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Friday the 13th.

I’m sore. My right leg is heavy. I raise it like it is not really a part of my body. I swing it to the right, off the bed and set it down on the floor. Now the rest of me follows, and I rise gingerly. Erect, I take a tentative step. Like a machine loosening its sluggish unlubricated gears, one leg follows the other in baby steps. The right leg lags behind. After a minute or two, the parts begin moving better, though there is still a hitch in my giddyup.

It is the seventh day of my debilitation.

The plastic surgeon told me yesterday the 3-inch smile shaped cut on my forehead won’t leave a scar, so it doesn’t need his intervention.

“Keep it covered from the sun all summer.”

So, I’ll be wearing a hat for the foreseeable future once the big bandage is off.

When I got home with the freshly groomed Giles after that appointment, I forced myself to empty the rest of the mulch off the Ram pickup. Since I have fewer vehicles in play now, I needed to get that one freed up. It was half full. I was able to drag most of it off with an iron rake. The last bit was difficult, as I had to get up into the bed of the truck to shovel it. Not easy one-legged. But I had an old metal milk crate as a step, and clambering up, although not graceful, was not too painful.

Giles looks about half as big as before.

The grooming didn’t go well. I was told he “alligator rolled” and was aggressive when they tried to shave his back legs and feet. I had warned them that he had never been groomed before and had issues about his back legs. He is a rescue dog, and I think he was abused, especially on his hind legs and flanks. Since I inherited him about two years ago, he has become much calmer and better behaved. At night, he curls up onto my feet when I sit on the couch to watch tv.

It has been a lost week with medical stuff and insurance and the usual ever increasing influx of books at Wonder Book.

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SATURDAY, June 7

In the ER. It is nearing noon. The car crash was around 9:30.

Bad luck. But lucky it wasn’t worse. The old Jeep is totaled, I’m sure.

There’s a cut on my forehead, but no stitches needed. “It might leave a scar.” The bloody nose was a mess but is better now. My right knee is stiff, but I can walk on it ok.

This is my second visit to an ER ever. The first was in Amsterdam over 6 months ago. I’m on a roll. I hope the roll is not all downhill from here.

I’m waiting for the results of the X-ray on my knee and the CT scan on my head.

Maybe then I can get picked up and go to work.

I’m glad the dogs are ok. Giles and Merry were in the car with me.

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Damn! Another interruption. Another medical interaction. After the shock of impact subsided, I called 911. A sheriff came first. I was standing outside the car in the high grass. He asked if I was ok. Asked what happened.

The ambulance was there soon. When I knew I’d be taken to the hospital, I reached out to neighbors to see if one of them could get the dogs up to the pen at the house. The first two weren’t home. The third that I don’t know well was at work, but said his wife and daughter would come and do it. That was a relief. I didn’t want them going to the county’s animal control services.

The ride in the ambulance was uneventful. The first responder checked my vitals. He also wiped the blood off my face, neck and hands. He gave me an alcohol wipe to clean the tiny blood spots off my phone. Must have splashed drops when I was calling 911 and texting family.

Blood was still dripping from my nose like a leaky faucet. The dark red shirt I was wearing was black with blood that night.

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I’m anxious to go.

I’ve been seen by 6 or 7 people in my little room. ER room 48. Everyone has been so nice. Police, ambulance driver and attendant, various ER staff. I hate being an inconvenience.

Everything went so fast… until now.

I was supposed to go to see Paul Simon at Wolf Trap tonight. I left home, and all was normal. Then I remembered I’d need the EZ Pass maybe. I was 15 minutes from home. I turned around to get it. I should have just paid the photo “fine.”

Stupid.

The road was wet from rain. I came to a curve. A deer ran out. I braked, swerved and skidded off the road. The Jeep bounced on the grassy verge. The tall wet grass was slick as ice. Brakes and steering had no effect. I thought it might turn out ok until the telephone pole loomed straight ahead.

Boom!

Hit it straight on.

Well, I’m in the lobby waiting for my ride. I’ll go to the warehouse and see what I can do.

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Monday

A pea-soup fog out on the mountain. The gardens and acres of ferns on the forest floor compete with the gray air. The ground has a kind of fairy feel—a green glow. Magic.

I slept well and long. My right leg raised on a pillow. Lots of dreams. One was about competing at checkout in a grocery store. Weird excuses from other customers for cutting in front of me.

My body is a little sore. My nose still tender. My reading glasses get caught up in the bandage and tape covering the smile-shaped cut on my right temple.

My first car wreck. I’ve been rear-ended a couple times, but I’ve never crashed before.

I got to the warehouse about 10 on Sunday. My first post-wreck shower took some time. Dressing the wound on my forehead in the mirror was a little complex.

