The
Attic
Notebooks
Tom Darling
Smashword Edition
Published Beach Chair Press at Smashmouth
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The Attic Notebooks © Tom Darling
The Night Librarian © Tom Darling
ISBN: 10: 1-889543-06-3
ISBN-13: 9781889543062
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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The
Attic
Notebooks
First Notebook
DEVON UNION HIGH SCHOOL
“High Standards in All Fields”
Student: Jackson, Agnes
Year: Freshman
FALL ACADEMIC SCHEDULE
Homeroom: Homeroom: Ellis: Woodshop
Period 1: Woodshop: Ellis: Woodshop
Period 2: English 100: Smith: 101
Period 3: Lunch: Staff: Cafeteria
Period 4: Study Hall: Staff: Study Hall
* * * * *
Woodshop
“Agnes Jackson,” Mr. Ellis barks.
Until Mr. Ellis’ voice cuts through my daydream, I am looking up School Street as it stretches away from the tall window of the shop. The big maples that line the road drop their leaves, leaving them to scrape along the patchy school lawn. The Devon School is up that hill, beyond the curve, its neat brick buildings dotting the faultless lawns, students holding field hockey sticks and maroon binders in their clean hands. They are starting their freshman year in high school with their future ahead of them. I, on the other hand, am holding two long blocks of wood that have been glued together, waiting to be made into a decorative half-spindle.
I startle, glance at Mr. Ellis’ snarl and straighten up.
“It’s your turn at the lathe,” he says, looking up from his work.
Flustered, I set my block of wood tightly in the lathe with my long fingers, nails bitten, and proceed to butcher it at a great speed. My height requires that I lean down—I am taller than most of the boys in the class—and while I shape this block my glasses slide down again and again. Focusing on the task at hand, I can’t push my glasses back up my nose. I won‘t wear the safety goggles Mr. Ellis left by the shop door because they’re scratched up and the straps are all stretched out anyway. I don’t like Woodshop but the school board requires it—even for students who will never work in a mill—even though all of the mills have closed. My time at the lathe is longer than I want—I want to not be there at all—but it’s required to pass the course.
Done.
My block is basically round, with decorative nicks and burn marks. The char of burning wood hangs in the air. Again, Mr. Ellis looks up and at me. Putting the chisel away, I touch the tip of the blade and burn my finger. Mr. Ellis frowns at me, seeing me pull my hand back sharply.
Mr. Ellis is missing the index finger on his left hand. It’s a cliché, the woodshop teacher missing a digit, but DU travels in clichés. He is sixty, and never uses safety glasses or ear plugs. Every day he wears a blue work shirt and matching blue Dickies, with a darker blue shop coat over it all. From his deep coat pockets he takes carpenter pencils, unused ear plugs, drill bits, rubber bands to serve as hair ties, or used tissues. The woodshop is cold, and the collar of his thermal shirt sticks visibly above his top button like a weed from a stone wall. With a stoop in his back from bending over lathes his entire career and a smoker’s gravel in his voice, he asks, “Are you going to do more on the lathe?”
“Why?” I reply.
Another student is already sliding into place behind me.
Everyone needs the lathe, but we have only one that works. Two more lathe carcasses lay nearby, cannibalized for parts. Even if I want to do more, I would have to wait for another turn; Jesse Bouvier, tightening his piece into place, will not give up his turn unless Mr. Ellis specifically demands it.
“I took a block of wood and made it round,” I say.
I hold up my recently minted and slightly chipped dowel.
“I’m a woodworking goddess.”
Mr. Ellis looks at me, and, as usual, does not smile.
“Apparently, even goddesses make mistakes,” he says.
Several people around Mr. Ellis’ desk laugh. Because there are only four machines—lathe, table saw, band saw and drill press—the other sixteen students wait. Later, there would be sanding and staining to do, which we could all do at once, but as first quarter ends—with one
hundred and twenty three days left to go—we all need the machines. Four of us work and sixteen wait.
“I like the simplicity,” I say when the chuckles die out, holding the dowel behind my back, more to hide my hands than my shoddy workmanship.
“You’re simple,” a student rings out. Repetition with a twist is what passes for wit at Devon Union High School. I smile out of a girl’s survivor instinct, and say nothing.
“Simplicity is an important aesthetic,” Mr. Ellis grunts, ignoring the comment. “But I’m supposed to make sure you know how to use the lathe.” Eying the clock, there are twenty-three minutes before I leave for English 100. Behind me the lathe starts with the low warble of a slightly off-center block, and as Jesse puts the chisel to his block of wood I can no longer hear anything Mr. Ellis says.
English 100
Mr. Ellis is entertaining in his stories, so three or four students often occupy his desk, most often boys. He knows everyone’s father, either from the mills, the dump, or having taught them years ago. Most of his stories involve someone they all know, usually doing something stupid a long time ago. For some, he is a surrogate father, a role he accepts because he knows the kid’s father and that the inconvenience of this role is nothing compared to the pain those kids feel. He knows my father, and why I fear the lathe, so he leaves me alone.
Each morning, as I leave for school, my father pours what he did not drink of his coffee back into the carafe of the coffee maker. My mother makes me a single piece of dry toast, which I grab with my left hand as I sling my backpack onto my right shoulder. Until sixth grade I had eaten cereal while my mother warmed up my father’s black cup of coffee, and left with some sort of fruit. My father had both arms then. Now it is a slice of dry toast and tea first thing, a second piece of dry toast as I leave, then nothing until lunch, where I drink coffee and eat slices of turkey from a reusable plastic container my mother packed and put in my backpack while I still slept.
