Denny Limmer hummed "The Streets of Laredo" under his breath as he stacked the returned books on the counter. He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of old books, combined with the lemon oil he'd used on the desk earlier. Perfect! He finally had the job he'd wanted since he got his library card in first grade.
Miss Foxx's footsteps sounded behind him. "Ahem."
Denny smiled up at her until he noticed her sour expression.
"Stop that infernal humming," she ordered. From a side pocket of her black dress, she produced a key ring. The museum guard was troubled again by his intermittent bursitis, she explained, and no one else had arrived yet, therefore Denny would be the one to unlock the museum that morning. She showed him which key to use. He took the blob of keys from her and shook it with an impish snap of his wrist. He tried to think of something important to say to the old librarian, someone who might befriend him eventually. "Break forth through the barred portals, oh great southwestern lore and legend, to ye people of no knowing," said Denny.
Miss Foxx sighed, "Whatever you do, don't speak to the protester. He's a very disturbed person. If he's outside, you must come up and tell me right away, but don't engage him in any conversation. Is that clear?"
"Oh yes," said Denny snappily, without really listening.
"All right. As long as you understand."
Denny left the counter and the sunny expanse of empty tables in the library using a hallway Miss Foxx had shown him. As he departed, he paused to tap the black stenciled words "staff only" on the exit, but was stunned when the steel door swept closed, driving the door handle into his left hip. There's gonna be a big bruise there, he thought with a wince.
Through a series of long gloomy museum corridors, Denny toyed with the phrase "part-time assistant librarian." It wasn't his first job, but his good fortune at finding this job astonished him. That morning he felt so excited. He'd made a decision the night before and today he felt that he was embarking on a new career as a librarian, able to assist scholarly people. In Denny's opinion scholarly people needed a lot of assistance. It would be a lifetime spent actually helping people. And important people, too!
Miss Grimm, the guidance counselor at his high school, had tried to talk him out of majoring in race track management and vintner culture. Denny wished he'd listened to her on both those scores. Those majors had not suited him. Being a vintner was a bad fit. It had kind of dawned on him suddenly that if he majored in vintner culture he would be contributing to public drunkenness! Who wanted that on their conscious? The thought horrified him. Besides, he hadn't really liked the agriculture students. When he had switched to thinking he wanted to be a vet, that hadn't lasted long, either. All those details about animal bodies! From being a vet, he had switched to wanting to run a race track, since if he didn't take care of the horses he could run everything at a race track. There was something about a race track that scared him, though, maybe it was the idea of the bells and the competition and the gambling. That wasn't a very noble profession, after all.
Actually, the guidance counselor hadn't been much help for Denny. Nevertheless, Denny planned to visit the old school on Friday afternoon and leave a bouquet of roses for her. Afterwards, he might hang around the parking lot when school was out and tell some of the younger kids where he was working. He bet they'd never known anybody who'd become a librarian.
That thought just cleared up all the gray clouds troubling his mind.
In a hallway painted pea green, he lingered at a staff bulletin board. A notice on the board announced the employee picnic in a canyon in April. That picnic sounded fun, thought Denny. He didn't read far enough to see a notice at the bottom of the flyer that said only full time employees were invited, for he was bounding eagerly down an open staircase toward the main floor of the museum, one palm skimming the iron railing, his gaze fixed on two potted cacti placed at the bottom of the broad stairs. Mother would like those, he thought, his sneakers caressing the museum's marble.
When Denny reached the museum entrance with its towering glass doors, he was chagrined to discover that he'd shoved Miss Foxx's key ring into his pocket without remembering which key he'd been shown as the one that unlocked the museum entrance. Denny studied the ring carefully and tried to remember what the key Miss Foxx had picked out had looked like. Why hadn't he paid more attention? There was no question of going back to Miss Foxx's office. What would she think of such an inattentive employee? Denny begin the laborious process of testing the different keys methodically.
Key after key probed the shiny brass works. By his fourth time around the ring, Denny thought he'd probably tried each one twice. The thought made him jittery. Why did the guard have to be sick on Denny's first day? That bursitis thing sure sounded phony. Denny wondered if the guard was a chronic malingerer.
In the course of his fifth examination of the ring, Denny became aware of a large man with blue tinted glasses standing outside the museum. The man wore a red checked cowboy shirt and jeans, and his feet in Mexican sandals were cracked and grass-stained. He chewed gum and watched Denny with a satisfied expression. "Are you opening soon?" asked the man abruptly. His voice, penetrating the glass door, sounded as though he were underwater.
