Anthem's Fall (6 page)

“Excuse me!”

An agitated voice rose over the bass and guitar riffs in his ears. Startled, Ryan looked up from his perfunctory typing. He quickly pulled off his headphones, silently cursing himself. Caught listening to music on the job again—luck was not on his side this afternoon. It was Janet McCreedy, the community taskmaster of the library supervising staff. The dowdy older woman glaring at him was short and stolid, her white hair pulled into a tight bun, which stretched her forehead. Janet McCreedy was Ryan’s most critical and overbearing boss. She had threatened to fire Ryan on more than one occasion for what she called “poor work ethic,” despite the fact there was rarely a speck of work to do. None of his other supervisors had issues with him, but the knowledge that others considered Ryan Craig a conscientious worker held no weight with Janet McCreedy. In fact, it seemed to irritate her.

Ryan wondered how miserable Mr. McCreedy must be.

“Hi, Mrs. McCreedy.” Ryan forced a genuine-looking smile. If he acted oblivious, maybe she would forgo the tirade and write him off as a lost cause.

Janet McCreedy glowered down at him, her prickly demeanor masking any trace of warmth. “Ryan. Would you say I’m a reasonable supervisor? Mind you, I ask this question at the very same moment you sit and complete your own homework while simultaneously getting paid to work for me.”

“I think you’re a great supervisor,” Ryan said. “I’m sorry. I won’t wear my headphones again while I’m working at—”

“And you are aware at this very moment there are hundreds of books that need to be put back on their respective shelves?” Janet McCreedy regarded Ryan humorlessly. “Hundreds of books that easily could become your responsibility.”

“I was not aware of that.”

“Your duty at this desk is to help people with circulation questions. How can you answer their questions if you can’t
hear
them? If you want to listen to music, you can be reassigned to shelving duty quite easily.”

Ryan nodded noncommittally. Shelving books was the worst job in the library, by far, and everyone knew it. Endless and constantly growing stacks of worn books—often with infuriating broken bindings—requiring placement in one precise location on one of the hundreds of shelves. Shelving was a drudgery mainly relegated to incoming freshmen that did not know any better when signing up for the work-study jobs. Ryan had been on shelving duty last year, and he had no intentions of returning to it.

“You’re right,” Ryan said. “I won’t put on my headphones again. Really, I promise.”

“Oh, I know you won’t. If I ever,
ever
see you wearing headphones at this desk again, you will be formally let go from your position. Is that clear?”

Ryan nodded. “Crystal.”

“Good,” Mrs. McCreedy said. “Since you’ve already been warned once, you can place this cart back onto shelves before you leave.”

Ryan rose and leaned over the desk. She had pushed over a rickety steel cart filled with nonfiction books
.
It was a sight he knew all too well from his shelving days. He guessed from the size of the stacks that it would easily take an hour or more to place all of the books in their appropriate places.

Ryan looked up at her with resigned dismay. “Today?”

“Yes, I should think so. And don’t leave until it’s finished. Maybe this will remind you how easy you have it at this desk. I’m certain one of the freshmen would jump at the chance to have your position.”

“But I have class at two.” Ryan glanced to the clock. He would never finish the shelving in time.

“Do you?” Mrs. McCreedy checked her watch. “Well then, you had better get started.”

Ryan sat down heavily and shut his laptop. She was mental if she thought he would skip class to shelve books for her. At the very least the clash between capitalism and human rights would have to wait until he got back to his dorm later that evening. He wrapped up his headphones with an assenting nod, tossing his backpack over the desk and onto the stacks of hard covers in the cart.

“Then I guess I better get to it.”

“Very good,” Janet McCreedy said. She turned and plodded toward the coffee lounge, stopping on the way to admonish a group of girls for laughing in a designated quiet section.

Ryan pushed the rusted cart of books, lurching it into motion. The front right wheel emitted a sharp squeak. Ryan smirked; Janet McCreedy was diabolical. He rolled the noisy cart through the otherwise silent library toward the nonfiction levels, causing many heads to turn and scowl. In return Ryan offered a self-deprecating shrug.

