Duke was there, his dark hair graying, his beard getting outof control.
I got up, because he was my dealer, he had something topimp, and I could never resist what he was pimping.
I didn’t look at Darius as I passed where he was sittingbecause I might trip or something, which would be so embarrassing, I wouldn’tbe able to deal.I wasn’t sure Mom would accept the excuse of, “I can’t go toschool for the next two years because I tripped in front of a hottie.”
Though, she’d get it, she just wouldn’t accept it.
Dad definitely wouldn’t (and he wouldn’t get it either).
As I made it his way, Duke turned and sauntered deeper intothe bookshelves.
I followed him, thinking I loved the smell of Fortnum’s.Must and dust, the portal to a million different worlds, a cornucopia ofknowledge.
I’d just started hanging with Indy and Ally, mostly becauseI’d started hanging at Fortnum’s, seeing as that’s where the kids hung.
And the first time I went there, I fell in love with it.
Now it was my favorite place on Earth.
Duke moved into a row.
P-Q-R-S, fiction.
I followed him.
When I stopped in front of him, he lifted his hand andoffered me a book.Fahrenheit 451.
I took it even though I said, “We read this in school lastSeptember.”
“Read it again when you don’t have to write a term paper onit.”
I smiled at him.“Is there a difference?”
“There’s reading something because you want to get a goodgrade, and there’s reading something because every person on Earth needs toread it andget it.”
Well, I thought I got the book when I read it, but rightthen, I got him.We shared a love of words.We had a different language thanother people.
Since he knew I understood him, he nodded and took off, asusual (Duke was a man of few words, the spoken kind, the other kind, he hadgazillions to offer).
As was becoming our way, I didn’t follow.
I leaned against the shelves and opened up the book, knowingwhat I’d get.
This time, it was “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel.
Duke always put a sheet of handwritten song lyrics in frontof the books he gave me.He said there was poetry everywhere, you just had tolook for it.
To prove his point, in one of the books he gave me, he onceput a snapshot he took of a fawn and its mother in the forest around his cabinup in Evergreen.It wasn’t the greatest picture of all time.But it was purepoetry.
I read the words of the song.
And at the bottom, I read Duke’s note:
They’ll cut you ‘til you cry out.
Be the boxer.
Remain.
