The Book (7 page)

Except for one.

Holden pulled the tarp down and got to work. He finished the job in a remarkable three weeks. It easily could have taken triple the amount of time, but Holden wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. No matter how much he loved reading, he knew that he shouldn’t be associated with someone who was so blatantly disobeying the law. On occasion, he recalled the man and supposed that, at his age, Winston didn’t care if he were caught with such an extensive collection and arrested. What was a life sentence to someone with little life remaining?

But now, this day, feeling the weight of the single torn page in the front pocket of his jacket, Holden pulled into the man’s long, curving driveway, knowing that somewhere in that hidden closet, there had been a plastic box with surnames that began with the letter ‘S’. A box that very likely held a book by J.D. Salinger.

The rain instantly poured down as if, like in his recollection, the clouds were simply waiting to release their penetrating droplets the moment he left the van. Holden ignored the rain and tossed a bag over his shoulder (it held a random assortment of tools that would help him sell the lie) before rushing toward the door with a box of sprinkler heads under his arm.

From outside, the enormous lake-side estate was just as exquisite as he remembered with thick, stone walls topped by a sloping roof line that was shingled with a charming patchiness. Even standing under the eave with its reticent columns and cornice work, Holden knew this man had a wealth he would never attain, even in ten lifetimes. Paper was so rare that for a man to keep such a vast store of books, his wealth was likely without measure. Steadying the box of sprinkler heads against the heavy iron wrench on his belt, Holden approached the door and knocked. After a few moments passed, he realized he wasn’t patient enough to wait and rang the doorbell. Just as he depressed the button, Winston poked his head a bit into the side window, wearing a bowtie and a grin. A series of unlocking latches followed and it gave Holden a chance to review what he wanted to say. After an annoying chime was silenced, the door opened and Holden and Winston met once again under the darkness of a cloudy, overcast day.

* * * * *

008-14592

“A bit eager, are we? A knock
and
a ring?”

Winston stood uneven in the opening of his front door, sprouting a surprisingly adolescent tuft of hair from the bottom of his boney chin. Behind a new pair of thinly-rimmed glasses, Holden saw the same fiery gaze. The bowtie on Winston’s neck spoke of a gallantry long before this digital world, where men looked their best even if they were stewing in their home behind a light, fiberglass walker.

“Good Morning. I don’t know if you recognize me, but I installed the sprinkler system in your house.”

“Yes,” the man nodded with a grin. “Holden. A memorable name.” His words and tone were courteous, but his face said differently. A strong suspicion seemed to tighten the skin on his cheeks and his filigree of eyebrow feathers hung drastically lower than Holden remembered. Still, the pale-lipped grin gave Holden hope and he quickly went into the act he had rehearsed during the long drive.

“It’s very important for me to keep track of the homes I do work for and I believe that the sprinkler heads I installed here may have been faulty. If it is alright with you, I would like to replace them. Free of charge, of course.”

Winston nudged the door a little wider and stared down at the box of sprinkler heads under Holden’s arm. Gradually, his eyes rose to mark Holden’s face with a deep, inquisitive gaze. “You couldn’t come back another day?”

“The structure I installed was a dry system which means that the water only discharges when a fire is present. If you would allow me to do this today, I could be finished before lunch.”

Winston scratched the bushel of white hair atop his head, realizing that he was losing whatever game was being played. “Well then, it appears as if I do not have a choice. The protection of this home is paramount to me.” Before his next words, a grin tipped from the corners of his mouth and stretched like a stain across the contours of his face. He took Holden by the eyes, skewed his head to the left and said, “I was wondering how long it would take you to come back.”

Before a response could come, the elderly man stepped aside and allowed the door to open on the weight of its own hinges. Holden had once more been invited into the perspective of Winston Pratt.

