Woods

by Finkelstein, Steven

  The library was a domed building made of brick with wings extending out to either side of it, and at the end of one of the wings was the hall of records, which had not been part of the original library; the two had been combined by way of a tunnel, also made of brick. Standing outside in the street, one could tell without difficulty which parts of the overall structure had been added more recently, though “recently” here being a relative term, as the tunnel had been constructed nearly twenty years before Tad’s birth. You could not reach the hall of records without first passing through the tunnel from the library, as there was no other entrance to it. Tad swung the door open, and walked into a welcome blast of frosty air. At least he would be able to search for the information he was looking for in comfort.

  He had not been in the library for some time, though at one point he’d been a regular visitor. When Daisy was younger, his mother had sometimes taken the two of them there in the evenings for the reading of any one of a number of children’s classics by one of the geriatric librarians. There were at least three or four of them, so alike in mannerisms and appearance that Tad could never tell them apart and thought of them all as extensions of more or less the same person. No sooner than Daisy had grown old enough to speak then she had begun shunning the world and no longer cared to go to the readings, while Tad found his mother lacking in motivation when he was the only one still interested, so that was the end of it. Casey, of course, had never gone with them. He would have hated it.

  The place was just the same as Tad remembered. It had the same ponderous and weighty feel that all resting and storing places of knowledge have, and the overpowering, self possessed silence typical of all libraries. The checkout desk was directly ahead of him, and he walked forward to it, his still-damp shoes making soft squelching sounds on the floor, which had a thin layer of carpet on it, the unfortunate shade of an unripe tangerine. The librarian, who also looked about as old and frail as he remembered, needed him to repeat what he was after a good three or four times before she finally got the gist of it. Tad thought that he had known her name at some point in the past, and felt slightly guilty for not being able to remember it. She made her way out from behind the desk, making soft clucking noises in the back of her throat as she led Tad toward the right side of the library and the adjoining passage. As they walked, Tad glanced up, as he remembered doing many times in his youth, at the sloping underside of the dome, which was a soft rose color. Close to the pinnacle the roof flattened out, and according to legend there was a storage space up there, that Tad had heard many stories about from school acquaintances. He’d heard it was full of everything from remaindered books or rare first editions to the skeletal remains of old librarians, and while the last of these didn’t seem to be very likely, with the events of the past couple of months it didn’t strike him as anywhere near as farfetched as it might have before. They walked past a good many shelves, a row of computer monitors, and the magazine and periodical section. They passed by the children’s reading area, a comfortable nook with a pile of stuffed animals and other toys. Pictures on the walls of Peter Rabbit, Dr. Seuss creations and other favorites, all of which Tad recognized from earlier, simpler times. And then they came to the tunnel entrance that led to the hall of records, a simple archway with no door, easily wide enough for the two of them to enter together, but Tad let his guide enter first. He had never been through there before; he’d never had a reason to, and now that he did, he was less than happy about it. He passed under the arch reluctantly.

  The tunnel was well lit by fluorescent lighting in the ceiling, and there were glass cases on the walls in which posters had been placed advertising library events and books that had recently been released. Tad glanced at them, but none of them left a lasting impression. He was too distracted. The tunnel was about three hundred feet in length, and after walking up a single broad step at its opposite end, Tad and his hunchbacked guide arrived at their destination. She stepped inside in a very nonchalant fashion, but again, he hesitated before leaving the tunnel. Already too far to turn back, and then he was inside.

  He noticed immediately that things seemed a lot more cramped and generally less organized than in the library itself. The Hall of Records wasn’t as well lit, and modern touches like the computers were completely absent from view. It resembled the study of a scatterbrained scholar who had never thrown anything away. There were shelves here too, and rows of gray metal cabinets. But some of the books on the shelves were not bound, and some more closely resembled law ledgers, hefty packages of file folders in groups, separated by clear plastic dividers, with letters printed on them. Tad had always been somewhat baffled by the method by which things are kept in a library, and had often had an inordinate amount of trouble finding a book if he had a specific one in mind. But typically he would also feel embarrassed when this happened, and, ever obstinate, he would refuse to go ask one of the roving bespectacled women for help, instead hunting down whatever he was after himself. But in times past he would have made a game out of it- Private First Class Surrey rifling the enemy barracks for their most sensitive documents. How strange to think that he no longer had to play to bring excitement to his life; he was in genuine danger now, but it didn’t feel anything like he’d ever thought it would. He hated being afraid, and that is what he felt more than anything else. It was the fear that comes of uncertainty, the fear of not knowing what the best move to make is, and knowing that a misstep will have lasting consequences.

