Part 3 — The Little Library
Tamara pointed with her whole arm toward the end of our street, past the church doors, as if she were showing the way to a lost child.
“It is under the false bottom of the Little Free Library at the end of the cul-de-sac. Garrett built that box himself. He thought nobody would ever look inside a box of paperbacks.”
Forty neighbors stood up as one. The deputies followed us out of the hall, the three of them, quiet as shadows.
The Little Free Library stood at the corner under the streetlight, a wooden box on a post with a glass door and a hand-painted sign. Inside it were thirty paperbacks, a Bible and a tattered book of crossword puzzles.
A young deputy lifted out the books. The bottom shelf was a thin board with a screw at each corner. He unscrewed it with a pocketknife and lifted it.
Underneath lay a plastic bank deposit bag zipped shut and fat as a pillow.
The deputy counted it on the hood of his cruiser while the neighbors watched. Eleven thousand, three hundred and forty dollars in cash.
I rolled that old womans trash can to the curb for nine years, and in the end it was her butterscotch candy that made me count the doors on my own street.
Garrett was brought out of the church hall by the third deputy, gray and silent. He did not shout. He asked, at the door of the cruiser, if somebody could feed his dog.
Idaho takes theft of this size seriously, and the prosecutor in Canyon County told us it was a felony. But he also said that restitution would be a central part of any resolution, and the neighbors could make a victim statement.
Garretts bass boat was sold in November for twenty-six thousand dollars. With the eleven thousand from the library and the proceeds from the boat, the court was able to return thirty-one thousand of the thirty-four thousand to the families. Gert and Hank Dobbs got their nine thousand. Mr. Ochoa, on his oxygen, got his four thousand seven hundred fifty.
Wilma got her six thousand two hundred, in a check I carried to her door myself.
I called the propane company that morning and ordered a full tank. The truck came by at noon, and the driver did not charge a delivery fee. By two oclock the house smelled of warm dust and furnace, and Wilma took her coat off for the first time in a month.
Tamara organized a real winter fund that December. It had three signers and a public ledger, and it bought heaters for eleven households.
Saturday morning I rolled the trash can to the curb. There was a butterscotch on the lid, and a Post-it that said, “For the driver. Thank you, Wayne.”