Working in a Public Library Can Be Hell
Kim Davis. That woman is Kim Davis, in my library, looking at my display for arts and crafts month. Panic rises in the back of my throat. What should I do?
The correct answer, the ALA-approved answer, of course, is nothing. I’m in a Kentucky library — not rural Kentucky, where one may expect to see the woman who became the face of the anti-gay movement in the days after marriage equality became the law by refusing to grant licenses to same-sex couples — but Kentucky, all the same, so she could conceivably be here as a normal patron. And even if she wasn’t, if she was here to tour Louisville and spread a message of hate? That doesn’t matter, either. I’m a public librarian, I serve all people, terrible bigots or not.
But, still, my heart aches and I feel like an animal trapped in a cage. I want to tweet, want to take pictures, want to confront her. My radical queer activist self is fighting with my public-services-are-for-everyone librarian self. Jesus Christ, why is she in my library?
And then the woman turns, and the adrenaline runs straight out of me. Oh. I was wrong. That isn’t Kim Davis. She just looks a lot like Kim Davis from the side. Same stringy hair, lined face, but maybe not so dead inside. Maybe that’s the difference. Oh, shit, she’s walking towards me —
“Can I help you?” I ask, cheerfully, my customer service voice perfect and not revealing a damn thing of the internal conflict I just went through staring at this woman.
“I just want to check these out.” She smiles, too wide, and makes eye contact too long, and the crazy alarm in the back of my head goes off. I correct myself mentally, trying to show some of the compassion this profession expects of me: the perceived mental illness alarm. I’ve been working in public libraries for more than five years and I’ve developed a pretty good sense of when someone might suddenly start screaming at you for mentioning a library fine in the wrong tone.
I scan the woman’s library card — see, her name isn’t Kim Davis, you idiot — and begin to scan her pile of books, when my attention — and the attention of all the patrons in the library — shifts to a man who had also been on my perceived-mental-illness radar begins to scream about Jesus Christ being the savior to the unborn at a very normal looking young black woman who’s making eye contact with me like ‘is this really happening?’ And I’m wondering if between incidents like this and the near-constant stream of articles online about dying libraries if this job is really worth it as I stand and apologize to the Kim Davis lookalike. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right back, sir — SIR, could you please lower your voice?”
One of the circulation clerks takes over with Kim while I talk to the anti-abortion crazy — sorry — perceived mentally ill man who has political views that differ from my own. He agrees, surprisingly easily, that maybe he shouldn’t be in the library today and that he’ll head home. I follow him to the front of the library and make sure he’s significantly off property before turning back to look inside the library and take a mental image of the whole scene as I plan the incident report I now have to write.
Kim is chattering away with the clerk — maybe I was wrong, they seem to be having a very nice conversation, and she looks sympathetic to our situation. The young woman the man was yelling at has gone back to browsing Adult Fiction and seems fine, though I should make sure to apologize to her before she leaves, and the computers are full, as always. The other librarian on shift is helping a self-declared computer-illiterate person through a job application to McDonald’s, there’s a group of teens in the teen section that looks like they might soon be getting rowdy enough that the patrons at the computers will complain, and there are no less than eight unaccompanied children between the ages of seven and eleven absorbed in Roblox in the children’s section. At least they’re sharing, I think to myself as I pass, seeing that they’re sitting two to a computer in most instances. Still, something rattles me about the makeup of the patrons in the library today. We’re usually a lot less white, I realize. And a lot of these white people have that same rural-white-could-be-a-relative-of-Kim-Davis and/or mistaken-for-the-woman-herself look that poor — sorry — disadvantaged people from the counties far out of Louisville have. Lots of premature wrinkles and white t-shirts.
“That man took books!” the page has surprised me by getting so close.
“I — what?” I’m put off by her general lack of professionalism — you don’t need to shout at your coworker, and you certainly don’t accuse a patron, mentally ill and anti-abortion or not, of stealing books in earshot of other patrons.
“He took at least five. I saw him.” I’m sure you did, Phyllis. Did you think to say anything to him? To me, before his outburst?
I groan and head for the door again, hoping I can still see him and shout something like ‘Sir! I think you forgot to check out your items!’
