by Tim O'Dell

Created on: July 05, 2008

The Librarian

"Out, get out now, you little lout!" Eric stood rigid and pointed towards the door, Hitler-like, as the child ran, tears streaming down his cheeks, out of the library, out of the building, out of Eric's way.

The other staff looked at Eric in silence as he marched back to his desk. Eventually, Janice decided to speak up. "Was that really necessary? He was just chewing gum."

"He was making a noise with his incessant popping of bubbles. It was disturbing other readers." Eric said, through gritted teeth.

"What other readers?" Janice exclaimed, incredulous. "Except for the old man at the next table, who's wearing a hearing aid and probably wouldn't be able to hear him anyway, there's nobody else here."

Eric looked at her over his horn-rimmed spectacles. He was in a foul mood, and his unkempt mop of dark hair looked incongruous lying over his brow, as if he had stolen a scalp from a spotty teenager and stuck it to his own head. "Alright, he was disturbing me! Misses Tenney, I ask you to remember this is MY library, and if people want to use it, they follow MY rules."

Janice glared at him, before turning, shaking her head at the other staff, and walking, pacing, striding away to finish cataloguing the newly arrived books. None of them liked the chief librarian. Janice and Mary were senior staff, who had worked at the library nearly as long as Eric. They were settled and secure in their positions, and felt able to challenge Eric when the occasion rose, which was often. Jimmy was the junior. He had worked at the library six months now, and still felt intimidated by the older man. Nonetheless, each and every one had got a grasp of Eric's character, and despised, hated, detested him. When he screamed at customers for talking, they would clamp their jaws; when he refused to let out a book because a customer had too many late returns, they would gasp; when he loomed over children, waggling his finger if they so much as giggled, the staff would cross their arms and glare at him. Nothing changed his mean-spirited ways; any opposition to his methods was met with a firm affirmation that this was his library. The staff felt frustrated, powerless, ineffectual in the face of his belligerent malice.

The atmosphere was leaden. The recent incident with the child, and the earlier standoff between Eric and a regular customer, who had intentionally whistled while reading one of the daily papers, had created a tension, a strain, a pregnancy, which affected everyone in the library.

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