They watched him until Easter break, when school let out and they disappeared back into the unknowable depths of their neat houses, and when they saw him on the street headed for a shop or moping on a bench, they cocked their heads quizzically at him, as if to say, Do I know you from somewhere? or, if he was feeling generous, I wonder where you live? The latter was scarier than the former.
For his part, he was heartsick that he turned out not to be half so clever as he’d fancied himself. There wasn’t much money around the mountain that season—the flakes he’d brought down to the assayer had been converted into cash for new shoes for the younger kids and chocolate bars that he’d brought to fill Bradley’s little round belly.
He missed the school library achingly during that week, and it was that lack that drove him to the town library. He’d walked past the squat brown brick building hundreds of times, but had never crossed its threshold. He had a sense that he wasn’t welcome there, that it was not intended for his consumption. He slunk in like a stray dog, hid himself in the back shelves, and read books at random while he observed the other patrons coming and going.
It took three days of this for him to arrive at his strategy for getting his own library card, and the plan worked flawlessly. Bradley pulled the books off the back shelves for the final time, the librarian turned in exasperation for the final time, and he was off and out with the card in his hand before the librarian had turned back again.
Credentialed.
He’d read the word in a book of war stories.
He liked the sound of it.
“What did Krishna do?”
“What do you mean?” She was looking at him guardedly now, but his madness seemed to have past.