early morning, grey pines

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EARLY MORNING,

GREY PINES

Short fiction by

SCOTT C. MARTIN



Early Morning, Grey Pines – 2010 - Written by Scott C. Martin

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution-

NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License . This means you are free

to share this story with whomever you wish, and reproduce the

story for any non-commercial purpose. I really wish you would.

I would be delighted to hear your feedback and suggestions for

improvement at my website .

You may also re- write it if you didn’t like it, and distribute the

reproduction for any non-commercial purpose.

Please attribute Scott C. Martin with any redistribution or

remixing. I really do appreciate your time and attention.

The front image “ Patrons reading in the reading room of the

University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan ” by Lewis

Wickes Hine is in the public domain. It is available at the Library of

Congress Website .

Visit Scott’s website soon for more free stories.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/




http://www.scmartin.com/contact-scott/




http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2007684793




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1

s. Jenkins had a feeling. Behind the circulation

desk, she focused on checking in the overnight

books as she did every morning. She couldn'tescape the nagging suspicion, however, that her quiet

morning was about to be disrupted.

She was usually right, and it usually happened the same

way, so she couldn't help but let a sigh escape when she heard

the door of the Grey Pines city library rush open. A warm

breeze, swept over the great plains, followed.

Cue the gasp, thought Ms. Jenkins.

A man standing in the doorway wheezed in a great breath.

Cue the muffled sob.

The man covered his mouth and stifled a shuddering,

emotional exhalation.

M



SCOTT C. MARTIN

2

Ms. Jenkins cracked her arthritic knuckles, and smoothed

out the front of her floral-print dress. She hadn't had to

endure one of these visits for some months. With June freshly

begun, however, the summer season was sure to bring more

of them.

The visitor was in his late thirties or early forties, and was

nicely groomed (as they all tended to be). The grey flecks at

his temples belied a boylike face. As was usual for these

visitors, thought Ms. Jenkins, he seemed even more boylike

with his face filled with awe and wonder."Have you been to the watertower yet?" said Ms. Jenkins,

realizing that she would be shattering his moment of inspired

reverie.

The man turned his head sharply, as if genuinely

surprised to see another person in the library. "Yes, I just

came from there."

"I remember him as a little boy, always climbing that

damned thing," said Ms. Jenkins, turning her eyes back to her



EARLY MORNING, GREY PINES

3

stacks of books. "He wasn't kidding when he wrote about

that."

The man approached the circulation desk. "I wanted to

climb it, too."

"The security fence went up a few years ago, so we've

had fewer accidents since then." Ms. Jenkins looked up at the

man, arching her eyebrow.

"It's just as beautiful as he described it," whispered the

man. Ms. Jenkins could see from the man's damp cheeks that

he'd probably been reliving his childhood all morning. Ishould be more gentle, she thought. After all these years, I

should really be more gentle.

Behind her, from the administrative office, a loud rip of

celluloid tape sounded through the door. Ms. Jenkins knew

that fans of the town's most famous former resident weren't

dangerous, but she was happy nonetheless that her younger

assistant was in the back, repairing books. She liked not being

alone.



SCOTT C. MARTIN

4

"Let me show you around," said Ms. Jenkins.

She walked slowly around the desk, the tall man inching

nervously around while he waited.

"What was he like?" said the man.

"What was who like?" said Ms. Jenkins.

"Why, Arch Weston, of course!"

Grey Pines was memorialized in loving, intimate detail in

Arch Weston's stories of the fantastic, well known to science

fiction and fantasy fans who grew up during the fifties and

sixties. The fictional Hadley Town was a street-for-streetreplica of Grey Pines, with the watertower and library

figuring most prominently.

"He was an ass," said Ms. Jenkins. She smiled at the

visitor. "But he was an inspired ass.""I don't believe that," said the man, appearing though he'd

been punched in the solar plexus.




5

"It's all right. Would you believe me if I told you

Hemingway was a jerk, too?"

"You knew Hemingway?" said the visitor, stopping.

"No, but that's what I read," said Ms. Jenkins, stopping in

the middle of the most open area of the library. In the

octagonal structure of the small building, the stacks were

arranged like blades of a fan; from the center of the library,

nearly every window could be seen between the great

shelves.

After fifty years, thought Ms. Jenkins, it's still somethingto behold. Predictably, the visitor gasped again.

"My God, it's the wheel of knowledge!" said the visitor.

"The very mill of time, and we're in center of the hub!"

"You're referring to The Axis, I assume," said Ms.

Jenkins, name-checking one of Arch Weston's most famous

stories.

In The Axis, a lone astronaut flies into the far reaches of

space, his only diversion a central, rotating library in the



SCOTT C. MARTIN

6

center of the starship. As dimentia overtakes him, the

astronaut imagines himself at the outer edge of all

knowledge, and he struggles to reach the center.

Weightlessness has atrophied his muscles, however, and the

artificial gravity of the hub is the only thing keeping him

from reaching the center. The struggle becomes a poeticodyssey in the mind of a lonely, crazy man who has read

thousands of books in his years of solitude.

"Yes! What's in the center... the answer is here, isn't it?"

said the man.Ms. Jenkins stepped to one of the shelves and grabbed a

book. "The answer is... Horticulture for Dummies. Yes, I

suppose that lonely astronaut could have used that book."

The visitor, undaunted, slowly pivoted on his heel, taking

in the sum of the panoramic view. "You can see the water

tower from here," he said.

"Yes, you can see virtually everything in the city limits

from here," said Ms. Jenkins. "Including the water tower."




