A Cat in a Hat

It’s funny to me when I think about it. Me in circulation. Fifteen years ago my circulation stopped and a man had my heart in his hands and had to put my circulation back together.

I am standing now at the checkout desk of one of the busiest libraries in one of the wealthiest counties in the state of Maryland. Most of the customers, though, like me, are not wealthy. I know this because they have fines on their library cards that a rich person would pay in a heartbeat, but these folks can’t. A problem only arises when the fine owed reaches $25. At that point the county blocks the card and no book, however inspiring, may be checked out to the person presenting book or card.

A woman steps up to the desk, I think it’s her daughter beside her, four books in her hands. They are what we call in libraryese “yellow tape” books for how they are shelved. They are books for those who are truly blessed, those just beginning to read.

I ask the woman for her library card to check the books out. She says that she does not have one. “I’ll make one for you,” I say. No problem. But things turn worse. I need a photo ID. There are rules. Anyone could take a book or CD or DVD from the library and never return it; if there were no customs, someone could use someone else’s card like a credit card without the first person’s knowledge. The book thief could have the library of Alexandria in his garage and an innocent would be responsible for the overdues. Think on that.

I put the customer’s name and address into my computer. She has a library card already. She owes the county $25.05 for returning items late. My supervisor is sharp. She glances at me from her office. She can smell from there that I’m in a jam, but turns back to her own task and waits for flames.

I say, “Can you pay 10 cents to bring your card back into use?”

“No,” the customer replies.

I have 10 cents in my pocket, but the supervisor is watching me now and I have been warned that such largesse is frowned upon. So a bead of sweat forms on the back of my neck. Great people worry about great things. I worry, greatly, at things small.

Then I think to say, “Does your daughter have a library card?”

“No.”

I check the computer. True is true. I create a card that I think is something more. The first book I check out to her is this: “El Gato en el Sombrero.”

That night I read that the summer book fair sponsored by the Montauk Library will no longer happen. Revenues have shrunk, the volunteers have grown older, books seem slightly heavier (perhaps due to the foil-stamping of the dust jackets).

Goodbye happiness. I have been at best an inconsistent spender at the fair, though I have pulled an oar and bought and continue to buy books from the good sellers in East Hampton, Montauk, and Springs. The president of the Friends of the Montauk Library — whose name is Krusch (one wonders if she pronounces it like “Khrushchev” or like “crush”) — allows that the $17,000 taken in by the Friends is not worth the efforts exerted by its crew.

I guess it’s just chump change.

And the folks of Montauk will stroll more easily without tourists or sojourners in the sunshine trolling the green there, their noses in books.

So: The next night I take a book from a shelf at home. It is a work by Paul Scott of which I am very fond. It comes apart in my hands: glue and dust falling and rising. I will name the publisher here, because shame is in order. William Morrow & Co., Inc. This was a hardcover book I expected to last. But no. There’s a lesson here. The cheaply made book will disappear from our shelves and be replaced by electronic books. But the typographer, the printer, the bookbinder, and the publisher dedicated to craft will continue to produce work that will last beyond our lifetimes.

On the following night in a dream I am 9 years old, an altar boy locking my bicycle in the play-yard of a Catholic school. Like Catholic schools most everywhere, the grass and dirt in the field have been paved over. Remember the scene in “Lawrence of Arabia”? Imagine a small boy in his cassock and surplice walking just after dawn through barrenness toward Mass, his robes aflutter. What is this small fellow thinking about? Is it Mrs. Cawley’s equations? Sister John Andrew’s punishments? No. He is thinking about the emerald city of Oz that appeared in the asphalt desert last week.

The bookmobile. A rolling treasure chest of incalculable riches. He knew what Chapman wrote of realms of gold. The last bookmobile in the county where I live rolled to a halt 30 years ago.

Imagine if America, instead of sending tanks to distant deserts, sent bookmobiles to schools, loaded with taxpayer-paid-for books, free to any child inquisitive.

Imagine if a man lit his fire ring in his field and invited the kids in the neighborhood to watch. Imagine if he tossed a shoddily made book in the flames. Imagine his face orange as Satan’s. Imagine him with a wheelbarrow of good books. He rolls them away from the blaze. “Take what you want,” he says. “Take any book you want.”

Dan Marsh, a longtime “Guestwords” contributor, writes from Garrett Park, Md.