The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book

by Wendy Welch

  I remember as a very young child being warned that libraries and bookstores were quiet places where noise wasn’t allowed. Here was yet another thing the adults had gotten wrong, for these book houses pulsed with sounds; they just weren’t noisy. The books hummed. The collective noise they made was like riding on a large boat where the motor’s steady thrum and tickle vibrated below one’s sneakers, ignorable until you listened, then omnipresent and relentless, the sound that carried you forward. Each book brimmed with noises it wanted to make inside your head the moment you opened it; only the shut covers prevented it from shouting ideas, impulses, proverbs, and plots into that sterile silence. What an enigma (a word my young self wouldn’t know for years) that such a false sense of quietude should be imposed on this obviously noisy place. It felt the same as the subversive, subliminal hush of a lunchroom where kids were plotting—just a temporary absence of noise until adult backs were turned.

  Childish … and yet, have you ever stood outside on very still nights and let your ears adjust until you could hear the soft hum of overhead power lines? When I head downstairs in the morning to brew coffee, I hear that sound again—the low throbbing of the books in our shop, pulsing with energy, waiting. And the childhood sensation that they stopped talking to each other only because I came into the room returns. Perhaps that’s what makes people breathe slower in the bookstore; without knowing it, they adjust their rhythm to the gentle pulsing of the books.

  Of course, if this childhood fancy were true, then some of the books in our shop would be swearing at us. Idyllic libraries with straight shelves and neat rows may have well-behaved volumes; ours look more as though they’ve been in a drunken brawl. They await us in the morning sloughed across the table, stacked alongside overflowing shelves, stuck in windowsills, hanging off the turn rack I found in a thrift store and brought home in my little Honda’s backseat. (I had to keep the windows open so the rack could stick straight out either side. Lots of honks on the highway from that escapade, but the state policeman just grinned as he passed.) Our bookshop is the Lonesome Gulch Saloon to a library’s Eastern Boarding School for Young Ladies.

  At night I sometimes browse the peaceful chaos of our shelves with no intention of actually choosing something, just wanting to see what’s there, playing the old library games. I look at covers—that you can’t judge books by them is just one more lie we teach our children—and weigh pros and cons. Then I might choose a volume or, feeling luxurious, two or three. With potential gems in hand, I flip off the light and head to our wooden staircase, groping my way up by feel. The bookstore is wired so that you have to extinguish the downstairs chandelier (just four bulbs in iron hooks, but it looks very distinguished). Then you must cross in darkness to the stairs and climb them before hitting the switch for the second-story landing’s dome light.

  Here’s yet another dichotomy about running a bookstore: on the one hand, it’s a sacred trust, a third place where people can find a listening ear and the wisdom of the ages; on the other, it’s a building that has to be kept clean and lit. And as much trouble as Jack and I had trouble keeping the place clean, keeping the lights on proved worse.

  It’s our own fault that we’re slobs, but when we started running out of space sometime during year three, we had to cover the first-floor staircase’s light switch with a bookshelf that ended up resting right against the toggle. To use the light would require moving a whole stack of hardbacks, then feeling around with a stick between wood and wall. It became far simpler to just leave it off and creep up the stairs, hands outstretched. This lazy attitude led to a nightly ritual I have come to adore.

  Zora the black Lab likes to sit as silent sentinel halfway up the staircase; bumping into her tempts a heart attack each time. In the evening, it’s fairly common that one of us will be working on domestic chores upstairs while the other is in the shop taking care of business. From her point of view, Zora is only fulfilling the duty of watching over us both, but hunting a black dog on the inky staircase each night is no great treat, especially as she sometimes stretches out lengthwise—a fuzzy, benevolent speed bump. Or, as A. A. Milne put it in what we think of this as Zora’s theme song:

  Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit:

  There isn’t any other stair quite like it.

  As Jack is usually the last one to come to bed, I will lie in our room reading, one ear tuned to hear the moment when dog and human connect: the thud of his outstretched hands hitting the wall, followed by his muffled oath and the tap-tap-tap of Zora’s wagging tail against the wood. It never fails to reduce me to giggles. Ah, bliss.

