Nameless

  « Nameless »

  by Sam Starbuck

  Chapter ONE

  IT IS A natural human urge to settle in certain formations, which can be repeated in a village of six hundred even more easily than a city of five million. The village is merely the city stripped to its basic component parts, after all: places to gather, places to buy and sell, places to live, places to play. The church, the shops, the houses, the park. Low Ferry's major road was a two-lane blacktop lined with storefronts, the only reliably-plowed street in the winter. During the summer the cheap asphalt sometimes melted and stuck to people's shoes. My bookstore, and my little apartment above it, stood midway down the road in the heart of our bustling retail district: Dusk Books, the hardware store, the cafe, a general-goods store with a grocer's built into one side of it, and two antique stores that only opened for the tourist season. There were a few old boarded-up buildings to the south, as well, evidence that some folks had gone bust and moved on and nobody new was filling their place. We had a school and a church at the north end of the street, and most people seemed to feel we didn't need much more.

  The first week in September that year saw the heat of summer not yet faded in Chicago, which was where our television signal and our official weather reports came from. In Low Ferry on the other hand, far from Lake Michigan and with wider, clearer skies, we could see autumn closing in and an especially brutal, cold winter hard on its heels.

  Across the street from my shop, the cafe was stacking cartons of flour in airtight containers and freezing basins of butter and meat for when the roads washed out late in the year. For much the same reason, I was stocking my shelves with new books, tight bound and good smelling, to fill the days when the television signals would slack and die and the impassable roads meant no trips to the nearest movie theater, three towns over and across the river.

  We were in that transition time, when we put the heat on at night but left the windows open during the day, and through mine I could half-hear music from the radio in the cafe across the street. Over that came the occasional sound of a car driving past and, eventually, footsteps on my gravel walk.

  I glanced up from my unpacking, looked out the window, and sang out:

  "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle

  que nul ne peut apprivoiser,

  et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle,

  s'il lui convient de refuser."

  Carmen, the victim of my serenade, laughed and pushed open the glass door into the shop.

  "Don't sell your business," she advised, wandering over to my counter. She had her daughter deftly propped on one hip and began digging in her pocket with her other hand, first the front of her apron and then the jeans underneath.

  "A man can dream, Carmen," I said, leaning on the counter. "I think I should get points for effort. Not to mention remembering anything about the opera at all."

  "You were off-key. And I think you learned all you know about opera from children's cartoons."

  "Better than knowing nothing about it," I said. "What can I do for you today? Book for the squirt? New shipment came in but the magazines won't be delivered until next week."

  Carmen finally gave up and set Clara down near the low rack of children's books so she could ransack her other pockets. Clara immediately located one about dinosaurs and began mauling it.

  "I need some change," she said, producing two wrinkled twenty-dollar bills. "We're running low at the cafe and the bank's closed because Nolan's all alone over there and the man has to eat lunch sometime."

  "Sandra and Michael still off sick?" I asked.

  "Yeah, poor kids."

  "Don't pity them too much. No bets on how they both came down with it at the same time."

  "Really? Sandra and Michael?" she inquired.

  "Well, I heard it from Cassie who got it from Nolan's little sister who says she saw them necking in the safety-deposit vault, but you know Sandra's parents don't think much of Michael. At least that's what Jacob says. So I suspect they're keeping it a secret."

  "You know everything," she said, while I counted out ones and fives for her.

  "People tell me things." I shrugged and stuffed her change in an envelope. "You keeping Clara at the cafe today?"

  "Actually, I was just about to deliver her to Paula."

  "Paula?" I asked. "Really? You know they don't childproof hardware stores."

  "Well, my regular babysitter's back in school now, she can't take Clara until three-thirty. They don't let her wander around the bulk nail bins, and Paula calls it even if I bring her dinner. Unless you want to – "

  "Love you like a sister, not going to babysit your hurricane," I said hurriedly.

  "Then you don't get to judge Paula," she replied. "Thanks for the change. Gotta get back – lunch rush is on. Clara!"

  Clara looked up from the book she was mangling and reached out for her mother. Carmen, who will never be lauded for her observational skills, took her hand and led her out the door, down the porch steps and across the gravel, book still dragging from Clara's other hand.

  I was considering closing up and getting lunch myself when I caught movement through the window. A stranger was standing on the pavement outside, studying the sign that hung off the front porch, arm cocked so that his fingers rested against the back of his neck, shifting from foot to foot.