What to wear?

Sweatpants would be easiest.

Was this a good idea? Going in, I mean.

Saturday, I got a ride from the hospital to the warehouse where I had left the Explorer. I decided to work some and see how it would go. I managed a couple hours before my leg hurt so much I had to limp to the car and drive home. I’d managed a decent number of carts, but there were so many backed up. At home, it was all I could do to get the dogs inside. Then I took some cans of water and went to bed. When I had to get up for water or relief, it was excruciating.

Despair.

I took a leftover painkiller. (I’d refused painkillers in the hospital. The pain was only at “2” there.) Who knew it would get much worse when the shock wore off?

I had no interest in food or looking at my phone or computer. John Dickson Carr and London got me through the night. I would read for a while and then doze. Read. Doze. All night.

On Sunday, I raised my right leg and swung it over the edge of the bed and then sat up. I pushed up on the leg and then gingerly put down the right leg.

Not bad.

I could walk!

Slowly, I got things together and eventually got to the warehouse about 10.

There were 50 or 60 carts filled and waiting for attention.

I thought working from a rolling chair might be a good idea. But bending my knee really hurts. You can’t rise or sit without bending your knee.

I stood for 6 hours. It wasn’t bad. Partly because the books were so great. I focused on the carts holding mostly old and antiquarian books. Those have a simple blue slip of paper with “Chuck” printed on them. I wasn’t shy about asking the people working there to bring carts or boxes or other supplies to the area where I was working.

The finds were astonishing. A Fitzgerald first. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Signed Stieglitz. Anne of Green Gables—a second edition, but in great shape. Lots more.

Damn, it was fun. It helped take my mind off the uncertainty of what the workweek would bring.

Maybe my favorite find was The Faerie Queene. It is just a Limited Editions Club version. I’m not a big fan of those big awkward, often forgotten works. Most collectors aren’t either. The current demand is very low for most LECs. Maybe it is a good time to invest? They are usually attractive and sometimes strikingly beautiful.

There was also Oscar of the Waldorf, which “Oscar of the Waldorf” signed “Oscar”. (I miss the Waldorf. I guess that life is over.)

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Tuesday. Three nights of blessed rest. Ten hours in bed with my leg raised on a pillow. It was wonderful.

Please dawn don’t come
Let this calm silent black night continue
Rest and warmth and sleep
My mind can wander
There’s no pressure, worry or danger
Nowhere to go
No one to talk to
Peace and sleep
Nothing moves
Even my breath is soundless
I’m not needed
Time is suspended
I don’t know the hour
There’s nothing to care about
Just slip in and out of dreams
My eyes closed or open see the same
There’s peace in nothingness

I’m not sleeping straight through all those long hours. If I need to rise to get more water or get rid of water, I’ll slowly swing my right leg up and over the side of the bed. The left follows. I test the floor and both legs then lean forward and rise. When I return, I perform the tentative ritual in reverse.

To get back to sleep, I read sometimes. I started a new Carter Dickson (a pseudonym of John Dickson Carr) after the wreck. A Graveyard to Let. We’re in New York City and then a New York exurb so far. It is 1949. (A previous bookseller penciled in 1959.) I’m already engaged with the characters. The protagonist so far (Carr can surprise you quite often. “What’s fair is foul. What’s foul is fair.”) is a book collector. His older, cynical socialite, daughter mentally complains about his habits.

Across the broad hall from the drawing room was the library, three of its walls lined to the ceiling with second hand books. If [he] had collected first editions, [she] could have understood. But they were merely old and often half ruined books, because her father said he could never be comfortable with a new book in his hands.

My kind of guy!

Later, he quotes Browning to his daughter, who is complaining about the woman he is seeing. (His wife had been dead 18 years.)

“What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more that’s all;
Cram in a day what his youth took a year to hold.
When we mind labour, then only we’re too old—”

Further on, Carr’s “detective” asks the lawyer friend of the family why he’s being so “ruddy energetic” about jumping into the swimming pool.

“I don’t know, to be bright and fresh for work, I suppose. Work is all, or so they tell us.”

It is a fun distraction to get lost in another world and time. My minds gets disengaged from the present… difficulties… and soon I can switch the reading light off and go back to dreamland.

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It is Wednesday morning. Much of the week has been lost in phone calls and changing plans.

I had a single ticket to see Paul Simon on Saturday night. That’s why I had turned around and headed back after getting a few miles toward work. I thought I might need the EZ Pass to get to Wolf Trap. If only… Turns out, the EZ Pass was at the warehouse all the time. All this could have been avoided. But who knows? Maybe fate has it reasons—The Bridge of San Luis Rey and all.

