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What Might Happen
Anne Macdonald
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Anne Macdonald grew up in southern California and lives, works and writes in Colorado.
Her fiction has appeared in Matter: A Journal of Art, Literature and Movement; Blue Earth Review; the Belletriste Review and others.
Her novel, A Short Time in Luxembourg (Gardena Press) was published in 2004. Anne’s professional work has included rare book and
manuscript librarian, business librarian, arts administrator, chamber orchestra manager, and grant writer.
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The librarians don’t mind you being drunk. They just don’t want you drunk and fighting. Dennis couldn’t think of anything he hated worse than getting kicked out of the library.
The library sat in a park at the edge of downtown, about three blocks from the railroad tracks, a block from the day shelter, and it was surrounded by clapboard houses, houses like a kid would draw. Dennis found comfort in the symmetry of the houses—one after another up and down the street, two windows on each side of each front door, an attic window much smaller than the others, and a pointed roof. Dennis needed symmetry—the day shelter counselor had told him that, everything neat and in its place. Symmetry.
There were no cars in the four-corner stop and Dennis wanted to get to the library before the others finished their breakfast. The Colorado sun had risen fiercely that morning, like sparks of fire or splatters of sharpened glass. The glare blinded him. Dennis worried that if he fell off the curb because he was blinded by the sun and he sprawled out on the street, a car might not see him and the driver would run Dennis over. Dennis pictured the tires making an indentation on his back. He imagined the sound crunch against his backbone. Symmetry. He liked that word, the sound of it. Symmetry. Peaceful word. Dennis liked peaceful words.
Halfway across the street, Dennis heard the sound of the Burlington-Northern. He stopped, looked down to make sure he wasn’t crossing on railroad tracks. If the engineer had been blinded by the sharp sunlight and startled by his own sound, Dennis would be crushed.
Symmetry.
“Dennis, wait.”
Shit. He had taken too long to cross. Lindsay caught up with Dennis. Lindsay was new to the day shelter. She had a long face, her cheeks kind of hung down by her jaw, and her left eye drooped. Dennis worried that Hank, Guy and Ensign Jack would follow Lindsay. The day before, Ensign Jack was drunk, and inside the library, up on the second floor where they have all the computers, Ensign Jack kept telling the librarian to give him respect because he was Ensign. The librarian, the old one with the really big top and bird-like legs, told him that she was Librarian and unless he treated her better he would never learn to get his email. That day, Ensign Jack got the whole group, including Dennis, kicked out of the library—Ensign Jack and Lindsay had argued too loudly.
Dennis wanted to lose Lindsay. But if he changed to the diagonal path around to the front of the library, Dennis worried he might
| "The library sat in a park at the edge of downtown, about three blocks from the railroad tracks, a block
from the day shelter, and it was surrounded by clapboard houses, houses like a kid would draw. Dennis found comfort in the symmetry of the houses—one
after another up and down the street, two windows on each side of each front door, an attic window much smaller than the others, and a pointed roof." |
get run over by a bike. Last week, a kid on a bike flew past him so fast, it almost knocked him out. What would have happened if he and the kid had collided? The bike tires might have embedded themselves right into Dennis’ chest, and maybe gone right on out his backside. But on this other path there was a flag pole. Dennis pictured running into the flag pole and how it would feel to have the cold round metal hit him on the forehead and have his forehead broken open.
Dennis was a slight man, a featherweight boxer when he was in the Navy in Vietnam. His featherweight still protected him from any transient stealing his stuff, but not from the fears that nagged at him. Symmetry. Symmetry.
That was the other thing that Dennis didn’t like about Ensign Jack. Ensign Jack always said ‘ Nam instead of Vietnam, like he was some cool Vet. But Dennis wasn’t even sure Ensign Jack had ever been in Vietnam. For one, he was too young. For another, he was too stupid. Hell, Dennis had been in Vietnam. Every time he thought the word Vietnam, he pictured himself trudging through the swamp with a rifle above his head. But Dennis could never recall if that really happened or if he saw it on television. He remembered that in Vietnam, his buddy, Cal, fell over the ravine trying to hold onto Dennis’ hand. Dennis always pictured the pleading look on Cal’s face as Cal slipped right down the wet, mossy, vine-covered hillside, never to be seen again. Cal fell into oblivion. Dennis always completed the thought of Cal with the word oblivion.
Dennis missed the flagpole, but Lindsay had caught up with him and was yakking on about Ray, Ensign Jack, Guy and Hank and what they ate for breakfast and how she hoped that Hank had not gotten her pregnant up there by the river the other day.
