The Reluctant Librarian

Being a man of few needs and less wants, it wasn't surprising that Cap was as confirmed a bachelor as you were likely to find in the small village. 

He'd been island born and raised, fought in France when he was barely eighteen, joined the merchant marines for a number of years, and then came home just in time to take over the ferry between Brier and Long Islands. He was a short, stocky man with salt and pepper hair, a neatly trimmed beard and a gift for silence.  When he did speak, his directness could be disarming - the reticent old sailor didn't have the patience to mince words or waste time - and even though it took some years, the island women eventually realized that he was likely to be a lost cause for even their concentrated matchmaking.

He took up residence in a two room vacation cottage overlooking the cove - had winterized it himself his second summer home - adding a hot plate kitchenette and a tiny deck where he could sit in his rocking chair and look out to sea in the evenings, two old hound dogs and a tinny sounding portable radio his only company.
He liked to read and count the stars, he told Miss Clara who came once every two weeks to clean.

Although I can't see why, she confided to my grandmother, I declare the man keeps the cleanest house I've ever seen, why, it's fair military neat!  Ain't gon' surprise one little bit if them dogs salute one of these days!

Sometimes, he told her, they's things that kin use a woman's touch.  Though I ain't one of 'em.

So every other Saturday, Clara rode her paint pony to the small cottage and spent her morning polishing the already polished and dusting the already dusted while Cap smoked his pipe and read on the little front porch or slipped into his navy jacket and took the dogs for a long haul walk.  They fell into an easy though pretty much wordless routine - Clara would always tell him good morning and Cap would always nod - anything more was like pulling teeth.  She left promptly with the noon whistle.

Good lookin' pony, he'd once said and startled her out of a year's growth.

And when the boxes of books started arriving, See somethin' you like, ma'am, just take 'er with you.  Don't reckon I'll live long enough to read 'em all.

More words'n he's said in a month, Clara told Nana cheerfully, That man's a pure readin' fool.

There were novels and biographies, books of poetry and crossword puzzles, historical accounts of sea battles and textbooks on philosophy and religion.  There were books about art and music and architecture and travel. The mail car brought a new box every month, carefully taped and packaged, and Cap walked to the post office and back, carrying them as if they were gold.  He wrote each and every title on an index card and filed the cards in shoe boxes.  After the first year, there were so many books he was obliged to build bookshelves to accommodate them.  After the second, he had to add a room.  On specially clear and starry nights, he would sometimes bring out his old squeeze box and play snatches of sea shantys.  The music drifted lightly like smoke across the water, reaching as far away as the village square and bringing a smile to anyone who heard.  There was something distantly romantic and dark about it, much like the man himself, we thought, a mystery made of books and music and foreign-ness.  His solitariness was quietly lonely and reclusive.

Do that man a world of good to open a library, Clara observed one afternoon, There's a sight more to life than books.

The casual remark was overheard by the schoolteacher, a dedicated young man always in search of new and inventive ways to interest his restless students, and in record time he was at Cap's door.  It took some gentle persuasion but my summer's end, the lending library was in full swing and parents and children all over the island began individual journeys of discovery.

The library was open to all but Cap remained a mystery and a bachelor.