The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
“I did that. They sent me up here. Can you please just tell me something,
anything about him so I have something to write?”
He looked at me sourly and shuffled some papers on his desk. “Look,
Mr....”
“Tomm.”
“Mr. Tomm?”
“Yep. T-O-M-M, Tomm.”
“What the hell kind of name is that?”
“Long story. You don’t want to hear it.”
“You’re right. Mr. Tomm, Johnny and I were collegial, friendly, but that’s
it. We weren’t best buddies. When he first came to this country, my wife and I
had him over for barbecues a few times—rah, rah, July Fourth, wave the flag
and all that horseshit. I went out drinking with him occasionally, but not in a
few years. That’s all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to whatever
crap I was doing before you showed up.”
I stood up and, as I was leaving, asked where they went drinking.
“You know, it’s funny, but I still remember. It was this roadside dive called
the Lone Wolf, a little ways past Westerly, just over the border on the way
back to his town. Think it was in a place called Clougham. God knows what
possessed me to drive out there. He only drank there, and he only drank this
hideous homemade brandy. A few of those and they’ll peel you off the floor.
This one time, my wife . . .” He waved his hand and grinned briefly, before
his face slumped back into defeated doughiness. “Story for another time.
Anyway, Lone Wolf: that’s where we went. Good luck with the digging, Mr.
Tomm. Shut the door on your way out, if you wouldn’t mind.”
I silently wished Crowley all the good reviews, fawning midlevel politicians,
and C-SPAN interviews he could handle and prepared to head back to
Lincoln, no more enlightened than when I’d left.
At the second-story landing, a familiar cultured voice spoke in a familiar
inimitable accent from behind me. “Do you know that I once had a student
who looked remarkably like you? My student, however, was a well-mannered,
almost timid young man, one who would never neglect his duty in courtesy to
pay at least a brief visit to an old friend, were he in that friend’s vicinity.”
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