Cold New Year: Part Six

Caleb Montgomery cut an impressive figure in a black suit and deep blue tie that matched the bows in his wife’s hair and dress. His dark hair was cut short, almost a military buzz that was slicked down with a knife edge part. Blocky shoulders rounded out the look, giving him a commanding air if you added his height. He could look me in the eye, something that I was not used to in my profession. I am tall, around six foot three, and most librarians seem to range in at the five and a half foot mark. That’s not a stereotype, just an observation from the guy who can spot the buffet over the heads of the crowd when entering any library conference.

Tall and slender, Caleb moved with easy grace and confidence like someone who had been talking to crowds his entire life. He had the air of a politician, but I guess all librarians that make director have that about them. The ones that do not inherit the position from their mothers anyway. I’m not bitter, really.

Cold New Year: Part Five

I have gone over my familiarity and issues with the Bannville Police Department. Captain Robert Stein and I have a healthy relationship built on trust and a mutual wish that the public remain safe and informed. Detective Gerald Parker and I just plain hate each other. Such is life.

I turned to look at the two of them. They were in dress uniform, the blue dark and clean highlighted by the bright yellow ribbons and chevrons that denoted each man’s rank. They looked damn impressive. Stein had his head shaved bald, the lights overhead gleaming in his dark skin. Parker, a head shorter than the other man had his blonde hair cut with the usual buzz that made me want to touch it to see if it stuck out like that on its own. I held up my small plastic plate and offered each man a cookie.

They declined.

Cold New Year: Part Four

The door from the kitchen opened into the main front room of the house. Guests milled about, coming and going from the open dining room to the left. A grand piano sat to the right of the door and a man was seated playing a soft jazz song I did not recognize. A large Christmas tree sat in the far right corner in front of the bay windows, the angel on top nearly reaching the twelve foot ceiling. A model train ran around the base of the tree.

 
Well, I say the door opened into that room. It also opened into a young girl carrying a tray of hors d'oeuvres.

The tray went tumbling down to the varnished floors, crab cakes and shrimp bouncing everywhere. A small glass bowl of red sauce splashed down on the toe of the girl’s shoe and she let out a cry of surprise.

“Oh, damn, I’m sorry, Bern,” I said, “Let me... damn.” 

 
Before I could turn to get a towel from the kitchen, the girl pulled out a white cloth from the small of her back where it had been tucked into her belt. 

 
“Don’t worry,” she said, “Not my first rodeo.”

Father and the Goats

I always wanted my dad to be proud of me. I know he is, always will be, but there were some doubts along the way. See, I am not sure I am the son he wanted. He loves me, and I love him, but I was not the ideal child to be born to a country boy Marine from Mississippi.

In many ways we are just alike. I got a healthy dose of his sense of humor, an ironic sarcasm mixed with absurdity said in a low, deadpan tone from the back of the room. One of my favorite examples of this is a picture he took as a paratrooper. In the small photograph, you see a panaromic vista of farm land and ocean taken from high in the sky. In the very bottom of the frame are the tips of a pair of boots. The caption written in block pencil on the back simply reads, "My boots."

I also got his willingness to travel, to try new things, and to do the job right the first time so you can move on to do more. Always do more and revel in the doing rather than the accomplishment, the journey rather than the destination. Maybe that last part was learned, but he was a good if sometimes strict teacher.

We are also alike in our rejection of our father's position. Dad walked away from the library and left his mother to run it while he joined the Marines. Fate can be fickle, however, as he met a pretty young friend of his sister's that also happened to be a library student. After they were married, my mother worked at the library as the children's librarian under my grandfather until a year after I was born, when my grandfather passed away and and she took over. Dad worked offshore for years after while Mom ran the library.

Like all fathers and sons, we had our clashes. He is a healthy, active person that enjoys watching sports and being out working the land. I can be rather mired in sloth, prone to sit and read or play video games than see the sun shine. It must have hurt him when I rejected sports, as I am a rather large and imposing figure, the type that would have gone well on a defensive line had I gained muscle and worked on coordination.

