WHEATYARD
Peter Anderson
Copyright © 2013 by Peter Anderson
(KUBOA)/SmashWords Edition
www.kuboapress.wordpress.com
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[email protected] For Julie and Maddie,
my fondest critics and fiercest fans
"Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable except from the original sources, and, in his case, those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report, which will appear in the sequel."
Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
ONE
Wheatyard came through as a storm, sudden and jarring, then gone not long after.
I first encountered Elmer Glaciers Wheatyard, if that was even his real name, at Cellar Books, the used book store in the basement of the Campus YMCA. It was June 1993, and once again I found myself facing half a row of Sinclair Lewis paperbacks—a long line of tattered and smudged spines interrupted only by the hardcover monolith of Schorer's biography of the author—and wondering if I could spare three dollars for a old copy of Arrowsmith.
Though three dollars might not sound like much, back then it was a real concern. That night, whether or not I bought the book might mean the difference between having a decent dinner or not. I was barely able to pay my rent, and any leftover cash had to stretch for the necessities—food and gasoline—but also for the little things, like books, that would help keep me sane during what I thought would be a long, lonely summer in Champaign.
A week after graduation, I was still in town, enduring the already stifling heat, with only second-hand books to console me. Alone but, as it turned out, only for the moment.
***
I stood with that odd angled-neck posture so endemic to bookstore habitués, scanning the titles I already knew by heart: Babbitt, Main Street, It Can't Happen Here, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth, all of which I had read, which made my decision more a process of elimination than an actual choice. After a few minutes, my neck aching, my internal debate shifted completely from "Can I buy Arrowsmith?" to "Why shouldn't I?" I reached for the book and began to remove it from the shelf when I heard a cluck of disapproval from over my shoulder, seemingly from out of nowhere.
There stood a rumpled, bemused figure, shaking his head like a gently scolding schoolmaster. He was of below-average height, a few inches shorter than me, with an unkempt beard, greasy hair which hadn't been washed for a week or more, and intense brown eyes which peered at my selection—which I unconsciously began to return to the shelf—with a riveting stare.
"Do you really want to read that?" he gently asked.
"I like Lewis," I replied defensively, too thrown by the suddenness of the encounter to question what business of his it was, as I realized only later that I had every right to ask.
"Yeah, Babbitt was alright, and Main Street had some good moments, but Lewis was just too safe. Conventional, middlebrow, not much better than the bourgeoisie that he loved to satirize."
I was silent, taken aback at this unprovoked attack on an author I admired. Lewis was clearly no Babbitt, and I was about to strenuously argue that point when the strange man continued.
"You like reading, though, or you wouldn't be here," he said. "Nobody on campus even knows this store is here, and the school is supposedly some institute of higher learning. Learning and Labor, pffft."
His denigration of the school's motto, of its highly admirable goals, peeved me even more than his criticism of Sinclair Lewis. I was again about to object when he reached into his knapsack and withdrew a bundle of papers, which bulged two inches thick in an unwieldy and misaligned stack.
"Here, you like reading, you should read this," he said, rolling the bundle and shoving it under my arm. "An extra copy, yours to keep," he added, nodding and flicking his index finger from his temple toward me in some sort of salute, then brushed past me toward the exit.
"I get to campus every now and then," he said over his shoulder as he walked past the cashier's desk and through the doorway. "See you around," I heard his voice echo from the corridor outside.
The entire exchange lasted less than thirty seconds, but it had an odd effect on me. Puzzled, I walked up to the cashier, the store's owner and sole employee, with whom I had a nodding acquaintance from my past two years of haunting the stacks.
"Who was that?" I asked, quite curious.
"Elmer Glaciers Wheatyard," the owner replied. "Strange guy. He stops in here now and then, after going to the copy shop down the hall. Always complains there's no copy shops out in Tillsburg, which I guess is where he lives."
I puzzled over the odd name as I unrolled the sheaf of papers. On top was a nearly blank page which read "Longing Dissolute Midnight, Elmer Glaciers Wheatyard, April 1993."
Glancing over the edge of the page and reading upside down, the owner seemed to recognize it.
"Hmmm," he said. "Must be another one of his manuscripts."
"Why, does he have a lot of them?"
He laughed. "You might say that."
TWO