  Though the Hall of Records was far smaller than the library itself, Tad thought there seemed to be more packed into it. Rather than the spacious isles between the shelves as in the main library, there were only cramped alleys crisscrossing the length of the Hall. Even the librarian didn’t seem to know exactly where they should be looking. She had led him to one of the rear corners, and as she perused one of the lower shelves, Tad glanced around at the semi-secluded niches that lined the walls, each with a dusty wooden tabletop and narrow benches on either side, big enough to allow only one person to sit on at a time, and a slim person at that. They were like the cloisters of a church, where parishioners could stow themselves away and observe a moments’ quiet prayer away from any other distracting human interaction. Here there was no central air, as there was in the library. The Hall was cooled by six large fan set in the ceiling, two rows of three, set equidistant from each other. They made a continual noise, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, as they spun overhead like the turbines of some perpetual motion machine the purpose of which remains a mystery to the seekers of arcane wisdom passing to and fro beneath it. It wasn’t hot, but it was stuffy. Tad hadn’t seen anyone in there besides the librarian and himself, but he was not convinced they were alone. There were any number of places where people could be hidden, intent on fact finding missions of their own, dredging up the leavings of the past for their own unscrupulous purposes. From where he was standing, he could see nothing but bloated, top-heavy sculptures of metal and paper. They surrounded him, and he thought of all the dead trees that had gone into the making of that paper, and he had a sense of himself and the librarian in a cemetery of timber, and he began to grow very claustrophobic and ill at ease. He paced back and forth, confined by the limited space, rubbing his hands together. The librarian turned toward him, gesturing with her fingers for him to kneel down beside her. “You might find what you’re looking for here,” she said with a grunt as she straightened up to her full height again. “There are all manner of maps of the outer areas of town stored here, some of them dating back nearly two centuries, I’ll be bound. You will be careful with them, won’t you?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Tad was already thumbing through the soft bound volumes, brushing away, in some cases, what looked like decades of dust.

  The librarian watched him doubtfully from behind her round lenses. “What sort of project did you say you were doing again, dear?”

  “Report for history. About the town’s origins and the inception of the Feral community.”

  “But
I thought school was out of session for the season?”

  “It’s a summer assignment. Due on the first day back.”

  “I see…” the old woman frowned, hands on her hips, obviously unconvinced, but when Tad stopped what he was doing to stare up at her, she quickly dropped her arms to her sides and hurried away. Whatever the child was up to was really no affair of hers, and she had seen something in his face she didn’t want to pursue any further. She had plenty of other business to attend to anyway. When Tad had grown tired of hunkering down on his haunches, he seated himself in the aisle and continued rummaging through the lower shelves. Part of the problem was that he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for. His plan was as follows- attempt to uncover records that might indicate whether Daddy or Stitch were the rightful owners or were related in some way to the rightful owners of a piece of property between the Surrey estate and that of their nearest neighbor along the Willow Road, the crotchety Roy McKenton. He felt that by determining whether Daddy and Stitch had any legal right to be there, he might be able to determine the next best course of action. Should they be revealed to have no rights to the land, then Tad had decided he would alert McKenton to their presence and let the stern farmer and his hounds roust the self proclaimed man among men and his rhyme spouting companion. And if the opposite proved to be true, and it turned out that Daddy had been telling the truth about the land being his, then Tad would be a step closer to unraveling the mystery, and perhaps also be a step closer to purging the man from his life. That is what he was thinking, and once again he was unsure how effective his methods would prove to be. He was making it up as he went along, relying on his instincts again, and praying as he did so that they would not play him false.

  A half hour passed. He was sitting in one of the cramped study cubbies with several of the ponderous ledgers stacked in front of him, leafing more and more despondently back and forth. He’d found a listing of property holdings for some of the outlying areas of town, but he couldn’t make much of them. He had found a pair of documents that were of some interest, though, as they both mentioned his grandfather, Percival Surrey, much renowned, as has been mentioned, in family history. One of them was a bill of sale for some horses dated March of 1967 for the sum of forty-three thousand dollars, not, as Tad had been told at one point, for a case of whiskey- or if the whiskey had been involved, it was not listed as part of the transaction. The other was a building permit for the house in which the Surrey family lived. This he gazed at for some time, curiously. He found it odd that much of his future rested on this piece of paper that had granted his grandfather permission to erect the structure that he’d spent his entire life in. In a way, this was the piece of paper that had set everything he’d ever known in motion. But fascinating as this was to reflect upon, it didn’t help him any with his current quest. The information he sought continued to elude him.

  It was some time later, just when he was on the verge of giving up, in fact, that he found what he was looking for. He had come upon a series of deeds to property in the northwestern area of town, and while the meaning of much of the antiquated language of the documents was difficult for him to decipher, he knew he was on the right track when he spotted the name McKenton as one of those listed in a document that seemed to mark the end of some sort of land dispute.

