An apathetic glass door drags itself leftward on rattling hinge as the growing bluster outside triggers the auto-sensor with a passing of unswept leaf-litter. It is Autumn; the mist covered branches of the nearby park have all shed their greenery into the gutter, discarding the last year of growth in preparation for the winter.
It’s a languid kind of morning. One where breath becomes visible and a cool wind sweeps through the streets of Balendup. This is a time where dusty coats are exhumed from their cupboards, where collections of woolly hats are seen to blossom from coffee shop loiterers and slowly sprout into scarves of tartans and greens.
Balendup is calm.
Dew covered grass is drawn with off-coloured lines by walkers whose routines are undeterred by wet socks; ducks float dreamily down the steady creek, passing under the historic footbridge of Balendup-main with a warbling ripple; contemplative pigeons puff out their feathers in a warm updraft from the fish and chip shop and dream in thoughts illuminated by the gas vapour.
All is good in this quiet town; the streets are sleeping-still.
Beyond the parkland, a small library sits beside the picket fence of an oval, its corrugated green tin roof giving it the appearance of some rural pavilion built in a times where dignified stoicism directed the facets of polite architecture. It is an unassuming building, one that is neatly lain and as plainly bricked as any old council building should rightly be. Hemmed by grey footpath and forgotten hedges, there is a stately kind of charm to the exterior of the library. A worn-in memory of black and white photos that has remained unchanged since the day it was opened.
A sheen of brown paint, glistens upon the ten-time repainted wooden awning that covers the steps to the entrance, the blue sentinel of a book return bin awaits each visitor as they enter. Inside, its rows are narrow, the lower shelves dusty.
The library is voiceless and yet it has given so many words to the town, so many moments of discovery.
It is a place that many have found less time for as the seasons move on. Life has become fast, the joy of searching now an act of immediacy. But still, Balendup remains fond of the library. They remember its main hall for its welcoming brightness, for the unchanging fragrance of musty carpet and aging paper. They remember a world becoming larger upon their first visit inside; they remember seeing more books than a child could count, the names of people that they may never know. The people of Balendup have cherished their library for the memories it has created, and it in turn has cherished them.
But today the aisles are quiet. The crisp air and settling dew blankets the parkland on this Autumn morning.
A scrum of parents huddle together and watch on as stick legged children learn the chaos and joys of football; routine runners and weary walkers shuffle along their shorter routes for today; the lazy sun remains low, waiting until midday before attempting to shine with any lustre.
It is an odd sort who ventures out towards the library on a morning such as this. Like moss that manages to cling to a rolling stone, a group of friends defies parable by enjoying the ride, each week booking out a study room just for the access to its complementary kettle. They gather in the warmth of the reading area each Sunday and join together in laughter and in the camaraderie of being able to argue about anything that comes to mind.
~
‘It’s just science.’ a nasal-ish voice of perpetual fever exclaimed as it attempted to prove a point by evading the answer, ‘Like, if you’re asleep, the speed of sound is always going to be heaps quicker than the speed of light. NASA said that. You can’t argue with NASA.’
‘A book said that, and you know that is was fiction.’ A second voice replied.
‘Speculative fiction.’ the first voice corrected, ‘Look, if you see a fact and then imagine that two other people saw it too. Your perspective will still be the most correct.’
A verbal textbook in snapped shut in punctuation. Fingers were drummed, staccato and proud.
‘But from my perspective, that means you’re always wrong. I actually like this theory, well done, Peter.’ argued a third voice, who was trying to remain neutral by reading a book of rude limericks.
The three friends were silent for a moment. Marla hadn’t joined them for the second week, they missed her gloomy presence.
‘You’re missing the point.’ Peter continued, trying to fill in a beat that was absent, ‘let’s go back and sit in Plato’s cave for a minute.’
‘No, we locked you in the cleaning cupboard last time you pretended to understand Greek philosophy, did you want to spend some time getting to know the mop again?’
Closing the book, not wishing to learn anymore about the farmer from Dunhollow, Kate gave a knowing nod to Arthur, wordlessly agreeing who was going to wrestle Peter to the ground and who was going to get the cupboard door.
Peter, in seeing this collusion of betrayal, pushed back his chair from the table and eyed the least obstructed path to outside.
The reading area of the library was simple, three shelves of trashy novels that encircled a scattered array of not entirely uncomfortable chairs and a single table that the Balendup Library Running Club had claimed as their own.
They hadn’t chosen their name. A perpetual booking had been made at some point in the sixties and the group of friends were more than happy to save on the registration fee. Taking on the name of an inactive running club felt right in a way that only mismatched socks can feel on Sundays.
Running while reading, currit in arbore
‘You’ll catch your death if you don’t rug up, dear. Don’t you own a scarf?’
The librarian on duty, Margret, had suddenly appeared beside the table as if they were a phantom. Peter, already on edge, half-jumped from his chair and became stuck in a kind of sitting crouch that his knees immediately rebelled against.
More silent than the shadow of a snake, the librarians of Balendup Library were menacingly agreeable. There were three, as far as the running club could tell, and although they had never killed anyone, it was common knowledge that you only received one overdue book warning.
‘No, Margret,’ Arthur muttered meekly as the living ghost behind him glided past and disappeared into the depths of the returns office.
‘I swear that they’re poltergeists.’ he said in a whisper after the librarian had moved beyond earshot. ‘Have you ever seen them outside of the library?’
‘Well, I’ve never seen you outside of the library, but I get your point.’ replied Kate, hiding her fright with a sardonic mask—She had been terribly nervous growing up and it was only through meeting like-minded odd-balls at the library that she had realised there were no normal people in the world to begin with; everyone was weird.
‘Margert’s sweet though, I think that her tone is just threatening. Remember she wished you happy birthday last month?’
‘She said to enjoy it like it was my last.’ Arthur frowned.
‘Well mathematically, every birthday is your last.’
Peter, having regained his composure, opened a textbook on mechanics for the theatrics of the gesture and smiled like a lecturer ready to introduce a Diophantine equation during their first lesson, ‘If all of our cells decay and then are replaced over the course of a year, it’s won’t be you that has another birthday. In 2024, someone else will walk in your shoes.’
‘Peter, before we go into how wrong that is,’ said Arthur, holding his hand up in a gesture on placing a pin in this section of the conversation, ‘you, very emphatically, stated that the world could end and nobody else would realise. Now without saying multi-verse, or NASA, explain what you meant, or Kate is allowed to punch you.’
Smiling sweetly, the kind and innocent, Kate, loudly cracked her knuckles.
Peter rolled his eyes.
‘Ok, so it goes like this. Perspective. Let’s say that Marla worked out how to end the world. Let’s say that she did and then we woke up the next morning. We’re not wrong, because we got out of bed. And she’s not wrong, because the lines of blah-whatever had cut through the veil of that other thing. All we have are the things we can see.’
Without realising, Peter had wiped a tear onto the sleeve of his shirt and the three friends where silent for a long time.
There was an empty space at the table, a corner of a square that when missing made the running club feel shapeless, almost like it had ended.
Stories shall begin and end, whereas life, life is a perfect shape no matter how many corners or bumps it receives along the way. When a life ends, only its stories that remain…
…
‘–Oh, hello! Sorry, finally made it!’ the memory of a voice and a brown tangle of hair peeked up over a bookshelf behind the reading area. Marla, still covered in dirt from a second night spent digging in the state forest, stumbled into the room with an equally dishevelled friend in tow.
‘Running club, this is Andrew, he was a coin yesterday.’
J. McCray
2023
Sunday Short Stories 