“What are you reading?” my mother asks.
I have little to tell her.
No one reads.
Taking a bite of dry toast-2, I mumble something purposefully unintelligible. This is our daily routine, ending with the slap of the storm door.
“Hey, Lenore,” Dan says, on this fifty-seventh day of school, as I turn the corner of my street.
Dan: Did you do the reading?
Me: No. Does it matter?
Dan: No. The book did not choose me, either.
He is mocking our English 100 teacher, Mr. Smith.
We do not choose the book; the book chooses us.
That is what Mr. Smith tells us.
I did not choose Smith’s class; the class chose me.
A bit on the thin side, glasses, thinning hair and a penchant for bad puns, Mr. Smith looks like someone who coaches the middle school girls’ basketball team to a mediocre season when no one else takes the position. Well, that’s true; he does coach and they are mediocre. Wearing a light blue oxford shirt, loose tie askew, his steady voice calling over the squeaking of sneakers and bouncing of the ball, Mr. Smith tries to hold players to a basic offensive and defensive scheme that breaks down each time the direction of the ball changes. Parents bully him from the sidelines. Every kid plays and they lose because of it. His freshman English class is much the same. He wears the same shirt and tie, even.
Every few weeks Mr. Smith passes out a new text and, after the complaining ceases, says, “We do not choose the book; the book chooses us.”
Groan.
Everyone takes English 100 their freshman year: It’s that “everybody plays” philosophy at work. Even if you fail it, you just take English 200 the next year, hope for the best and double up on indistinctly titled courses like Communications or Foundations of Composition and Literature in an attempt to graduate on time. Many people simply drop out. The drop-out rate at Devon Union High School is around thirty percent; another twenty can be counted on to skip on any given day. English 100, though, packs the room. It is literally standing room only on the first day, until some places on the floor are cleared to sit on.
Not that Mr. Smith is popular.
He is a benign pushover, well-walked on.
To trim the budget, the school board only approves buying enough furniture for sixty-five percent of each room under the theory that a third never shows up. Very pragmatic, except freshman courses always hover near capacity as the new wave of lethargic learners make an attempt to buckle down and fly right before failing at life. Entering high school is like a near death experience; your life flashes before you and you swear you’ll change, only to do the same dumb stuff a month later. Mr. Smith also has the smallest room in the wing, a half-room located at the end of the English corridor by the stairs where the druggies hang out. By the fifty-seventh day of the year, a few days after the first quarter report cards are sent home, the room thins out enough for everyone to find a seat.
Instructed to take out A Separate Peace, which half of the class has forgotten, no one moves in anticipation of what comes next.
“Let us visit Gene and Phineas,” Mr. Smith says.
Groan.
Mr. Smith’s spends ten minutes settling everybody down, collecting the few assignments that are done, offering extensions to a few others, and changing his attendance as more students trickle in. Each new student brings a new round of greetings from friends, making classroom control difficult. When the class finally shuts up enough, Mr. Smith again says, “Let us visit Gene and Phineas.”
Groan.
This is our prompt. A Separate Peace is a pretty good novel, though there is always groaning and complaining among those who have not read it. Another five minutes are spent dealing with student drama—some do not have their books, and then there are the excuses of those who did not read it.
Do not read it.
Will not read it.
Do not have the book.
Are in the wrong classroom.
Mr. Smith actually cares about their explanations. Everybody plays. Other teachers ignore the empty, bookless desktops, or wave off anyone caring enough to explain their lapse in reading.
Not Mr. Smith.
He tries to problem solve, suggesting that people share their copies of the story. It worked on the first week, but then the feeling of fraternity withered. Friends want to share with friends, even as neither has a copy. The sleepers do not want to move. My ex-friend Sophie MacDonald wants her own copy; she has been responsible, has brought her copy, and feels she deserves her solitude. I hide my copy until everyone works their problems out. Finally, after another five minutes of negotiation, just a third of the class has nothing in front of them.
“Please take your feet off of the chair,” Mr. Smith says to Sophie.
He says this every day, sometimes at the start of class, sometimes at the end. Today it is fifteen minutes in. Sophie complies for the rest of the class period. Tomorrow her feet will be on the chair. She has always been like this, pushing the teachers and the rules. Sophie has come back from summer pale, her hair lank and stringy looking. She now dresses in shapeless clothes, grey cardigans and baggy worn t-shirts with old slogans on them. Middle school Sophie was a soccer camp addict, bouncing back to school tan and chirpy in her hardened, exacting way. Freshman Sophie scowls, but does not speak. Instead, she slowly pulls her feet off the seat in front of her and slouches, looking bored. She runs her thumbnail across her closed book’s pages; a quick zipping noise.
Then Mr. Smith retells the plot for those who… well, everyone but Sophie. These result in what Mr. Smith calls “snowballs.” Bored, I write a definition of a snowball on the vocabulary worksheet I only half complete as a snowball rolls out before us.
Snowball: Noun? A discussion out of control. When a connection is made between the material in class and a student, that student verbalizes the connection. A second student connects to the statement of the first. A third student then connects to the second student’s comment. As more students make connections to the previous statement, the discussion gets further from the original material being presented.
“…So, Phineas and Gene played this game called blitzball,” Mr. Smith says, “that had no score, no teams, and consisted of running, passing and tackling.”
“We used to play a game like that at recess,” Student A says. He has no book on his desk.
“Remember when Larry got his leg broken in fifth grade,” Student B says from the back row.
“I broke my jaw at that party last year,” Student C says. “That blowout….”
