The muddy bookcase
Lunch break found me walking the rail trail between Norway and Paris, the afternoon day bright and sunny and soon shared with a oncoming woman with two small kids.
The eldest said ‘hello’ just as we drew level and asked, pointing, if I knew who had left a bookcase in the water. I followed his gaze to where, in one of the innumerable pools fed by snow-melt and spring rains, a large wooden bookcase lay face-down in water that will disappear come summer.
On this stretch, the trail divides a series of condominiums from a marshy wetland that gathers into a small stream before flowing into the Little Androscoggin River. I didn’t know who put it there, which wasn’t good enough, and he urged me, in all seriousness, to search the woods for who had left it. It looked as though the bookcase had been laid as a plank over the pool to avoid walking in the mud. It seemed to bother him.
I replied with similar seriousness that I would search — I thought of filing a police report — and said hello to the other boy, who appeared to be the younger brother. He merely looked at me silently, as though mildly interested with a brightly-colored bug he hadn’t expected to be there.
I said goodbye. My turned back was met with, “Have a good day!” and, a short while later, “Look! A bird, a baby bird!”
— Christopher Crosby
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