Denny started at the sound of a voice so near. "Yes, yes," Denny nodded, "one moment." He thrust his black-rimmed glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. Had it been a thin silvery key Miss Foxx had used? Or one with a bulldog on it? Suddenly, the key in his hand turned the lock, and, pressing a bar which spanned the door, Denny burst out into the crisp air of a beautiful spring morning.
He felt a rush of happiness, success, and good spirits. A part-time librarian's assistant was a grand thing to be! "Good morning," he said, ushering the visitor inside with an exaggerated gesture. The man stood still.
By now, Denny reflected, Miss Foxx might be wondering why he hadn't returned her keys. Denny turned his back on the man and grasped the key ring. He gave it a crisp tug. Nothing happened. He pulled the jangling mass, shook it, and jammed it in harder. The key remained in the latch. Denny could feel the large man studying him through those peculiar blue lenses. Denny wondered why he didn't enter the museum.
"You're new here, aren't you?" asked the man.
"New? No," scoffed Denny, heedless of anything but the stubborn latch, "I'm a third generation Arizonan. My great grandfather came to Fort Wagstaff after the Civil War. He was out here for years killing Apache Indians." It was then, when he finished speaking, that Denny realized three distressing facts: the man was not asking if he was new to Arizona, an enormous plywood sign which resembled a cross leaned against the thick ivy clinging to the side of the museum, and what he'd said was highly imprudent. From where he stood, Denny could read the red scrawl on the placard, "Beware Racist Mummy Snatchers!" A quick scan around showed Denny that there wasn't another soul outside the museum.
By process of elimination, Denny realized in horror that he'd just spoken to the protester that Miss Foxx had warned him about.
The man released his breath with a long, slow hiss. "So, your great grandfather came to Arizona to kill Apaches, huh?" he snarled. "You! You little punk! I've killed a hundred better people than you by mere accident on the highway. I'd like to take your scrawny turkey neck and wring it this way and twist it that way, and you'd squawk your squawk and you'd talk your talk, and your great big blue eyes would bulge out of your head like-"
Denny leaped across the threshold, dragging the door shut behind him. Denny yanked the key which came out in his hand, sending him staggering backward.
What had he done! The man pressed himself against the glass, his thick brass belt buckle clinking against the door pane, his pudgy hands strangling the air. Denny read the belt buckle's slogan: "Bullets, Budweiser, and Broads."
That man was crazy! What was it Miss Foxx had told him about this protester? Denny struggled to remember. Hadn't she told him that the man had become deranged over Native American causes? Hadn't she explained that he plagued the museum staff? They'd had hi
m arrested for trespassing, according to Miss Foxx, so he always stayed outside. He'd even spit on a minister they'd sent as an arbitrator. 'We have to work out our own salvation'; that was what the frightened minister had said when he left. He couldn't do a thing with the man!
Denny had been cautioned against speaking to the protester. And what had he done! He'd not only spoken to the man, but he'd told him his great grandfather had come to Arizona to kill-oh God, Denny didn't want to remind himself of his stupidity-his great grandfather killed Apaches!
Denny retreated from the entrance. He stood, dismayed, beside an American flag and an Arizona flag inside the museum entrance.
What should he do? Perhaps he ought to apologize. But what could he say? The man was glaring in at him, but Denny felt he ought to make an attempt. He crept to the door, where the man was standing, and pushed the bar slightly; the door opened. "I'm terribly sorry for the unspeakable outrage I uttered," said Denny through the crack in the door, "Can you find it in your heart to forgive me for saying such-"
"Tell Miss Foxx my first demand is the release of mummies of Native American heritage! Release them first and we'll talk!" yelled the man.
Denny recoiled, pulling the door closed. A moment later he thought better of leaving things as they were and opened the door again, but by a narrower margin. "I went to school with Apache Indians whose fathers' were firefighters for the National Forest," he said. "They were wonderful people."
"Doggie spittle!" hollered the man.
Denny hopped backward. The man's curses were still coming. The direct approached had failed; it was time to withdraw. Denny sought cover.
He ran toward a darkened diorama where papier-mache Indians wearing black fright wigs held gray Styrofoam boulders over their heads. They were heaving the stones onto the shaggy back of a woolly mammoth, about half its true size. The mammoth, accepting the justness of their blows, rolled its frightened eyes heavenward. Blood pooled under the doomed beast. Denny scrambled to put its bulk between himself and the man at the door. When he'd hidden, the mans garbled rantings decreased.