  Jack talks about installing a motion detector, perhaps a clapper or some voice-activated thing, but we haven’t to date. Blame for this procrastination rests squarely and solely on my father. How can I put this? I am the daughter of a card-carrying gadget geek. My dad never met a machine he didn’t like. As children my sister and I had LEGO out the wazoo, plus a Thingmaker (remember “Goop”?!) and Tinkertoys and Lite-Brite. If it made something, said something, turned something on and off, or involved new and improved electronic circuitry, my dad had to have it. (But it might interest you to know, my father has yet to purchase a Kindle.)

  After Jack and I married, we lived in Scotland for several years, so visited the old home place annually. On arrival—by which I mean, in the car from the airport—Dad would fill us in on all the new gadgets he’d acquired during the interval, and speak with disgust and a dismissive hand wave of those he’d discarded.

  My mother, a patient soul by nature, has used the same drip coffeepot since 1990, despite Dad’s best efforts. She usually sat with a book, smiling, as Dad showed us how to work the National Weather Alert monitor, the talking bathroom scale (Why?!) and, one memorable year, the Light Commander.

  Jack and I slept on the fold-out living room couch, flanked by two lamps with separate wall switches. One required either advanced yoga positions or getting out of bed to reach its off button. Father, recognizing a chance to own another gadget, decided this logistical problem could be solved with a voice-activated mechanism. He spent an hour that first night drilling us on its special features and passwords: “Light Commander, Light Off,” and the equally unforgettable “Light Commander, Light On.”

  Mom rolled her eyes and headed for bed as Jack and I repeated these modern abracadabras to Dad’s satisfaction. Only then would he go away.

  More than an hour later, Jack put down his book and yawned. I had long since fallen into a doze with a paperback on my face. Jack removed it, tucked the covers over my inert shoulders, and placed my glasses on the bedside table. Then he turned to the lamp.

  “Light Commander, Light Off.”

  There was no response.

  He repeated the command, a little louder. Nope. He tried softer. Nada.

  Jack thought a moment, then realized his accent would be flummoxing the gadget’s settings. He adjusted his Scots clip to a Tennessee drawl.

  “Laaahhhht CahmAINder, Laaaaaaght AAAAAhhhhhfffff.”

  The lamp ignored him.

  Perhaps he had the wording wrong. “Light Commander, Turn Off.”

  The bulb burned merrily—or, as Jack said later, brighter.

  Lying with my back to him, I listened to my normally unflappable husband lose patience with each successive attempt. Truth be told, I was enjoying the performance very much, and trying not to end it by laughing out loud.

  “Light Commander, Eff Off!” he snarled, and I couldn’t suppress a honking giggly snort. Reaching behind Jack to where the couch bed left an opening to the wall, I yanked the plug from its socket and handed it to him, biting my pillow to stifle the giggles.

  So it is understandable that Jack hasn’t followed through with his intentions regarding the upstairs light—or, for that matter, the other weird places where illumination sources grace our shop. I have to tell you that lights are a sore point among those brave souls who pinch-hit for us when we make brief forays back into performance, or just run away f
or a weekend.

  I think many people must hear the books humming, recognize that fun energy that thrums through our shop gathering a community around itself, because two years ago, a tax attorney came up to me at the town’s annual Christmas parade, put her hand on my shoulder, and said without preamble, “Isabel tells me she loves watching your store, that it’s peaceful and fun and pleasant, that it clears the mind. How much would you charge to let me do it for a weekend?”

  Tom Sawyer is alive and well and stocking bookshelves in Big Stone Gap. (If you don’t remember the famous fence scene Samuel Clemens wrote, wherein Tom suckers a bunch of boys into paying him to whitewash a fence, you should revisit that passage soon.)

