Nouveau Fontaine
I had this plan to burn down a library. Hard to explain why. It’s not like I hate books or have some deep-set insecurity about my intelligence. It’s not like I wanted all the cruelly smart people to burn, the people who made me feel inadequate, insecure — dumb, to be blunt. No, I held no such grudges. So why did I want a library to burn? If you really want to know, there’s an initial, important question to ask. This question is equivalent to that one, most revealing first question in every game of Guess Who, that game where you flip down faces on your little board as you eliminate the possibilities of your opponent’s secret identity. Boy or girl? Man or woman? Either works. The equivalent question in the case of my plans to burn down a library is this: any library or a specific library? And the answer is how you can be sure it all had nothing to do with some stupid inferiority complex. I wanted to burn down a specific library, not a library in general. Make note this was in the past — I no longer want to burn down this library, not that it still stands there on the corner of Washington and Cross.
I’ll get to my motivations in a minute. First, let’s go over the plan. So this was a small town, a place where my family was raised, where they had tried to raise me, where, luckily, by the summer before high school, I’d escaped… one damp, dark morning — clinging to the back of a school bus! No idea why it was driving in the middle of summer and why whoever driving it was going so far. Or why I chose a school bus for the great escape. But I did and it worked. After that, it was easy. I looked old, very old, worn for my age, scruffy face and all, so I got away with getting away.
Anyway, a few years later, I’m riding in this friendly hick’s car — wasn’t really a hick environment, so that’s why I’m noting all that, but don’t get it all twisted, no, I’ve got nothing against simple, straw people. So I’m riding with this hick, yeah? We were headed toward New Fountain. I’d never heard of it either. Strange name for a town, I thought, of course, but boy did he talk it up.
“Mmmhhmm! New Fountain! Nouveau Fontaine! You ever been to France boy?”
“No sir, I’ve been on the road a while. But no, never made it so far.”
“Ain’t gotta call me sir, boy! You can call me Ennis boy oh boy, that New Fountain. I gotta tell ya, that New Fountain’s like France, boy! When I’s your age, bout twenty sum’n lemme tell ya I had this Gor Gorgeous French dame called Poppy. Or Lucia or sum’n fancy foreign like that and oh boy lemme tell ya she brought me all the way to Pro-vence! Them rooolling hills and creeks fresher than a Bud and that sun, boy you ain’t never had a sun that’a warm ya but never, cross my heart, never bring you a drop’a sweat.”
And he went on and on, and some more again about France and then Italy and then some place called Porto and no, I never really believed him, but I never really doubted him either. Didn’t really matter to me whether he was preaching or spewing, since I was bound to move on somewhere, anyway, and I can promise no one else made nearly as compelling a case as the friendly hick. Everybody else was always moaning about this being hard and home being worse and the future, that shit-hole, being worst of all.
I fell asleep on the way to Nouveau Fontaine. I mean, I fell asleep a couple of times. Whole thing took over four days, not that we ever made it. But I was waking up from a dream about serpents that would chase you to the ends of the world — and you’d run, out of instinct. You’d run, run, run, but you’d always tire out before you made it to the end of the world, because, I mean, who could ever make it that far? But the thing is, you’d tire out and give in, you’d have nothing left, not even the hope of making it to the end. And the serpents would slither up to you — somehow they never seemed to move fast — and they’d spring to sink their fangs into you, but soon as their teeth touched your skin, they’d lose interest. They’d just slink away. Like they were satisfied. Like all they had ever wanted was a tease. Or like all they had wanted was to make you run. And you’re left thinking, why did I run? Why am I running?
I was waking up from this dream when I noticed something familiar. The windows were open and I noticed the smell. I remembered the smell. It smelled like burnt charcoal barbecue and old grass. It smelled like things that had been left a little while too long. I knew this place. I had run from this place. But the friendly hick was driving through this place — this place that all this time was on the road to Nouveau Fontaine. I asked the friendly hick to pull over and thanked him for bringing me home.
“But this ain’t New Fountain, boy!”
“It doesn’t have to be, Ennis.”
I started walking, alone, down Pearl Street and saw that everything had been left as it was. I thought about how it hadn’t been that long, how of course things were still the same, but how in thirty years, still, no one will have taken the burgers off the grill or trimmed the grass. I could feel the serpents at my heels but I turned, calmly, onto Washington. I passed a few invisible bus stops and kept walking. I barely glanced at the beige Faith Lutheran Church. I twitched a smile at Will’s old house. I stopped at the intersection with Cross. I looked up at my old favorite place in the world, Middle Library — old, teetering Neoclassical white palace in its bed of grey. I looked and I knew I would never stay unless I was forced to. I knew I’d keep running from the harmless snakes until someone restrained me and proved to me I wouldn’t bleed. I don’t think I would have tired on my own. I’d have run off the end of the world.
I flicked it ablaze.
