She called a high school friend and asked for a loan, but the friend let Holly’s location “slip out” to her parents and they sent a detective to find her and bring her back to Florida. They were as good as their word, and they committed her to the seventh floor of Shands Hospital in Gainesville.
She was there for just over a year. In that time, she began having zipless sex with a 16-year-old drug abuser from the next ward, ranted to the doctors about her parents, and practiced piano in the ward’s parlor. Except for her parents, Holly had only one visitor—Grim Hosford—who evidently hitchhiked, sans girlfriend, from Tallahassee to see how she was doing.
As far as I can tell, that is the last contact she had with Grim for over a decade. When she was released, she headed again to New York, where she met and married a Scientologist. They and their young son moved to California where she divorced the man, renounced Scientology, and opened a boarding house. Holly then spends many harrowing pages describing the harassment she was subjected to by the Scientology community for leaving their enclave. After less than a year, she fled with her son to Atlanta, where she finally settled down, taking courses in typography and design.
It was at this time that she and Grim began corresponding again, catching up on their lives as it were. There are hints of liaisons between the two of the m, both in Tallahassee and Atlanta, but either Holly did not want to be specific or she had simply forgotten the details of their meetings, which seemed to go on for a couple of years before they stopped completely. How I wish I had the letters they wrote to each other during these years! But in the mid 1980s, the meetings evidently stopped because she never mentioned Grim Hosford again.
In her spare time, Holly played in local bands and started going to a Christian church, where she played organ and piano and began composing sacred music. She started a typesetting business at the very beginning of the high-tech publishing era, and led a very busy life for many years. Just before being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she sold her business for far more than she thought it was worth.
I put the book down and noticed that I was still in bed. It was approaching noon and I hadn’t eaten, showered, or done anything at all. I was wondering about Holly. Was she in a vegetating state already, or did she sometimes still have memories of her early days with Grim and Tim Buckley and Ratsnake and the rest? Had the illegal drugs she took in New York or the legal ones in Gainesville contributed to her disease? Is there something about geniuses that makes them use up their brain before they are much past sixty? I had, in the last twenty-four hours, lived through a life of memories, and they were possibly the last memories Holly ever had. And through those memories I also had more than a glimpse of Grim Hosford and I felt I knew him almost as well as I knew Holly—and understood him.
And suddenly I was not thinking about Holly’s story any more. Rather, I was flashing back to stories I had heard about Grim Hosford and about my predecessors at The Paperback Rack. Some had disappeared after colorful escapades, others had written books that we actually carried in the store. I knew that I was the least of these, that in all my life I would probably achieve nothing at all. I will not earn an Emmy Award like Keely or a doctorate like Na’Imah or Jasmine. I’ll never have a big psychology practice like Tracey or have as many children as Little Shannon. But maybe, with luck and hard work and thrift, I can open a small bookstore somewhere, maybe back in Wyoming. A place where I can sit behind a desk for hours at a time, where I can offer things to the world at half price, where I can have a place for people like Holly’s great tawny son to bring things—not only books and tapes, but ideas and difficulties and loves and stories. Where I can, somehow, help.
About the Authors
Helen K. Bailey is a librarian, bookbinder, technophile, and occasional writer. Originally from Florida, she now lives in Vermont, in a crooked old house filled with well-catalogued books and too many iDevices. She has a mostly professional website at www.helenkbailey.com, on which she hopes to someday blog about her library and bookbinding adventures. She was one of the last employees hired by Paperback Rack founder P. V. LeForge and was instrumental in helping the store bridge the gap between old and new owners.
Teresa Jones went by the name of Terri when she worked at The Paperback Rack in the 90s. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Her novella, Gorge, is available as an e-book at Scribd.com and Amazon.
Jesse Murphree Kemper holds a degree in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a Masters in Early Childhood Education from Florida State University. Her work has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Snake Nation Review, and Willow Springs, among others. Currently, she lives in Tallahassee, Florida with her husband, Andrew, where she works as Forensic Interviewer and Case Specialist for the Child Protection Team at the Children's Home Society of Florida. Her several-year tenure at The Paperback Rack was part of the reason that the store enjoyed its Golden Years.
Brigette Kinney was a part-time employee of The Paperback Rack while a student in the Creative Writing program at the Florida State University. She still hasn't recovered from the shock of being handed the keys to the store on her first day of work at the age of nineteen, and attributes much of her sense of self-worth to that early vote of confidence. Brigette is now a full-time English teacher, sometime writer, and overtime mother of two astonishing daughters who provide abundant inspiration but precious little free time. She has a lot of ideas that she hopes to get down on paper one of these days.
P. V. LeForge is kind of a writer-of-all trades, having worked on novels, short stories, poems, plays, and essays. He is married to Sara Warner and lives at Black Bay Farm in the Florida panhandle. When he is not writing or tending to his ten horses, he is involved formatting many of his published books into e-books, all of which are available on the site where you downloaded this collection. He owned The Paperback Rack from 1984 until 2006. It was a good run. His story, “The Last Things We Do,” is from his forthcoming book of stories about his bookstore days.
Nancy H. Rainey found her way to Tallahassee and into the Paperback Rack in the early 80's. A writer of poetry, short stories, and novellas, she is working on finalizing her first novel, Till the Crickets Hush. She wrote & illustrated her first comic book at the age of 8, an autobiography with herself as a superhero of sorts who was swayed by the love of chicken pot pie & mac-n-cheese. Nancy spent years attempting to find greatness by following the dreams of others but is now quite happy knowing greatness is in the eye of the beholder—and being very literally and figuratively nearsighted. Nancy currently works for FSU, plays with her ‘grandkids,’ hikes when the weather permits, and writes love ballads to her constant canine companion, Asrael the Black.
Len Schweitzer is a lyrical fiction writer living in the piney woods of North Florida near Chaires. He enjoys books and movies from the library. Subjects include occultism, shamanism, history, earth and space sciences. He is concluding a novel, Calibanseed—connected character-driven stories placed in Miami, New York, the Caribbean, and Vancouver. Len was also co-founder of The Paperback Rack before moving on to other interests.
Shannon Taylor Shannon worked at The Paperback Rack for several years, beginning in her teens. She later received BA Degrees from Florida A&M University in Business Education and Office Administration, and currently works for Habitat for Humanity. She lives with her four children in Tallahassee, Florida.
Stephanie Tillman Stephanie was also part of the store’s Golden Years, and helped to make them so. She currently embroiders in London. Check out her work at https://www.sbtillman.com.
Sara Warner. By day she works for the state of Florida; on afternoons and weekends she rides and teaches dressage. In her spare time (where does she get any?) she writes poems, novels, and articles for equine publications. Her book Down to the Waterline is the definitive study of Florida water boundaries, and her novel Still Waters is available wherever excellent e-books are sold. When she married Paperback Rack founder P. V. LeForge in 2003, she became part owner o
f the store and was active in its management and its revitalization.
This is the Second Printing of this e-book
July 20, 2012
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