  Peggy isn’t the only person to approach us on the street and offer to work the shop “not for pay, just for fun, if y’all go away for a weekend. It just sounded like a good time, something I’d enjoy.” Once we’d been around long enough, that classic pendulum swing of small-town life sputtered into motion, and word went out that Jack and Wendy’s place was good fun not just to visit, but to be part of. Jack often says, “Nothing breeds success like success. And people want to own a piece of what they like.”

  Needless to say, we love that our shop is that easy to get a sitter for, but we do recognize the unfortunate light switch quirks in our baby. In order to understand this idiosyncrasy, you’re going to need a floor plan.

  Tales of the Lonesome Pine Used Books has seven rooms, plus the outdoor Luv Shack. As bookshops go, we are small “but pack a wallop,” as Garth once commented. Three rooms run across the front with only sliding pocket doors to separate them. If you were standing just inside the door with your back to the Free Books Porch, you would be in Local Lit, where we feature new and used titles by area artists, a Trigiani table, and CDs from many regional musicians. Southern and historical fiction also have shelves in this room, as do memoirs and other nonfiction narratives. To your left would be general fiction; literature, poetry, and writing; art and photography books; science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal romances (werewolves, vampires, and demons, oh my; or, as Jack calls them, “Fur and Fang Flings”).

  On the opposite side of the store is what we casually term the “nonfiction room,” something of a misnomer since its central shelves hold Christian novels. Along the edges run science, education, comparative religion, history, travel, entertainment (mostly music and television), biography, and economics. Directly opposite this shelf, customers find the shop sign they like best: “Humor is in the bathroom—seriously.” (Hey, we just flat ran out of room. Danielle Steel, Barbara Taylor Bradford, and Barbara Delinsky are in there, too. It’s not an editorial comment.)

  To the right of the bathroom is the staircase leading to our living quarters, where the dogs hang out on plush pillows during the day, whining at customers until they reach their hands over the baby gate blocking the lower landing and pet them. Opposite the staircase is a single shelf sporting another favorite sign: PATTERSON, CORNWALL, GRISHAM, THE CLARKS: AND THANK YOU BUT, NO, WE DON’T WANT TO BUY ANY. It is this overloaded bestseller shelf that incapacitates the downstairs switch for the upstairs light. I know (1) it’s not James Patterson’s fault and (2) he probably wouldn’t care, but we feel a twinge of resentment every time we restock his section. If we could just sell down his pile of books, we could get the use of this switch back …

  Straight on from here lies the Mysteries and Thrillers Room, with a small porch jutting off it holding the Children’s section. A former coat closet became the Teen Nook. Back to the bathroom and going left, you enter the half of our kitchen given over to the shop, where we keep—what else?—cookbooks. Also crafts, gardening, and horror. (The paranormals pushed horror out of the fiction room. Jack swore he could hear Robert McCammon’s werewolves snarling at the John Saul and Peter Straub novels.)

  The door at the back of the former kitchen leads to what was Jack’s man-cave, now shared with the rest of the species as the Guys with Big Guns section. To the left of the man-cave a door leads to the carport Jack enclosed for my chair caning business, which slowly got taken over by books advertised for sale online. Just before the garage door, a small but deep closet houses the infamous Quick Trades section. Although people often cite QT as their favorite section, they tend not to linger because Beulah and Val-Kyttie’s side-by-side litter boxes rest just below the bottom shelf. (The girls won’t share a bathroom.)

  It stinks that we can’t afford to overlook the space above the litter boxes, but that’s not the worst place we’ve squeezed out a few more feet. Straining to use every nook and corner efficiently, Jack has modified shelves to fit against windows, across counters, into the kitchen crannies reserved for a stove and refrigerator. I once threatened to crochet a hammock and drape it from the ceiling to hold tiny gift books—the fleas of the secondhand selling world. The silly wee things fall into crevices everywhere until Heather’s broom liberates them.

