The Reading Lessons (15 page)

There was only one draw back. On those occasions when Dickie was particularly ossified, he would throw an arm over Hadley’s shoulder, drop his chin against his big chest, and start mumbling personal confessions. “My daddy doesn’t like me one little bit. Did you know that?” He’d jab at Hadley’s nose like it was a doorbell, and one time his head even slumped against Hadley’s shoulder. “You probably think I got it made, don’t you, Mr. Crump? You probably envy my abilities with all these fine radios, too.” 

Dickie had a special talent for burping long and loud whenever he was drinking. As a rule, he belched long and loud between most sentences. “Well, don’t envy me, son.” Belchhhhhh. “My life stinks.” Double belchhhhhhh.

There were many things Hadley wanted in life and also many things he didn’t want. First and foremost, Hadley did not want to know Dickie. He would have preferred a middle man like Sargent or Mr. Sweet to control all communication between them, but Dickie didn’t believe in such things. 

“I’m not wasting good dough just to have someone speak for me,” Dickie once said. “I can speak for myself.”

According to Lucinda, Dickie might easily have been a movie star. With his Douglas Fairbanks teeth and his Charles Boyer’s lips, he attracted women wherever he went, or so Lucinda claimed. “I’d dress him as a pirate every day, if it were up to me,” she said. 

Hadley had no idea what Douglas Fairbank’s teeth looked like, but this mattered not. When he was drinking, Dickie resembled nothing so much as a basset hound, and basset hounds had always made Hadley feel bad. 

One evening, after making the same confession about his father four times in as many weeks, Dickie slung his arm over Hadley’s shoulder and said, “I’d rather be you, I think. Would you trade places with me, Crump?”

Hadley was naturally disposed to deplore Dickie Worther-Holmes, and yet, the attention flattered him. “I don’t suppose you’d enjoy it as much as you think,” he told Dickie. “My daddy don’t like me, neither. I ain’t seen him in years.”

Maybe it was just the whiskey, but those basset hound eyes actually glassed over. “You want a snort of this?” Dickie asked, sloshing
Old Overholt
down Hadley’s shirt.

Hadley felt genuinely sorry for Dickie in that moment. He took a big swig from the bottle and proceeded to choke his head off. 

Dickie laughed so hard, he almost fell out of his chair. He pointed at the new
Bijouphone
Hadley was building. “You stick to your talents and I’ll stick to mine,” he declared, and he took a big noisy drink.

###

Lucinda didn’t like it. “We’re not paying the man to build your goddamn radios,” she said to Dickie after she heard him laughing it up with Hadley. 

“I beg to differ, Lulu. I got nine new noise boxes thanks to him. I could open up a store.”

Lucinda rolled her eyes. “Surely we can think of better things for him to do?” she said, and she sent Hadley off to build her a new shoe tree.

Over time, Hadley became the chemist, the plumber, and the carpenter. He was also the painter, the chauffer, and the man to call when keys broke off in locks. Because Lucinda was never satisfied with the efforts of her other servants, she was always finding new things to add to his
to-do
list. One day she took Hadley down to the new
Beattie’s Bluff Carnegie Subscription Library
and paid a membership fee so he could borrow books. 

At first, Hadley thought this a generous offer and behaved gratefully. He was excited by the thought of exploring a whole big building filled floor-to-ceiling with books. Lucinda was excited too. 

The ceremony to dedicate the new library had been the biggest event to hit Madison County in years. A multitude of book-hungry Beattie’s Bluffers gathered on the new lawn to sing patriotic airs and watch Lucinda Worther-Holmes, President of the local chapter of the
Lincoln-Lee Legion
, cut the ribbon with a giant pair of gold scissors. A time capsule was placed in the wall behind a rectangle of stone engraved with the words of Francis Bacon:
Reading maketh a full man.

A cheer went up when the stone was slid back into place, but Lucinda told Hadley later that she didn’t approve of the capsule. She said it was filled with the most idiotic collection of putrid junk ever assembled by man. “If the people of the future ever open it up, they’ll think we were little better than cavemen playing with acorns and smelly bird feathers.”

“Well,” said Hadley. “What if there are no more trees in the future? Could be, they might use that little acorn to grow themselves a new one.”

