Libraries attract people of all types and as a librarian and library manager, on the east and west coast, I met many interesting characters. The attached story is loosely about one of them. I've changed all the names but the essence of the story is true.






"So you work at a library…that must be interesting…."

Can be, thought Susan, in response to the non-question.

She thought back over the years to the people she had met while working at reference desks all over the country.

And then she remembered, Arnold Masters. She met him the second or third day she worked at the public library in a little town in West Virginia. Arnold strode over to the reference desk and said “there’s a little bomb back in the section about sex education, I thought I should tell you. It’s not real…just my way of saying that those books shouldn’t be in the library.” While Susan was trying to figure out what to do, he disappeared. She decided to clear the building and call the police. Everyone was outside in seconds and the police were there in a flash.

Susan told them what had happened. One of them laughed, this was before Sept 11 and this was a very small town where everyone knew everyone and everyone knew Arnold. It might go very differently today. The other officers, all armored up, went to check out the “bomb”. It was, as Arnold had said, a fake bomb...a small box full of cotton and matches covered in tape with the word “ BOMB” scribbled on the top of the box so it could be easily found, he had said. Very thoughtful of him.

Everyone was nice about the incident. Arnold was rounded up and “talked” to by the police. He was shocked they had been called because he had been protesting in this fashion for quite some time and he didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

The next time Susan saw Arnold was a week or so later. He turned up at the reference desk looking quite dapper and sane. Arnold was about 5’7”, stocky and slightly bowlegged. He had a neatly trimmed beard and looked normal except that he was wearing what appeared to be a tartan tablecloth instead of pants and some sort of belt which should have been a holder for a sword. Thankfully no sword was present. And, of course, to complete the ensemble, a shirt, tie and suit jacket. He was a spectacular sight. She was tempted to ask what the tablecloth was all about but he volunteered the answer to the unspoken question “ I don’t wear pants. I’m protesting the way they’re made.”

Okay, thought Susan, just smile and don’t ask about the protest. That could provide more information than she needed or wanted.

He had, he said, a question. “Fine” said Susan, “I’d be happy to help”.

“Have you noticed” said Arnold, “that cows don’t frolic anymore? When I was a kid cows would frolic and run all over the fields and now they just stand around and look drugged. What do you think is going on with cows?”

Susan summoned up all the professionalism she could and said, without laughing, “I grew up in a city so I really don’t know how cows behaved then or what is different now. It would be a tough question to answer but we could gather some material together and see what we could discover about how cows are raised today. Shall we do that?”

“No” said Arnold, looking a bit angry, “no, you are just supposed to answer the question. Isn’t that what librarians do? That’s why you go to school, to learn this stuff. You shouldn’t have to look in some book.” He didn’t give Susan an opportunity to reply, just whipped around and swept out of the library.

Okay, thought Susan, I’m going to be dealing with this fellow on a regular basis so I’d better find out more about him.

At lunch that day, Susan asked the staff who were sitting around in the staff room to tell her about Arnold. They happily obliged. Arnold, it turns out, was retired military and had reached a fairly high level before leaving the service. He’d moved to this little town for reasons known only to him. He didn’t appear to have any family or friends. He was in good health. They guessed he was in his 60’s and he was currently living under the High Street Bridge in a tent. He did have a monthly stipend from the service so he wasn’t poor and his camping equipment was new and expensive. Apparently Arnold had, until recently, been squatting on land owned by the gas company. It irked them that he was there but they had tolerated his presence until he began causing problems of some sort so one day when he had walked into town some officials from the gas company had burned his little hut and all his belongs to the ground. He hated the gas company, said one staff member, and was obsessed with the idea of getting even.

Clearly, they all felt, he was suffering from dementia and probably needed help but he would refuse it if offered and was not interested in assistance of any sort from the library staff.

They assured Susan that he was a regular and that he’d be in most days. They were right. Arnold would appear almost every day with a new question as impossible as the one he had posed about cows and would generally leave in frustration at the stupidity of the staff.

“Have you looked at a map of California?” Arnold asked one day.

“No”, said Susan, “not recently. Why do you ask?”

“Get an atlas and I’ll show you” he said.

Susan pulled out an atlas and opened it up to California. “Not that kind of atlas” said Arnold, annoyed at Susan’s stupidity.

“Do you want a road atlas?” she asked.

“Of course” Arnold spat out.

A road atlas was found and opened to California. Arnold said “what do you see?” Susan said that she saw the state of California and most of the roads in the state.

“What else?” said Arnold.

“That’s it.” said Susan.

“You don’t see the problem?”

“No, I really don’t” Susan replied.