Within twenty seconds, ten separate conversations that have nothing to do with Phineas, Gene, John Knowles, private schools or even a ball-centered sport are occurring throughout the room. Two or three snowballs result (I had an uncle who lost his finger in a table saw while up at The School) from the most basic retelling of the plot. After five minutes of confusion about the concept of conflict, someone says something profound about the text (I thought the kid with the broken leg was an idiot) but is unable to back it up.
Student D: I thought the kid with the broken leg was an idiot.
Mr. Smith: Why was he an idiot?
Student D:
A dumb look stares back at Mr. Smith.
More surprising, there is silence in the classroom.
“He got pushed from the tree,” the student finally says.
“Was it his fault?” Mr. Smith asks.
Student D:
Clearly, the student had not meant to participate—it just came out—but a follow up question was clearly violating an unwritten Devon rule: Don’t put students on the spot.
“He shouldn’t have been up there,” someone says from the side.
“Yeah,” another voice adds. “He just wasn’t strong enough. Or smart enough to survive.”
“So,” Mr. Smith starts, cautiously, sensing a real dialogue, “You believe that we are responsible for our own fate…”
“I would have just whaled on Gene…” someone blurts out.
“Did you see the fight outside The Grille last week?”
“I was watching wrestling on Saturday….”
“I’m going up north next Saturday to fish.”
Snowball.
Mr. Smith believes that a student making the connection between his own life and the literature is the first step towards the book choosing him. Everybody plays. For that reason he is tolerant. We win as a team, and lose as a team.
Way to go, coach.
When first quarter report cards came out the week before, half of the class fails. A lot of students stand around the vending machines and complain about this great injustice before skipping class. Sympathetic, Mr. Smith nevertheless maintains something that resembles standards. More seats open up after these failing grades. Mr. Smith will not get half of his books back. It clearly bothers him, because he knows the school will not replace those texts. Before he stops this current snowball, he looks around at the number of students who do not have their book. He is patient as he waits for those books to make their choices.
God bless him.
In the eyes of everyone—blue oxford shirt, lose tie—he is a lovable loser. But still a loser.
Sophie MacDonald, class genius, read the book and offers insights.
In her torn jeans illustrated with disposal pen drawings, she is smart and does not hesitate to tell others that they are dumb. Near the end of class Mr. Smith gave us a predictable surprise quiz. I need to see if you understand what you’re reading, he always says after his announcement. He does this daily, yet half of the class seems surprised each time (the half that has shown up). After he passes out the five question quiz, I overhear a loud whisper two rows in front of me.
“Hey,” a dope sitting next to Sophie whispers, getting everyone but Mr. Smith’s attention, “Who’s the author of the book?”
“You mean John Knowles, the author of the book I’m reading?” she asks. “Because we aren’t reading anything. I am.”
“Yeah, who’s the author?”
How she is able to do it—openly mock people—and still be well liked, I do not know. People at DU seem to respect verbal sparring, or at least tolerate it. Any fight, even a verbal fight, is still a fight. They respect intelligence, too, even if the school does not. She judges the rest of the room with her blue eyes under those dark, long bangs. On the tips of her sneakers are written RIGHT and LEFT on the wrong shoes.
I did not read the book, but between the summary and Mr. Smith’s lectures I am good at filling in the blanks. That Mr. Smith repeats the five points each class—the same five points that he then puts as questions on the day’s quiz—my average is strong. Sophie knows that I am breaking some nonexistent honor code that she holds in her heart, and she hates me for it. She hates me because we get the same grade, but only she reads the book.
We do not choose the book, the book chooses us. It is true.
I wait to be chosen.
Tall and With Glasses
Like my father and mother, I am tall. A week before tryouts the basketball coach tries to get me to go out for the freshman girls’ team. I am not athletic, but I can put my hand up and block a few shots. The coach’s invitation is a de facto spot on the team, but I decline to try out. People like me, and I often like them, but I’m not much of a joiner. I have never wanted to be part of a group.
You give up too much.
This probably all goes back to my height, as I have never fit in physically as long as I remember. In kindergarten I was too big for the desk, and was crammed ridiculously into the back row of our class photo. By high school I can stand on my toes and touch my forehead on the head jamb of the classroom door.
Also like my father and mother, I wear glasses. It makes me look smart. Before they know me, teachers give me the benefit of the doubt. Other kids at school need glasses, but most kids don’t notice their slow slip into blurriness because they never read. After eighth grade the nurse stops her yearly tests (money saving policy), and only a few baseball players see her as their strike count rises. Most people do not have the money or insurance to buy glasses. If you bought kids glasses, my father jokes, the next thing they ask for are books.
So, being tall and bespectacled, each morning I drag on a t-shirt and khaki skirt, pull one of three wool sweaters I own over the top, and slip my feet into sneakers from the factory second store in town. Devon no longer manufactures shoes, but they do sell the rejects made elsewhere. My father’s missing arm is not a genetic trait, but his clumsiness around machinery is. He was missing two and a half fingers before the arm went. For this reason, I avoid the lathe. Mr. Ellis knows this, and accepts my limited efforts with passing grades.
It’s another school thing I avoid.
Lunch… Study Hall.
My schedule is full of them.
Names
Mr. Smith has us write our names on the inside of the new book he hopes we will read.
“You are part of a lineage,” he says in a ceremonious tone.
Maybe he believes that. In practical terms, our names inside stops the fight over who has who’s book when it comes time to pass them in. If you lose it, the school won’t let you play sports until you pay for it. Half the students put their copy in their locker until the unit is done.
Someone gets a name they know and shouts it out.
Another gets their parent.
An older sibling of someone in the class is found; the younger asks for that book and an argument ensues.
It’s my sister.