It occurred to Denny that if he climbed the main stairs (the same stairs he had come down) the man outside would be watching his back. Denny's insides squirmed imagining it. He vaguely remembered seeing an elevator on his arrival earlier that morning. If an employee went by, he could ask them the whereabouts of the elevator.
Denny waited, his heart beating more slowly. He began to feel sorry for the man at the door. Perhaps he'd experienced some difficulty in his life which had made him hateful. He might have been married to a Native American woman.
Somewhere, in an unseen office, someone sneezed. Shortly thereafter, a toilet flushed. No one appeared. He'd have to locate the elevator himself. He stepped briskly from behind the mammoth.
The instant Denny emerged, another harangue exploded from the man at the door. Denny bolted. At the bottom of the stairs, he wheeled around a corner. Fleeing to the end of a short passage, he confronted a caged doorway. Was there no way to the second floor but those stairs? Where was the elevator? Denny dashed to a nearby door and opened it.
He entered a wing of the museum that was divided into modular workstations. The first two cubicles he passed were unoccupied except for empty cardboard boxes and scattered razor blades, but in the third a woman turned toward him from a computer screen. Denny recognized her soft, sympathetic eyes.
"Hello," she said, "Didn't I meet you earlier?"
"Yes, you did," said a breathless Denny, unable to remember her name or function. She might have been the one who had him fill out paperwork, but he didn't want to hazard a comment to that effect.
"How is it being new here?" she asked.
"A little difficult," said Denny honestly.
The woman blinked twice and took a sip from a ceramic mug which had a lime-colored snail for its handle.
"But fun," added Denny, "I'm so nervous this morning."
"That's all right," she said in a slushy voice, "There's no reason to be nervous is there? You haven't done anything wrong."
Well, that was the thing. Denny thought he had. What he had done by talking to the protester seemed to be exactly what he shouldn't have done. He knew Miss Foxx had made a big thing of the importance of him not speaking to the protester.
"I unlocked the museum door," began Denny, wanting to tell her about his mistake with the protester.
"Good," she replied. "We always need someone to do that." With one hand the woman smoothed her black skirt which had been appliqued with pink shapes. Denny thought the figures resembled flamingoes.
"I like your flamingo skirt," he said.
"They're quail, actually," she said with a placid smile, as though she would have gladly had them be flamingoes, if he insisted.
Courage swelled in Denny. She was friendly. Perhaps he could tell her what had happened; maybe she'd had a similar experience. But before he could speak, the woman set down her cup and hastily returned her gaze to the computer. As though she were answering some silent directive, she executed a series of hypnotic keyboard strikes. When she finished each phrase, the computer beeped satisfaction.
She's busy, thought Denny. I shouldn't disturb her.
She kept typing in the same strange fashion. Her fingers were continuously jabbing the keys and her kind eyes were fixed on the screen.
I'd like to do that all day, Denny mused. A pang of guilt accompanied that longing, for he remembered a fib on his job application; he'd claimed to be computer competent and had fabricated some gibberish about writing code for a computer. What would he do if Miss Foxx asked him to write code or fill in a spreadsheet?
Denny search for some sign of the museum elevator or the stairs. There had to be a way out of there. Behind the woman there was a window with frosted glass, its sill crammed with African violets. A door to her left was blocked by a chair and a teetering stack of notebooks. "Is there an elevator somewhere?" asked Denny finally.
"Behind you," said the woman, pointing. Denny spun around and tittered, "Thanks. I haven't been able to locate anything this morning." He left her to press the black elevator button and then hastily ran back. "I like your quail skirt," he said in time with the elevator's ding. He hurried into the elevator car and faced outward.
The doors closed slowly, and Denny leaned against the elevator rail, crossing his legs at the ankles. He looked at the nice lady at her computer one last time. A white square passed the frosted window behind her.
What was that?
Denny strained to see what it was before the elevator doors closed.
It was the placard of the protester.
The elevator door slammed.
What had he done! That nut was following him. He'd seen where Denny had run and he'd walked around the outside of the museum in order to watch him through another window. Denny shuddered.
When he reached Miss Foxx's office, Denny found the old librarian discussing a water stained pamphlet with a bearded man who smoked a meerschaum pipe. Miss Foxx grunted at the sight of her keys and introduced the bearded man as Denny's supervisor. Denny was unable to repeat either of his Czechoslovakian names. His name sounded something like Zbenbak Zidlestromber.
The bearded man took Denny back to the library and the counter which might very possibly been a place where he'd begun his morning. Two researchers were already seated at the tables. They must have come in after he opened the door. A line of pink paper slips stretched along the counter. Those were the patron's requests. The bearded man handed Denny one. He needed to locate a poem entitled "The Lament of Big Nosed Kate."
