The Good Librarian, Page 3

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  They came back in 1965, when Jacob was trying for full Colonel in the Air Force and he could only get it by shipping to Vietnam.

  Jacob asked for Leaves of Grass again.

  “How about Leaves of Grass, Juney? When are we going to get that book of ours back?”

  Your position strengthened with further reflection. “Anyone who is so afraid of authority does not deserve to own Leaves of Grass,” you explained, talking in a clear hard voice.

  Where, you said, was their simple apology? Where was their frank acknowledgement that they might have been in the wrong? Where was any expression, any recognition, that they might have been part of the evil of that time? Instead they used a mocking air about the book. That was why you wouldn’t return it.

  By then you had concluded that they didn’t deserve Leaves of Grass. Their argument that their son might be harmed seemed to make more sense initially than over the years. The writing of one who celebrated the ordinary man was too controversial for the military, too communistic, and you felt they had bought that stupid argument. It was bigger than the petty matter of the book. It was a bigger argument. It was not the book, it was the principle.

  Of course, in a sense, they deserved their book back. It was once theirs; they bought it, they put it on their shelf; they only loaned it to you, thrust it on you that day of their goodbye dinner party, with the understanding that after the troubles you’d give it back to them and everything would be all right once the storm of McCarthy was gone. You were a librarian. At least they had the good sense to preserve the book and the taste to want to put it on their bookshelf in the first place.

  But had they shown any respect for the ideas in the book? Had they shown that they now respected Walt Whitman more than their base commander? Would they now salute Walt Whitman instead of an eagle on a staff or the red, white and blue? No, to you, the answer was no again.

  You thought they ought to form a cogent argument for the return of the book. They ought to explain to you the error of their ideas. If only they had had enough self-knowledge to confess their own weakness in the face of authoritarian dictates. Instead, they laughed off the time in which they had given up the book and demanded that you laugh it off too and give them back the book. But to you it wasn’t a laughing matter. To give in to unjust arbitrary power in the matter of a book banning was indefensible in your eyes. Hiding the book would have been cowardly. Why not display it squarely on the coffee table and challenge the unjust, challenge the mind of your base commander and his tacit agreement with the list of undesirable books?

  What was bravery after all? Jacob had flown B-52s over Europe. He had flown back holocaust victims to England. That was bravery of the physical sort. Was he only brave when given orders to be brave? Could he only be brave physically but not in the mental realm?

  You keep their book. You never give it back, and everyone agreed that we suffered for your foolishness, and we all chuckled at you about it. You were terribly stubborn and funny.

  Why did you do it? Why ever did you do such a strange, stubborn thing? What an odd thing for a former small-town librarian to do. A librarian from the Salamonie River. You keep that book away from them forever.

  "Gosh, Mom, you ought to give it back," we laughed. "It's like you stole it! You're a librarian who stole somebody's book!"

  "You really shouldn't keep it, Mom. It's not very kind," I said foolishly.

  Think, Mother, think, we teased you, is keeping their book what a good old fashioned Indiana librarian would do?

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  Lorraine Ray is an avid reader and writer. She lives in an adobe home in the center of Tucson, Arizona with her husband and daughter.

  Connect with Lorraine Ray at Twitter: https://twitter.com/@LoRay00.