She’s my friend.
“Girls, girls…” Mr. Smith says.
We write our names below the last one.
I notice that the signatures become less crisp as I scan down the list. Cursive turns to the print used in mechanical design class and turns to smudged block letters. Formal names give way to informal; Abigail Thompson from thirty years before becomes Tom Smith, who graduated ten years prior, and more recently John S. In the end, only “Joe” is written, as if this is enough. Homer has written six hundred pages, and Joe cannot be bothered with his last name.
Apparently it is enough.
I know Joe. He’s in English 200. One year closer to graduation.
Family
“That’s disgusting,” I say to my father.
“What?”
“Pouring your coffee back into the carafe. No one wants to drink your old coffee after you’ve drunk it.”
“The burner kills the germs.”
“That’s not the point. Your backwash is in it.”
Him: Who drinks it?
Me:
Him: You’re off at school. So who do you think drinks it?
“I don’t know,” I reply in a softer voice.
My father drinks his coffee black. He sits across from me at the breakfast table, drinking a cup of coffee while I eat dry toast. Every morning, as I eat the third bite of my toast—always the third bite—my mother warms his cup. It’s amazing, because she’s not standing around waiting for him or me; it just always happens. As long as I remember, my father never eats a breakfast other than black coffee. To my knowledge, my mother never eats breakfast, only working her way through a single cup of coffee that she never adds to. It sits there now on the counter, getting cold.
I fill out our vocabulary worksheet.
Elsewhere: Not here.
“Use a dictionary,” my mother says, looking over my shoulder.
My father had worked in the local mill for most of his life. Making wooden letter tiles out of maple for a popular spelling game, he nearly went nuts. Fifteen years of watching those small tiles jiggle down the assembly line told him he would no longer be sane at the end of fifteen more years, but he stayed when my mother had me. Finally, he moved to a shoe factory, where he lost his arm. After his accident the mill closed. Both the game company and the shoe factory sent their orders elsewhere. Now he drinks cup after cup of coffee in the morning with his one arm. He hates letters. He tolerates shoes.
My mother places a red paperback dictionary on the table next to my plate. Many homes do not have dictionaries, but my mother keeps one in the kitchen, another in the living room and at least two upstairs.
“Don’t talk about things you don’t know anything about,” my father says.
Ignoring the dictionary, I pick up my incomplete homework and cram it into my backpack. He puts his now empty cup down on the counter, a slight dribble staining the tile top. Looking at me with his kind eyes as I leave for school, a second piece of dry toast in my left hand and my backpack slung over my right shoulder, I feel guilty but am not sure why.
Family
Our family lives in a small clapboard house in a neighborhood that predates the war. Every house in the neighborhood is occupied, and most are well maintained. Like every house, ours is painted white with black shutters. It is a two bedroom, one bathroom upstairs with a living room, dining room and small kitchen below. I share a room with my sister. My mother used to ask me about wanting a brother, but those conversations stopped with my father’s accident. Every room has a light switch that does not turn on a light, but an outlet found in an odd corner; the light plugged into it never illuminates the room in the right places, and leaves shadows that make doing anything but watching television difficult. In the basement we have a washer and dryer, like everyone else on our block. Faced with hard times, the Jackson family has weathered it well.
Dan’s has not.
At the end of my walk, I look down the sidewalk to see if he will be walking with me to school. The screen door behind me opens and then gently closes; I know it is my mother.
“You need to do something with him,” she says.
“Like what?” I ask, not turning around.
“Be his daughter.”
“What does that mean?”
I know what it means. She has the look, which I don’t even need to turn around to see.
“Fine,” I pout. “I won’t go to school.”
That was not what she meant.
Fighting City Hall
“What’re we doing today?” I ask as I come back in the door.
“Going to fight City Hall.”
Great, a morning of my father making small talk with every other person laid off from the mills. Armed with minutia to discuss with the clerks who run the city, they will all comment how tall I am. As if that’s a compliment, or makes me feel included in an otherwise meaningless conversation. I unconsciously hide my hands at the thought of it.
Is it too late to go to school?, I wonder.
What did I think he would be doing?
Groan.
He doesn’t ask why I’m not going to school, or why I left and came back.
I hope to see who would drink the old coffee before we leave—him, mom, will it get dumped, or do we have a daily visitor I know nothing about—but we leave before any resolution happens.
Waiting in the hallway, bored, I find myself peeking in doorways and reading official notices on the walls. A blue notice hangs on a neglected bulletin board next to the bathrooms on the first floor, mentioning a public auction that afternoon. Among the listed items:
62.a. LISTED: COMPLETE INVENTORY OF DISCARDED BOOKS FROM PUBLIC SCHOOL LIBRARIES. SOLD IN SINGLE LOT.
Our collective intellect for sale.
The community school and high school cannibalize the elementary schools of any decent books, and dump their rejects alongside those remaining in the dimly lit and abandoned library of the Devon Central Elementary School.
Tempting, I think sarcastically.
Then, I’m tempted, but I don’t know why.
Our high school’s current stock is ancient; I can only imagine what did not make the cut.
These remnants of refuse.
Choices not made.
Curious, I let my dad go home so I can wait until the auction. I forget that I am spending the day with him, or to ask him if he won his fight about the taxes. Without words, he just leaves. He eats lunch with his buddies from the mill days and forgets we have a date. Serendipitously, that morning I had put my allowance in my right front pocket. I have cash.