It was scary looking for things in the archives. Denny had to walk long aisles of bookshelves. He had a feeling that he was about to be murdered.
When Denny emerged from the maze of florescent-lit shelves with the file, a nervous young woman clutching an imitation crocodile briefcase snatched the file from him. The bearded man scribbled something in a ledger and handed Denny another slip.
He processed
fourteen more requests. The young woman with the crocodile briefcase sought photos of Mexican steamboats and the records of a female Confederate spy who'd fled Alabama and had lived incognito in Arizona for fifty years. The other patron, a grubby old man in a blue suit, asked for the diary and drawings of a man who'd been scalped and a sample of 19th century hair art depicting a cattle drive. The hair art was packed in a black carton and after Denny brought it to the old man at his table, the man returned to the counter complaining that it was infested by beetles. He took the infestation personally, he explained, because it was his mother's hair. Tiny beetle husks sifted from the carton when he opened it on the counter. The bearded man told Denny to take his mid-morning break.
The tables of the library had filled with intense young scholars and old ladies with straw totes. Because she was the only one in the library sitting alone, Denny joined the women with the crocodile briefcase. When he sat down and opened a newspaper, she whisked her briefcase farther away from him and glared in a ferocious manner.
Denny surveyed the want ads, his stomach writhing at the attractive details in an ad for an unskilled plumber's assistant. The anxiety he felt from his skirmish with the protester had been increased by new fears of his supervisor. Denny knew he wasn't processing the pink slips fast enough. How long would he be given to improve? Maybe they'd let him practice that weekend?
Outside one of the library's immense casement windows, two sparrows, sheltered by stout ivy vines, fought over a twig. Denny stood up, strolled to the window, and leaned out of the open frame. He sniffed the fresh morning air. The splendid grounds of the museum extended below him. Rows of stout palms and gnarled olive trees lines up on either side of the museum's broad concrete approach, which was surrounded by a yellow Bermuda lawn turning green in shady patches after a winder of dormancy. On the dry skirt of a nearby palm a pigeon lit, shot off, and arched into the sapphire sky. As Denny admired a jet airplane, a movement beneath the windowsill caught his eye. He looked down on a dirt path. The protester stood there laughing. He brandished his sign above his head and made a chopping motion like the huge placard was an ax. Denny sprang back from the windowsill and spun around. His supervisor was watching him. He signaled Denny to return to the counter. "Never jump like that in the library," he scolded.
Denny processed fifteen more requests that morning. He tried to work faster and made two errors. His supervisor ignored his apologies. Near noon, when he was scheduled to quit, Denny saw the nice lady with the flamingo-like quail skirt approaching the counter. "Miss Foxx would like to see you in her office," she said. Denny was so frightened he didn't ask any questions; he supposed he was about to be fired and, feeling himself a docile innocent captive, followed her in resignation to his ruin.
Miss Foxx occupied an enormous wing chair in a corner of her office under a large dark painting of an angel emerging from a copper mine. A brass plaque bolted to the picture frame read, "The Seraph of Silverbell Mine." Denny sat on the fringed ottoman that Miss Foxx pointed out beside an ashtray dirtied by the cold ashes of his supervisor's pipe.
"You're new here-" began Miss Foxx.
"Yes, it's been a wonderful morning," Denny lied.
Miss Foxx studied him coldly and continued. "I try to meet with new staff at the end of their first day," she said, "I want the Southwest Museum to be a friendly place in which to work. What attracted you to library work, Dennis?"
She was not firing him! Denny's spirits soared. "That's such an interesting story, Miss Foxx," said Denny, "I'd like to tell you."
She indicated with a stirring motion of her hands that he should.
"Well, it's strange, but do you know that all I ever thought of in high school were girls, and goats, and the Future Farmers of America. Last year my parents were worried about me," continued Denny, "so they sent men to see this guidance counselor, Miss Grimm, at my high school. She said because I was a third generation Arizonan, I ought to be interested in the history of the state. She told me I ought to get a degree in library science and become a librarian. I ought to help scholarly people. Scholarly people need lots of help. Right then and there that I decided to become a librarian." He left out the forays into vintner management, race track management and vet school.
"So you think libraries are great contributions to society, then?" asked Miss Foxx. She was putting paperwork away in her drawers.
"Oh, yes," said Denny earnestly. He thought it might be a good time to discuss the protester and his mistake, but Miss Foxx continued.