“Oh, pish. This is our legacy we’re talking about, Hadley. A legacy ought to be something that looks nice, smells nice, and accentuates our modernity.”

Hadley and Lucinda didn’t see legacies the same way at all.

For him, the library hoopla had spelled extra work. He’d spent an entire afternoon cleaning bunting out of the Delphiniums after the mayor’s
Salute to Andrew Carnegie
parade tromped across his flowerbeds. 

“Are you sure they’ll let me in?” he asked as they approached the front door. Four days after the dedication, shiny specks of blue confetti continued to sparkle the steps. There was a fancy feather hat resting on the bottom in the new lily pond. Hadley liked the doorknob. It was carved in the shape of a frog prince and that much at least felt comforting to him.

Lucinda gave him the once over. “You are looking awfully brown these days,” she said.

He ran his fingertip over the points of the doorknob-frog’s crown.

“Come on, Hadley. You don’t think they’d kick Lucinda Worther-Holmes’ servant out for having a suntan, do you?”

Since taking on his new post, Hadley’s color had deepened by two or three shades. By comparison, the parts under his clothes were lily white. 

“Anyhow, you’re with me, aren’t you?” Lucinda asked.

“I am?”

“And you’re probably cleaner than ninety percent of the people in this town.” She sneered at the family reading books on a blanket in the middle of the lawn. Lucinda had made Hadley scrub his hands before they left the house. Twice. “Nothing worse than smudges on new books,” she had said.

Hadley looked at his hands now. They were very brown. A person got brown when they worked outside. That shouldn’t mean you’re too Negro to go into a library. 

“Shall we?” Lucinda asked.

Hadley clutched the frog head and gave it a pull, and the door opened with a sacred creak that would have put Rocky Bottom to shame. 

“P.U.,” Lucinda said. “It stinks like old books in here. I was expecting it to smell new.” 

As a boy, Hadley had made a trip or two to the Old McClay Courthouse to unload coal for Mr. Browning. The new library reminded him of the courtroom he’d seen there, only instead of a judge’s bench, there were three desks behind the wooden rail. Each one had a little brass sign. From left to right they read: HEAD LIBRARIAN, BOOKS CHECKED HERE, SUBSCRIPTIONS * INFORMATION * FINES. Behind the desks were enormous shelves of colorful books waiting to be borrowed. 

Hadley felt a little like a character in a Jack London novel. It was clear that wild adventure resided within these paneled walls. Like road markers painted on a scrap of board and hammered into the face of the Himalayas, hundreds of journeys waited to unfold a mere step ahead. THIS WAY TO DANGER AND INTRIGUE, the books seemed to say to him. THRILLING DROP OFF JUST AHEAD! TURN RIGHT FOR LOVE, LEFT FOR MURDER . . . 

A week before, while waiting for Lucinda to pack up her punch bowl after a club meeting at the big plantation home of one Mrs. Donetta Wexley, he’d picked up a copy of
The Sea Wolf
from the telephone table. Seven pages swam by in a blink, and all too soon, Lucinda was tapping on his head with a ladle and saying it was time to go.

That same smell that Lucinda would plug her nose against smelled like open water to him. Inhaling deep, Hadley closed his eyes and once again climbed atop the tossing prow of Jack London’s rugged
Snark
. 

Here are the seas, the winds, and the waves of all the world. Here is ferocious environment. And here is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is delight to the small quivering vanity that is I . . . 

“Snap out of it,” Lucinda said. Several chins turned their way. A furious set of eyes looked up over the half-moons of a pair of silver eyeglasses. “Jesus, it’s only books,” Lucinda grumbled.

Only books? Hadley couldn’t believe his ears. This was the girl who invented holidays and sliced into fingers based on the simplest of plot devices. Hell, all a fellow had to do was read about glittering steel outloud, and she would let him throw her down and kiss her. Lucinda could pertend that this was just business as usual, but for him, it was no simple matter to step into a room such as this one. With its annual subscription fees and courtroom solemnity, the
Beattie’s Bluff Carnegie Subscription Library
was no place for a Negro houseboy from Millport. And yet, here he was, his dusty shoes sparkling with sea-blue confetti, his skin scrubbed for adventure. Lucinda hadn’t brought him to the little colored branch of the library on the nig side of town. She’d brought him to the real library, and it felt to Hadley as if he’d achieved something big.

