Monsters (11 page)

“What is this book about?” he asked, picking up a flimsy paperback and looking at a cartoon drawing of an animal he didn't recognize. Why would this imaginary creature have a red bow tie and a striped hat? Although Bruce couldn't read the words on the cover, he could see there were simple words in the title, none more than three letters in length.

“It's
The Cat in the Hat
,” Jane replied, smiling as he flicked through the pages. She must have read his change in mood, perhaps from the slight scowl on his face.

“This is for children,” Bruce said, feeling indignant.

“Oh,” she said, seeing his pride was wounded. “This book was loved by both children and adults alike. It's one of the classics.”

Bruce glanced at her sideways, not convinced.

Jane took the book from him, saying, “Everyone has to start reading somewhere, and Shakespeare is probably a little beyond you at this point.”

She read the first few pages, running her finger beneath the words as she read so he could follow along.

“It's silly,” Bruce replied.

“Yes. I think that's the point,” she offered, trying to lighten the mood. She picked up another book. “This is
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
. Listen carefully to the cadence, the natural rhythm that comes from each of the sentences.”

Jane began reading, slowly at first, immersing herself in the narration, gradually increasing her tempo until she was rushing through the prose. She continued until she began tripping over her tongue, stumbling and stuttering as she came to a stop, laughing like a child.

Bruce laughed as well, appreciating how the rhyme and rhythm had driven her on.

“Oh, reading is so much fun,” she said. “Wait until you read this to a child. Wait until you see their eyes light up with excitement.”

Jane packed the books carefully in plastic, wrapping them and placing them in her backpack.

Bruce looked around at the fallen, empty shelves stretching to the end of the floor.

“How many books were there?”

“Oh,” Jane replied, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “This library probably held around ten thousand books and magazines, not to mention the music discs and moving pictures. And all of it was free.”

“Free?”

“Yes. Free to anyone that desired to learn.”

“They didn't charge for any of this?” Bruce replied, trying to imagine row upon row of shelves filled with books, magazines and newspapers.

“No. So long as you brought your book back within a month or so there was no charge.”

“So knowledge was free?” He had to ask again. He had to be sure he'd heard her correctly. The concept seemed so radical.

Jane smiled. “Yes, knowledge was free.”

Bruce was silent. Jane could see his eyes flickering around, his mind processing that realization.

“There were even larger libraries in the major cities, and universities that held anywhere up to a hundred thousand books and research papers.”

“Get out of here,” Bruce exclaimed. “Are you serious?”

“I'm serious,” Jane said, picking up her backpack and walking to the central stairwell.

Bruce followed along behind her. “So how many books were there? I mean, in total?”

“Oh, well that depends on how you count them. If you tried to count every copy of every book that has ever existed, there would be more than all the leaves on all the trees you've ever seen. I once heard there were over three hundred million different books, but some of them had print runs that would run into the millions as well.”

“Really?” Bruce replied. “You're saying there would be millions of copies of just one book?”

“Yes. It seems quite remarkable, doesn't it?”

Bruce barely realized they were walking down the stairs, past fallen roof beams and crumbling internal walls.

“How could there be three hundred million different books? Who could write so many books?”

“I don't know.”

“Who could ever read them?”

Jane laughed. “Not me.”

“It's sad, isn't it?”

Jane listened. Bruce figured she knew where his train of thought was leading him and was happy to hear him reasoning through this for himself.

“Hundreds of millions of books reduced to just a few small stacks squirreled away in rundown buildings. Will we ever get it back? The past, I mean. Will we ever recover what was lost?”

“No,” Jane said as they walked through the lobby. “Those books are gone forever. But we can write new ones. We can build a new future.”

“How many books are there?” he asked. “How many are left?”

“In this town?” Jane replied, thinking about it. “Roughly four hundred, plus the magazines and newspapers you saw upstairs.”

