The Little Library

by Kim Fielding

  “I love dictionaries!” the girl exclaimed as she took the book. “I even sleep with one.”

  “She does,” her mother confirmed.

  Elliott grinned. “Perfect, then.”

  The girl plopped down cross-legged in the grass and began to pore over the book’s pages. Elliott closed the library and walked the few steps to the woman. “Really, thank you both,” he said. “It’s great to include some children’s books.”

  “Well, I’m just tickled you’ve decided to build this. It’s such a fun idea! You’ve included some interesting choices too. I’m reading one of your books about the Great Stink right now.”

  “Makes you grateful for modern plumbing, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly does!” She turned to her daughter. “Come on, Melanie. You have gymnastics today.”

  Melanie got to her feet, picked up her backpack, and started down the sidewalk, all as she continued to read. Her mother shook her head fondly. “I think I’d better shepherd her home.”

  “Thanks again for the books. You guys come back anytime.”

  “We definitely will.”

  Elliott went back inside to email the plagiarizing student and found he was able to be remarkably civil about it. He didn’t include a single swear word.

  ***

  Elliott was not a nervous wreck Thursday evening. For one thing, he now knew that Simon was attracted to him—he had, in fact, felt physical evidence of that attraction. Realizing another man found him sexy went a long way toward calming him. More than that, though, Simon apparently found him interesting. And despite personal complications, he wanted to try something more meaningful than a simple roll in the hay. That was gratifying as hell.

  So Elliott spent Thursday night working on a journal manuscript he’d abandoned two years earlier. And then he read some Neil Gaiman, went to bed early, and fell asleep surprisingly quickly.

  Okay, maybe he was slightly jumpy Friday morning. If he’d had time, he would have gone for a run. But instead, he took a shower and dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved Henley, and a plaid flannel shirt. “You look like you’re trying Paul Bunyan drag,” he muttered as he laced his boots. But he didn’t change. He brewed himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping and waiting for the clock to move.

  Simon arrived at eight on the dot. He wore a gray hoodie with the Pita Palace logo, and he looked delicious enough to eat.

  “It’s a little chilly this morning,” he said from the front porch. “Fall’s finally here.”

  “Should I bring anything?”

  “Just you.”

  Simon drove a big extended-cab pickup, the kind featured in advertisements with men wearing construction gear or cowboy hats. He seemed slightly embarrassed by it. “Sometimes Mom and Dad do events. The Assyrian festival, stuff like that. They sell kebabs, shawarma, dolma . . . So I end up hauling a trailer with the grill and all their supplies.”

  “It’s a very manly truck.”

  “I don’t have plastic testicles hanging from the trailer hitch.”

  “That’s a shame. But, hey, Christmas will be here soon. Maybe Santa will bring you a pair.”

  They climbed into the cab, Simon with some difficulty due to the knee. The inside of the truck smelled like a heady mixture of honey and Simon’s cologne. He tossed his cane into the back seat, then pointed to the paper bag on the center console. “Breakfast? It’s my mom’s baklava. Best you’ve ever had.”

  As Simon pulled out of the driveway, Elliott took a piece of pastry, more out of politeness than hunger. It was delicious, however. “You’re right.” He brushed crumbs off his chest. “Best ever.”

  “My grandma’s recipe. It’s top secret, but she gave it to Mom as a wedding present. Mom says she’ll pass it down to me when I get married.” He cut his eyes quickly to Elliott, then back to the street in front of him.

  Elliott waited a couple of minutes, then cleared his throat. “Did your parents, um, mention . . .”

  “No. Ashur can’t keep his big mouth shut, though, so either Mom and Dad are playing it cool or Ashur had bigger gossip to worry about. I hear his sister’s pregnant and she’s not married. That ought to keep everyone busy for a little while.”

  “Does it outrank you being gay, on the scale of family catastrophes?”

  “I doubt it,” Simon replied with a sigh.

  He headed north instead of west toward the freeway. With the radio playing eighties hair bands, they turned east in Riverbank and followed the river all the way to Oakdale and beyond.

