I used to live a city life, like any normal man. But only city people think their home is normal. So one day I just up and decided to move. I sold all my possessions (except for my bed, clock, chair and books) and quit my job. My parents and old girlfriend were all dead – the city killed them. I had no one to miss me. I worked my last week of contract and then I left.

I drove (in a rented car – now stolen I guess) to the nearest desert and on the spot bought a cheap house just outside a small town. With all my savings from work and the money from selling my stuff, I could afford to live a fairly frugal life for a good few years without work.

I had wanted a simple existence and that was what I had gotten. But to my high-class, city mind simple was becoming boring. All the books I brought with me I had read some time ago. I had no stereo or radio, and there weren’t any hi-fi stores for a good distance away. I grew my own food in the small patch of fertile land I had; and drew water from a nearby well. But, on one particularly boring day, I decided to visit the town I had so judiciously avoided.

It was very hot that day, so by the time I had walked to the town (my car was out of petrol for some time now. Animals lived in it.) I was sweaty and parched. I walked into the general store for an ice cream or a coke or something

When I went in I saw a cooler in the corner. I turned to ask the guy behind the counter how much a cone was going to cost me, but before I could speak he looked up at me – and winked. I sure hoped to god he wasn’t coming on to me. He smiled a little then, as if I had spoken that out loud. In the dim light, I’m now embarrassed to say, I thought he looked a little retarded.

‘Hey,’ I said – a little timidly.

‘Hey,’ he replied, ‘I’ve got what you need.’

I must be sweating more than I thought, I said to myself; but then I saw his eyes flick to the left for a second – so quick it might have been my imagination. I leaned forward slightly, and looked down the back end of the store to where I thought his eyes had directed.

It was almost pitch black down there, in contrast to the front of the store. I walked down towards the darkness, but when I reached its edge an extra room suddenly appeared. He had turned the lights on. The single bulb dangled from the ceiling by its electrical wiring, it gave the room and everything in it a yellow tint. A little disconcerting coming from the blinding white sands of the desert, or the grey of the main store.

Anyway, in this room were books. Shelves ran round the walls carrying them, racks in the centre as well. They all appeared to be new, but at the same time seemed old. Like old-style first editions right of the printing press, leather-bound and gold edged. I picked one out of the rack immediately in front of me, ‘[sic]’ embossed on its red cover. Beside it: ‘The Writer’. These books did not seem to be in any order.

As none of the volumes appeared to have prices on them, I left the room and walked back up to the counter. When I asked him about prices he simply pointed over his right-hand shoulder at a sign I hadn’t noticed before. It was white, with simple, black, hand-written words imprinted on it. They read:

‘Each book from the back room may be borrowed once for free.

 

‘While the back room is not a library, neither is it a bookstore.’

I stared at the sign for a bit longer than it took me to read it, and then retreated to the back room once more. I walked around it, trying to decide which book to borrow (I had assumed a limit of one). There were many to choose from, and the shelves were tightly packed. Except for one. On a shelf slightly lower than my eye-level, there seemed to be one book missing. I made note to ask the man at the counter about it when I had decided which book I wanted.

It was an eclectic range, some with bizarre titles and other with none (or just a single letter or symbol). I didn’t recognize many of the author’s names. I had glanced through ‘Rovis Ruv’ and ‘Seah Louse Foves’; eventually, however, my finger came to rest on one particularly intriguing novel. It was bound in what appeared to be green leather and the title was written in silver. It was a relatively small volume, about 200 pages. While neither its title, nor the name of its author intrigued me; it was something on the inside of the cover that caught my eye. Stamped in red ink was a ‘1’ surrounded by a circle – apparently there was an order to these books after all. I picked up its neighbour to the right and, sure enough, there was a ‘2’ stamped on the inside of its cover. The next had a ‘3’, the next a ‘4’ and so on. It was a slight relief to have the order in which to tackle the books already decided for me. I walked out of the room and back up to the counter. It seemed to be early evening outside now and I couldn’t help but wonder how long I had been in choosing.

The same clerk was behind the counter still and he smiled (again) slightly as he inspected my choice. When done he looked directly at me and suddenly jerked his thumb over his left-hand shoulder to another sign I had failed to notice. It was the same size and colour as the first and was written in the same spidery script:

‘The numbers inside the books indicate only a

recommended order and by no means indicate

any kind of restriction in choice.’

And below that was written (except in green ink this time – perhaps to distinguish it from the above):

‘Books are borrowed on the condition that

they will be read carefully and in their entirety.

No book can be returned until the above

conditions are fulfilled.’

When I looked at the clerk again, he was writing in a book he had pulled from somewhere without my noticing. It was a ledger, bound in a similar fashion to all the other books. He turned the book ‘till it faced me and then gave me his pen. I looked down at the page (seemingly the first) and saw that I would only be the second to sign. Someone named ‘James Burke’ had filled the first ten places.

‘Who is James Burke?’ I asked.

‘Local boy.’ he replied in the same strained voice as before. I was afraid he was going to throw up or something. I dared not ask another question; but I had already decided that the boy must have the missing book. I looked down at the entry above mine. All it contained was the date of withdrawal, the boy’s name and the books number.

‘Where does he live?’ I chanced, but the man just shrugged his shoulders. I wrote my name in the space provided and then left, having forgotten how thirsty I was.

The walk between my house and the town took longer the second time. I was tired from my morning walk and hadn’t gotten around to that drink. It became progressively darker as I walked, and in turn cooler. But once the sun went down it became hared than ever to see the road. My worrying increased until the bright moon rose and coated my home in an incandescent glow. I had walked right past it.

I sat in my only chair to read, after pulling myself a drink from the fridge. In my kitchen I sat. Reading.

Days passed, as they do, and I finished the book. I finished number two and then number three. It took almost a year of my life to finish all that small shop had to offer. No new books had appeared since that first day, and things in that town were pretty much the same as they always had been. As I walked to town, with the last book under my arm (‘W’ – author unknown.), I wondered what to do. It seemed as though my time as a patron of that store had ended, and it saddened me.

I arrived in town shortly after noon; I had stopped wearing watches and looking at clocks a long time ago, so I can’t be sure of the exact time. But the sun was high, and it was the hottest it had been for awhile. The store was there, as usual, and I went inside.

My relationship with the clerk had hardly developed one iota. The most he ever managed was a slight smile and a strained ‘Mornin’’, and that was what greeted me inside. He accepted the book without another sound but when I started walking (out of habit) down the end of the shop he stopped me.

‘Back room’s closed’, he said. I was surprised of course; it had never been closed since I had started coming. Then he spoke again:

‘I’ve got what you need. Here.’

It was the most I’ve ever heard him speak; and when I turned around I thought, for a second, that he had the ledger out in front of him again, but when I stepped towards him to have a closer look I saw it wasn’t the ledger, it was a pile of neat, blank, paper. There were even some pens resting on top. I looked at the clerk, but all he could manage was his old, slight smile.

I took the pages and headed home.