The Boy, the Book

I was going to write about the $231.00 electric bill, and how Zach and I were going to have to now raise bees for the wax to make candles because Jesus Fucking Christ are you kidding me? $231.00?

But I rode the bus yesterday and realized I had to write this letter instead.

Dear Boy with the Book:

I recognize you. "I know you what you are." You are me, at 13, limp hair unwashed curtaining your forehead and eyes, head privately bent, the book on your knees, and it's an accident your being in the bus at all because really you're there. There being Narnia or Earthsea or Middle Earth, Mount Olympus or the Hundred Acre Wood or under the Willows in the wind. You're there, not here, and yet I can see you, on the bus, head privately bent, and you're me at 13, and I know what safety there is in pages and book spines, in serifs and ink.

The bus is loud, and the bus is slow, and yet you at 13 aren't aware of the noise, and the heat, and the pulse of everyone around you because now you're striding purposefully down Baker Street; now you've glimpsed Mercedes after a long thousand years in the Château d'If; now you've bid goodbye to the Last Homely House. Your head privately bent, your hands on your cheek, elbows holding the book open, and for five minutes or five miles or five years -- until you're not 13 at all, but you're 18, or ten years and you're 23 -- you're Athos, you're Jim Hawkins, you're young King Arthur when he's just Arthur and the stone is just a stone with a sword that's just a sword out of reach.

I want to tell you, boy with the book, to stay there, where you are, there; there being not here because here things are rough for boys with books. Or they were when I was 13, and 18, and 23, and even now, even 33. A boy with a book is dark magic to some.

You looked up once, with that look of loose dreaming, and a furrow of regret creased the bridge of your nose, and I knew you. The bus had moved inches, not miles, and I knew you. The sound of traffic and music, the rattle of the bus engine and the noises of complaint, and I knew you, boy on the bus, who is me at 13. So I went back to my own book and left you to your wanderings and hoped that I might meet you as Huck Finn in another time and place.