By Dwayne Phillips
Short Story 2008-45, 22 November 2008
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Todd stepped off the bus onto the corner. The driver pulled close enough to the curb that he didn't have to step in the puddle of water. That was a relief to Todd as he hated to have cold, wet feet all day.
Todd didn't have a job, at least not yet. He had placed applications with a dozen companies, interviewed twice with one company, and was hoping but not hopeful. Instead, he had spent his days for the last six weeks in the library. It was just a "regional" branch of the library. How could a county have a "regional" branch of a library? That struck Todd as silly. Lots of things like that struck him as silly. A library, the one place where people who could read, and think, and understand the language. Why did such a place use a silly adjective to describe a branch?
Todd ducked his head instinctively to avoid the drizzle. He hurried his pace and was quickly under the large porch out of the rain. Todd pulled on the door handle and his hand slipped off. "Must be the moisture from the rain," he thought.
Todd pulled again with the same result. He raised his eyes and froze. There was something wrong as the door was locked. Todd wiped his face with his rain-dampened hands and batted his eyes a few times. Taped to the inside of the door was a piece of paper with a message scrawled on it.
THIS REGIONAL BRANCH CLOSED
LACK OF FUNDS
Todd placed the palm of his right hand on the glass opposite the sign. He moved his spread fingers across the top line left to right, then back right to left to the start of the second line, and across it left to right. He repeated this several times hoping that one of the waves of his hand would magically erase the words on the paper and unlock the door.
Reality sank Todd's heart. The sign remained, the door was still locked, and the library was dark.
A thump next to his feet woke him from what wasn't a dream. A pile of newspapers had been dropped next to him. Todd turned to see a delivery man walking away. "Hey, stop!" shouted Todd. "The library is closed. Don't leave the newspapers. There is no use."
"Not my problem," returned the man as he glanced over his shoulder while walking to his truck at the curb. The man stepped into his truck, took one last look at Todd and shouted, "I just deliver them. You do whatever you want with them." He then drove away.
Todd looked at the pile of newspapers squeezed with a yellow plastic band. "Well, it wouldn't hurt for me to take one copy and leave the rest," thought Todd.
He pulled on the yellow plastic band trying to snap it. The only result was pain in Todd's fingers. He tried twice more, but quit. Todd settled on pulling the top newspaper from the bundle. The front page tore, the paper unrolled itself and fell onto the wet steps of the library. Todd slowly picked up the wet, ruined pages and put them in the trash can. He took the next paper from the bundle and walked back to the bus stop.
Todd returned to the library the next day. It was stilled closed. He came back every day for the remainder of the week. Somehow, he felt, that if he kept coming back someone would notice how much the library was missed and open it again. That didn't happen.
The next week Todd returned. This time he placed his face on the glass door and shaded his reflection so he could see inside. The library was empty. The tables, computers, shelves, and the books, yes the books were gone. "How could they take the books?" wondered Todd. "What would people read? This wasn't right, and someone should do something."
Todd began a campaign to reopen the library. He had plenty of time as he wasn't receiving any calls from his job applications. Each day instead of going to the library, he went to the county government center. That place was huge and full of employees. "Surely," thought Todd, "the county has plenty of money to keep that one library open. How else could they afford this government center and pay all these employees?" Todd didn't understand the priorities of the county government. Bureaucrats could be paid, but people could not have access to books. That made no sense.
Todd spent a week going from office to office in the county government center. He kept detailed records of every person he met, the date, the time, and what they told him. He remained polite even though he wanted to scream. Nevertheless, he wrote everything on scraps of newspaper. He used the newspaper that the delivery man kept dropping at the closed library. At each stop in the government center, Todd showed his notes to whoever he met. Some of the people were impressed with Todd's records. One person, some type of lawyer, appeared frightened at what Todd had. The lawyer mumbled something about "evidence" and spoke slowly and carefully thereafter.
After a week in the government center, the answer was the same. The county didn't have the money to operate the regional branch near Todd's apartment.
"How much would it cost to do so?" asked Todd of an accountant.