  “We’re heading for the hills?” Elliott finally asked. He was eating his third piece of baklava.

  “Yep. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I was originally thinking about going to Calaveras Big Trees. There’s some nice little hikes there, but the damned leg’s not quite up to it yet.” Simon scowled, then shrugged. “I guess I should be grateful it’s my left knee. If it was my right, I’d have a hell of a time driving.”

  “That was a very considerate bad guy.”

  “I’ll send him a thank-you note.”

  They chatted lightly as they drove through rounded hills, the grass still withered by summer, and then past cattle lounging under oak trees or strolling past chunks of volcanic rock. The road grew twistier, but traffic was light and they made good time. Simon took them past the few blocks of Jamestown—Ladd had loved the railroad park there when he was a boy—and then into downtown Sonora, where touristy shops and restaurants lined the main drag. Past that, the highway climbed more sharply, and the trees’ autumn colors blazed between the dark green of the conifers. Elliott smelled wood smoke and pine.

  A few miles outside of Sonora, Simon took a turnoff to the right. “We’re going to Columbia?” Elliott asked with a grin.

  “Is that okay?”

  “It’s more than okay. God, I haven’t been in years.” As a kid, he used to beg his parents to drive there on weekends. Once a gold rush boomtown, Columbia was now a state park with many of the original buildings either restored or replicated. He’d loved stomping on the wooden sidewalks, pretending he was a prospector who’d just struck it rich, and climbing on the boulders left over from the town’s hydraulic mining operations. Sometimes he and Ladd had wheedled their parents into a stagecoach ride or a try at panning for gold.

  After a short journey down a narrow road, Simon pulled into a gravel parking lot behind the City Hotel. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, and the parking lot held only a few other cars, but when Elliott climbed out of the truck, he heard children’s voices. “Field trip,” he said.

  “Yeah. We came here in fourth grade.”

  “Us too. And we also went to Sacramento for the gold rush museum and Sutter’s Fort.”

  Due to the uneven ground, Simon leaned more heavily than usual on his cane as they walked toward the main drag. “I don’t remember going to Sacramento, just here. Maybe you had a better grade school than me.”

  Columbia’s paved Main Street ran past a few blocks of old brick-and-wood storefronts, with trees sporting autumn leaves as gold as the mother lode. Side streets led to a scattering of small houses. The ground dropped off at one end of town, leading to the boulders and gold-panning operation Elliott remembered from his childhood, while in the other direction, a hill rose toward the old schoolhouse and cemetery. As Elliott had guessed, schoolchildren swarmed everywhere, clutching bottles of sarsaparilla and candy sticks and jostling to watch the blacksmith work.

  “Do you mind if we eat first?” Simon asked.

  Due to the baklava, Elliott wasn’t hungry, but he nodded agreeably. As it turned out, their breakfast options were limited to a single restaurant, a place with plank floors and the aroma of frying bacon. Their waitress wore a long gingham dress, her gray hair in a long ponytail.

  “Coffee, boys?” she asked as she handed them laminated menus. They both said yes.

  While Simon perused the offerings, Elliott looked around. The rest
aurant was surprisingly busy. A large group of men in orange construction vests occupied several tables, and other seats were taken by people who appeared to be locals, chatting with one another across the room. A few were dressed as if they worked ranches.

  “Hoppin’ place,” Simon observed, putting his menu down. “Are you sure this is okay with you?”

  “It’s a great idea. I’m glad you thought of it.”

  Simon grinned widely. “I wanted to get out of town, you know?”

  “To where there’s less chance of running into cousins?” Elliott regretted the question as soon as it left his mouth. He reached over to pat Simon’s arm. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that as a dig.”

  “It’s okay. As far as I know, I have no relatives in Tuolumne County, which is a good thing. I wanted to be outdoors, but somewhere I could handle.” He sighed. “I used to be pretty ripped. I didn’t run as much as you do, but I spent a lot of time in the gym. Now I hobble and I eat.”

