Sam started to pull away from the curb.
“Wait,” I said, looking over at the library, where Chief Jansen had busted the under-age hooker a few minutes before. “Let’s go to the library really quick, I need to check on something.”
Sam drove over there, managing to take up two spaces when he parked at an uncaring angle.
“Wanna come in with me?” I asked, but he only laughed.
I left him and entered the cool quiet hush of my church. When I’d been inhaling the prison library whole I’d just about memorized the Dewey Decimal System. Now I wended my way through the rows and shelves, running my fingertips along the exposed book spines as I searched for those familiar catalog numbers.
Here was 818.3, and I nodded patriotic respect to the Transcendentalists as I passed: Thoreau with his bleak ironies – his attack disguised so well by the beauty of his words that his victim was unaware of the damage before it was too late. And Emerson, the King – his unapologetic world view was such a lonely one, I was surprised more of Ralph’s readers didn’t try to hack their wrists up with a dull butter knife. A little ways down at 811.3 Whitman held court, aloof as always: Walt, with his suicidal compassion dripping crimson from his poems like a squeezed triage room sponge.
From there a straight leap back to the ancients and my buddies the Stoics: 187 and Lucretius, with his flat gaze and incisive mind, attacking the world as if it were an enemy deliberately trying to pull the wool over his eyes. 188, and my almost-namesake, Marcus Aurelius – reading his Meditations was like chewing on tin foil sometimes; but Marcus freely gave all the tools necessary for courage and honor in a universe so obviously not constructed with our benefit in mind.
What should I do now, Lucretius? I asked silently. How would you go about things here, Marcus? But of course all I got from my boys was static.
Which of my mentors did I want to hold in my hand? What book would be worth the effort of carting it away from here?
I smiled as I realized who it had to be. I walked to 844, grabbed a copy of Montaigne’s Essays and headed to the checkout counter. “I don’t have a card,” I admitted to the librarian, a pretty young brunette.
“Do you have proof of residency?” she asked.
“Sara,” an older librarian called from behind her.
“Excuse me,” Sara said, going back to join her coworker. The two huddled together whispering, both of them turning to look at me occasionally. I was getting ready to leave when they both marched up to me and Sara took her seat again.
“We know who you are, Markus,” the older librarian told me, while Sara pressed all the necessary keys on her computer. I nodded, blinking a little.
I was happy as a kid at Christmas when I left the library with Montaigne, no longer fully alone. Sam just smirked when he saw the book in my hands, and we commenced to driving.