“That book,” she said, “didn’t have the real Tai Kwon Do in it. Hank told me. I showed it to him and he said it wasn’t the right Tai Kwon Do. That librarian gave me the wrong book. Hank is coming over today to tell her which is the right one.”
But Dennis liked that librarian. She was very young, almost too young to be a librarian, and she had long dark hair, and cool clothes.
About a week before, the young librarian had helped this other shelter guy. That guy had white hair and a white goatee, but was very clean. He told the librarian that he wanted a book about trekking through somewhere like Katmandu. She found him the exact book he had wanted, Trekking in the Annapurna Region. The guy said he had last read the book in 1993. Dennis thought the guy probably got mixed up and had actually trekked Katmandu himself in 1993—he looked like the trekking type. After the librarian handed him the book, the guy asked how he could find more books like that; he had had a head injury and got confused when he came to the library—there were so many books. She asked the trekking guy if he had a computer. He told her he could use a computer and knew about Google, but Dennis found out later, the guy was lying. After dinner at the shelter, Dennis showed him how to search for more books on the computer, and they found lots of trekking books. That night, Dennis and Trekking took their sleeping bags up to the river because that’s the best place to crash; there were two day shelters in this town and one over-night shelter, but the overnight shelter made you pray, and Dennis didn’t pray any more, either did the trekking guy. Besides, up at the river the stars shone very brightly at night. You could stare at them forever, like you were entering the universe or something. The trekking guy left two days later; the bus to Omaha had come through.
Dennis got to the entrance of the library, but in his hurry to beat the others, he forgot that the library didn’t open for another ten minutes. Now Hank will have followed Lindsay. Then Ensign Jack will follow Hank, and all the chaos will start again. Ensign Jack pissed off Dennis. Dennis liked that he could use the laptop anywhere in the library, and he liked all the books and magazines he could look at all day. Everything was so clean and orderly in there. Dennis didn’t like to piss off the librarians. Ensign Jack was fucking things up for all of them. Dennis wished he’d get a bus out of town.
The library stood on stilts, so it looked kind of science fiction-y, like an eight-sided space ship with one window on each side, eight in all. The outside was rock-covered, not wood or cement. Wood and cement reminded Dennis of Idaho. Idaho reminded him of Sandy, and he always got down when he thought about Idaho…when he thought of Sandy.
A new guy stood by the bushes on the other side of the library entrance, under one of the corner stilts. Two mothers, each with two babies stood closer to the entrance. Well, they were early, too, Dennis thought, so he wasn’t so dumb after all, and they didn’t have a laptop like he did, unless it was in the bottom of the stroller, down where he and Sandy used to keep the diapers. For a second, Dennis saw Sandy with her long brown hair, and her big brown eyes, and her brown skin, though the vision of her was in the coffin, all shiny and not real at all. Then Dennis pictured Cal with his eyes pleading for Dennis to hold onto him but Dennis couldn’t hold on. He was slipping himself. Oblivion.
Dennis didn’t like the looks of that new guy standing under that corner stilt, behind the mothers with the strollers. For one, he had on a new coat and new baseball hat. Those were the clothes the prison gives the newly-released—Carhartt coat, baseball cap and new jeans. He was also a big guy, and fit and strong, wore scary sunglasses, and he talked to himself. Dennis didn’t like the ones who talked to themselves. He’d ask around at the shelter. He might have to warn that librarian. Then Dennis noticed Ray, another shelter guy with a laptop, only his was a stolen laptop, standing behind the newly-released guy. Ray had been in Iraq three times and didn’t really like anyone. Dennis felt better that Ray had his back.
The library opened at exactly 9:30 a.m.
“Felon.” Lindsay motioned to the new guy as Dennis and her entered the library. “Me and Hank saw him yesterday up in the Square. He killed someone. Someone important like a kid, I think, or a grandpa, something horrible. He’s crazy. I’m going back. I don’t want no one killing me today.”
Dennis didn’t like to think they’d get killed. For one, the librarians didn’t mess around--you give them trouble and they trespass you—that means you can’t come back until you talk to the head librarian. Be good, and they let you stay as long as you want, even if you’re drunk. As long as you’re not sleeping it off or you’re not fighting, you get to stay. But this guy ... Dennis decided this guy was bad news.
“He’s crazy,” Lindsay whispered.
Dennis could feel the guy trudge up the stairs right behind them. Dennis pictured a big monster trudging. He pictured himself tripping on the stairs and the felon marching over him, and squishing him with his big black boots.
