The library

I went to the library today. I had a Hemingway book that was almost 10 days overdue, so I went to the bank beforehand to get cash to pay my library fine. I took $20 out of my checking account.

I had to stand at the check-in counter for a moment before a lady standing just opposite of me noticed. She finally looked up and asked if I wanted to check something in. I said yes. Also, I said, I had a fine, and I wanted to pay it.

She checked Hemingway in and told me I owed the library $2.40. I handed her the twenty. It was crisp and flat. 

“I overestimated a bit,” I said when I handed her the money. She turned and changed the bill on the other side of the horseshoe-shape desk. She might have smiled when I said what I did. It’s hard to tell because she was walking away from me, but sometimes it does seem that you can see someone smiling by the way they turn their head or where they look, even if it’s away from you. I thought she smiled.

I found Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and I read through the first five pages in the aisle. The book wasn’t what I expected it to be. It was nothing like I had expected. But I was engaged, and although it wasn’t what I was expecting or particularly craving at that moment, I took it, and I intend to read it. 

But it really isn’t what I expected.

The same lady who checked in Hemingway was there to check out Vonnegut. I placed the book on the desk, and I reached for my keys, because on my key ring is my library card. The key ring was not in my pocket. I had left it outside, as I do. 

I went and got it as two Hispanic boys were paying for something. They didn’t know how much to give. The lady behind the desk – not the one who checked in Hemingway – told them it was $2 per day. They stood there and counted out some cash. I saw a lot of ones. She asked if they were paying today. I walked outside.

On the way back in, the two Hispanic boys passed me on the sidewalk. They were smiling. I can only imagine that the transaction went as well or better than they had anticipated, or they were laughing at one another, joking about the lady or something that one of them had said to her or among themselves. 

My book, the Vonnegut, was on the desk where I left it. I stood with it at the check-out station. The lady reached her hand out and I pushed the book toward her. She did not put her hand on the book, and I looked up at her. She wanted my library card. It was the very reason I had gone outside. I passed it across the desk to her. 

She took care of the check-out and asked if I needed a print-out. She didn’t explain what a print-out is, but I knew that she meant did I want a piece of paper with the return date on it. I said no. “What’s the date,” I asked.

If I had walked up to her and handed her nothing and asked her what the date was, she would have told me May 31. But after the check-out and her question, she answered, “the 14^th.”

June 14. That is my dad’s birthday. I didn’t say that to her, but it flagged immediately in my brain. I told her that I’m trying to work through top 20^th century American literature. She said nothing, and I walked away. 

I find it curious that she said nothing. She has made books her life, and I find that most people love to talk about what they do, and in this case, I expected her to have two reasons to answer: one, her career revolves around literature, and two, she certainly has a favorite 20^th century author or work. 

Maybe it's just me.

To milestones

Today is my twenty-second birthday. It's also the day that two bikers may have lost their lives and one innocent man had his change forever.

Shortly after a couple of motorcycles collided with a white grand am at the intersection of Highway 27 and Black Oak Ridge Road, I pulled up at the wreck ready to snap some photos and get quotes from onlookers.

I can only say that I underestimated what walking up on a wreck would be like. In all of my years as a Herald-News correspondent, I've never worked a crime scene or wreck or site of injury or fatality.

I didn't really consider it until it had already happened. People were doing what people do and gawking hand-over-mouth, each giving his/her accord of what took place. But some weren't. Some were just watching.

I spoke to one man who drove up on the accident and parked and got out rather than sit and wait for emergency personnel to clear the road. He had nothing to say to me. But his face was telling. He looked on as if one of his own loved ones had been involved. He was wearing a red Redskins ballcap and glasses. He reminded me of my dad.

There were others who showed genuine horror at the accident. I was surprised, though, at who these people were. They weren't the fellow bikers who had stopped and were part of the group that the victims were riding with, although undoubtedly there was angst and worry in them. They stood around and bellowed at drivers to go here and there, and they hugged one another.

There was a fifty-something couple from Ohio who are just in town visiting. Their daughter lives in Dayton because she graduated from college here. I used to work with her. They were nice, and we talked about the Strawberry Festival from a few weeks ago.

And there were the emergency personnel. They see thousands of wrecks, accidents and deaths every year, but today, at the scene of a wreck involving six people at the max, I saw grief in their faces.

That surprised me. The man who drove the white grand am that the bikers hit stood silently away from the crowd propped against his wrecked vehicle. He just looked.

I was hesitant to speak to him for several reasons, but my job superseded my own preferences. I walked over to him and found that he walked with a cane. He wore thick brown glasses and a tucked in long-sleeve button down shirt with khaki pants. I didn't look at his shoes. I was unable to tear away from his eyes.

They were red and hollow. He had been crying. He was still rattled. Very rattled, almost in shock. His eyes said sorry in every way that a human being can feel it, but his lips never uttered the word. I think he wanted - needed - to tell someone what he was feeling. But it couldn't be me, and I knew that.

I only asked his name and if he is from Dayton. He is. I told him I was sorry about the accident several times, but it didn't help, and I couldn't go any further and comfort him. So I walked away and left him there, alone, by his car with a dried trickle of blood along his hairline and down his face.

It was a horrible experience, but I'm better because of it.

I didn't tell him that it's my birthday.