7

The stranger thumbed a paperback protruding from his

jacket pocket. "The Passenger," he said.

"Not one of my favorites, actually," said Ms. Jenkins. "I

never bought that a bookish boy, running from bullies, would

be able to hide use a water tower to hide from them. I always

thought that climbing up a tall structure tended to make one

more visible."

"I figured it was just a narrative tool," said the visitor,

surprising Ms. Jenkins with his sudden coherence. "The

important part of the story is how he tries to contact the aliencivilization, to get picked up in a flying saucer to take him

away from...."

"From this fine city?" interrupted Ms. Jenkins. "From the

pack of young jocks constantly hassling him? Why doesn't

anybody think that story is simply about the bullies? Or

arson?"

The man looked away. At the end of The Passenger, the

bullies set the water tower alight with the boy on top of it.



SCOTT C. MARTIN

8

They didn't actually believe that a water tower could burn,

but merely hoped to scare the boy. But burn it did. After the

fire brigade put out the flames, they aren't able to find any

trace of the bookish boy. He is never seen in Hadley Town

again.

"Because the aliens rescue him, and that's the critical

point of the story," said the visitor.

"People have actually done doctoral theses on what

happens at the end of that story," said Ms. Jenkins. "How can

you be so sure that's what happened?"Across the library, the tape dispenser rattled loudly.

Another book needed repair.

"Well," said the visitor, searching for a defense, "did you

ever ask him what happened?"

"Weston? No. I'd sooner ask my dentist what happens at

the end of a tooth extraction. Nothing could be more

obvious."




9

The man shifted in place. Ms. Jenkins sighed. "Look,

Arch Weston was just a kid. A picked-on kid. Then he

became a man. A formerly picked-on man. It's to be expected

that his revenge fantasies were a little goofy."

"Revenge fantasies? But he loved this town," said the

visitor.

"Sure he did," said Ms. Jenkins, her voice softening. "He

really did."

"I've never loved anything the way Arch Weston loved

this town," said the man, swallowing, "except his books.They made me feel less alone. They made me feel like

someone knew what I was experiencing." He looked at Ms.

Jenkins, his eyes moist.

"Well, we get that a lot here," said Ms. Jenkins. "Don't

mind me, kid. No one can ever take that away from you. Not

even Arch Weston's old librarian." She patted the man's

shoulder warmly.

"Thank you," said the vistitor under his breath.



SCOTT C. MARTIN

10

"I suppose you want to see the seat. Everybody does."

The man nodded. Weston wrote most of his early stories

from a particular library seat in a ritual documented in Words

In The Belfry, his book of collected essays. In the essay,

Weston described a simple desk in the sunlight, far away

from the circulation desk.

Ms. Jenkins didn't have to show the visitor. From the axis

of the stacks, the hub of all knowledge, the desk was quite

obvious.

Tucked against a window, the table was as simple as ithad been described. Two wooden chairs, beaten and

scratched, sat on either side of the table. The man approached

the chair, Ms. Jenkins at his heels. A small plaque had been

fastened to the wall next to the desk, reading: "The home of

Arch Weston's best ideas."

"It's beautiful," said the man, running his fingers over the

top of the chair. "Thank you."




11

"Stay as long as you like," said Ms. Jenkins, "and enjoy

your stay in Grey Pines."

The man nodded and sat down slowly as Ms. Jenkins

returned to her circulation desk.

"Oh, Miss?" said the visitor. Ms. Jenkins stopped. "You

don't happen to know where he lives now do you?"

"He keeps a residence in Los Angeles now," said Ms.

Jenkins, continuing on her way.

At the circulation desk, she grabbed the next book on her

pile and checked it into the computer. She noted thetownspeople's names as they flashed on the screen, names she

had known all her life. The books reflected patterns of taste

that never seemed to change.

Ms. Higby returned another mystery.

Sully Thompson wanted to know how to repair a

lawmower motor.



SCOTT C. MARTIN

12

Mr. Bothan had just enjoyed Pride and Prejudice for the

umpteenth time.

The computer beeped at the next book, indicating an

overdue return. Ms. Jenkins looked at the book. Words in the

Belfry by Arch Weston had arrived two days past its due date.

She looked at the borrower's name, sighed, and marched back

into the library office. Her assistant ripped another piece of

tape out of the dispenser.

"An ethical dilemma," said Ms. Jenkins, pulling the door

closed behind her. "Do I charge a late fee on a book when theauthor himself has returned it late?"

"Depends," said Arch Weston, applying tape carefully to a

ripped anthology. "Is that author still bringing tourist money

to his flea-bit home town, or is the town librarian scaring all

of the tourists off?"

"Ass," said Ms. Jenkins.




13

"Don't blow my cover," said Weston without peering up

from his work. "I can't write unless I'm sitting back here

undisturbed, you know."

"Get your work done and we don't have a problem, do

we?" said Ms. Jenkins, opening the door.

"Just because I'm twenty years younger than you doesn't

mean this is any easier for an old man," said Weston. "And

they don't make books as tough as they used to."

"You don't write as well as you used to, and yet I still let

you work here," whispered Ms. Jenkins. "It's all relative, Ithink."

She turned to leave, then stopped. Stepping back in the

office, she closed the door again.

"Hey, what did happen to that kid on the water tower?"

asked Ms. Jenkins.

"He was picked up by aliens and taken away from this

fine city," said Arch Weston, smiling up from the half-



SCOTT C. MARTIN

14

repaired book. "It's the point of the whole story. Nothing

could be more obvious."

early morning, grey pines

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