You do your own time

There we were, a regular murderers’ row of librarians. Little Jo. Eustace. And me. Turning around in the nave of our library to greet the sound of footsteps, pistols leveled in case whoever was coming in didn’t respect sanctuary. Little Jo had a stack of books under one arm. Eustace was holding the screwdriver she’d been using to tune the aneroid barometer. Eustace had painted height lines on the big double doorframe, as only half a joke. When the wanderer paused, outlined within, the eiroscope and I both registered that they were exactly five feet, ten inches. With their Cool Hand Luke hat on.  They paused, boots scattering sand on the threshold. A narrow straight-hipped silhouette against the white noon light falling from the white, white sky. The doors had been open to catch a breath of wind, but there wasn’t any. So when the stranger swayed, it wasn’t from the gale.  “Sanctuary,” they croaked, and remeasured their length onto the rug between the smoothed trunks that held the loft up. The Stetson went rolling. Little Jo dropped her stack of books and her pistol and dashed forward. I jumped at the noise but holstered my own shooter in case I came to need it. We each grabbed an armpit and dragged the outlaw’s feet inside the threshold, grunting, lickety-split. I slipped their floppy pack off, empty metal water bottles clanking as I set it aside. Eustace helped us roll them, and I laid the soft of my wrist on their head. Hot as Hades, but still tacky. Moist enough that my skin gave a reluctant pop when I lifted my arm. Not past saving.  “Let’s get them someplace cool,” I said. “Little Jo, go empty out the ice machine.” Eustace and I toted our fugitive down to the cellar, using the rug as a stretcher. It was Diné, vermilion with black and gray, and I was glad they hadn’t thrown up on it. Though that wool had seen worse. Mehitabel, the black cat, watched us from atop the timber lintel of the cellar access. Her tail tip flicked incuriously. She was on pack rat watch. Aloof from human antics. The cellar was narrow, low, and stocked with Eustace’s blue corn lager in bottles, prickly pear jam, potatoes, and the few hard-rind squash still left over. The mud walls were whitewashed, and while it wasn’t quite cool, it was better than the outside. We stripped off the stranger’s clothes, trying to slit along the seams so we could repair them later. City stuff, mass-produced and machine-woven. Little Jo brought the ice and went back upstairs to watch alongside the eiroscope in case pursuit was close behind. The stranger’s eyes flew open, and they screamed when I packed wet cold pillowcases against their pink bits. Eustace had to hold their battling hands away from their genitals until they settled.  Those were good signs. Brown eyes blinked between heavy creases. “What the hell—” “I’m Ponyboy,” I told them. “She. PhD. I’m one of the librarians here. This is Eustace. She, MLS.” They struggled to sit upright. “Shhh.” Eustace pushed them down and laid an ice-soaked cloth across their eyes. “You’re heat-sick.” “Sanctuary,” they whispered. “Did I say?” “You did. This is the Bōchord. You made it. Must have been a long walk.”  We continued packing ice around them—into their armpits now. They yelped and moaned but gave up fighting. “What’s your name?” “Guh—” Too long a pause to be believable. “Gibson. She.”  “Welcome to Judgement, Gibson,” I said. “Sorry about the cold, but it’s got to stay there for a little.” “My pack,” she said, shrilling. “My pack. I need it.” “It’s safe,” Eustace told her. “You just relax and we’ll get it for you.” When I came back out the nave was still and heavy in the heat, as if nothing had happened. Little Jo had turned one of the bumpy-backed wooden chairs to face the door and was sitting on it, hands buried in tiered skirt ruffles between her knees.  I looked left, two steps up into the sanctuary, but all was calm, the work I’d left—cataloguing—still heaped on the blond wood altar tab