It was a beautiful day outside. As they walked out into the warmth of the sunshine, a couple of young dogs played in the overgrown weeds. They pounced and snapped at each other, rolling over and growling.

“Aren’t they cute?”

Bruce tried to force a smile like hers, but the concept still jarred his mind. “As cute as little carnivores can be.”

They returned to the village that afternoon and arranged to marry in the spring.

Throughout winter, Bruce ventured from his farm in the hills down to the village to visit Jane. He braved the cold, the storms and the monsters to be with his fiancée, and that drew Jane even closer to him. She told him he was silly, crazy to be taking such risks, but he assured her they were calculated risks, that he'd meticulously planned out all the possible routes, that he carried survival equipment and only ever traveled when the cirrus clouds high overhead spoke of fair weather.

Jane asked Bruce to stay in the village. He had nothing to prove, she said. He wouldn't admit to the pride involved, and yet it was there. He was showing off as he courted her, but he couldn't admit that to himself even when she tenderly pointed it out. Jane told him there was nothing more he needed to do to win her heart, and yet his instinct said otherwise, and so he braved the winter.

Jane taught Bruce to read. He was a quick learner, eagerly devouring books and content to listen to Jane read aloud those books that were beyond his grasp.

Her father was supportive, although he'd never bothered learning to read for himself. During a particularly windy snowstorm, old man Smith asked Bruce, “Why read?”

His question took Bruce off guard. Bruce had been helping out on the forge for most of the day while Jane baked upstairs. The two men had talked about so much as they worked with the glowing red steel, talking about everything from his background in the militia to his hopes for the farm. On retiring for the evening, Bruce had been bringing in firewood when the old man asked, “Why would you bother to learn to read when Jane can read for you?”

“Well,” Bruce replied, thinking about it for a moment. “That's a good question.”

Jane was quiet. Bruce looked over at her, noticing she was struggling to suppress a smile as she stirred a stew over the fire. She clearly wanted to hear what he had to say.

“I guess it's personal. Reading is something you do for yourself.”

“Does that make it selfish?” asked the old man.

“No,” Bruce said. “At least, I don't think so. Reading is solitary. A writer may control the words on a page, but what those words mean is up to the reader. It’s all about context. Writers may control the context within a novel, but they cannot control the context of life in which a book is read. Life has its own twists and turns. Writers don't make a book great, readers do. No two people will get the same thing out of the same book. They'll both see something different, they'll take something different away from it, and what they take with them will enrich their lives.”

The old man mumbled something under his breath. Jane couldn't help herself, Bruce could see that in her smile. Jane had to jump into the conversation. She must have been trying to get her father to read for years.

“Think of the most beautiful flower you've ever seen, Papa. You could describe it to someone else, but until they see it for themselves they'll never really know quite what it's like. The same is true of books. You have to read them for yourself.”

“A man should be tending the fields,” her father said. “Planning for the future, not dreaming about the past.”

“My dreams are only of the future,” Bruce said.

Jane wiped her hands on her apron and began dishing up dinner. She must have sensed this wasn't going anywhere as she changed the subject and started talking about the wedding. The following day, once the storm lifted, Bruce insisted on returning to his farm.

They married in spring, with wildflowers dotting the countryside.

The villagers remembered how Jane had been attacked by the wild dog and survived not only the attack but the possibility of contracting rabies. They took the couple's nuptials as a sign of a good year ahead. The mood of the villagers was raised further by light rains on the day Bruce and Jane married: a good growing season lay ahead.

Bruce and Jane spent their honeymoon in the library. Shakespeare and Sherlock left presents for them, a fruit cake and a copy of
Carrying the Fire
, the story of Michael Collins' exploration of space in the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. Bruce was fascinated by the concept of traveling to the Moon, the thought had never crossed his mind before, but now he was electrified by the idea. Jane half-heartedly complained, saying she'd have preferred something by Charlotte Bronte.

“Tell me about them,” Bruce said, cuddling Jane as they sat on the leather bench seat inside the top floor of the library.