Arnold went on to explain that there were very few major roads running north and south and fewer running east to west. He believed the design of the highway system was a plot by some foreign power to prevent Californians from escaping in the event of a disaster of some sort. “Probably Russia or China had their hands in this.” Arnold concluded his discourse on the plot. He wondered who should be notified. Susan said he could write to the governor of the state of CA. Arnold thought that would be too much work for him and suggested that Susan write the letter. Not happening old man, thought Susan, but, before she could say anything, he was gone.

For the longest time Susan thought Arnold existed just to drive her crazy and then one day she encountered him at the bank. He managed to bring practically all business to a stop as he questioned every possible aspect of his account. The manager was called over to explain something to him. The assistant branch manager was summoned too. Pretty soon Arnold had everyone working on his account and a growing line of customers waiting to be helped. Susan had to smile. She was feeling pretty good about the way she worked with Arnold so that he didn’t become the focal point of the entire library.

Over the months and years that Susan assisted Arnold with his library questions, she became fond of him in a distant sort of way. He was unique and he could be difficult but she sensed he was a man haunted by demons who sought center stage in every encounter he had with anyone. Perhaps he needed that attention to assure himself that he was still there, still Arnold.

One day Arnold didn’t show up with his usual question. The staff noticed his absence and several wondered out loud where he was and what he was up to. He didn’t show up the next day or the following or the one after that. After a week had gone by Susan’s concern prompted her to call the police to see if they knew what had happened to him.

They told Susan that Arnold had been enjoying his evening drink at a local college bar and had taken offense at something one of the students said to him. The altercation grew into a fist fight and Arnold and the students were ordered out of the bar. Apparently the students had followed Arnold back to his camp under the bridge and had beaten him and robbed him. Arnold lay there overnight, badly injured and unable to move until a fellow crossing the bridge looked down to see if he was up and eating his breakfast. Alarmed at what he saw, the passerby ran to the phone booth at the end of the bridge and called the police.

Arnold had some broken ribs, lots of cuts and bruises and was lucky to have survived. He ended up in the hospital for a week or so. Arnold was only able to give the police a sketchy description of the men who had beaten him and and the bar manager wasn't much help either. It had, after all, been a Friday night and the bar was packed with students. Arnold had been much more memorable than they were.

The students were never found. Arnold’s campsite was destroyed. Winter was fast approaching and Arnold was going to need a better and safer place to live. Social services in this little town were pretty sparse. A local church took on Arnold’s case and tried to help locate a place for him to live. An apartment was found and Arnold seemed to settle in.

At this point Arnold began coming back to the library. He was a much more subdued Arnold. Oh, he still had questions but often he would arrive at the library, bid everyone good morning, walk over to the reference desk but never actually ask a question. Sometimes he would bring donuts or candy for the staff and say he just wanted them to know he appreciated them.

Susan got used to the new improved and quieter Arnold and assumed his situation was more stable and so was his mental health. About this time, Susan began looking for another job somewhere new. She’d lived in West Virginia and on the east coast all of her adult life and wanted to see other parts of the country.

She interviewed for lots of jobs and was offered and took a position with a much larger library system in northern California. She turned in her resignation and started packing up her belongs. She had a month left at her current assignment. Now that her plans were in order she noticed that Arnold hadn’t been around for awhile. She hoped he was okay. Susan had often wondered about Arnold and how his life had ended up so totally askew. She figured she would never really know what it was all about but she still thought about him and wished that some family member would show up and take him in.

She asked around but no one had seen Arnold for quite some time. She asked the shop keepers up and down the main street if they’d seen Arnold. No one had.

Susan never did see Arnold again but she learned from a friend, after she had gotten settled in California, that he had died that winter. Apparently he had moved into his apartment but never connected any of the utilities. It was a very cold winter that year and Arnold had built a fire to keep warm. No, he didn’t burn down the building. Someone smelled smoke, called the fire department and they put out the fire and informed the landlord about Arnold and his fire. The landlord asked Arnold to leave and he did, being the proud, slightly daffy man he was, he hitchhiked out to the state park and set up his home. That was where he was found sometime later, dead.

People like Arnold haunt you, thought Susan, they’ve fallen through the cracks and been forgotten…..lost souls. Susan had watched him transform from a cocky, inquisitive, weird old man, full of confidence to a subdued, somewhat frightened man who had learned the world could be just as scary as he imagined it was.

But, thought Susan, he had lived and died on his own terms and certainly he had made an impression on all the people who had met him over the years. That is not a bad legacy.






The pictures are of places I particularly like in Georgia and West Virginia.