Page 62 of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Book
“Did you?” Delvin asked.
“Put the gun down, Logan.”
Delvin’s head swiveled toward the voice. Jeb had just come around the corner with a pistol in his hand.
“Well, well. Look who’s here.” Logan’s face crumpled, and his lower lip trembled as he spoke. “If it isn’t Jeb Sweeney, the fakest motherfucker around. You know I used to pray every night that you were my dad? Then Hollis pulled me out of Little League. Took away the only thing I was ever good at. I thought for sure you’d come save me. But you never asked why I was gone or bothered to come check on me. Do you have any fucking idea what I had to live with?”
“I didn’t know—” Jeb said.
“Fuck you.”
Logan took aim and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 26
The Art of Crochet
Jonathan Bartlett sat at the table in the high school teachers’ lounge, sipping his fourth cup of coffee and scrolling through Facebook. Since the town’s newspaper had gone belly up three years earlier, Facebook was Troy’s sole source of local news—if that’s what you wanted to call the gossip, hearsay, wild speculation, conspiracy theories, and general insanity that Jonathan’s neighbors tossed with their fact salads. You had to know a person’s political leanings, astrological signs, and pharmaceutical history if you wanted to interpret their “news” correctly. Sorting the facts from the fiction was exhausting, confusing, and occasionally hilarious. Like the time Viola Lewis was discovered wandering the beer aisle at Walmart in a thong at six in the morning. Soon the whole town was captivated by a detailed account of her alien abduction. It wasn’t till days later that her sister, Violet, popped into the comments to report that Viola had misread the dosage on her Ambien prescription.
It got worse than that, of course. Seemed like somebody was always being accused of Satanism or sleeping around. As a teacher, Jonathan pitied any historian who might one day try to make sense of it all. But like everyone in Troy, he was hooked. Feeling like a junkie, Jonathan refreshed his feed. The talk today was about Logan Walsh. Melody Sykes had just posted a clip from Channel Four.
Reports of Walsh’s involvement with a local white nationalist group have not been confirmed and no evidence of any such affiliation was uncovered during a search of his home. Nathan Dugan, a forty-year-old Troy resident whose neo-Nazi sympathies were revealed earlier this spring, was known to many as Walsh’s mentor. Reached in San Antonio, where he has been staying with his mother, Dugan told reporters that he believed Walsh was struggling with his sexuality. News Channel Four has not been able to confirm or deny that Walsh was gay. We have, however, confirmed that a copy ofTheCatcher in the Ryewas found in his home. As you may recall, John Hinckley was carrying the same book the day he attempted to assassinate President Reagan. Walsh appears to have attempted to hide the book’s title by wrapping it in the cover ofManhoodby Senator Josh Hawley.
Do y’all need any more proof that these gay books are dangerous!!!!Lula had commented below.
Manhood. Jonathan had recently come across a book with that cover. He could see the red and white letters on a red background—and the name of the senator (an Ivy League graduate with a three-hundred-dollar haircut and bespoke suits) who’d written it. Though it wasn’t the kind of book that would ordinarily catch his eye, Jonathan knew exactly where he’d seen it. Lula Dean’s purple library.
Jonathan set his phone down on the table. He closed his eyes, touched his middle fingers to his thumbs, and began the breathing exercises his therapist had taught him. He needed to calm the hell down. His blood pressure had just shot so high he was watching fireworks on the backs of his eyelids. It was only twelve-thirty and school wasn’t over until three. There were still two and a half hours left before he was free to murder Lula Dean.
For the past two years, it had taken a monumental show of self-restraint to keep Lula’s (mostly metaphorical) blood off his hands. Jonathan crossed the street when he saw her coming. He turned off the TV whenever Lula showed up on the news. He did give in to temptation one night and drive around collecting lawn signs for her mayoral campaign. He’d taken themhome, shot them up with a pellet gun, and set them all ablaze. But so far, that was the worst he’d done.
Sometimes he lay asleep at night, dreaming up horrible fates for her. Eaten by feral hogs was a personal favorite. So was tying her to a bedbug-ridden mattress and watching her slowly sucked dry until there was nothing left but a withered, desiccated husk. Others were a little less fanciful and a few didn’t even involve murder. But none of them could be seen through to fruition because he’d promised Elliot he wouldn’t.
Elliot Minter was Jonathan’s best friend. For years, they’d lived just down the street from each other. They worked at the same school, where Jonathan taught American and European history and Elliot was the beloved musical director. They ate lunch together. They celebrated Christmas at each other’s homes. Every Tuesday night, they played Dungeons & Dragons. And after Jonathan’s wife died of cancer at age thirty-eight, Elliot Minter kept Jonathan alive.
During the months when Jonathan couldn’t find the will to live, Elliot let himself in every morning to make coffee and lure Jonathan out of bed. He made sure Jonathan wore clean clothes and drove him to work. In the evening, Elliot cooked them both dinner. For half a year, Elliot sacrificed his personal life. He kept Jonathan going until he was able to function on his own.
Elliot was a saint. Lula Dean would rot in hell for what she’d done to him.
Everyone in Troy knew Elliot was gay. He didn’t discuss it with most people—because who the hell discusses their private life with a bunch of gossips they barely know? But it wasn’t asecretand Elliot certainly wasn’t ashamed. Under his direction, the music department put on two musicals every year—a feat few heterosexuals could have ever accomplished.
Then, ten years into Elliot’s tenure at Troy High School, an email arrived in the principal’s inbox. Attached were two pictures of the musical director kissing a handsome, leather-clad man outside a gay bar in Atlanta at three o’clock in the morning.Elliot Minter is grooming innocent young people to be perverted and promiscuous,said the note that accompanied the images. The email had been sent from an anonymous address. Later that day, having received no response, the note and pictures began popping up in people’s Facebook feeds from an account called Protectors of the Innocent. Most of the early comments were from women gushing over Elliot’s incredibly hot lover. Then Nathan Dugan and a couple of other bigots picked up the story and ran with it.
I do not want this pedo anywhere near my son, Nathan wrote.
“Pedo?” Elliot had come carefully to Jonathan’s house to strategize over gin and tonics. “The guy I’m kissing in the photos is three years older than me. For fuck’s sake, he’s in finance.”
Is this the lifestyle a high school teacher should be living?Melody Sykes asked, phrasing her comment as a question so she couldn’t be called out if the situation ended up going the other way.
“What the hell is thislifestyleshe’s talking about?” Elliot asked. “I was kissing a hedge fund bro. We weren’t renovating a historic bed-and-breakfast.”
“Nobody’s asking why the person sending the pictures was outside a gay bar at three in the morning,” Jonathan pointed out. He’d assumed the stalker’s identity was as much a mystery to Elliot as anyone else at that point.
“It was Lula Dean,” Elliot announced flatly.
“Lula Dean?” Jonathan repeated. “That prissy woman with the little white dog and orange hair?” At that point, Lula hadn’t found the dirty cake book that would lead her to fame. “How the hell did you reachthatconclusion?”
“I know who she was there to see that night.” After he told Jonathan the truth—and shared a few pictures—he swore him to secrecy.