“I’m coming back with Hank and Guy,” Lindsay said. “We need back-up.” She turned, held onto the railing with her hands behind her and carefully slid past the felon. She ran down the stairs and out the automatic doors.
Two of the librarians were working the second floor that morning, the short snappy one with the leathery skin, and the nice one who had helped the trekking guy. No matter, Dennis thought; the felon didn’t concern Dennis. Thinking of felons would mess his mind. Dennis planned to look at the history of Annapurna that afternoon, maybe look for a few more trekking books.
It took two of them – Mickey, the security guy, and Joshua, the man librarian – to pull Ensign Jack off the Men’s Room floor and drag him out of the bathroom. Ensign Jack was drunk asleep in one of the stalls and had vomited around the toilet.
Hank told Dennis that Ensign Jack had been sleeping in the back of the library, behind the Dumpsters and next to the boiler room. Ensign Jack got trespassed.
Dennis brushed Hank away and moved his laptop over nearer the magazines. He decided to look up the Falkland Islands. He hated Margaret Thatcher. He couldn’t quite remember why, except that maybe because of those Irish boys she let starve to death.
Around 2:00 p.m. Mickey did his rounds. Dennis told him that the guy with the green hat and Carhartt coat was fuckin’ crazy. “Don’t let no one go near him.”
Mickey admitted that they had a couple of complaints about the guy talking too loudly, but they couldn’t do anything because he wasn’t loud enough to get kicked out, and he was reading a book, and he wasn’t drunk. “As for his being a felon; he served his time so he’s free to go where he wants.”
“But, he’s fucking crazy. He talks to himself.”
“I know. He has people in his head. I’ll talk to him.”
“No, no, no. Don’t do that. He’ll get confused and he might hurt you.”
Dennis wondered how he could get a trek to Annapurna. What would the sherpas be like? How cold would it get? Or, is Nepal hot like Vietnam was? He then wondered how that Margaret Thatcher could let those Irish boys starve to death. Dennis had been in prison; no one let him starve to death.
Not sure why, but Dennis looked up just as the felon caught the little Chinese girl by the throat. The felon pulled out a knife, waved it around with one hand while he held the girl with the other. He kept waving the knife and talking to the air. He had people in his head, and he whispered loudly that the people won’t stop talking to him.
The leather-faced librarian was calling 911. The young librarian who helped the trekking guy was walking toward the Teen section. The little Chinese girl was shaking and trying to scream but the felon held her by the neck and continued to wave his knife, whispering to the people in his head.
Everyone at the computers continued typing; no one seemed to know what was going on in the Teen area.
Dennis returned to his computer; he was now looking up the Irish war, but he couldn’t remember why. He wanted the felon to go away so he could concentrate.
The elevator door opened. Dennis hoped it would be the police, but it was an old lady with a walker. She turned her walker full body toward the Teen area, saw the felon and the little girl, and she screamed.
Everyone at the computers stood and craned their necks toward the girl, who was crying, and the felon who was now hollering at the people in his head and waving the knife around trying to get the people out of his head.
The young librarian told everyone to move away. She turned off the main computer switch and steered the crowd down the stairs.
Dennis started shaking. He didn’t move from the table. He couldn’t think of his quiet word… seminal? Shocking? Sinatra? Oblivion, all he could think of was, oblivion.
The knife was now at the girl’s neck. The leather-skinned librarian was still on the phone.
| "Just as he pictured the knife going into the girl’s neck and then being pulled out and going into
Dennis’ own heart, Dennis made up his mind. He was like a shot out of a canon, like a superman flying in the air, a hawk giving attack. He grabbed
Tyler Jay by the arm that held the knife, whipped the arm against his knee several times until the knife dropped. " |
Dennis knew she was talking it through with the police. The librarians called 911 almost every day. They called the police direct line about once a week, and they called Mickey, the security guy, all day long. Dennis had seen people faint, people fight. An old man once pulled a gun because someone had taken his place at the computer. Just the day before, a drunk guy stumbled backwards and banged his head against the pillar. Last month, a massively fat woman had a seizure and the paramedics couldn’t fit the gurney into the computer area.
This, Dennis knew, would be a police call. He shut his computer. He worried that the felon might throw the knife directly at Dennis, and Dennis pictured the knife embed in his chest and how that would sting so badly, and how he would gag on his own blood, how he would die.