He’s nowhere to be seen, but I notice a giant truck in the parking lot. What the hell? Who drove this unmarked little-brother-to-a-semi to the library? Didn’t they have a smaller car? I’m at least gonna tweet about this weird truck when I’m on break.
I turn to go back to the library and realize Phyllis is holding court to whatever patrons will listen about the man that supposedly stole books. Jesus, woman, I know you’re way too old to be paid barely over minimum wage to shelve books, but you should know not to talk to patrons about other patrons. Especially about patron misbehavior. My mental to-do list lengthens: incident report, see if Phyllis remembers the section he stole from so we can shelf read and mark the books missing, email to manager about worry over Phyllis’ professionalism with patrons. Great.
Not Kim Davis is in the growing clump of patrons talking to a staff member — who should really know better — about the strange patron’s behavior. She’s nodding and pointing and Phyllis gestures me over when I get close. “She says she knows him. Says she gave him a ride here and he might be waiting near her truck.”
Her truck? Of course Not Kim Davis drove the weird truck and the weird patron in. “I — It’s fine, it’s just some books.”
No one is listening to me, the group is headed for the parking lot, and Phyllis is their queen. Shit. I might have to call a manager right now. Is she inciting a riot for some James Patterson trash? I look back at the circulation desk. The clerk is experienced and is handling the line and phone easily. The other librarian is returning from helping McDonald’s Application, so they’re covered. I can try to deescalate whatever the hell is going on in the parking lot before things get too crazy.
I exit the library to see more people than I remember in the gaggle that left standing behind the giant truck. What are these used for? It’s a refrigerated truck, right? Food transport?
Not Kim Davis is on the back bumper, unlocking the big door and talking about something. I step into the back of the group and listen.
“ — crazy when I pulled over to the side a the road ta pick him up, mumblin’ about Jesus and fetuses and what if Mary had an abortion, should of known then that something was off about him.” She opens the truck and again something strikes me as deeply strange. The crazy alarm is going off again, screaming in the back of my head, but none of the patrons around me, or Phyllis, seem to have that same instinct. The inside of the truck seems to be empty, but there’s this weirdness to the shape of it, like it has a false bottom or something because the floor doesn’t start at Not Kim Davis’ feet, it starts near her thighs, and — yes, I can see there’s another door to access that storage. Is that how these trucks are made?
I scan the — crowd, now, did more patrons come out of the library? Yes, they must have, I see more of the rural-looking whites and a few regulars getting nosy about all the commotion and I make eye contact with the young black woman that the man had been yelling at — she looks extremely concerned, I can tell she feels the wrongness of the situation as keenly as I do, and is hanging back, yards away, not joining the throng. I come back to myself, I should be de-escalating this situation, whatever it is that’s happening here.
I look back into the truck and see that there is, in fact, a stack of books near the cab of the truck. I can’t see if they have library markings from here, so I take a couple steps forward to see better. Not Kim Davis is talking again, I’m not really listening because the alarm bells in my head are filling me with adrenaline. I’m sweating, I realize, sweating enough that you can see it through my cardigan and everything feels wrong, the crowd is too big and they’re shoving each other a little and yelling and the books in the back of the truck are a librarian trap, I realize, and even though that doesn’t make any goddamn sense I pull back towards the library quickly as Not Kim Davis opens the second compartment.
A smell hits me, even from back here, from so far away, of rot. I see glimpses of pink and white and she’s grabbing something, something big and — corpse, it’s a corpse — tosses it into the middle of the crowd where it splits on the pavement and spills out gore and thank god it’s only a pig corpse but dear god it’s a pig corpse and there’s screaming and
I see the young black woman running away
while the whites that were out of place are pushing the crowd together
and someone is digging through the corpse oh my god they’re eating
oh my god they’re eating
and someone bites someone else and I can’t even tell if it’s a regular patron or one of the out of place ones
and there’s more screaming
and she’s throwing more corpses
and she’s shouting
and I swear I hear pigs squealing but I know there aren’t any live pigs here
and my last thought before I black out is
this is going to be one hell of an incident report.
