Alliance for Antrim

  ***

  The two men left the apartment and walked across the campus to the college’s main library. Anson was still quite intimidated by the strangeness of this place, so he kept very close to Nevin as they walked. A woman on a motor scooter zipped past them, causing Anson to jump back from the edge of the street. The vehicle moved too fast to get a good look at it, but he thought it must be some kind of heavily armored, speedy little horse with a bad case of flatulence. Turning his attention back to their destination, he asked Nevin about his village library. Nevin pointed to the building just ahead.

  Anson was totally unprepared to behold a four story structure dedicated for the purpose of housing books. “How many books can there be in one place?”

  “I think there’s about 700,000 volumes here,” Nevin said. “That’s a fair collection for a college of this size.” Anson missed the intimation that Hempstead might be considered a small college. In the short time since his deliverance, Anson had seen some startling things that were beyond his comprehension, but the sheer size of this building for its singular purpose was practically a dream-like experience for a person who respected books as much as he did. He trembled as Nevin led him by the arm up the granite steps and into the building.

  Gawking at the hugeness of the first floor and its maze of tables, shelves and study carrels, Anson scarcely heard any of Nevin’s comments about the library’s features. The place had a cathedral-like silence punctuated by the sound of shuffling steps on tile floors from occasional students. Nevin guided him to an ascending spiral stairway, the way to the “stacks.”

  A tour of the second floor stacks added to the extraordinary experience. Anson agreed that this area of the library was appropriately named as they walked around, between and among hundreds of shelves packed with thousands of books. Each aisle was identified by placards with a mysteriously coded system of signs, apparently well understood by Nevin and others in search of specific books. To Anson, there more books here than an entire village of readers could peruse in a lifetime. What could the rest of this huge building used for, he wondered, not realizing that there were two more floors of book stacks similarly arranged.

  Anson peeked down one of the narrow aisles and startled at seeing a person emerge from an opening in the wall and scurry away. Nevin took him over to the opening, a set of metal doors he called the “elevator.” He said, “This is nothing more than a platform raised and lowered by a system of pulleys and wire ropes. The people who work here use this movable platform instead of the stairs to move heavy loads of books.” He added that anyone emerging from the doors was probably one of these people, so there was nothing odd about it.

  Anson followed along as they meandered through the stacks with Nevin occasionally picking out a book from their list. A few students exchanged pleasantries with Nevin and basically ignored Anson, yet Anson could tell from these encounters that Nevin was accorded high status. There was no doubt that Nevin had achieved distinction in this community of sages.

  Nevin placed several books on a table and invited Anson to look through them, then excused himself to take care of some personal business with the library. Anson was left alone for about thirty minutes, during which time he looked through all the books Nevin had collected. He finally chose three photographs which suited his purposes: one of a mushroom-shaped cloud over the city of Hiroshima, a second which showed vast devastation of homes and buildings, and a third picture of several adults and children with injuries or deformities attributed to the radioactive fallout. With these pictures as proof, he might convince the Kings of Antrim and Gilsum of the futility of their war, but he was now facing a moral dilemma of his own. He had to force himself to commit a desecration. He tore the three pictures from their books and hid them inside his shirt. When Nevin returned, Anson asked to go back to the apartment to further seek Nevin’s council.

  They went down the spiral stairway and exited the building—totally unaware that Anson’s every movement was watched by a familiar pair of eyes the entire time they were in the stacks.