The windowless nonfiction levels of the library were a desolate place for the majority of the semester, excluding the days directly preceding midterms and finals. Long narrow aisles ran between cumbersome shelves and an endless treasury of enlightening texts. Faintly humming fluorescent lights cast the maze of shelves and immaculate tile floors in a harsh clarity.

With an apathetic sigh and a long stretch, Ryan began the task of organizing the texts. The daunting piles of worn books in the cart spanned an array of subjects, from
The Life Cycle of the Honey Bee
to
A Brief History of Italian Neorealism
to
Nero: A Leader Misunderstood
. Ryan knew the best strategy to deal with this task, as he was no amateur in the refined art of nonfiction shelving. He began to methodically organize the books into separate stacks by field: biology, history, music, film, engineering, geology, art, and so on. Shelving duty, although monotonous, had proven interesting to Ryan in some aspects. As he passed each book onto a respective stack, he decided shelving duty was not as bad as he remembered. It often exposed him to unusual or peculiar topics. While he had slaved away on these quiet floors the previous year, he had developed a habit of skimming through any book that featured a subject unfamiliar to him. Every volume he placed back on the shelves had been checked out of the library, and therefore every one of them was relevant to someone. He viewed his skimming as a constructive way of developing his basic knowledge of obscure subjects, a worthwhile pursuit. And since there was never a rush to finish shelving—because the job itself never ends—he had spent many isolated hours sitting cross-legged on the cold floor reading an array of topics and waiting out the clock.

Ryan was flipping through one such book presently. He had picked up
Legends of The Corn,
a worn hardcover tome with a withered binding
.
The pages were cracked and yellowing, and the book smelled ancient and musty. It was an old collection of Native American mythologies, and one particular narrative caught his eye.

The Legend of Mandamin says that one day, in the early days of the mother-world, the god Mandamin appeared out of a tall field of windswept grass and approached a village. His body was made of corn and he lashed out his deadly corn-arms at any brave warrior who approached him. The people of the village both feared and respected the living deity who stood before them. His voice spoke like the wind, and his gaze pierced like the sun and the moon. Mandamin challenged the warrior-chief of the village to battle—

The ringtone of his cell phone suddenly rang through the silent labyrinth of shelves enclosing him. Ryan raised his eyes from the faded words and looked down the long empty aisle, his only company the buzz of the lights and the lonely shelves. Finding him on a cell phone immediately after chastising him would surely be the last straw for Janet McCreedy. But getting caught on this barren floor was unlikely. Ryan pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and answered it.

It was Devon Richmond, Ryan’s freshman roommate.

“What’s up?”

“Ryan! Where the hell are you?” Devon’s voice carried a youthful inflection even over the phone.

“I’m at the library. My boss is making me do a bunch of extra work, but I have class at two.” Ryan balanced the phone against his shoulder and continued to read
Legends of The Corn
.

If he could not defeat the warrior-chief, the god Mandamin would present the chief’s people with the gift of corn. If the warrior-chief proved unworthy and died in the struggle, Mandamin would leave the mother-world forever, and man would never learn of his gift.

Devon said something, but Ryan was not paying any attention. He mumbled something in return, his attention transfixed on the peculiar myth.

Mandamin and the warrior-chief fought in the open field from whence the mysterious god arrived. Mandamin thrashed his corn-arms, and the warrior-chief thrust his spear. For four days and four nights they clashed. In the end, the warrior-chief struck Mandamin in his husk-chest with his mighty spear. The god fell to the grass, and seeds of corn spilled and overflowed from the mortal wound the spear had hewn. His corn-body shook and writhed and transformed into countless seeds that were carried away in the wind, forever to be harvested by the village.

“
Ryan! HELLO?”

“Yeah . . . I’m here, sorry.” Ryan cleared his throat. “What is it?”

“Where the
hell
are you? The debate is going to start any second!”

The speaker vibrated against Ryan’s ear from Devon’s shout. Ryan jerked his head up. He swore aloud, panic overwhelming him. The debate had completely slipped his mind. “Oh god. I completely forgot.”

“Hurry up! The place is packed!”