"Denny, I wonder if you have heard about the great fire in the library at Alexandria, Egypt?"
"I have to confess something, Miss Foxx. I don't read the newspapers as much as I ought to. I know it's a fault if I'm going to be a librarian. People come in a lot and ask about current events like fires! Even ones in Egypt!" he said solemnly.
Miss Foxx assessed Denny coolly for a moment.
"The fires to which I made reference, Denny, occurred in 47 B.C."
"Oh, those fires," said Denny.
"According to the histories of the Hellenistic Age," she went on to explain, "half a million manuscripts perished. What do you think of that?" asked Miss Foxx.
"Horrible!" exclaimed Denny.
"What do you think of Euclid flaming?"
"Appalling!"
"Of Hipparchus charred?"
"Just awful!"
"Of Eudemus ignited?"
"Miss Foxx, do you think you could write those names down on a piece of paper for me?" Denny asked. "I'm trying to better myself by learning stuff. I'd hate to miss the chance to learn about all those great guys you just mentioned."
"Denny, what would you say if I told you that I believe the fires were set by a librarian?" said Miss Foxx.
Denny sat up.
"Are you shocked?" she asked. "You see," she said, thrusting a pencil into the wispy white bun on the back of her head, "library work isn't the splendid profession you've imagined. It never has been. Library work, working in a library, destroys people. Two of the finest human beings I've had the pleasure to know and to call intimate friends of mine became librarians along with me and they are now-" Miss Foxx struggled to say more. "They are both currently housed in the Arizona State Asylum. I used this very phone to call their ambulances." She displayed a black rotary-style phone with a straight black cord.
Denny could barely swallow. He felt his throat closing and his palms sweating. What was she saying? What did she mean by saying library work destroyed people? How could she ever suspect that a librarian burned down a library?
Miss Foxx sank into her wing chair, her eyelids closed. "I want you to think about what I've said before you choose library science as a major."
A bulky palm tree outside Miss Foxx's window rustled. Denny had been thrilled by the idea of being a librarian. Now Miss Foxx was telling him if he became one he might end up in the state asylum!
The old woman consulted her watch. "I've held you too long. Your shift ended at noon." She stood and shook his hand. "Good day," she said.
Denny blundered from the old woman's office. He wondered if he should remain inside until he could exit the building with someone who was going to a late lunch. No doubt the protester was out there in a shrub or a hedge waiting for Denny to appear. He would attack Denny with full force. Denny had said the worst possible thing he could have said to someone upset about the abuse of Native Americans. But what did it matter? What could that madman do to him that hadn't already been done? It was all over. Miss Foxx had completely disillusioned him about having a career in library sciences. She didn't want him to become a librarian. The librarians she knew had gone crazy!
Denny wondered if Miss Foxx wasn't a little mad herself. Denny wondered what it would feel like to be hit on the head with a great big plywood sign. He thought he might prefer it to the morning he'd had.
He plodded out the rear entrance of the museum, feeling in his front pant pocket for his bus token. He was disappointed when the protester didn't lunge ou
t from behind the graffiti sprayed trash scuttle. No one emerged from behind the thick oleander hedge, either. A rustle Denny heard in the dense suckers of an olive tree proved to be a lizard. Of course, thought Denny, the protester could be lurking behind the stone wall on the west side of the campus. Denny studied the ominous volcanic basalt, marched toward it, and stopped parallel to an opening. He breathed and stepped out.
The protester wasn't there. Instead a glob of pink chewing gum bobbed on the split tip of an enormous agave plant.
The east of the building must be where he's hiding, thought Denny, trudging eastward on the dirt path where he'd seen the man. When he got to the east wall of the museum, the bricks of the building gleamed with the noon sun, but the protester wasn't there. Denny walked from the east to the north again, near an oleander hedge, around the trash scuttle. He'd circled the building once. The protester had eluded him.
Out onto the Bermuda lawn ambled Denny. Someone had turned on a sprinkler; it had a broken head. Water gurgled out of the pipe sideways. Denny stood transfixed by the sound of its joyous, bubbling voice and the sight of the yellow Bermuda chaff and dirt floating on the liquid surface which rolled toward his feet.
"I'm ready!" hollered Denny suddenly, "Hit me with your sign!"
No one moved.
"Come on, you jerk!" he yelled at the oleander hedge, "Hit me with your sign! Hit me with your goddamn sign!"
Denny glanced around. The protester didn't appear, but Denny saw Miss Foxx in her second story window. She slowly brought the receiver of her black telephone to her ear.
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THE END
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Consciousness Raising