The Giant's House Read Free Page A

hall, misguessed a corner and cracked his ankle.
    He was twelve years old then, and six foot four.
    A librarian is bound by many ethics no one else understands. For instance: in the patron file was James’s library card application,with his address and phone number and mother’s signature. But it was wrong, I felt, to look up the address of a patron for personal reasons, by which I mean my simple nosiness. Delinquent patrons, yes; a twenty-dollar bill used as a bookmark in a returned novel, certainly. But we must protect the privacy of our patrons, even from ourselves.
    I’d remained pure in this respect for a while, but finally pulled the application. I noted that James had been six when he had gotten his card, five years before; I hadn’t even seen Brewsterville yet. He had written his name in square crooked letters—probably he’d held the pen with both hands. But it was a document completed by a child and therefore faulty: he’d written the name of the street, but not the number. If I’d been on duty, such sloppiness would never have passed.
    I decided I could telephone his mother for library purposes, as long as I was acting as librarian and not as a nosy stranger. The broken ankle promised to keep him home for a few weeks. I called up Mrs. Sweatt and offered to bring over books.
    â€œI’ll pick them up,” she said.
    â€œIt’s no bother, and I’d like to wish James well.”
    â€œNo,” she said. “Don’t trouble yourself.”
    â€œI just said it’s no trouble.”
    â€œListen, Peggy,” she said. That she knew my Christian name surprised me. There was a long pause while I obeyed her and listened. Finally she said, “I can’t do too much for Jim. But I can pick up his books and I intend to.”
    So of course I resigned myself to that. I agreed with her; there was little she could do for him. Every Friday—his usual day—I wondered whether James would come in. Instead, Mrs. Sweatt arrived with her big purse, and I stamped her books with a date three weeks in the future. Mostly she insisted on titles of her own choosing—she seemed determined that James read all of Mark Twain during his convalescence—but she always asked for at least one suggestion. I imagined that it was my books he really read, my choices that came closest to what he wanted. I’d sent
Worlds in Collision
by Immanuel Velikovsky;
Mistress Masham’s Repose
byT. H. White;
Hiroshima
. Mrs. Sweatt was always saying, “And something else like this,” waving the book I’d personally picked out the week before.
    â€œHow’s James?” I asked her.
    â€œFine.” She examined the bindings of a row of books very closely, her head tilted to a hunched shoulder for support.
    â€œHow’s the ankle?”
    â€œComing along.”
    â€œNot healed yet?”
    She scratched her chin, then rucked up the back of her skirt like a five-year-old and scratched her leg. “He’s still keeping off it,” she said. “Ambrose Bierce. Do we have any Ambrose Bierce?”
    I looked up the card for the magic book; James had not been in for three months. Surely an ankle would knit back together in that time. Maybe Mrs. Sweatt was keeping James from the library, had forbidden him to come. It wouldn’t be the first time. A certain sort of mother is terrified by all the library’s possibilities. Before he was homebound, James faithfully renewed
Magic for Boys and Girls
every three weeks. Perhaps his mother didn’t like it—perhaps she thought sleight of hand was too close to black magic—and so he’d filed it between his mattress and box spring. But I couldn’t accuse Mrs. Sweatt; though she projected fragility, I suspected she wouldn’t crack under the harshest of cross-examinations.
    I was meddlesome myself: I decided to cut off James’s supply of interesting books. He was one of my favorite