  He was a tall man, hardly old enough to have left off being a tall boy, in a battered tan jacket and blue-jeans. I probably wouldn't have noticed him if we'd passed on the street – we get a lot of tourists in the village, right up until mid-October or so. As it was, with him studying my shop and me studying him, I got a pretty good look. Hair the same pale tan as his jacket, a little gangly, perhaps not quite fully grown into his body, a spine stiff with tension. A nice face but not particularly unique: firm features, ordinary chin and nose, wide eyes.

  After a moment, he climbed the steps and crossed the porch, pushing open the glass-paneled door.

  Unlike most people, he didn't pause when he stepped inside. Even someone who knows what they want and how to find it will usually stop to orient themselves, to check out the new-books display and the magazines. The step, the pause, the glance, the turn, the search; people only do this in bookstores. I think it's because books mostly look alike on the outside; it's harder to tell Nietzsche from Jane Eyre than it is to tell a hammer from a screwdriver or an apple from a potato.

  This was different. He looked around for people instead of books and he did it on the move, already ducking not-quite-furtively behind the nearest shelf even as he took in the fact that I was the only one in the shop. I remember wondering if he was planning to steal something, but it's hard to come up with many reasons people would steal books, especially this far out in the country. They have a low resale value, after all, and you can't eat them.

  He pretended to read the cookbooks for a while, then drifted past the science fiction novels to the small rack of art books near the back. He studied the spines, tilting his head this way or that to see them better. He did finally reach for a book, above and to the left of the art section – home improvement. A relatively large shelf of them, given the size of my shop, but I live in a town of do-it-yourselfers.

  He looked up at me to see if I was busy, and I set aside the books I had been sorting, moving the box to the floor. He ducked out of the protective shelter of the shelves and crossed the open floor hurriedly, reaching into his pocket for his wallet at the same time he set his chosen prize on the counter.

  Unfortunately – more for him than anyone – Carmen burst into the shop just as he reached me. Clara was in her arms, squealing in outrage and clutching the book she'd lifted from my shelves. Carmen hustled up next to him and pointed to the unhappy child in her arms.

  "Christopher, she took it. I'm so sor
ry, you know how she is," she said. "I didn't even notice – "

  "Please, it's all right," I said. My prospective customer silently backed away a few steps. "I could have stopped her. She seemed to like it."

  "Well, let me pay you – "

  "I'll put it on account," I said, packaging up the book for my customer. What I thought was his book, anyway. "Pay when you have cash on you."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course, Carmen. Say no more." I held out my hand for the cash and my silent customer pressed exact change into it, which I dumped into the till.

  "Thanks so much. I really am sorry," Carmen said, as Clara continued to wail.

  "It's no problem. Clara, sweet child, be silent before I make you eat that," I said, and Clara shut her mouth abruptly. "You see?" I added to Carmen. "It's all in the tone."

  "You're the best, Christopher. See you tomorrow!"

  She left with Clara taking a renewed interest in the book, rustling the pages excitedly. I glanced around, but the silent young man in the tan jacket had disappeared as well.

  It wasn't precisely a momentous occasion. People bought books from me every day. Strangers came into the shop all the time, especially in the summer months when the tourist season pulls in most of the yearly profit. Some were standoffish, uncomfortable with the closeness of the village locals. As far as I knew he was just another backpacker on his way to somewhere else. I didn't think much about it for a few days, until we saw each other again.

  I was having dinner at the cafe, sitting at one of the window tables that faced out into the street. I ate in the cafe a good deal of the time, mainly because cooking for one was not much cheaper, and the cafe was so much more sociable. From the corner table at the window I could keep an eye on the shop, greet friends as they came in, and watch life revolve around me while I ate my food. Good food from the local farms, too: sweet tomatoes, ripe apples, bread, glorious yellow onions, chicken that had been pecking and squawking and scratching the day before.

  By the time I'd finished dinner the streetlights were going on, and the lights in the shop windows as well. Dusk Books was eventually the only dark storefront, which meant it was time I should be getting home again. I was just putting on my coat when I happened to glance up and saw him again, standing on the sidewalk. That same brown jacket and short hair, the same hesitation, shoulders pulled in, tense and shy. He waited until a crowd of people left the cafe before he tried to enter, then caught the door on the back-swing and stepped inside, reaching behind him with his other hand to keep it from slamming when it closed.

