The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
He sighed, spit on the ground. “Sure, we chatted, said how ya doin’, but
that’s about it. I don’t know the first thing about him, and he don’t know the
first thing about me. I been here long as this place has been open, and so’s he.”
“When did this place open?” He breathed in like he was about to restart
his lecture, so I reassured him. “I won’t write it. I’m just curious. When did
the Lone Wolf open?”
He put on a black watch cap from his inside pocket. Something about
him—the lost expression, the agelessness, the aquiline dissoluteness—made
him look like a figure from New England’s past, a bookish crewman on the
Pequod. “Well, let’s see. I remember when I first come here, my kid still lived
at home, but just barely. He’s in the army now, lives in Germany. Says he’s
about to make captain, I guess. But I haven’t seen him in . . .” His voice
trailed off, and he looked down. Suddenly, like an otter popping up from
underwater, he refocused on me. “That would mean 1991, I think this place
opened. Yeah, gotta be early ’91, ’cause I remember watching Scott Norwood
miss that field goal in this bar, while Eddie and I were laying the floor tiles.
He’d never seen a football game before. Yup, 1991 early.” With that, he nodded,
hit the roof of my car, waved good-bye, and went back into the bar.
Eddie opened the door for him, and as he walked in, Eddie clapped him on
the back of the neck, a gesture somewhere between affectionate and threatening.
To me he flashed his death’s-head grin, gave me a thumbs-up, then drew
his extended thumb across his throat.
against my better judgment—and probably against the law, too—I
drove back to Lincoln without waiting for the brandy and beer to fade. Something
about Clougham unsettled me: it was as though the town itself didn’t
want me there and had animated its citizens to make sure I left quickly. All
except that skinny guy from the bar, whose name I didn’t know and to whom
I may well have owed my intact body.
When I reached the office, I found Austell and Art in the same positions:
one staring out the window, the other seated behind his desk with his door
mostly closed and his headphones on. Only the light had changed; the soft
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