Almost no one has come to the auction. About twenty chairs are set up in a conference room at the end of the hall, only five of which hold interested parties. Like a class at DU, no one sits near the front and it smells of stale coffee. I wonder if they are alumni. At the front stands an auctioneer, who is really a man from town records that is familiar with the goods being sold. He is nearly sixty, thin, with little hair, a grey beard and seems ready to lecture you as much as give you directions to the bathroom. For the first hour each item is made out of metal. A scrap dealer with a big moustache from two towns away buys each lot. No one else says a word the entire time. At the end of each item, the record keeper bangs his fist down in lieu of a gavel, and keeps and otherwise silent, cynical frown. No one gives me a hint of recognition.
I think about leaving.
I wish my father was here to make small talk.
A few parcels of land go unsold, as their back taxes prove too high for anyone to bother making a bid on. Finally, the books come up for auction.
I am the only bidder.
“Son,” the man from records asks me after my first and only bid. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Buying books,” I reply. “No, I don’t know what I’m doing. I like to read. And, I’m not a son. I’m a daughter.”
The man from records does not smile at this.
“You have one week to remove them, or you start paying a storage fee.”
He is the person to record and collect the fee, and he stares at me as if an oracle seeing how it will all play out. I smile at him. He drops his fist down, hands me the paperwork and sends me to the collections department. As I walk down the hallway, I look at the top of the first page of paperwork. It reads:
PAYMENT DUE AT CLOSE OF AUCTION. WINNING BIDDER RESPONSIBLE FOR REMOVAL IN SEVEN DAYS.
And then I enter the office and buy my lot.
Moving the Books
Faced with the task of moving such a large number of books, I ignore it for a few days.
The sky is turning grey with late fall, and I want to burrow into my bed and hibernate.
The purchase is a lark.
Lying in my bed, I start to wonder what possessed me to go to the auction, much less act. The face of the man from records hovers over me while I lay on the living room couch.
He pushes me into action.
With a few phone calls I find a storage facility in a closed mill. It is cheap and large. There was no contract, so I can abandon the load if nothing profitable comes up.
With my one-armed father at the wheel of his automatic pick-up, we drive to the town’s storage facility, unceremoniously known as the old Devon Central Elementary School.. My one-armed father insists on helping move the boxes. Each of the trips, as we push handcarts through the empty hallways, my father tells me stories about his days as an elementary school student in the building.
“I remember this library,” he says, looking around.
He mentions a teacher, a fellow student, a lesson learned.
In truth, he does not tell stories; he names a teacher, fellow student or lesson and then he shakes his head. That’s the story: It speaks volumes.
We drive between the school and my storage space in the old mill.
Then, we go back.
I look out the window. With each trip I see something new.
Devon is a town of three thousand. At one point it had over ten thousand people happily working in the mills, homemaking for people working in the mills, selling groceries and other sundries to people who work in the mill, or going to one of Devon’s five public schools and waiting until they were told enough to work in the mill. Passing another closed elementary school, I am reminded of how many of my first grade classmates moved before they could go to DU. When the mills closed, so did three of the schools, a number of stores and the future of those not academically inclined. Housing for ten thousand still stand, but many have ragged lawns and broken windows. The paper is filled with foreclosure and auction notices. Every month there is an electrical fire and an apartment house burns down. We pass several of these, now sagging under the weight of charred beams and rain soaked sheetrock walls and carpeted floors. On the other side of Devon are the brick houses originally built to house the managers of the first red brick mills that line the river that snakes through the town. I see them on the hill, far from the mill whose parking lot we turn into. There are plans for renewal, but many involve either luring in companies that send jobs elsewhere, or tearing down blocks of houses to ease the reminders of the past. Surrounded by mountains we never climb, a pair of railroad tracks runs through the middle of town alongside the Devon river. Feeling the bump as we roll over them reminds us that we are here.
I wrestle with boxes. As per the agreement signed at auction with the town of Devon, I sweep the floor of the library clean two hours before I need to be out. Now dark, I close the door to my storage space and put on a large padlock. Key in my pocket, my father and I go home for supper.
Notebook 2
It is a
PLEASURE
to
BURN
Celebrate the end of
Summer School
by burning school books.
Books will be sold for a nominal fee.
Add them to the blaze.
Bring your own drinks.
The Summer School Crowd
Now.
The story of the for-profit burnings starts the summer after freshman year.
I do not attend summer school, but most anyone who plays fall sports does (i.e., half the student body). Devon Union High School has the high academic standard that athletes have to pass all of their classes. Actually, Devon Union High School has no academic standards, but our athletic conference does. Passing all classes is their minimum requirement, and so it is Devon’s.
High standards in all fields.
Except athletic fields.
Students who otherwise sleep late in bed throughout the summer instead sleep in class. Those who watch television at home instead watch videos at school. Everyone complains until noon, and then use school as an excuse not to get a summer job. One night, I overhear their complaints at the pizza shop. Athletes loudly talk about their troubles of having to get up the next day.
Kaylee (Soccer): Hey, I’m heading out.
Kristen (Field Hockey): What’s up?
Kaylee: Gotta do homework.
Kristen: Yeah.
Replace soccer or field hockey with football, girl with guy, throw in a few skateboard kids, loners and burn-outs and the conversation repeats itself throughout the summer. I spend a lot of nights eating a slice alone in the back table, but I hear the Kaitlyns, Kristen and Kyleas of the various teams talk about their classes. Only the cross country team seems to avoid summer school.
Wearing flip-flops on their feet and disposable coffee cups in hand, they stumble in at 8:30 (about) and leave at 12:00 (promptly). Invisible and with nowhere to go, I watch them as I hang around the entrance to the school.
Kaitlyn (in soccer shorts): Did you do the reading?
Kristen (in a shirt with field hockey sticks crossed on the chest): No.