“Who? Shakespeare and Sherlock?” Jane asked. “I don't know any more than you do, other than that they're older than me. Or, at least I assume they're older. I don't really know. But they've been coming here longer than I have. We exchange notes. Nothing of any real substance. We're not supposed to even do that, but I can't help it, and I suspect they can't either.”

“It must be hard,” Bruce said. “Not being able to talk openly with the only people you feel you can really trust, those that share your passion for reading.”

“It is,” Jane replied. “Whenever I come here, the first thing I look for is a note in the ledger. We treat it as a diary of sorts, cataloging our fleeting correspondence. Most of the comments are general, not directed at anyone in particular. They're notes about incursions by hunters into the city, circulating books between locations, a list of the books someone has borrowed and when they'll return them, stuff like that. But, occasionally there's something personal, and that's nice.”

“Don't you think we're a little exposed?” Bruce asked. “I mean, how many other people in the territory got married this spring? There can't have been more than half a dozen at most. If they figure out the village we came from they'd realize there was only one marriage, ours.”

“They wouldn't betray us,” Jane said, quite adamant in her assertion.

“You don't know that.”

Looking in her eyes, he could see she knew he was right. “They wouldn't want to, but no man can tell how he'll bear up under torture. Just be careful, Jane. Don't say too much.”

Jane's head drooped slightly as she nodded, agreeing with him.

“So,” he continued. “If they've got elaborate names like Shakespeare and Sherlock, what's my nickname going to be?”

“Oh. You don't get to choose your pseudonym. It gets chosen for you.”

“Really? So what's mine?”

“Promise you won't get mad?” asked Jane.

Bruce was silent and a little nervous. He didn't want to promise anything. His curiosity was getting the better of him and he gestured to her with his hands, prompting her to carry on.

“You're The Cat.”

“The Cat?” he asked.

“
The Cat in the Hat
.”

Bruce laughed. “You told them, didn't you?”

Jane smiled sheepishly.

They spent three days at the library. Bruce was curious about the town so Jane took him for a couple of walks with the dogs, using them for protection and early warning about any predators in the area. They explored the surrounding factories and rundown houses over several days, collecting trinkets and anything that might be of some value. After that they returned to his farm and settled into married life.

The farm stretched out over almost five square miles and would have been impossible to manage alone, but several other families on the outskirts pitched in to help for the right to catch insects in the fields and share in the harvest. During spring, they could be seen in the early evening, walking through the new growth of wheat and barley, swirling poles around them, catching crickets and grasshoppers in their vast nets. With cockroaches reaching the size of a man's foot, and the largest grasshoppers being the size of a man's hand, they were good eating, providing plenty of protein.

Bruce preferred his roaches deep-fried in vegetable oil, but Jane was more economical, boiling them and making mash from the leftovers. Dried crickets would keep for months on end, making them ideal for a snack-on-the-go. Although the summer harvest of crickets tended to go a little moldy through winter, they were still edible well into the following spring.

Bruce would bring in hired help for a month or so at a time, but he was hard working and tended to shoulder more than his fair share of the load. He had one beehive, on a hill in the northwest corner of his farm. It was well fortified, as much to keep the bears away from the main homestead as it was to farm honey.

Spring tended to bring the bears, but they quickly learned there was no easy meal to be had and would return to the forest.

The hive was located in a small thicket of trees on the brow of an exposed hill. Like everything on the farm, it was the result of generations of work being handed down.

Deep pits had been carved into the rocky ground and lined with spikes to deter any critters from raiding the hive. Being exposed, the winter winds tended to keep the snow from building up within the trench. Drainage channels allowed the spring thaw to wash away.

Bruce would swing a drawbridge across the moat to reach the hive, using smoke to keep the bees subdued when harvesting honey. He'd once snagged a bear cub that had fallen into the pit and impaled itself. The bear skin lined his cabin wall, taking a place of pride among his possessions.