Ray, the other shelter guy, stood about fifty feet from the Teen section. Ray always worked his stolen laptop over in the corner, with his hat down over his forehead and his coat up against his chin. Ray had long, stringy hair and he never took his coat off, winter or summer. Ray caught Dennis’ eye, which Dennis knew was meant to mean something; Ray never looked at anyone in the eye. He motioned toward Guy and Hank hiding behind him.
Everyone else had left the second floor, except Dennis, Ray, Hank and Guy, the two librarians, the felon and the little Chinese girl. The felon could trudge toward Dennis and stab Dennis over and over again. Or, he could kill the girl, could slice her neck off, all the while yelling at people in his head.
Dennis looked at the librarian, but she was already near the elevator. She shouldn’t approach the felon, Dennis thought. That would be stupid. The felon might flip his knife and hit the librarian in the heart and she’d be dead. Or, he could take the knife and slice the girl’s neck open and there would be blood spilling all over the Teen area. The girl’s dead eyes would be wide open, and the felon would wonder why he had done that.
“Tyler Jay,” the librarian said. She must have gotten the guy’s name from the police. “Let go of her. You need to let go of her.”
Stupid to talk to the guy.
Dennis heard sirens in the background but Tyler Jay didn’t seem to notice; he was now screaming at the people in his head. There was a little blood coming from the girl’s neck. From the other side of the library, Ray took a step around the book stack, his fingers twitching like mad.
“Tyler Jay, let go of the girl,” the young librarian said again. “If you let the girl go, you’ll be okay. Your people will stop talking to you. Just let the girl go.”
Tyler Jay didn’t buy it, and the girl had terror written on her face.
Dennis wanted to run, but the little Chinese girl was the same age of his and Sandy’s girl when he last saw her. He didn’t want the little Chinese girl to get her neck sliced open. He wished Ray would jump Tyler Jay and all would be well. But Ray had slinked back behind the book stacks. Dennis was the only man left standing.
The young librarian noticed Dennis and looked at him with pleading eyes. Oblivion. There was blood coming from the girl’s neck where Tyler Jay held the knife. Sirens stopped right in the front of the library and Dennis heard noise downstairs. In his own head, he pleaded to get them up the stairs and save the girl. Dennis wasn’t good at saving people. He couldn’t save Cal— oblivion—he couldn’t save Sandy.
The young librarian was nearer to Tyler Jay now. Dennis worried about the librarian because he really liked her. He had even wished the trekking guy had hung around and maybe married her; Dennis worried about her being lonely. But, he really worried about the blood that would spill all over the carpet and how Tyler Jay’s hands would be full of blood and the girl would lay dead. How Tyler Jay would look at his bloody hands, then look at the girl and realize what he had done. Dennis did that when he had killed that enemy kid in Vietnam; horrible to think too late.
Just as he pictured the knife going into the girl’s neck and then being pulled out and going into Dennis’ own heart, Dennis made up his mind. He was like a shot out of a canon, like a superman flying in the air, a hawk giving attack. He grabbed Tyler Jay by the arm that held the knife, whipped the arm against his knee several times until the knife dropped. Just as he did this, Ray appeared from behind the book stacks. He flew toward Dennis, Tyler Jay and the girl, down on all of them before Dennis could blink. Hank and Guy appeared. Hank rammed his knees onto Tyler Jay’s head while Guy sat on his legs.
The young librarian pulled the girl out from under the mess.
Blood was everywhere but the librarian held the girl’s neck, while a paramedic and four cops and Mickey ran up the stairs. The elevator opened and two more paramedics and a gurney appeared.
Dennis, Ray, Hank and Guy released Tyler Jay only when the cops flipped him over and handcuffed him. Ray, Hank and Guy ran down the stairs, meaning, Dennis was sure, to disappear into Library Park.
The cops accompanied Tyler Jay down the stairs and out the back door, and told the librarian they’d be back for statements. The paramedics got the girl to stop bleeding, and took her down the elevator.
The librarian and Dennis slid down to the floor near Teen Classics.
“Thanks, Dennis,” the librarian said. She stared straight ahead as she said it.
He liked that she knew is name, but Dennis hated to think what might have happened. All he knew was that he’s getting on the next bus, not the Omaha bus—that would be the wrong direction and he’d get lost trying to get back. He’d get on the one that heads west, but he was already nervous about dealing with a ticket station--the bus people were very mean, and the bus station was very dirty. He’d head back to Idaho—see what happened to his and Sandy’s girl, see if his sisters will let him see her, see if Sandy’s mom was still alive. He was pretty sure he’d do all that. He was just glad there wasn’t too much blood on the carpet.
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2004-2011 the Dublin Quarterly--to see familiar things with unfamiliar eyes!
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