Bored, I go to the school’s library nearly every day to see them at work. It is not very inspiring, yet I stay because I have nowhere else to go.
It is a Pleasure to Burn
Those discarded books I bought at auction are locked up; they have been since fall, when the days grew short and it got dark and I forgot about everything. Except for the monthly bill, I forget about them.
Now it’s summer, and they began to trouble me. I think I hear them.
Too much time on my hands, I walk down to the mill every morning.
Taking out my key, I remove the lock and stand among the boxes. The only light comes from the tall floor-to-ceiling windows that mark prewar mills. In large piles lay stacks of boxes. They emit weight. It is as if their contents—the books—have a perceptible gravity. A smell of dryness hangs like smoke, the stale air refusing to rush out the door or let fresh air in.
It stops time.
I don’t know how long I stand there each morning, but when I leave I want coffee.
Inside of The Coffee Mill I run into Dan.
“Do you have Smith again?” I ask.
He is in summer school so he can play soccer.
“No,” he replies.
Looking at my watch, it reads ten thirty in the morning. He is getting a cup to go.
“I heard he went to England this summer. Maybe he’s charging up his batteries. I don’t think he could have faced us again so soon. This summer, I mean. We wore him down, I think.”
“Why aren’t you in class now?”
I hold up my wrist to show him the time.
“Break. We get a twenty minute coffee break. Just like a job. Although some students take more like thirty.”
“Like you?” but it’s not really a question.
“They usually have an awesome party on the last day.”
“Where’s the party?”
The rituals of Devon Union High School are still revealing themselves to those of us just finishing freshman year.
He does not know.
Finally I say, “I am sure something will come up.”
“Two weeks, man.”
I have not gone to a teen party yet. Instead I think of my last party in fifth grade, which involved giggling girls and pajamas. This will not be that, I know. The thought scares me because it is unknown and I feel I don’t fit in. Gripping my coffee like a binky, I am suddenly conscious of my chewed fingernails. And this is Dan. I’m feeling nervous in front of Dan.
He checks the inside of his cup to make sure they added cream, and then presses the lid on tightly. To be sure, he cups a few extra creams and sugar packets from the counter and puts them in his pocket.
Dan gives me a thumbs-up sign.
“Later,” I say.
The Plan
By the time I leave the coffee shop my plan is set: I will host the party and it will feature a book burning bonfire. My newly acquired private collection will be the fuel.
Why do this?
Money.
Every book comes with a price. A small price. In the celebration that comes with the end of summer school, students are eager for a little literary blaze. For a few coins, they toss on an abandoned title from the old school libraries. With this small price comes a feeling of relief. Aristotle calls it catharsis.
Catharis: A purging of emotions.
I know the word from Mr. Smith’s vocabulary worksheets. You could dodge the reading, but he counted the worksheets faithfully, so, I know the definition.
At home and full of coffee, I write up a simple handbill.
It is a PLEASURE to BURN.
Celebrate the end of Summer School by burning school books.
Books will be sold for a nominal fee.
Add them to the blaze.
Bring your own drinks.
At the bottom I give the time and place. After copying fifty at the copy shop, I hand them out to students as they trickle into town from class. It goes viral. I soon get word that hundreds of kids are planning on showing up.
Summer School Ends
Summer Begins
At the end of four weeks of showing up, each passing student produces one piece of evidence that demonstrates an awareness of the class’ subject. It is a collage or poster (most likely) or a research paper or passing grade on an exam (less likely). As rare as they are, the research paper or exam do not resemble anything like scholarship. Efforts that failed during the colder months succeed in the summer.
There is a Scholar’s Fair on the last day.
Some sadist came up with this tradition years ago under the guise of celebrating learning: It is an embarrassment for all involved. Substandard work covers all of the walls and tables of the cafeteria. Their creators—the students—clot aisles and corners and talk about the evenings ahead. Teachers make small talk and attempt to hide into the wall so that they do not have to defend the work.
No one asks.
Parents say nothing.
I wonder what they expected.
Why did they come?
Why does anyone come?
Traditionally, the students have a night time teen party to celebrate inching a credit or two towards graduation.
I have a book burning.
The Fire
The phrases “book burning”, “last day of school” and “party” imagine up the night.
Add the phrases “several hundred teenagers” and “alcohol”, plus “the police arrived.”
You write the newspaper article yourself.
Had I known what real catharsis looks like, I would have had more respect for Oedipus Rex when Mr. Smith had tried, and failed, to get us to read a third play following the Tennessee Williams disaster.
This first fire is a freshman effort.
The day before the event I drag wooden pallets out of the mill and place them in the middle of the larger, empty parking lot. Meant for the days of full productivity, the lot is the size of six football fields. On one side of the lot a rusted black iron fence about eight feet high and in need of a paint job separates the property from the main road. Surrounding the lot on two sides is the old mill. It’s red brick, like the schools, with large glass windows that have been spared rocks. The fourth side also has a poorly maintained black iron fence, but separating the lot from the river. Stacking the pallets to eye level, I cram as many crushed cardboard boxes between the slats as I can. It is big enough to dazzle and allow for the addition of hundreds of newly purchased ex-library books. Hopefully, it is not too big to be dangerous. Hours before the first guests arrive I douse it with eight cans of paint thinner that have been left in a storage closet of the factory.
This is not a fire, though, but a book burning.
It is a celebration of anti-intellectualism.