  "I beg your pardon," I said with a smile, allowing him room to pass. He ducked his head and hurried on, looking as though he was unsure whether he ought to seat himself or wait for someone to help him. I turned for a backwards glance and saw Carmen guide him to another window table, sweeping up my plate and payment as she returned to the kitchen to fetch him a glass of water and a menu.

  Looking back at him as I was, I nearly ran into a young boy on the doorstep of the cafe. He looked like a local kid, about twelve years old and vaguely familiar. I was nearly certain he came in with the others to buy comic books, or the occasional required reading for school.

  "Scuse me," he said.

  "No, my fault," I replied. "Are you going in?"

  "Do you know who that is?" he asked, peering around me at the window, where the young man sat hidden from the street behind a low curtain.

  "Of course not," I answered. "Do you?"

  "Not yet!" the boy said cheerfully. "He just moved here."

  "Has he now."

  "The old cottage at The Pines. You haven't spoken to him at all?"

  Unaccustomed to being interrogated by boys in front of cafes, I shook my head.

  "I sold him a book," I said. "What do you want with him?"

  "Nothing!" the boy said, bolting off down the street to join his friends, who were hollering and gesturing at him from the open window of a car. He climbed in and they drove off as I cast a last look at the shadow in the cafe window.

  Back in the shop, I switched on the lights and settled myself in a wing-chair near the door, feet propped on a battered ottoman. I had planned on reading, but the boy's questions had distracted me. This young man was a new neighbor, then, though not exactly a close one. The low hill and stand of trees known locally as The Pines was closer than some of the farms and not too strenuous a walk if there was no hurry, but far enough out that the little house on the hill had stood empty since last winter. It was difficult to rent as a vacation cottage even in the summer months, when the walk was pleasant and warm.

  Still, it wasn't really my concern. Obviously he didn't mind the journey, and at least it would be something to talk about when business was slow.

  ***

  I was woken the next morning by gravel rattling against my bedroom window, which overlooked the street above my porch roof. I waited until another handful had smacked into the glass and then opened it before they could reload.

  "What time do you call this?" I shouted down. The figure on the walk glanced up.

  "Seven o'clock!" he called back. "Come on, Dusk, out of bed! I've already milked the cows and goats and got the eggs! Brought you some!" He held up a small wire basket.

  "Be down in a minute," I said, and shut the window again. I put on enough clothing to be decent and clattered down the stairs, just as he walked into the shop and flicked the lights on.

  "Breakfast," he said, setting the basket on the counter.

  "No croissants?" I asked. "Classless, Jacob."

  "Wondering if you'd do me a favor," he replied, hitching a hip against the counter in a farmer's lean. He made a spare gesture, flicking his fingers at the worktable against the back wall. "You got all those...book tools."

  "Binding equipment, yes," I said, ducking under the counter. "Need something bound?"

  "Well, I got my dad's Farmer's Guide," he said, laying a dusty, crack-spined book on the table. I whistled and picked it up.

  "Rural Bible. This looks like a first printing," I said.

  "Couldn't speak to that, but it's got some family things in the front, see," he said, pointing to the inner flyleaf when I opened it. The cheap binding creaked ominously. Inside the frontispiece was a series of names in various hands and shades of ink, a family tree in list form.

  "This wasn't just your father's."

  "Nah. Grandfather's before him."

  "Definitely a first printing. Family treasure?" I asked.

  "Sorta. He'll be sixty next week."

  "If you don't look after this – "

  "Yeah, well, s'kinda why I came in," he said, rubbing the back of his sunburnt head. "Thought you might put a new cover on it, maybe fix some of the loose pages."

  I let the book fall open to a random page. Most books will open to the page that's looked at the most. In this case, it was a chapter on diseases common to children.

  "How many brothers you got, Jacob?" I asked absently, studying the stitching.

  "Three brothers," he said, perplexed. "Two sisters too."

  "Mmhm. Well, I can do one of two things."

  "Yeah?"

  "I could take out the frontispiece," I said, flipping back to the first page. "Coat it in acid-free sealant. There's a new edition of the Farmer's Guide out last year, if you bought a new one I could sew it in..."

  "I don't think Dad'd much go for that," Jacob said.

  "Probably not. Otherwise..." I closed the book and tapped my fingers against the spine, "...I can take the cover off, take out the damaged sections, paste them and restitch them if they're durable enough, put a new cover on. Paula's got some nice leather for embossing. But that's repair rather than conservation, Jacob. It'll decrease the value of the book."