somewhere.
***
Chapter 12
For several minutes, Carl sat in his car, trying his best not to think about anything, to simply sit and watch people walk by on the sidewalk. It was largely a residential area, two blocks from the school. But the business district started only two blocks in the opposite direction, the direction he was facing. One corner of the courthouse square was just visible a block into the business district; and a block beyond that was the marquee of the movie theater that had closed most recently. Another block to the right, he knew was the library.
If any place in Morgantown could prove he existed, it was the library. They had a complete run of The Raider , his high school yearbook, and of the Morgantown Tribune with its annual lists of graduating seniors, its end-of-semester honor roll lists. He remembered a reporter coming to the school to take a picture of everyone on the honor roll, and his mother’s delight at the picture in the paper the next morning.
He blinked. Unprovoked, another shard of memory appeared for an instant and then whirled away, glittering. And with it lingered a faint measure of relief. He remembered getting his first library card. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, and the building had seemed huge and forbidding, like a mausoleum, the biggest, sternest looking building he had ever seen. They had just moved to Morgantown from … where? For an instant a different kind of terror gripped him, a paralyzing fear that his past was being expunged not only from computer records but from his own mind as well.
Nonsense, the library would clear everything up.
Calm again, he got out of the car and fed more dimes into the meter and started to walk, hoping with a warped grin that the car would not have vanished when he returned. Towed away like his past, never again to be found.
It was too much to expect a familiar face in the library, but at least the building matched his memory, inside and out. At the checkout counter a plump, pleasant-faced woman well into middle age looked up as he entered. Her mouth opened as if to say hello, but instead a puzzled frown creased her forehead. Accustomed to double-takes, Carl hurried on past.
He found the catalog: more microfiche, not the long wooden drawers of finger-worn cards he recalled. Yes, the yearbooks were listed. Carl glanced around to orient himself. The woman at the checkout desk lowered her eyes quickly. She’d been staring. Another woman, with gray hair carefully arranged, was working at a desk near the catalog. As Carl approached, she looked up and smiled, though Carl noticed—or thought he noticed—an instant of uncertainty as she focused on him.
Am I fading away? he wondered. Getting transparent? Disappearing from the present as well as the past?
“May I help you?” The voice was soft and pleasant, and Carl wondered fleetingly what had happened to Carrie Gordon. Whenever he wanted anything in the library, he had always tried to find her to help him look. With her, it had been like a friend helping him with something rather than someone who was doing it, often reluctantly, because that was what she was being paid to do.
“I’m looking for The Raider for 1966. Back there, somewhere, if I’m remembering correctly.” He waved one long arm. “Right?”
“Precisely.”
Carl grinned. What relief three syllables could bring! The woman beckoned.
To his joy, she led him to exactly the room he’d pictured: long maple tables filled the center, with maple chairs pushed up to them, and bookcases lined every wall, broken only by the door and two windows. His memory fit this place.
“You said sixty-six?” she asked, stopping halfway along one wall and glancing back for his nod. She pulled a volume from a shelf and handed it to him. “Your graduating class?”
He nodded. “At least I thought it was, until half an hour ago.”
“Not the sort of thing one forgets!”
“You wouldn’t think so. But I lost my
***
Chapter 12
For several minutes, Carl sat in his car, trying his best not to think about anything, to simply sit and watch people walk by on the sidewalk. It was largely a residential area, two blocks from the school. But the business district started only two blocks in the opposite direction, the direction he was facing. One corner of the courthouse square was just visible a block into the business district; and a block beyond that was the marquee of the movie theater that had closed most recently. Another block to the right, he knew was the library.
If any place in Morgantown could prove he existed, it was the library. They had a complete run of The Raider , his high school yearbook, and of the Morgantown Tribune with its annual lists of graduating seniors, its end-of-semester honor roll lists. He remembered a reporter coming to the school to take a picture of everyone on the honor roll, and his mother’s delight at the picture in the paper the next morning.
He blinked. Unprovoked, another shard of memory appeared for an instant and then whirled away, glittering. And with it lingered a faint measure of relief. He remembered getting his first library card. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, and the building had seemed huge and forbidding, like a mausoleum, the biggest, sternest looking building he had ever seen. They had just moved to Morgantown from … where? For an instant a different kind of terror gripped him, a paralyzing fear that his past was being expunged not only from computer records but from his own mind as well.
Nonsense, the library would clear everything up.
Calm again, he got out of the car and fed more dimes into the meter and started to walk, hoping with a warped grin that the car would not have vanished when he returned. Towed away like his past, never again to be found.
It was too much to expect a familiar face in the library, but at least the building matched his memory, inside and out. At the checkout counter a plump, pleasant-faced woman well into middle age looked up as he entered. Her mouth opened as if to say hello, but instead a puzzled frown creased her forehead. Accustomed to double-takes, Carl hurried on past.
He found the catalog: more microfiche, not the long wooden drawers of finger-worn cards he recalled. Yes, the yearbooks were listed. Carl glanced around to orient himself. The woman at the checkout desk lowered her eyes quickly. She’d been staring. Another woman, with gray hair carefully arranged, was working at a desk near the catalog. As Carl approached, she looked up and smiled, though Carl noticed—or thought he noticed—an instant of uncertainty as she focused on him.
Am I fading away? he wondered. Getting transparent? Disappearing from the present as well as the past?
“May I help you?” The voice was soft and pleasant, and Carl wondered fleetingly what had happened to Carrie Gordon. Whenever he wanted anything in the library, he had always tried to find her to help him look. With her, it had been like a friend helping him with something rather than someone who was doing it, often reluctantly, because that was what she was being paid to do.
“I’m looking for The Raider for 1966. Back there, somewhere, if I’m remembering correctly.” He waved one long arm. “Right?”
“Precisely.”
Carl grinned. What relief three syllables could bring! The woman beckoned.
To his joy, she led him to exactly the room he’d pictured: long maple tables filled the center, with maple chairs pushed up to them, and bookcases lined every wall, broken only by the door and two windows. His memory fit this place.
“You said sixty-six?” she asked, stopping halfway along one wall and glancing back for his nod. She pulled a volume from a shelf and handed it to him. “Your graduating class?”
He nodded. “At least I thought it was, until half an hour ago.”
“Not the sort of thing one forgets!”
“You wouldn’t think so. But I lost my
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