Ryan hung up and looked at the time, his body feeling abruptly hollow. The debate team’s public forum started five minutes earlier in the Legrande auditorium. Ryan was the first student speaker in the lineup. He had chosen to discuss the ethics of genetically modified foods. A Columbia alumnus from Washington had evidently volunteered his time and taken the trip to New York to represent the interests of a biotech company. Ryan felt certain that this lobbyist—a career arguer—would be licking his chops at the chance to shoot down a bunch of disjointed, ill-conceived undergraduate perspectives.

Ryan groaned. How could he have been so unreliable? It was unlike him. He looked to the now diminished piles of books in the cart and decided he would return later and finish the shelving. If Mrs. McCreedy found the cart sitting here unattended, he would almost certainly be canned. But the debate was vastly more important. He replaced
Legends of the Corn
in the cart, taking care not to further damage the binding, and trotted down the aisle toward the main stairs. As he turned and jogged down the stairwell, he glanced at the time on his cell phone.

Six minutes late.

Avoiding the crowded main lobby, Ryan burst through a pair of double doors and into a narrow corridor that led to a side exit. As he ran, he cycled through the main debate points he had been preparing. The stance he had chosen was well constructed, but would it hold up against the scrutiny of an expert—and the packed crowd in Legrande? Ryan rounded a turn and crashed through the steel side doors, stepping into the cool air of a blustery overcast afternoon. Below a gloom of gray clouds, autumn was taking hold of the city. On the stone path, rich scarlet and bronze leaves rustled about his sneakers.

He headed toward the Legrande building. How many people would show for the debate? Ryan felt his heartbeat pounding as he quickened his pace to a rushed jog interspersed with sprints when no one was looking. Hustling past ivy covered brick-and-stone buildings, stately white columns, and trees drenched in warm autumnal hues, Ryan at last bounded up the granite stairs to Legrande three at a time and pulled open the thick oak doors to the auditorium.

His mouth dropped.

There were easily two hundred people sitting attentively in the ordered rows of chairs. The debate team had been expecting a minimal audience, not maximum capacity. The auditorium overflowed with the dull roar of their conversations. Ryan took in a breath of relief, seeing that they were still setting up microphones. The debate was behind schedule and he did not miss his spot, but the unexpected crowd still put him on edge.

Above the stage a projection screen reading
Fall Student Body Debate
separated two podiums. Behind the left stood a sharply dressed man in a black suit, surely the lobbyist. Ryan sized him up as he pushed past shoulders to make his way to the front. The lobbyist looked to be in his early forties, his features etched in haughtiness as he chuckled in conversation with a man sitting nearby. At once Ryan knew his predictions about the lobbyist had been right. It was obvious by this guy’s self-important manner that he was looking forward to embarrassing a rudimentary undergraduate perspective on genetic engineering. The lobbyist was in for disappointment if Ryan had anything to say about it.

“Devon!” Ryan called as he approached the student presenters in the first row. Most were looking paler than usual, perhaps due to the unexpected size of the audience.

Devon Richmond shook his head. “Finally! I told them you were on your way, but I don’t think they were going to delay it for another second.”

“I know, I know.” Ryan plopped down breathless in a reserved chair in the front row and nodded to the other presenters. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Are you . . . prepared for this?” Devon asked. “You might want to let someone else step in—or bail altogether. I wouldn’t normally say that, but this guy doesn’t look like he’s messing around.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Ryan said. He pushed his backpack underneath the chair and waved to the debate team senior captain Julie Thorne.

Julie gave him a withering look, then stood and ascended the stage steps. Ryan rose and trotted up the steps himself, taking effort to maintain a calm and collected countenance. Public speaking made him nervous, but Ryan liked the challenge. He stopped behind the open podium and focused coolly at its wood surface, his expression a picture of concentration.

“Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming to Columbia’s annual fall semester student debate.” Julie Thorne spoke cheerily into the microphone over obligatory applause. Her anger toward Ryan seemed to have evaporated. “We are going to get our debates started right away. It is my pleasure to introduce you to an alumnus of Columbia, Alden Harris. Mr. Harris is a biotechnology lobbyist for the New York-based genetic engineering conglomerate, the Rijcore Company. To my left is sophomore Ryan Craig, an undergraduate student currently majoring in . . . ?”