  “But you’re moving. Anyway, I told you. I like you just as you are.” Elliott threw in a leer for good measure.

  The waitress took their orders—some kind of elaborate skillet thing for Simon, a fruit cup for Elliott—and refilled their coffees. They sat without talking, but that was fine. There was a lovely solidity to Simon that meant he didn’t always need to fill space with conversation. He could simply smile across the glossy pine table, and that was enough to make Elliott feel content.

  When the food arrived, Elliott shook his head slightly. The portions were enormous. But Simon finished everything on his plate except two pieces of toast, which Elliott ate. Simon insisted on paying since this date was his treat. “You boys have a good day,” the waitress said before giving them a wink Elliott didn’t know how to interpret.

  More kids had arrived while they were eating, each little group accompanied by a harried-looking chaperone. Loud crashes and cheers came from the gold-rush-era bowling alley, while a large group clustered around a costumed older woman who was telling ghost stories. Simon and Elliott strolled slowly, pausing now and then to scrutinize an exhibit or peruse a store. Simon left the candy store with a hefty chunk of peanut butter fudge, which he broke off in small bits as they walked.

  Kids were having a great time tossing feed to the chickens in the large coop at one end of the storefronts, and Elliott found himself smiling at the spectacle.

  “Do you like children?” Simon asked, leaning against the weathered boards of the adjacent shack.

  “I guess. Never thought about it much.” That was not entirely true. When he was in college, he’d imagined becoming a father someday. He’d even thought about which books he’d buy for his hypothetical offspring. Goodnight Moon would be the first. But then he’d fallen in with John, and their twisted little version of domestic bliss clearly had no space for kids.

  “My mom is desperate for grandchildren,” Simon said. “She makes do with my cousins’ kids, but I don’t think that’s enough for her.”

  “What are your thoughts on the matter?”

  Simon chuckled. “I think I need to finish growing up first.” But he was smiling at the field trip kids, and Elliott could picture him joking around with a son or daughter or folding himself into a tiny plastic chair for a student-teacher conference.

  “Want to visit the schoolhouse and cemetery?” Simon gestured in that direction with his cane.

  Elliott vaguely remembered that the route, although short, was steep. “Will you make it okay?”

  Simon shot him a scowl. “If I can’t, you can leave me to the bears and coyotes.”

  As it turned out, he had a good bit of difficulty with the uphill road. He grunted a lot but didn’t complain, and Elliott didn’t mind taking it slow. He wondered what it would be like to live in one of the little houses they passed—isolated yet beset by tourists. They didn’t see any bears or coyotes, although a placid deer stood next to a lawn-statue doppelganger and gazed at them as they passed. The juxtaposition struck Elliott as unbearably funny, and he laughed so hard that he had as much difficulty with the walk as Simon.

  The old hilltop schoolhouse was a two-story brick structure surrounded by green lawn. Simon carefully lowered himself to the grass, his bad leg in front of him at a somewhat awkward angle. He squinted up at Elliott. “You’re gonna have to help me stand.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you to the bears and coyotes.” Elliott sat next to him.

  “Maybe it’s the scavengers I should be worried about. Turkey vultures.”

  Elliott patted Simon’s good knee. “You seem pretty lively to me.”

  “I’m thinking pretty lively thoughts with you here next to me. You look extra good outdoors. The sun catches the colors in your eyes.”

  Elliott blushed. No lover had ever complimented his eyes, which were an ordinary blue gray. He leaned back on his hands and looked up at the sky.

  “What do you think it was like to live here in the 1850s?” Simon asked.

  That was a line of inquiry Elliott could address with comfort. “Hard. Really hard. People died from disease, accidents, violence, drugs and booze.” He gestured toward the nearby cemetery. “The dates on those headstones show a lot of young deaths.”

  “No way I’d do that to myself just in hopes of striking it rich. I’d rather be poor and safe.”

  “I don’t know that they were all after money. I think some of them probably wanted adventure, fresh opportunities. They could reinvent themselves when they came here.”

