete stranger.

      “I hope that’s all it sprayed,” he continued. When I shook my head, he grimaced.

      “That couldn’t have been good.”

      “You have no idea. Can I show you what I have?”

      “Sure thing.”

      As we reached the tailgate, Dallas lifted his shirt and covered his face. “Are you sure it wasn’t a whole herd of skunks?”

      “No, it was just one very aromatic male. He wasn’t happy.”

      “I’d say he sprayed more than once.”

      I hadn’t thought about that, but remembering Mateo and Liza on the floor, I had no doubt the skunk probably had. I pulled a box toward the back of the bed, but Dallas stopped me.

      “I’m sorry but I won’t be able to help you.”

      “What?”

      “We can’t take these in the center. My employees would quit.”

      “But…but…what about the bins outside?” I pointed to the bins where the three drivers waited patiently inside their trash trucks for Dallas. “Or the trucks. They could go directly into the trucks.”

      “I’m sorry, miss, but those are trash trucks. They take what we can’t recycle.”

      I looked over at the trash trucks and saw the different logo on the side. They had two large letter Cs with Waste Services printed below them.

      Fuzz buckets. I wasn’t sure how I’d missed the Coleman County logo. “But you can’t recycle these. Couldn’t they take my boxes?”

      “I would be in violation of the contract I have with them. We aren’t supposed to accept trash here, it’s only the trash we inadvertently pick up. If I took this in front of the drivers…

      I can’t break the contract, but you could put them in the trash or take them directly to the dump.”

      I thanked Dallas for his time and got back in my daddy’s truck. I’d already thought of his suggestions and decided against them. They weren’t viable options. For one, my trash pickup was Wednesday morning. It was Thursday. Where in the world would I put these boxes for the next week? I’d also thought of taking them to the dump, but a “green” candidate couldn’t have his name associated with such a move, and Cade’s stuff couldn’t be handed off to dump personnel to go into a landfill. Nor could books stamped with the Book Barn’s trademark tiara stamp. We were located in his town. We were his friends. We, namely I, could be a blemish on his career. The last thing in the world I wanted credit for was being the boil that busted his career.

      I backed up and drove past the trash trucks raising the recycle bins to empty into their beds, but all I could think about was what I had to do. It was the last thing any bookstore owner would even consider. Yet I had no choice.

      I had to burn the books.

      Chapter 4

      After leaving the recycling plant, I immediately called the sheriff’s office and advised the dispatcher that I was going to be burning debris behind the Barn. It was a lie, and I felt sick about my blatant disregard for the law and the environment. The dispatcher, however, told me I had to wait twenty-four hours. It seemed Mother Nature didn’t particularly care for my decision to have a book burning. She’d kicked up the winds to stop me.

      The entire rest of the day I pouted. I unloaded every stinky box of books from daddy’s truck by myself before anyone else caught wind of what I was doing and carted them into the middle of the backyard. Once there, I cussed them and arranged them neatly into a symmetrical pyre that would ignite easily. Then I hauled branches that had fallen off the trees in the last wind advisory to the pyre. Daddy normally took them to the county’s recycling center. Not this time, though. They were the camouflage for my crime.

      Which spoke volumes to how low I’d sunk.

      I’d also cleaned the Barn and used the skunk scent remover on the floorboards, shelves, and tables in the loft. The wood on the tables survived the onslaught. The old wood floors and the shelves, however, were going to need some TLC. Instead of sorting through the books and taking the titles out of inventory one stinky volume at a time, Sugar had suggested taking photos of them and using the photos to delete them from the program. It worked like a charm, and three hundred and sixty-one books were wiped out of inventory.

      The number alone was staggering. The value to the Barn was worse. Yet it couldn’t be helped. If I looked on the bright side, only used books had been damaged. The new books were on the lower level and although some of the scent went downstairs, the inventory downstairs had been protected from spray and residual fog by the shelves of books that were destroyed in the loft. Still, taking that quantity of books out of our inventory made me ill. To top off my really bad day, Princess didn’t want my company that night after my second chemical shower. She wanted to go out and stay out. She never stayed out overnight. It seemed her new friend was more appealing than me.

      When I lay my head on my pillow and closed my eyes, I thought the nightmare would finally be over. It wasn’t. All night long the smell from the pyre in my backyard wafted in through the deck doors to my bedroom. I had dreams of smelling like skunk for the rest of my life with Cade opening a skunk perfume store and Mateo giving me a bottle of skunk perfume for my birthday.

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