At the branch library in town they were selling used books, piled or boxed atop card tables in the parking lot. There were people milling around the tables, poking at the wares, and it was hard to find a place to put the car since the roped-off lot was the makeshift shop floor. I dislodged a copy of Of Human Bondage and flipped the pages checking for mildew and thought of how it was the second or third novel I ever read and not one I’ve read twice.
A voice behind me coughed, “No, no, no. We don’t open til 8.”
My watch said 7:55.
I turned to my accuser and tried to look friendly but probably showed only quizzical, wondering if he thought I was planning to steal it instead of paying the buck fifty written in pencil on the first flyleaf. I thought of running off just to see if he’d wheeze after me. But he explained:
“Last year folks were mad we let people start early. Everyone has to get a fair chance.”
About then I noticed that the millers were all sporting “Friends of the Library” tshirts in powder-blue. The staff. It must have taken almost everyone at the senior center to man this literary labor day yard sale.
“How did they know?”
“What?,” he craftily replied.
“How did they know? Did you make a list of everything you sold five whole minutes early and then taunt the laggards with it when they showed up on time at 8 sharp?”
“We just want to make sure everyone gets a fair chance.”
“Ok,” I shrugged, glancing down at my early-bird special of an education-of-a-young-man novel then stuffing it back in the box. “Somerset Maugham,” I said, cocking my head back toward the book. “I heard he was a queer.”
I un-double-parked my car and drove home empty handed and didn’t feel friendly to the library. Winding back along the road through town to the bar that afternoon I saw 16 powder-blue shirts among the folding tables that bowed under the books.
