booksale

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor. Third movement, which is a Nutcracker-like march that has a crazy little dance scurrying behind the grand brass fanfare.

Here's an entry that I didn't have time to post earlier. It's an account of Friday, February 24th, in which Rachel and I go with the Ss to the booksale in Oklahoma City.

My mother drove Rachel and me home in time for lunch this morning. My mother and Daisy left for Irish Dance class at 1:15. Rachel and I fixed our suppers, collected our gear, and asked Brother1 to drive us over to campus. The plan for the afternoon: to go to a lecture at the OSU library at two o’clock, and then to walk over to Mr. S’s office at three fifteen, to drive with him to Irish Dance to pick up the girls, and then to leave directly for the Oklahoma City booksale. Brother1 took us down to OSU and dropped us off behind the power plant. Rachel and I walked to the library together, staring at the huge, sharp-edged brick buildings. They looked harsh and ungainly to my eyes, more used to the gentle, cream-colored stone and the Gothic arches of the Tulsa campus. The library still smelled like a library, though, and Rachel breathed in the smell of ink and dust with a happy sigh. We walked around to the front of the building and up the grand flight of marble stairs to the reading room, where the lecture was to take place. The reading room is two stories tall, with massive Corinthian columns and upholstered armchairs down both sides of the room, under floor-to-ceiling windows, which are shaded with heavy cream-and-grey silk drapes. Faded plastic orange chairs had been set up in rows down the center of the room, and here the talk took place.

The lecture was quite good. The speaker somehow managed to bring in most of the concepts that we’ve studied in Honors, plus some of the writers that I’ve studied in MBW this semester. The lecturer was a tall, paunchy man with a fleshy face and a deep voice. He spoke well. We left during the question-and-answer session after the lecture. We walked over to Engineering North, glorying in the warm spring sunshine and the fact that, in God’s providence, everything had worked out for us to be able to attend the lecture, and to go to the booksale too.

Inside the engineering building, I picked our way down the hall, up a staircase of brown-sugar-colored marble, and down another long hall. Our feet echoed on the hard tile. Fluorescent lights flickered dully on announcement boards fluttering with notifications of competitions, scholarships, and favorite faculty. The office that Mr. F and Mr. S share is at the north end of the hall. I knocked timidly on the door. No one answered. I knocked again, rather louder, and Mr. S finally opened to us. We sat down on the two chairs in the secretary’s area in the front of the office (Mr. S’s little room is to the left of the secretary’s room, and Mr. F’s little room is to the right). I looked at the tall shelves of engineering files, and pointed out to Rachel the poster for the Smart Bridge project (they’ve been working to store solar heat in the summer to heat bridges in the winter so that they don’t freeze over). Rachel commented that science is much like magic. “The internet—that’s magic,” I said. “Yeah. It’s like having a crystal ball or a magic mirror or something,” Rachel replied. “Oh, my magic mirror isn’t working today!” I whined, mimicking someone whose internet isn’t working, and Rachel giggled. I laughed at the sign that someone had made for Mr. Fisher (probably SwanElf): “To all students: Make sure Dr. F has had at least three cups of coffee before you ask stupid questions.”

When Mr. S was ready to go, we stepped out of the office into a crowd of Pakistani students, who were all jabbering in Arabic. As we hurried downstairs, we passed a couple of Chinese men earnestly discussing something in Mandarin. Outside, as we crossed the sidewalk to the parking lot, we passed a couple of Eastern European men in long coats arguing in something that sounded like Russian. “That’s got to be the third language I’ve heard on the way downstairs,” Mr. S commented, and we laughed. Mr. S drove us to Irish Dance to pick up Princess, Marigold, Hannah, and Rebekah.