But we worked it out and have a quiet understanding. My father and I love each other from afar, talk when we can about subjects we sometimes agree on, but are different people with the same goal. We both want me to do good, to be happy. Maybe as we get older we will both stop being as standoffish, and I know he's trying. I am trying to.

I could go on, but I think you see why I was not surprised to see him standing at the dispatch desk picking me up from the Banned Library Police Department and Bowling Center.

Storm Passes

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long. - e. e. cummings

There is a point when the truth is absurd. Just ridiculous. But there it is, right in front of you and you have to except it because why else would it be happening otherwise?

Case in point: When I was ten, I found out (SPOILER ALERT) there was no Santa Claus. Sure, I had my doubts and logic started to seep in, but the human brain is nothing without the capacity to keep hope alive. Especially if that hope drops off a buttload of goodies once a year. But my parents, in a nice gesture, took me aside one day and basically said, “Look, we know you are old and probably figured out that Santa Claus isn’t real but don’t tell your sister just yet cause she’s younger than you and should figure that out on her own.” Why they had to tell me my sister was younger than me is odd, but more for the point of exposition than anything.

So the myth that a fat North Polian in a red suit was not breaking and entering in my house as I had been lead to believe all my life was exposed by the very people who had been perpetuating that myth all along. To top it all off, my parents were the one’s dropping off the presents all along. On the next Christmas, when I crawled out of bed early in the morning to look at the haul, my mind flashed with alternating images: The fake one I had believed all my life with the jolly old elf pulling presents from a ginormous bag or the real one with two middle class parents pulling toys out of the attic and stacking them around the tree. The truth was a bitter, strange pill that day. I wanted to believe the lie, because the truth seemed ridiculous based on previous “knowledge.” But there you go.

Questionable Questioning

My mom really likes murder mysteries, especially ones where random events or clues are put together at the end to solve the case. Since I was young she always read the newest Mary Higgins Clark, often breaking the street date. My introduction to television was not Sesame Street but Perry Mason, then Matlock, then Law & Order in every flavor. The first book series I can remember her turning me onto was Encyclopedia Brown.

I do not think she likes it when she is in one, though. Especially when her baby boy, me, is the chief suspect.

Wrong Kind of Bars

“I don’t like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.” - Charles Bukowski

I have never been arrested before. I have been questioned, pulled over, handcuffed, put in the back of squad cars, but I have never been formally charged with any crime. It goes with living in a small Southern town, listening to punk rock and doing my fair share of alcohol and drugs. But I straightened out. All that was behind me. So I thought.

First Kiss

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

I remember my first real kiss better than I should. It was the culmination of a long overnight road trip, a stumble onto beach at sunrise, and followed by breakfast at Waffle House. I was delirious as shit, from both the amount of time I had been awake and the experience itself. You never forget that first real kiss. All the kisses that have followed have been built from that first real kiss, that jolt of electricity fueled by hormones and caring and just the right setting.

Kisses can bring about great change. They can signal the beginning of something great, both short term and long term. They can open doors and fill a mind with excitement. They can also cause everything to crash down around you. A real kiss can make you forget yourself. Being that close to another person breaks mirrors in the mind.

I forgot myself today.

Viper Day

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous. - Chanakya

Summer Reading came to an end late Saturday with the annual Viper Day party. After saying goodbye to Dave on Friday, Ava and I set up the place and I went home for a long sleep. The storms raged outside and the rain pelting down making me worry about the festivities. In the morning the sun was shining and we prepared for the activities.

Here’s the condensed version on what Viper Day is. Around 100 years ago when this area was still a small logging town, the original library building burned down under strange circumstances on the day known as Fire Day. Two weeks later, the remains of the building were infested by legions of snakes. Some think they were drawn by the heat as it was an unseasonably cool summer, while others think an evil curse placed on the land by the original natives of the land. Either way, the villagers banded together and beat all the snakes to death. The joke remains that the beating took so long that all the tools in the town were broken so the villagers were left beating the last serpents to death with their shoes. Shoes and snakes are the symbols of the day, from gummy reptiles to boots fixed on ax handles.

When summer reading became a thing after all the kids in town no longer had to help out on the farm in summer, the two events became one. So, we party and the entire town is invited. Even Victor the Viper.