Work Song - Ivan Doig [71]
“Told you there’s something I have for you to do,” he was saying, as though I were looking for a way to fill my time. “Draw up an inventory of what’s mine out there on the shelves,” he waved in the direction of the prized books on the mezzanine. “That’ll bring the trustees to their senses,” the grandee of the library finished, sitting back and cracking his knuckles in satisfaction.
“I shall need a helper.”
That caught him by surprise, and before he could cloud up enough to tell me I was out of my mind, I said, “Fortunately, Sandy, the staffing has been a little light for some time, hasn’t it.” I flipped to the ledger page that listed library positions and wages, his piggybank for those Miscellaneous expenditures when irresistible books showed up in dealers’ catalogues. He eyed me as my finger singled out positions budgeted for but chronically unfilled. “Very wise of you,” I drove the point home with a final finger tap, “to leave leeway for an occasion just such as this.”
Sandison coughed. “Let’s be reasonable about this. We can’t be cluttering up the place with some moron we don’t absolutely need, just because—”
“No, no,” I headed off that objection, “summer help will do. A teacher, perhaps, with free time now that school is out. In fact, I think I know of one.”
“Don’t waste time talking about it, then.” He heaved himself around in his seat as if compelling business awaited on his desk. “Hire this summer wonder you have your eye on, and get going on the inventory. You have to make decisions in this life, Morgan.”
“THIS IS EXCITING, working for Sam Sandison. It’s like being on a pirate ship.”
“Rab, contain your imagination. This is a library.”
“You know what I mean,” she whispered back secretively, there on the mezzanine. “Everyone in Butte has an opinion about him. What’s yours, Mr. Morgan?”
“It’s too deep to go into. Pull down Pride and Prejudice and see if it has the bookplate.”
She took a peek inside the tanned leather cover and giggled. “It does. Just like on a heifer.” Volume by volume, our library lord’s collection bore the bookplate lettered in bold SSS, with the smaller, uncompromising line below, Property of Samuel S. Sandison. I hadn’t put this together until Rab’s remark, but now my first conversation with the man came back to mind, when he berated me for not knowing that the most famous cattle herd in Montana history had borne the Triple S brand. Leave it to him to put a brandabetical stamp on the world’s literature.
Rabrab—or Miss Rellis, as I had to make myself call her in front of other staff members—was a diligent worker, as we were both going to need to be. Already we each had a heaping armful of exquisite books, and this was only Adams, Arnold, and Austen. As we tottered off to the sorting room, where Sandison had let us set up shop for the inventorying, she marveled: “Say what they will about him, he really does have a soft spot for books, doesn’t he.”
And Ivan the Terrible perhaps loved his staghounds. My private opinion of Sandison, inconstant in the best of times, varied almost hourly during those first busy weeks of summer. He was as demanding as ever in the office chores he foisted onto me, the Earl of Hell with a list in his head, and between those I would dash back to the sorting room to work with Rab on the inventory. Sometimes we would look up and see the snowy beard and cowlick pass by as he came stalking out of his office to stand there on the mezzanine and contemplate the ranks of books on the shelves. When he loomed there in one of these trances, white as a sacred elephant, Rab and I simply detoured around him in our task. I was certain as anything that bibliomania did not mean a maniac loose