“Come on,” Lucinda said. “Let’s get you signed up so you can start borrowing books.”

Hadley followed her toward the SUBSCRIPTIONS * INFORMATION * FINES desk. “I won’t know where to start,” he said, his heart thundering

“I’ll handle that,” Lucinda assured him. 

One of the best moments of his life occurred when the large woman in polka dots behind the desk handed him his own subscription card. Breathless and grinning ear to ear, he stopped to read the card the minute they got outside: 

Hadley Crump has been approved to check out books from the colored branch of the Beattie’s Bluff Carnegie Subscription Library on Dalton Street.

###

An entire week passed before Lucinda’s intentions became clear. “Go down to the colored branch and fetch these books I’ve written down for you.” 

Hadley was dying to check out books, but subscription borrowers were only allowed to check three at a time, and he didn’t want to waste his checks on books for Lucinda, delicious though they may be. Hadley had it in his head that he might like to read some
real
books. “The Packard is up to its hubs in gumbo over on Mussacuna Road,” he said. “I’m suppose to have it dug out by noon. Wouldn’t you rather walk over to the white one yourself?”

“A respectable woman can’t borrow these sorts of titles for herself.” She waved her list at him. “Come on, darling. If you leave this minute, you can dig out the car, run over to the library, and still have hours to spare.” 

“What about Jack London?”

“What about him?”

“I was hoping to borrow
The Sea Wolf
.” 

“Whatever for? You aren’t planning a voyage anytime soon, are you?” She unfolded her list. “Have a look at these titles and tell me you aren’t keen to read these books with me.”

Hadley had a look and grimaced.
The Work Girls of London, Their Trials and Temptations. Wagner the Wehr-Wolf
.
Vice and its Victim: or, Phoebe the Peasant's Daughter. 

Lucinda smiled. “I have it on good authority that some undisclosed patron has donated her collection of penny dreadfuls to the Negros.”

Hadley put the list in his pocket and went off to dig Dickie’s automobile out of the mud. Then he grudgingly took himself over to Dalton Street. But for the work girls of London, this job might otherwise have proven the highlight of his week.

###

It became a ritual. Dickie, who found reading to be the most poorly thought out invention since women’s underwear, had recently put a stern limit on Lucinda’s book-spending. “The Reading Room already has enough books to give us a good excuse for owning all those shelves,” Dickie said. “If you want a new book, get rid of an old one.”

Lucinda responded by calling him
cheap cheap cheap
in a voice loud enough for half of Mississippi to hear. 

“This is a just temporary,” she assured Hadley. “I’ll win this war in the end. Just watch me.” Until Lucinda got her victory and was able to start buying books again, Hadley was to visit the library once a week and borrow books for her. 

This meant no Jack London. No running his finger down the library’s long list of exciting titles and laboring over which three to pick. No real books. Clearly, he was not the wild young upstart he’d imagined himself to be when he first walked through those frog prince doors. He was just a servant doing a job, and he was not, in fact, permitted to use those frog prince doors ever again. Instead, he was to use the one marked COLOREDS that opened the little shotgun house on Dalton Street that had been set aside for Negro borrowers. Lucinda still read books with him, there was that much to be said for Hadley’s experience with the library. Somehow, this made checking out naughty books no less painful. 

Looking busy was the only way to get through the process. Requested books were retrieved from shelves by the librarian on duty. Hadley had developed a method whereby he would slide the list across the desk and then riffle through his pockets as if he was looking for something important so as to avoid looking anyone in the eye. This was a strategy that served him well until the day the librarian decided to speak to him about his dubious selections.

Even though it was set up in a living room that would fit five times inside the walls of the good library, the colored branch was organized in a similar fashion, with three desks, and three signs, and three ladies behind the desks and signs. Instead of brass, the colored branch signs were index cards folded down the middle to form a little tent so they would stand up.

“
Women in Love
?” asked the librarian behind the BOOKS CHECKED HERE sign, reading the first book title from the list. “Another provocative choice, Mr. Crump.”

His ears commenced to blaze as though sunburned. “Excuse me?” Outside of wishing him good morning, the librarian had never said a word to him before.