If I am going to make money from my stock, books need to be front and center. Going through the boxes, I pick out the most colorful covers. To the crowds that will come, I figure titles and content mean nothing. Color is my guide; like a Christmas tree, red, blue, green and purple books are hung from the pallets. I open the book’s back cover and jam it between crushed cardboard and stacked pallets. From this the rest of the book hangs; their jackets, cases, and endpapers flapping in the gentle breeze. It gives the pile movement even before a match is lit.
A few minutes before six I unlock the gate to the mill parking lot.
A few kids trickle in.
With the help of an abandoned and rusty pallet jack, I had managed to move several pallets loaded with books near the entrance. Laying a door over a couple of saw horses, this makeshift table sits between the gate and the books so people know payment is due. A sign with the prices is taped to the front of the table, and I position myself behind. Still, I give these first-comers a free title when a slight breeze blows the smell of paint thinner our way. On the faces of those few kids eyes widen at the smell. They dig into their pockets and pay for a few more thick volumes.
The table makes it all seem a bit more mercenary than the usual summer party, but I am here to make a buck.
“Are you going to light this thing?” one of the kids asks.
There are about twenty kids standing around with books in their hands. Most are dislodged from the mainstream; slackers whose first instinct would not have brought them to the traditional big blow out.
Looking at my watch, I determine it is time.
No one else is coming, I figure.
“Let’s do it,” I say.
When I produce the box of matches, five people volunteer to light it. The faces of several others want to volunteer, but do not. Everyone gets that look; I don’t need to describe it: You know it. Another light puff of wind sends the fumes of paint thinner towards our noses and we swoon.
“Let me try,” says a wiry kid sporting a rough beard.
He grabs the box out of my hand, ripping it open and several matches fall to the ground. Ripping the head along the side of the box, the match breaks. Again, he tries. Another kid picks up a match from the ground and tries striking it on the pavement, but they are safety matches and the head just crumbles and leaves a streak. Someone pulls out a lighter, but the strong fumes makes her too afraid to strike it. Finally, the wiry kid succeeds and flicks the burning match onto the pile. It explodes with a loud WHOOF and everyone moves back. After a moment, as the pallets crackle and the flames settle in for real, the crowd moves in closer.
Hesitation is not expected.
Every student jokes throughout the year about burning their textbooks; burning their homework papers; burning the school: Fire has a fascination. Given the chance, though, people are timid. The people come in small groups; chatter muted. People buy books, but then tuck them under their arms while their hands are thrust deep into pockets. Some flip through the pages. Everyone looks at the rest of the group. It is awkward. At ten past six the mood is that of embarrassment.
First, books do not burn as well as one would think. The selling line on the cover of one of Mr. Smith’s books says that 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature that paper burns. Maybe, but books are another matter. The paper used to make books is loaded with clay. They leave a high amount of ash, which rises and wafts with the updrafts. As a solid block of paper, only the outside burns; the fire makes itself slowly to the core of the book.
It does not make for a satisfying, passionate burn.
Pages need to be fanned out for a cathartic burn.
“This is a dud,” one of the girls says. She speaks as if speaking were a chore.
The color has burned off of the books I hung, and they just smolder over the now raging pallets. It is mesmerizing, but the lack of catharsis sucks any energy gained from the lighting.
“This needs air,” another kid says. He’s wearing a loose hooded sweatshirt and worn jeans. “The triangle of fire: that’s what my wilderness survival camp counselor had called it. It takes three things to make a fire—the triangle of fire—fuel, oxygen and heat.”
“There’s plenty of air.”
Kids are just taking the books and chucking them on like a log.
“If you want a book to really burn, you have to open it.”
I fear the party will end, along with sales. I host the most boring book burning in history. Some arguments on the other side of the fire break out and save the night.
“You don’t just throw it on,” a guy in shorts and who lost his shirt says. “You gotta chuck it.”
“No,” another says. He’s wearing a shirt with a band name on the front, and flip flops on his feet. “You rip out half the pages.”
“You don’t have to do that. Just chuck it.”
Someone just chucks it.
A large paperback copy of Composition flies through the air, over the sparse crowd. Its pages flap and flutter like a wounded bird; at one point majestic, and another lame. When it lands it quickly bursts into flame. Even on top of a six foot high blaze it is noticeable.
That starts a hail of books.
Some miss the pile, hitting kids on the other side of the fire. Others hit the side, and bounce off. Most hit the mark. A few kids pick up the ricochets, light their edges, and wave them around, ablaze, while themselves dancing. Someone burns their hand. Music comes from somewhere, as formerly unnoticed guitars begin pounding out tunes.
Suddenly the crowd has doubled.
Tripled.
Sales take off. Focused as I am on the rush for fuel I do not see the crowd surge forward. The blaze suddenly grows. No one is hurt. A number of dancers get dangerously close to the pile. Books continue flying through the air. People are pushing to get to another part of the party. In all of this, the fire dances in people’s heads. It unlocks a passion. With everything that has happened in Devon since as long as we kids could remember—about the mills, the schools, people leaving—a lot of emotion is ready to come out. Being an uncaring punk day in and day out, while fatalistic, does not offer the same release as a good cry. This is a definition of catharsis. It comes with every strong emotion the kids of Devon can muster. The sirens sound just before everything can get out of control.
In hindsight, it might have been better had it happened then, while everything was still small.
The Police
A burn permit is different from telling the fire department you are going to have a major bonfire with a few hundred teenagers. The authorities—in a dying town—are anxious and unhappy. People light things on fire all of the time. In addition to poverty and depression leading to the neglect of worn electrical wires, people falling asleep with cigarettes, or bare and needleless Christmas trees still being up in February, every month someone thinks arson is an easy solution to their financial problems. The fire department has seen a small growth in business as the mills close down. The duty officer sends a police cruiser.
