Horace Afoot (40 page)

A woman came into the library with two young children, a boy and a girl, both of them somewhere between five and ten years old. I’ve never been a good judge of children’s ages. The woman sat the kids down in the children’s reading room and then went straight to my reserve shelf and began a thorough perusal of it. I watched her from the corner of my eye as I checked in the previous day’s returns and stacked them on the cart. The circulation desk—the heart of the library—is an apt metaphor. Everything passes by and through it. I now understand the peculiar obsession of librarians that nothing escape their notice.

The woman selected a book from the shelf and hurried back to the children’s reading room. A short time later she appeared at my desk with the young girl.

“Tell the man what we read,” she coaxed, then flashed me a broad smile. “This is Estelle. My aunt said you’d appreciate her gift.”

I was only slightly surprised and beamed indulgently at the little girl. People, I’ve learned, are comfortable with and will confide almost anything to a librarian—all their eccentricities and obsessions. It’s one of the more fascinating aspects of the job. I leaned over the desk. The little girl gripped her mother’s hand, hung her head shyly.

“Come on, Estelle, it’s okay. Remember what we talked about?”

Estelle nodded.

“She’s a little shy,” the mother said.

I can see why, I wanted to say.

Suddenly the little girl looked up at me—looked me straight in the eye. And began to recite.
Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici
—the entire first stanza of Horace’s epistle! Word for word in her little girl’s voice! No stumbling. No backtracking. Her pronunciation was awkward, but she didn’t seem self-conscious in the least. Then she finished the Latin and, without so much as a pause, recited the English. I immediately recognized the translation. It was my old copy of Horace. I had donated it to the library to put up on the shelf with all my other recommendations.

When she finished she became shy again and looked away.

“My daughter has a photographic memory,” the mother began, as if explanation were necessary. “My aunt told me you had one too.”

“Your aunt?”

“Mrs. Entwhistle. I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce myself.” The woman’s face colored slightly and she put her arm across her daughter’s shoulders and drew her near.

I don’t know what the expression on my face communicated, but by the woman’s look it must not have been the benign, charmed look she had been expecting. Was it astonishment? Bewilderment? Disgust? I don’t know. “Thank you,” was all I could bring myself to say.

The little girl peered up at me.

“It’s all right, Estelle,” the mother said. “You can go play now.” The little girl detached herself and ran back to the children’s section.

“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” the woman said. “I only meant …”

“No. Not at all.”

“I just thought …”

“Don’t apologize. It’s fine. Really. I’m just a little surprised. Astonished.”

“I hope you don’t think I go around showing her off.”

“No. I didn’t think that.”

“We’re here visiting my aunt. The kids and I.”

“I see.” There was nothing I could think of to say. The woman stood there, somewhat awkwardly, for another minute. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something; just stood there, her fists jammed into the pockets of a bright red nylon windbreaker. She had an air of sporting good humor about her that apparently, I had just undermined. She seemed both delighted and bewildered by her daughter’s precocity—didn’t strike me as the sort who would exploit or show it off.

“Did she pick it out?” I asked.

The woman shook her head. “Not exactly. We picked it out at random. The poem. It wasn’t my idea, really. My aunt said you liked Horace.”

“Does she understand the words yet?” As I spoke Mrs. Entwhistle walked past the reading-room door, waved at us with a knowing smile, and started upstairs.

“Oh, you’d be surprised how much she understands,” the woman replied.

They stayed in the children’s section for another half hour or so. Then came to say good-bye.

“Say good-bye,” the mother instructed them, placing the volume of Horace on the reshelve pile.

“Good-bye,” they chimed together.

“Good-bye, Estelle.” I picked up the volume of Horace and offered it to her. “This is for you.”

“Say thank you,” Mother chirped and took the book from me on her daughter’s behalf.

“Thank you,” Estelle said.

“Are you sure?” the mother asked me, hefting the book in her hand.

I nodded.

I was sure.

A sharp wind picks up outside, a cold front moving in. Before she left the library this afternoon, Mrs. Entwhistle told me that a snowstorm might be on the way. She was worried about it, worried that snow would
fall and winter would come upon us even before the leaves had fallen. It’s something I have come to like about her. That she worries. There’s a war brewing in Africa, and she worries about that. A two-year-old in California has been missing for a week. Weapons-grade uranium has been stolen from a facility in Russia. She has worried to me aloud on each of these topics, buttoning up her overcoat, wrapping her scarf around her head. Whenever she does, I try to imagine someone in China doing exactly the same thing, putting on an overcoat, preparing to go home, worrying about things beyond the horizon.

I eat, finish the wine, and sit at the kitchen table for a time. Before going upstairs to bed, I cover Boethius’s cage.

Someone is flying a kite up on the mound. It is a bright, windy Sunday morning. No snow. Not even a threat. The kite is flying high on the breeze, so high that it is hard to tell what color it is. Just a dark speck in the sky. The university van is parked at the base of the mound. I follow the path to the top and find Dr. Norris, the big-bellied archaeologist. He waves to me, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his beard.

“Couldn’t resist,” he says.

“It’s up there pretty high.”

“Five hundred feet,” he says, indicating the empty spool of string at his feet.

“You’re back to dig?”

“Start tomorrow. Came up to make some measurements. Got distracted.” He plucks the cigarette from his mouth, drops it on the ground.

“Still expect to find something?”

“Besides a dead body, you mean?” He grins, fishes a cigarette pack from inside his down vest, shakes one out, and offers it to me. I accept, put it in my mouth.

“Here. Hold on.” He hands me a short stick around which the kite line is wrapped. I take it, surprised by the force. The kite seems firmly anchored to the sky. I watch it, mesmerized, while Norris hunches over to
light his cigarette. I return the line to him and he gives me his lit cigarette. I puff my own cigarette to light, return his. Norris plants it in the corner of his mouth and concentrates on flying the kite.

I sit down in the grass, remembering a dream I had during the night in which I turned into a border collie after flying under the great arch in St. Louis.

“What are you looking for?” I ask after a while. “More pipes?”

“Maybe. It’s impossible to predict.”

“You must have some idea.” The wind seems to be getting stronger. “What do you expect to find?”

Norris turns his head so that the ash is blown from the cigarette in his mouth. The wind begins to blow in strong gusts. Norris squints up at the tiny speck sailing against the sky. Then, suddenly, he lets go. Line and stick are jerked from his hand. He watches the tiny kite float away, then turns to me. “Clues,” he says, indicating the ground at his feet. “All the way down.”