  Now, with that floor plan in mind, what could bring more pleasure than to be the guest manager presiding over such an exotic flock of humming, throbbing, tightly packed books for a day? Friends do indeed clamor to be on the substitute book-slinger list. Paige, a student from the college, lived in the guest room one summer in return for watching the shop while Jack and I traveled; we got the idea from the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. When he counted up one night, Jack named more than thirty people who have helped out at what friends nicknamed “The Beckwelch Bookselling Cooperative.”

  But none of them can find the light switches.

  As every inch of our establishment’s wall space from the floor to six feet up is covered with shelving, the switches are hidden by books. We always tell the store-sitter what titles they lurk behind, but at the end of the day we come home to a dark bookstore operated by flashlight and candles—or worse. Once we arrived to find all the volumes from the third shelf of histories—the next section over from where the switch actually nestled—on the floor and that day’s guest seller sitting in the gathered gloom, draining a bottle of wine.

  Our favorite seller-and-switch story is the time we pulled up at midnight to every light still blazing. A moment later, the phone rang, and Peggy’s voice said without preamble, “I remembered how hard it was to find them last time, so as soon as you showed me where they were and left, I went around and turned them all on. They stayed on all day.”

  Good friend, bad electric bill. But one has to admire Peggy’s problem-solving prowess—not to mention her ability to recognize the sound of our motor driving past her house. (Actually, that’s not an unusual skill in a small town.)

  My friend Jenny, from the writing group, says, “If it weren’t for the damn light switches, this would be a great gig. There’s a whole different kind of energy to this place: busy, yet calm at the same time. I don’t know any other work environments like that.”

  When my friends say such things, I remember the hum of the libraries that graced my childhood—and smile.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Network

  It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.

  —Epicurus

  JACK AND I MISSED THE exact moment when we changed from “those new people who own that place” to “Jack and Wendy, who run our town’s bookstore.” Too busy running “that place” to notice the gentle slip from suspicion to trust, we just looked up one day and found ourselves surrounded by a network of customers, friends, and fellow citizens.

  However, we can pinpoint the day our new status came home to roost. (In retrospect, people begging to take a turn at the helm should have been a clue, but most of those people had become friends as well as customers, so we didn’t take it too seriously.)

  One summer Saturday, some five years into our sojourn as bookstore owners, a man shuffled in and stood at the door of the fiction room, looking around in a vague sort of way. Typing on my laptop at the table, I glanced up and smiled as Jack headed toward him with his customary �
�Good morning! Help you find something?”

  The man said, “Well, do you have any books about reading?”

  I suppressed a snort of laughter.

  “What type of reading?” Jack said, ever polite.

  “Well,” the man drawled, eyes moving from Jack, to me, back to Jack, “about learning to read.”

  A couple of things were starting to sink in: the way he stood, slumped and still; the fact that his eyes didn’t roam the shelves, which is what most people’s do even while they’re speaking to one of us. They can’t wait to get started, but this man stood, bearlike, eyes darting back and forth.

  Jack shot me a look that said out of my league here, so I smiled at this potential customer. “Who is learning to read, a child or an adult?”

  “Me,” he answered. “I need to learn to read.”

  Ah. Got it. Hey, good for you! I thought. Aloud, I said, “Okay. We have some literacy—um, some books about learning to read here, but do you have someone who can help you, because most of them are designed to be used by someone who can read, and they go over them with the person who can’t. You would have a hard time using them yourself.”

  “Oh. Well, no. I live alone.”

  “You’re going to want someone to help you, because it’s really hard to learn to read by yourself. I’m pretty sure there are classes here in town. Let me check.” I pulled my laptop lid open again and thought fast. I didn’t have a clue where such classes might be held, but could think of three people who would: Isabel, who was on every do-gooder board of directors for forty miles; Jessica, a counselor at the local college; and Paul, the director of a youth agency.

  As the man expounded on his story, I e-mailed all three: Help! Man in bookstore needs instant answers on literacy classes; he can recognize his own name, no numeracy or literacy beyond that. Please call!

  Within two minutes, the phone rang. Jessica asked for some details, then told me where to send “Steve.” No sooner had I hung up with her than the phone rang again.