When the cruiser arrives about three hundred kids are dancing around a blaze that has grown to at least ten feet high. The pallet core of the fire has long ago collapsed on top of itself, leaving a heap of books. Dozens of books are flying through the air, feeding the fire. More musical instruments appear, including a sousaphone. People shout happy shouts of joy. It is the most positive vibe I have felt coming from a group of Devon Union High School students ever.
To the police it must look like a riot.
“It’s the police,” some says, but the cruiser has been sitting at the gate, lights flashing, for five minutes.
They all notice.
Everyone runs.
The third lesson learned is that guilt is directly related to how much you respect someone. A corollary of the lesson is that we often do not know we respect someone until we hurt them in some way.
Or lose them.
When the first police cruiser arrives, it sees the throngs dancing and put on its lights.
“It’s the police,” someone says.
One cruiser with lights sighted and panic sets in. Even though the gate is wide open, and about twenty feet wide, kids just run in any direction that enters their head. Some run towards the mill. Many run into the darkness. A surprising number run to the fence within fifty feet of the gate, yet try to climb over the eight foot tall iron pikes. The cruiser backs up; it has no intention of trying to stop the fleeing youth. About fifty kids have not moved at all, and continue to stand around the fire and talk. Without so many bodies, the music echoes off of the mill. (The guy with the sousaphone kept tooting away.) A few others wander back to the fire from the darkness and stay until the fire department puts out the pyre.
As the pumper truck arrives, the police have figured out what has happened and ask me to come to the station in their car. Before, when the kids ran in panic, I had slipped into my storage area and hid the money I had made. Rejoining my peers, I look into the darkness and think I see a familiar face. Mr. Smith looks at me through the bars of the iron fence. He is in the darkness, and the light of the fire make it difficult for my eyes to adjust and focus.
Perhaps it is not him.
Didn’t Dan say he’s in England?
Disappointment. The look on his face…
No, not quite.
It is a disappointment that spreads like a disease. Mr. Smith has projected his disappointment into my soul. For a minute, I feel really guilty.
Then, a voice distracts me.
Standing beside me is Sophie MacDonald.
“Burn any good books lately?” she asks.
I have not seen her all night, and do not remember selling her a book. She has one in hand, with one of my original handbills stuck in it like a bookmark.
“No, but I’ve burnt plenty of bad ones.”
“Is this all you have?”
“Oh, no. I could have a dozen of these parties.”
“I would think after a bit, book burning gets a bit dull. I would think its rarity is really the allure. Could you really have twelve?”
“Perhaps I can graph that in my business proposal. A ratio of frequency and boredom.”
It is a depressing conversation, because I had hoped Sophie MacDonald would see something more in all of this. Half distracted by the face of Mr. Smith I had just seen, I want to talk about him. I am not sure Sophie MacDonald is who I want to open up to about my feelings of guilt. Unable to speak, I sink in to a deeper despair.
That melancholy goes away quickly as the police ask to speak with me.
I am not arrested or charged with a crime for events that occur that night. I have a permit to burn; the mill has a permit for hundreds of people being in the parking lot. The permit, from better days, still valid, does not specify age, time of day, or for what reason people might gather. They give me a ride home, and my parents do not know a thing until they read the paper later the next day.
My mother cries all afternoon and into the evening.
The Night Librarian
About the time I went to kindergarten, my mother read me a book called The Night Librarian over and over again. She would sit on my bed—the blanket over my body while she sat on top of the covers—and gently read a few chapters each night. In the summer, the story mingled with the sounds of the neighbors still enjoying the late evening. During the winter, the warm snuggle of the sheets and comforter gave the story warmth. On some nights, she would read the entire book. It is not short, but my mother likes the story.
Out of print, the first chapter “The Night Librarian is Seen”, gives me comfort as I hide from everyone.
It reads:
Chapter One
Joseph stomped up the stairs and slammed his door.
He was mad.
He was irate.
He was livid.
Joseph was just plain angry.
Finally, he fell into a long sulk.
The night came. His window grew darker and darker. Streetlights turned on in the distance.
Joseph’s room was on the second floor, at the top of a very steep, very narrow staircase. It was small, in a small house, and the room had a pitched roof that hung over his bed. His window overlooked the town’s library. As the moon came out, his room grew darker than the night.
Sitting on his bed, most of his anger had left him. He did not know why he had not eaten dinner. Or why he refused to clear his plate. Yelling at his parents, well…. But he was no longer mad. He was hungry. There he sat, looking down at the library, and listening to his stomach growl.
And then he saw her.
She was about six feet tall and dressed entirely in black. At least he thought it was a “she”. It—she—seemed feminine. She wore a long skirt. Her legs were clad in striped leggings. Over her body was a long, thick wool coat. On her head was a big, floppy hat. In her hand was a large tote bag. However, this was not unusual. Not compared to the other thing.
No. On her face she wore glasses that lit up.
Still, that was no too unusual. She was odd, but it was something else that Joseph would never forget.
On her back where enormous black wings.
The bird-woman (for Joseph did not know what else to call her) stepped out of a side door of the library. The library—formally called the Lawrence Memorial Library—had a door on the side that hung five feet above the sidewalk. The bird-woman stepped onto the stoop, somehow managed to close the door behind her, and spread her wings.
Then, she flew up into the night.
Joseph forgot that he was hungry. He jumped off of his bed and ran to the window. Looking up into the sky, he saw her wings flap as she flew high into the sky and over the rooftops of his town.
I rewrite this chapter from memory.
Sometimes I think my mother read it to me all of those times not as an escape, but as training for later.
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