I googled them of course. Back home, as soon as my fingers were thawed, I went a-googling to sate my curiosity about this bog turtle ecostery—but found nothing. Oh, there was a website describing ecosteries (something new under my sun)—they seemed to be a cross between a monastery and nature preserve—and there were Wikipedia entries on bog turtles, but nothing of the two together. I googled Gronigen Brocklesby, the name on the blank check given me some time ago, and again, nothing. Well! Here was frustration, and a little surprise, the ubiquitous urge of information under which we live is so hard to dispel.
Then I googled myself and joined Gronigen among the unmapped interstices of the internet.
As I googled and googled I could see my reflection in the hallway mirror—and what a slumped slouching figure I cut!—something Beardsley or Schiele might have drawn. I felt ashamed.
I turned off the computer, determined to think no more of bog turtles or ecosteries, dismissing what I saw in the morning as a mere luddite caprice in these new York hills, an enclave of eccentrics of no consequence to the world.
Besides, I had my own problems. My book sales had been slumping for months, and of late I’d found myself scarcely able to pay the bills. It was a common bookselling lot, every bookseller I knew was being driven into austerity, starved by each other and bewildered by a wildly changing market. Soon enough the steady creep of life reasserted itself and I returned to my paltry yoga of checking email, processing and packing orders (what few there were), losing games of chess online, putting water on to boil for pasta. And so the winter day threatened to become like countless others in my life, sinister in its dullness, as the horizon on the west tilted up and devoured the sun.
One week later, as the universe tilts, an envelope appeared in my mailbox. It was adorned with the drawing of a wren and the sender’s name was Bronwen Brocklesby.
Just last spring some wrens built a nest inside my mailbox. The door of the mailbox didn’t close properly, leaving just enough room for egress, otherwise nicely sheltering their young. The birds didn’t even mind the postman’s occasional deposits. Now I’ve had vines cover my windows, mushrooms grow in my bathroom, and raccoons colonize my attic, so birds in my mailbox was of no concern whatever. The eggs hatched, the young fledged, and had not heard from them since—until this letter.
To speak of surprise doesn’t do my eyebrows justice.
Of course I savored the envelope before opening it—I savored it and held out as long as I could. The line drawing of the wren was done expertly, without the care of a trace. The script, fine, almost calligraphic, was addressed to “The Bicycling Bookseller,” capitalized and in quotation marks, thick with jest. I turned it over and over in my hands.
Enough already! I chided myself—what are you, some stuttering lovelorn adolescent clutching his pen-pal’s latest volley? I tore open the envelope and found a single sheet inside. It read:
“Dear Mr Glencote—
Thank you for the books. I am still reading them—some I like to start to read at the end and work backwards, some I start in the middle, and one or two I even start at the beginning. However, I am writing because I would like to return one of the books. Mumford’s The City in History. There is no writing in it!—I thought that these books, being ‘used,’ would be well-tended, marked up as they say with notes from previous readers in the flyleaves and margins. Your other books have at least a signature in the front, but this book is so clean it may as well be new. What a disappointment! Of course I could annotate it myself as I go along, but that’s not nearly as much fun. I want to know something of the people who read the book before me. Would you be able to find a replacement copy with some signatures and notes and marginalia? I’m not one to speak of false advertising, but you are a used bookseller, aren’t you? On further thought—I assumed that the used referred to the books and not yourself, so I am sorry if I was mistaken in that regard.
Bronwen B.
PS
The night after your visit Coyote ambled down our path, crisscrossing your footprints, and left a thick deposit of scat at the base of the tree where you’d leaned your bike. Here is a rendering.”
And befitting Bronwen, a line drawing of coyote scat adorned the bottom of the page.