The accountant paused a moment, but wrote a figure on a piece of paper and gave it to Todd. "Are you sure about this figure?" asked Todd. "You wrote it without much thought."
"I am sure," answered the accountant. "We used the last two days calculating this. A member of the legal staff asked us to do this after meeting with you three days ago. You must of impressed him with something you said."
"I don't know about that," mentioned Todd. "This is a lot of money, isn't it?"
"Yes," answered the accountant. "It is a lot of money."
Two months later, Todd stepped off the bus onto the corner. The driver pulled close enough to the curb that he didn't have to step in the puddle of water. That was a relief to Todd as he hated to have cold, wet feet all day.
Todd still didn't have a job, at least not yet. He had placed applications with a dozen more companies, interviewed once with one company, and was hoping but not hopeful. Instead, he took the bus every morning from his apartment to this place where the county used to operate a regional branch of the library.
Todd ducked his head instinctively to avoid the drizzle. He hurried his pace and was quickly under the large porch out of the rain. Todd pulled on the door handle and the door opened to the scent of freshly brewed coffee and the sound of rustling papers.
"Good morning, sir," came a call from behind the coffee counter. "Here is your regular, half decaf, half dark brew."
"Thank you," said Todd as he took the ceramic coffee mug in passing. He walked a dozen paces and turned into an opening in the book shelves. Todd sat at a long table with his coffee in front of half a dozen newspapers from major cities around the country.
A elderly man looked up from reading a paper and noted Todd's presence with a nod.
"You get pretty good service here, hey bub?" asked the old man.
"Yeah, pretty good. This is a nice place," answered Todd.
"Sure," mentioned the old man. "Better than before. When the county ran this place they wouldn't let you have anything to drink. Now this place serves good coffee, and free. For old guys like me this is better than McDonald's."
"Good, glad you like it here." added Todd as he sipped his coffee and flipped the page of the Wall Street Journal. "You like libraries?"
"Libraries? Oh yes, I worked in one for twenty years at a private college. I loved it. Wish I still did some days."
"Really, you want a job at this library?" asked Todd.
"This one? Oh, I don't know. I’m old you know." The old man paused, held his chin in his hand, and shook his head from side to side. "Still, this is a pretty good library, I wouldn't mind putting in a few hours here and there. I could make something of this place."
"I could fix it up for you," said Todd.
"You?" said the old man in disbelief. "I've been watching you. You come here everyday and stay all day. You don't even have a job, do you."
"Well, no not right now, but I'm looking," answered Todd in embarrassment.
"Hmmph," grunted the old man. "By the way, what do you do or what did you do when you had a job. You have had a job at sometime?" asked the old man.
Todd drew a deep breath and let out the air slowly. He sipped his coffee twice and closed his newspaper neatly as if it had just come off the delivery truck.
"I, uh," started Todd quietly, "I start software companies. I build them up with new products and sell them."
"Oh," said the old man poorly faking that he was impressed. "And how much do you make when you sell your 'companies,'" mocked the old man.
"Well, different amounts," smiled Todd. "Sometimes ten million, but usually 50 million dollars each time."
"And," continued the old man, "How many companies have you sold for 50 million dollars each?" he asked with a chuckle.
"Well, for 50 million I have done that ten times, but the last two that I sold I got 100 million each." answered Todd in an unassuming manner.
"Young man," spoke the old man, "If you have so much money, why are you unemployed and hanging out in a library every day."
"I am looking for a job as CEO of a major software company. There are only a couple of dozen such companies in the world, and they all have CEOs at this time. I've always liked reading, but didn't want to waste money on buying books when a library was so convenient. I came here everyday. At least until the county closed their regional library. I talked to a few people at the county and learned how little it costs to run a library. It seemed obvious that the thing to do was buy the building, stock it with books, add a coffee counter, and open a free to the public library of my own."
Todd sipped his coffee one more time. Breathed deeply, and repeated his question of the old man, "You want a job at this library?"
Go to
Dwayne's Home Page
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org