The Librarianist

With this, the women resumed situating themselves, and time passed in silence. The train now was traveling at a downward angle through a dense wood. Bob took out a book from his knapsack and began to read. In a little while he saw by the side of his eye that June was tapping Ida on the arm and pointing a chin at him. Quietly, but not so quietly that Bob wasn’t meant to hear, she said, “It’s at its studies.”

“What?”

“It reads, Ida.” June said to Bob, “Boy,” and Bob looked up from the book. She made a beckoning gesture, and he passed the book across to her. She inspected the spine and flipped through some of its pages. She told Ida, “It’s one of these stories where a lone man suffers considerably in an unforgiving wilderness, and if a vicious wolf or two has to perish in the meantime, so much the better.” June handed the book back to Bob, who received it but did not resume his reading, being hopeful June would speak with him further, and then she did this. “I’m waiting,” she said in a confiding voice, “for some guardian of yours to arrive, but it seems that shall not happen.”

“No, ma’am.”

“But surely you’re not traveling alone?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Eleven and a half.”

“Where is your family?”

“There’s my mother.”

“Where is she?”

“Working.”

“And what does she do?”

“She’s a secretary, in Portland.”

“And here you are, not at all in Portland, and without her.”

“Yes.”

June sat thinking. She asked, “Are you running away from home, boy?”

“Yes.”

A smile broke out on June’s face. It was a surprising thing, this smile; for her face, in expressing a natural joy, became dented and smashed, and her teeth were stained and crooked. It looked, really, that she was in pain; but no, she was elated by the news, and she said, “Oh, I had thought you might be. Ida, didn’t you think he might be? Running away from home?”

“I didn’t think he was,” Ida said. “But then, I didn’t think he wasn’t, either.”

“Well, I find it very romantic,” said June. The smile had passed but her face still wore the folds the smile had occasioned. “And to where will you run?” she asked Bob, and he shrugged, having no destination in mind.

“Perhaps he’ll simply run until his legs give out,” Ida answered. “Motion being the thing. If I were you, boy, I’d run away to Florida. It’s a nice climate for living out of doors.”

“We mustn’t assume so much,” said June. “He may well luck into a more comfortable situation. Perhaps he moves toward some peaceful pastime, a loving benefactor eager to set him up in healthful endeavor. Perhaps he moves toward a position in the clergy.”

“He could become a bell ringer.”

“He might very well achieve prosperousness as a bell ringer, that’s true. Do you know,” June said, “I always wanted to run away when I was a girl, but I never had the pluck. Didn’t you ever want to, Ida? To run away? To teach the world its bitter lesson?”

Ida said, “What I wanted was to jump in the river with a pocket full of stones.”

“Oh, yes, that,” said June, as if recalling a first love. She told Bob, “I notice that you are alone in your adventure. But why? I should think you’d have wanted some of your school chums to come along with you, no?”

Bob didn’t answer, but looked away and at the ceiling, as if something interesting was happening or might soon happen there.

“Yes, I understand,” said June.

Ida said, “I used to wonder what it would feel like to smash one of those great plate glass windows with gold leaf lettering bowed across the face of it. A butcher’s, bookkeeper’s, a pool hall — I didn’t care what, the smashing was the thing.”

“And with what would you smash it?” asked June.

“A brick, naturally.” Ida displayed her hand in the holding-a-brick shape. “It would arc through the air, landing at the center of the broad pane of glass, which would drop into itself, and the shimmering noise would satisfy my deepest, most destructive urge, and forever, I should think.”

June, speaking from the side of her mouth, told Bob, “Ida had no friends in school, either.”

Ida said, “June, however, always had a good many friends and companions. But they were every one a betrayer in the end, isn’t that right?”

“Truth, yes. And then, after the final savage treason, I thought, I won’t be falling for that wicked business again. And I vowed that I should walk alone.”

“But then, do you see, and she met a certain someone,” Ida said.

“Yes, yes, and now look at me. Up to my neck, boy. Dragged into a life of uncertainty and vagabondery and I don’t know what all else.” June wagged a finger at her friend as she told Bob, “One must be careful about whom she meets. But then, how careful can one be? Each time we leave our home we’re witness to fate’s temptation. People fall into unexpected communion every day of the week, whether or not they want to. Like an illness delivered on the wind.” June paused. Soberly, she said, “It can be upsetting to one’s plans, I’ll say that much.”

Ida sat breathing awhile. “I’m sorry, which plans were upset?”

“You aren’t familiar with them,” June answered, and she winked at Bob.