When the lesson was over, Princess, Marigold, Hannah, and Rebekah whisked themselves together, and we all hurried out to the car. There was a scramble to get in: knapsacks, sweaters, books, and Susie’s car seat had to be dumped in the trunk before there was enough room for all of us. Marigold sat in front, with Mr. S; then came me, Princess, and Rachel, and last of all, Hannah and Rebekah. As soon as we got in the car, Princess produced snacks. We passed around a bag of jellybeans, and everyone took a handful. I sucked them: banana, popcorn, lemon, peach, green apple, strawberry, blueberry, licorice. Princess wrinkled her nose as she bit into one that “tastes like bubble bath”. Hannah dug chocolate-covered peanuts from the cooler, and we all had some of those, too. Rebekah handed up some almonds for Mr. S. “Are these all for me?” he asked. “No! Mommy said you had to share them,” Rebekah replied. Everyone laughed. “Rachel, one of my friends was once on a web chat group where they were discussing Presbyterians. A Baptist commented on the thread and said that Presbyterians always remind him of hobbits—they love to eat, they’re cheerful, they love to talk, and they love to be together,” I said. Mr. S had fusion rock/Celtic blaring out of the CD player as we drove out of Stillwater toward Oklahoma City.

On the outskirts of the city, Hannah and Rebekah spotted a water tower with a white canopy tied over it. “Look! It’s a landing platform for aliens!” Hannah joked. She began to write a story in her notebook about aliens. As we neared the fair grounds where the booksale takes place, we ran into road construction. The highway was backed up for miles. Mr. S got off the highway and drove through cramped back streets, between seedy hotels, dirty gas stations, liquor stores, and old houses toward the fairgrounds. I wondered aloud if everyone who lives in that part of town is Hispanic. At the fairgrounds, Mr. S pulled into the big gravel parking lot. We scrambled out of the car, leaving behind coats and sweatshirts, and hurried to the exhibition building where the booksale is housed. I skipped, dancing the jig step to keep warm. However, it turned out that we were just too late to stand inside the building, for there was no more room inside; instead, we had to wait outside for half-an-hour until the booksale opened. A chilly south wind raced over the building across the street where they show airplanes and cars, scouring the dry ground and whirling dust in our eyes. Princess, Rachel, and I huddled together with our arms around each other’s shoulders and Rebekah in the middle of the three of us. Mr. S chafed at the waiting and apologized brusquely for telling us to leave our jackets behind. He took one of his bookbags, a huge army knapsack that he’d bought at an army surplus store, and pulled it over Hannah. It came down to just above her ankles. Encased in the rough green canvas, she was fairly warm. We laughed at her: “A bookbag with feet!” Mr. S took pictures of us with his palm pilot.

The booksale finally opened at five thirty. We shuffled inside the entry hall with everyone else, into Collector’s Choice. Trash cans rumbled over the dusty cement floor. Boxes, suitcases, bags, and tennis shoes rustled on the concrete. Mr. S made sure that Hannah and Marigold, Princess and Rebekah were set (they were supposed to be “buddies”). Rebekah inquired pertly whether he had a “buddy”. Rachel and I switched on our walkie-talkies.

Inside Collectors’ Choice, Rachel and I pushed our way to the religion section. She found a NKJV Bible for my father, which he’d requested that I look for. Then we went to literature, where Rachel found several volumes of plays, including one of Gilbert and Sullivan, and where I found Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. I browsed the SciFi and Fantasy sections, pushing past a girl with curly red hair in a black, spiderweb-patterned jacket, and a boy with a spiky Mohawk.Rachel and I scanned the old books, too, poring over dusty covers, faded leather jackets, and peering at the dim gold leathering and fading ink. We sorted our books with Princess and Rebekah—like children sorting through a bag of jellybeans, choosing out their favorite flavors. I exclaimed happily over a volume of Irish folktales I’d found that had the legend of Cuchulain in the back. We stood in line for awhile, then purchased our books, counting them out at one of the many little tables. The volunteers at my table flipped open each cover, read out the price, and added them up. I wrote a check and met Rachel outside the Collector’s Choice area. We handed our books to volunteers at the holding area, who arranged them in brown paper grocery sacks, slapped a tag number on each sack, and gave us a token strung on a rubber band, with our tag number on it. We left as they were settling the sacks among countless other sacks on tall shelves.