  Simon plucked a tiny weed out of the grass and played with it, spinning the stem between thumb and forefinger. “Were some of them running away from something?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  A jay landed nearby and eyed them speculatively. When neither of them did anything interesting or produced any food, it pecked at the ground a few times, cawed in derision, and flapped away. But it didn’t go far, landing on an oak tree branch near the reconstructed outhouse.

  “Man, it must’ve been really hard to be gay back then,” Simon said.

  “In Columbia? Maybe not as hard as you think.”

  “Really?”

  Elliott sat upright, brushing the debris from his palms. “Nobody would have been suspicious of two men sharing a house. Lots of men lived in close proximity with their mining buddies. And there weren’t many women around, so perhaps folks were understanding if men turned to each other for company instead.”

  “That’s . . . kind of cool. I never thought about it like that. Do you have a book about it? I’d love to read it.”

  “About homosexuality in the gold rush?” Elliott shook his head. “I’ve seen the subject mentioned here and there, but I don’t think much has been published about it.”

  “Maybe you oughtta write that book, then, Prof.”

  “My specialty is the Balkans.” But even as he said that, Elliott found himself intrigued by Simon’s suggestion. Before John led him elsewhere, Elliott had been interested in studying minority groups in the state’s early history. Here in Northern California, Elliott would have a good chance of discovering whatever original sources existed on the topic. There were a couple of archives on LGBT history in San Francisco, which might be a good place to start.

  Except he was just an adjunct instructor of online courses now, and such people didn’t begin original research projects.

  Elliott helped Simon stand, and they held hands a moment longer than necessary. They might even have kissed if a gaggle of fourth graders hadn’t appeared a few minutes earlier, accompanied by a droning teacher. Elliott didn’t want an audience and doubted Simon did either.

  They walked slowly around the schoolhouse and down the hill a bit, then through the gates of the Columbia Cemetery. It was a large graveyard, founded in the 1850s but still in use. Some of the headstones were shiny and new, with flowers and trinkets from still-living family members in front of them. Others were worn and covered by lichen. Nobody remembered the people buried under those stones.

  Elliott
paused to run a hand along a marker for a Mary Azevedo. According to her headstone, she’d immigrated from Portugal and died in 1879 at age 31—most likely in childbirth, because an unnamed baby boy was buried with her.

  “The cemetery is like a book,” he said softly. “It tells stories.”

  Simon leaned against a nearby tree, looking solemn. Next to him was the headstone of a New Hampshire native who’d drowned in 1858, age 28, and was memorialized in granite by his twin brother. A low fence with fancy metalwork—now badly rusted—surrounded that grave. Elliott wondered where the longer-surviving twin had eventually been laid to rest.

  “I didn’t much like history in school,” Simon said. “It was all, ‘Who won this war?’ and ‘What was the name of that president?’ Boring. But those books I’ve been borrowing from you? They’re like novels, only true.”

  Still stroking the old granite, Elliott nodded. “You want to know something? I think right here in this cemetery is where I decided to be a historian. Because it wasn’t just a bunch of dead guys with dates to memorize—it was real places and real people. I can almost see Mary Azevedo, can’t you?”

  He pictured dark hair, a careworn face that looked older than her age, brown eyes that had seen a multitude of wonders and sorrows. She would have worn a dress similar to their waitress’s, and she probably had several children before the one who died with her. Hard work would have roughened her hands. She would have been well acquainted with hunger and hardship, but perhaps she’d known joy as well. Maybe she was happy in the hope of her children growing up in this young country, surrounded by the promise of endless riches.

  Simon walked over and cupped Elliott’s cheek in one hand. His eyes were as soft and warm as melted chocolate. “You can see her for me,” he rumbled. He looked as if that was a wondrous thing.

  Elliott stepped back. If he hadn’t, he’d have been in very real danger of jumping Simon’s bones right there among the mortal remains of a century and a half of Columbians. Maybe some of them would posthumously approve, but the park rangers and the school chaperones probably wouldn’t.