The interior of the immense estate was exactly the same as when Holden had completed the job. The smell of leather and pipe tobacco hung in swags from the heights of darkened rafters; not an off-putting smell, but something that just didn’t seem to agree with Holden’s nose. The simple decoration, subtle furniture and clean environment were that of someone who had everything and had nothing. It was depressing, yes – but comfortable.

By the time Holden closed the door, Winston was halfway to the kitchen. “I was in the midst of brewing a pot of coffee, if you would like some.”

“Nope. I’m good,” Holden replied, turning his eyes toward the cellar door. “If it’s alright with you, I’m gonna jump right in. Get started downstairs.”

The man rose a tired hand and waved it flippantly with his back turned, marching his walker toward the kitchen.

Be my guest
, it said.

Exactly what Holden wanted to hear.

His greedy footfalls echoed off the crown molding, harmonizing with the creaking tones from uneven floorboards as he moved through the sitting room, foyer and dining room before tracing the narrow runner toward the singular door that he had been envisioning throughout the night. It was positioned to the left of a wide, curving staircase and beckoned for him to open it. He approached the door like a man to a mirage, envisioning everything that could take place the moment he reached it. The dull brass handle was cold and it turned with an unrelenting shuffle to expose a wall of darkness beyond that smelled of something biting and unidentifiable. Holden set that aside for the moment and recalled the light switch to the right of the door before allowing his finger to unearth it in the evocative darkness. It snapped on with little effort and a crackle of electricity released before the cellar stairwell was coated with incandescent splendor.

Holden ground his teeth and turned the corner. Staring down at the unvarnished wood steps, he was almost frightened by the uncertainty of the place in which he was about to enter. Light traced gracefully down the hand rail and the wall to the left guarded Holden’s view from what he remembered to be a very open and cavernous cellar. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, the view that met his eyes and the smell that reached his nostrils were altogether astounding. The rows of shelving he had once seen empty were now lined with hundreds upon hundreds of books. Lanes of story and fact along a city of so much unrecycled paper. The stripes of tattered bindings stretched along each shelf like a rectangular horizon of dull rainbows. A potent, almost minty, smell caught itself in his nose and it made him want to simultaneously cough and breath deeper. The absolute quiet of the cellar allowed him to wonder for a moment if two of his senses had overpowered the other three. Holding The Book and knowing any story was a double-tap away had been one thing, but seeing them lining the space all around him - a new romantic fascination came over Holden.

In the silence, he noticed, from the sound of his own breathing, that his jaw had slackened, leaving his mouth open and vulnerable. Holden forced himself to abandon his shock for the moment, in fear that Winston would come to the stairs and see him standing there dumbstruck, and unloaded his box of sprinkler heads and tools. He stumbled into the nest of illegal paper and reached for the step ladder Winston had placed at the center of two aisles, no doubt to reach the top tier of shelving, and positioned himself below a pageantry of pipes to begin his fictitious renovations.

Over the course of the next seventy-two seconds, Holden breathed very evenly and allowed his eyes to soundlessly navigate the lines of the nearest shelving unit. He was simply amazed at the number of book spines and how the sheer volume of names embossed upon them with sparkling gold ink had chipped to leave a shadow of authors behind. He hadn’t come that morning expecting so much bewilderment. The reason he eventually rested on was the thickness. He had seen only a few books in his life and had never imagined the disturbing thickness of multiple books beside one another. So much information squeezed together in a printed form and yet, so little information taking up so much space. His digitized viewpoint was designed in the web of the internet and the green arms of The Book, where entire encyclopedias of knowledge took up less space than a pair of shoes. And yet, he instantly understood the man’s willingness to break so many laws and risk sacrificing his future for such tender obsession. Each one of those books had pages upon pages of shadowed text that, even at that very moment, were sitting stagnant, yearning to be flipped through. Among its dusty volumes, Holden could lock himself away and lose his life with a tome in hand. It was a dream he never knew he had.