Entering the General Area, Rachel gasped: the huge exhibition building soared above us. Books, books, books! On tables, like mazes, and lined on the floor under the tables. People, pushing through the aisles, carrying babies in strollers, or leading children by the hand, or dragging boxes or grocery carts or bulging knapsacks. Girls in long skirts with the little black caps of Menonites perched on their heads. Young women, eyes lined with dark mascara. Fat old women examining the Romance novels. Boys flipping through the CDs, plastic cases clicking together between fast fingers. Old men sampling the religion section or browsing the sets with the air of connoisseurs. Little girls sitting cross-legged in the middle of the children’s section with picture books spread over their knees, oblivious to the people pushing past them. Blonde-haired little boys with ruddy cheeks. Grey-haired women with gently-wrinkled smiles. Colored balloons hovered over each section to mark the various genres, hanging like pale nebulae in the shimmering, dusty air.

Rachel and I went to literature first, then split up. I browsed through various sections—SciFi, Fantasy (in quest of Lloyd Alexander or Susan Cooper), religion (praying for C.S. Leiws), adventure, mystery (tracing any copies of Sayers or Chesterton), youth (hoping for George MacDonald for Daisy), science (investigating after copies of Living Fishes of the World, or books about sharks and the sea, for Brother2), and the CDs, which were the most crowded. It was eight thirty by the time Rachel and I met up, in a quiet corner, to sort our books. I had managed to find a book of shark pictures for Brother2, a Liszt CD for Daisy, and a piano CD for Brother1, as well as a Matthew Henry commentary that I’d wanted, a copy of Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, The Robe, Kon-Tiki (without the gloriously tropical paintings that are in my mother’s copy, but still enchanting to read), The Name of the Rose (a mystery that Syneva recommended), and a little volume of G.K. Chesterton poems and essays that Rachel picked up for me. We checked out briskly, picked up our books from the holding area, and sat down outside in the large entry area.

I munched a couple of crackers while Rachel went off about her own business. Mr. S came by to give the direful news that he’d lost one of the tags for a bag of his books, and it would probably be awhile before he could find it in the holding area. The other girls showed up, grinning and cheerful, with their arms full of books. We curled up like gypsies in a corner by one of the metal buttresses that support the big building (like a metal bubble, with a stiff skeleton), books stacked in bags around our feet. Dust tasted dry on my tongue and coated my fingers, staining my jeans, too. I began The Name of the Rose, which starts with a delightful Author’s Note in which Umberto Eco gives you a ridiculously long and unlikely story about how the mystery he’s written actually derives from a fourteenth-century account he picked up and then lost somewhere—just like the Romantic and Victorian authors who would say that they’d “discovered” a story somewhere, when they were really making it up. I read and watched a lithe Asian girl clamber about in the holding area. She was light enough to climb onto the tallest of the steel shelves of books and to search among them for a sack that someone else had lost. Her long straight black hair swung down over her shoulders.

Us girls sat together until Mr. S returned, in a miraculously short amount of time, with his missing sack of books. Someone had found the tag, which had snapped off its rubber band lacing, and had turned it in to the holding area. Mr. S made several trips with books, and then we all trooped out to the car together. The trunk of the suburban was piled high with crunching brown paper sacks, angles and poking corners and leather covers peering out of them. Everyone was shivering from the cold night wind. Rebekah split up the last of the chocolate-covered peanuts. I shared jellybeans with Princess. We talked busily about the books we’d found. Mr. S was pleased with his catch of the night. He’d netted fly fishing books, a couple of books about Irish history, etc. Marigold had found a copy of Detectives in Togas for Ruth. Hannah had found some children’s Christian mystery books. Rebekah and Hannah listed off their books happily, like misers counting treasure. Mr. S asked Rachel what she’d found, and Rachel told him about the books of plays and an economics volume that she’d discovered.

In the back seat, the “peanut gallery” (Hannah and Rebekah, who were very, very silly, being hyper on candy and adrenaline) counted radio towers. Hannah counted thirty-nine on the way back to Stillwater—towers light upright blades of wheat beaded with red seeds. Lights flickered on the dark hills as though the land was a deep sea, remembering the play of sunlight on its surface, and clinging to the red and the gold reflections until day should come again. Orion swung high overhead. Wisps of cloud flung silver robes over his shoulders. We left Princess and Marigold at the Fs’ house to spend the night—they were to go to robotics Saturday morning, and were staying the night with the Fishers so that Mrs. S wouldn’t have to spend the two hours driving out to robotics to drop them off and pick them up. Mr. S drove Rachel and me to my house. We went to bed.