  City of Feral General Commonwealth Arbitration Committee 20th May, 1963

  This will serve as the definitive closing of the matter brought before the attention of the committee on the abovementioned date by Mr. Thomas C. McKenton, heretofore referred to as the plaintiff. Let it be noted that actual properties belonging to said plaintiff in the form of either developed or undeveloped farming lands in his possession from a legally binding standpoint are as follows: from North to South, said properties extend from, at the northernmost point, no more or less than precisely fourteen acres and thirty paces from the southernmost point, this being marked by the Willow Road, and it being noted that as of the time of this hearing, the property on the opposite side of the Willow Road as that being owned by the plaintiff remains in the possession of the trustees of the City of Feral. From East to West, the property of which the plaintiff is the legal owner extends from, at the easternmost point, the end of lands being owned by Ms. Madeline Crawley, heretofore referred to as the defendant, duly marked by the boundary fence, to the westernmost point five and one quarter acres distant from it, this also being marked by boundary fence, the property beyond it being owned by Mr. Maxwell Brinkley.

  Furthermore, the plaintiff wishes it to be noted that any violation of noise and/or trespassing ordinances will be prosecuted to the fullest extent that the law allows, and it is also to be recognized that since the defendant has neglected to appear today for this hearing and mount any form of defense, that the committee finds fully in favor of the plaintiff in these matters. In the event that the defendant wishes at some point in the future to reopen these proceedings, further claim may be filed at such juncture.

  Observed and witnessed by the following committee members-

  Misters Edward and Earnest Heath, Mr. Patrick Dempster, Mr. Hal Mallory, Mr. Milo Shepard, Mrs. Nicole Principal, Mr. Jacob Lastings

  Then there were the signatures of all involved scrawled at the bottom, including that of the plaintiff, Thomas McKenton, who Tad correctly assumed was Roy McKenton’s father. The only missing signature was that of the defendant, a Ms. Madeline Crawley, who apparently hadn’t thought enough of the charges leveled against her to appear before the committee. Tad spent some time gazing at the piece of paper, which was somewhat yellowed around the edges. He reread it several times, but eventually he was satisfied that he hadn’t missed anything, and he returned it to the file from where it had come. Certain things had been revealed by the rather sparse document, but on the other hand, there was a good deal that hadn’t. By Tad’s way of thinking, the end of the McKenton’s holdings to the east should be right up against the property that, in 1963, would have been owned by his grandfather Percival. But if that wasn’t the case, as this document seemed to indicate, then that meant that there was a piece of land between the Surrey property and the McKenton’s, and it had been owned, at least back in 1963, by someone named Madeline Crawley. Is there some connection, then, between Daddy and this woman? There was no way to know that, and the piece of paper had revealed all that it was going to. So he turned and made his way through the clutter back toward the tunnel to the library, while the blades of the fans spun slowly overhead.

  As the other family members had not come looking for him yet, he assumed that the doctor was not finished with Daisy, and he walked down the street in the direction of the office, the sun glaring stubbornly down at him. It was early afternoon, and he stuck close to the buildings on the right side of the Willow Road, flitting from shadow to shadow, trying to take advantage of what limited shade was available. The people that he saw going in and out of the various establishments- the hardware store, the flower shop, the drug store- all struck him as having a variation on their faces of the same expression that he’d come, over his lifetime, to associate with the Feral citizenry. There was a time when he might have described it as laid back or mellow, prototypical small town ease, a certain deliberateness to the motions, the casual stroll, the hands in the pockets, the smile of acknowledgement at a greeting that takes the whole long summer afternoon to reach the lips. No one was hurrying. There was no need to. They would finish their shopping in plenty of time to get to any other business of the day. He crouched by the side of the drug store and watched them, two young girls passing on the other side of the street in close confidence, their heads together, arms thrown over each others shoulders, whispering to one another. An elderly man in overalls with no shirt, skin the color of a dried up orange, a floppy straw hat on his head like some motley scarecrow, ambling straight down the center of the road with no fear of traffic. They all went about their lives, as he saw now, in a kind of happy stupor, simplistic, complacent, inattentive to anything beside
s those small chores that collectively made for some kind of acceptable and meaningful whole. Welcome to Feral, a nice place to live. He thought of them as sheep, meandering over the meadow while in the trees beyond the wolf waits for sunset, salivating, doubtless in yet another decorative costume, muttering nonsense speech loaded with innuendo. It was hard to know how to feel, with him being the only one privy to that information. On the one hand, he felt contempt, and a kind of superiority, that I have been the one chosen to know. I’m the one who answered the call. But on the other hand he was envious, and he longed to return to where they were, and his heart clamored painfully for what he’d taken for granted, that which had been ripped from him so brutally, so unexpectedly, so totally.