A sprinkler head came free of its threading and fell to the ground, waking him swiftly from a dazed sleep. Holden had been unscrewing it, unaware. He stepped down from the ladder and reached for the fallen metal sprocket, but once down there, so near the closest shelf, he felt a duality of strength and sadness take over him and he dropped to his knees. The space around Holden seemed to pulse with an overwhelming power. It was as if the books were alive. And yet, there was a heartbreaking sensation lingering in the dust that reminded Holden of a job he had done a few years back at a small assisted living facility downtown. The two spaces shared the same air, and he knew why. It was the dissonant melody of life ending. Life that was barely holding on in a world that had forsaken it and moved on to something it believed was better.

Holden reached for the closest shelf and caressed the book nearest him. He felt the grain of the linen cover and memorized the sporadic stripes of black and white along the bead of binding, with a sympathetic spirit of guilt. In his jacket was The Book with all its gadgetry and perfection, the device he adored above all others. The Book suddenly seemed so arrogant. With the patience of an art connoisseur, he admired the novel in its entirety, memorizing the finest details, until he moved on to other books nearby. Holden felt a surge of excitement as he saw so many names beginning with the same letter. The shelves were in alphabetical order. His eyes scanned the walls until he discovered that in the shadowed corner, where a reading nook had been built with a small desk, couch and reading light, all grounded with a finely woven rug, was where he would find the letter he needed.

The step ladder folded effortlessly and Holden held an ear out for Winston. He remembered how easy it had been, when installing the sprinkler system, to hear the man shuffle his walker along the hardwood floor. For the moment he was safe to approach the shelves and he did so with the fervor of a monk before a row of succulent market beef on the forty-first day of a tiring fast. His eyes flickered past each name, trying with difficulty not to stop and admire the collection in his search for the one most important. On a shelf, sharing space with books by authors like Salman Rushdie and Edward Said, he found it.

His breath released in a long summer wind and Holden nearly lost his balance as he very carefully traced a finger over the top edge of the paperback book. It was solid, nearly solid, there had been so many pages packed in there. With the gentlest care, he pulled it free from its position on the shelf. It was lighter than it looked, less substantial than it felt. Holden rested the book with a protective hand on the desk beside him before absorbing the cover he had been longing to find on the bus the day prior. It was worn and bent, with more than a few smudges and a blushing ring of dirt along the rim. The capital letter ‘D’ in Salinger’s first initials was nearly smudged down to the white of the background. Droplets of sweat escaped Holden’s hair line and soothed the taught wrinkles of skin on his forehead as he pulled free the page from his pocket and rested it beside the book on the writing table. And then, carefully – very carefully – he lifted the limp cover of
The Catcher in the Rye
and turned the many pieces of paper to page two-hundred and forty-seven.

An overwhelming joy that he had never felt before in his life overcame him as a smile took precedence upon his face. The pages matched. Perfectly. From the first word at the top to the last words at the bottom, they were identical. Holden hadn’t realized yet the importance of such a discovery, but it didn’t matter. He was right and had found it, against all fear and doubt. And now, with the complete, unedited manuscript at his fingertips he would finally be able to –

“So that’s the one, huh?”

Holden awoke from his trance and turned to see Winston standing at the base of the staircase without his walker, wearing a grin that didn’t mean to make sense. Holden did his best in the moments available to decipher what the man meant, but was lost in the emotions laced within his grin.

“I…I’m sorry, sir. I couldn’t help myself. I noticed these books here and I…”

“Holden, please,” Winston complained, shuffling forward. “There is no need to lie, especially when you’re holding the book that revealed the lies to you.” As he lumbered near, Winston noticed the fragment of crumpled paper beside the book and approached the desk carefully, as if one wrong step could make the page disappear.

Holden thought the man was reaching for it when he passed his arm over the page and gently lifted the book from the desk. His grin shifted, but it remained unclear as he wiped the dust from the stained cover with ethereal delicacy. Holden had never before witnessed a person employ such a gesture with an inanimate object. This man, nearing the close of his life, had a love affair with the items on these shelves that Holden would never understand.