Something worse might have happened.

I tried to get someone to take the ticket from the accident scene, the ambulance and the emergency room. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going even before I knew the extent of my injuries. My first symptom was the blood dripping from my nose like a leaky faucet. The knee pain hadn’t started yet.

Monday, I canceled the flight and hotel for Portland, Oregon. I was going there for the rare book show but also to see West Coast friends I hadn’t seen since COVID and, also, I’d never been there.

I didn’t hear back from the insurance company until after 5 pm. I was just too tired to return the call.

I’d gone to the lot of the towing company that took my car. The sheriff who responded had taken care of that. It wasn’t far from the warehouse. The place was right out of central casting. “Big Tow.” Really. Nice guy in charge. Covered in tats. Very rough chain-link fenced “yard” littered with dead autos. After I’d proved my identity, he let me get my stuff out of the Jeep.

Saturday’s dog food. Sunglasses. A lot of quarters for parking meters… stuff in the glove compartment and console cubby…

Then to Walmart for a prescription and some stuff that the ER said I should put on my head wound when I changed bandages. I was low on dog food and liverwurst—which makes Pip gobble up his pills twice a day. I was also low on canned fizzy water and electrolyte drinks that help if I feel cramps coming on after different strenuous exertions with underused muscles during the day. When I got home, the dogs were thrilled to see me. They’d had a rough weekend too. I was so glad the two that were in the car with me weren’t injured.

I was very lucky to find a neighbor at home who agreed to come to the accident and take the dogs up to their pen. I had some farfetched idea the sheriff might drive me up there before I went to the ER. I was only a mile from home. Bleeding from my nose and forehead, I’m sure he thought that was a bad idea for many reasons.

“I’ll have to call Animal Control.”

Oh no! They’d hate that. I’d have the additional complexity added to my short-term future.

My knee was very sore after a long Monday. (Not as sore as Saturday night when I could barely rise, much less take steps.)

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Perhaps TMI, but there are activities made much more difficult when a leg bend and sitting and rising really hurts. When I was visiting the John Soane House at 13 Lincoln’s Inns Field in London a couple weeks ago, I walked down the narrow stairway to the cellar to use the WC. (It was literally a small closet.) The porcelain throne was an original Crapper!

It almost didn’t seem right to use such a venerable antique for its intended purpose. But I guess they’re designed to last forever.

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I made it clear to the dogs I wouldn’t romp with them and set about bringing the stuff in. The three steps up the side porch were daunting, so I carried the bag of dog food, grocery bags, cases of drinks and set them on the porch so I could do the steps empty-handed.

I had no appetite. I forced myself to chop some lettuce and heat a bit of leftover steak from last week.

I was in bed by 7, mostly to get my leg raised but also from the exhaustion that was descending on me like dusk. I was close to the end of another Carr mystery, but could only read a few paragraphs before dozing off. I’d wake with a start, but after a couple of paragraphs, I’d be gone again. I finally surrendered and closed my eyes after switching off the reading light.

Tuesday was quite different. I engaged with 5 or 6 insurance people who had different responsibilities with my claim.

Wednesday should be a big day. First to the accountant, to write a couple of checks that will cause at least as much as much pain my knee does. Then to my regular doctor. My knee seems to be on the mend. I’m concerned about the cut on my forehead. It is at least 3 inches long and shaped like a smile. The ER doc said it might leave a scar. That would be weird. Can anything be done to avoid that?

The contractor is coming to install 40 or 50 bookcases in Gaithersburg. That should be the last big phase. Finally, we can proceed with the final layout for the venerable place. His arrival there will likely conflict with my doctor’s appointment, so I’ll have to work with him remotely. I’m sending a crew down there to assist.

It will be another “interesting” day.

I wonder if the gods are warning me to slow down. While aspects of my work are fun and gratifying, so much of my life seems to be at a manic pace. I’m a tool of Wonder Book to be used for as many purposes as could possibly be squeezed in some days.

But I’m no quitter!

The accountant was upset with the big bandage on my forehead. That didn’t stop them from making me write two huge checks for taxes. And these are just the first installments!

Now, I’m at the doctor’s office waiting to be seen. They texted me on Monday saying they saw I had been in the ER and asking was I ok. I thought I was, so I replied, “I’m ok.” Thinking about it, I thought maybe I should get checked out. My knee hurts, but I think it is getting better. The cut on my forehead is drying up. There was no blood on the bandage this morning, but I’m concerned about a scar. It is shaped like a “smile.” There are many reasons why one should not have a second smile on their face—especially a permanent smile. Someone with a permanent smile appears a little “crazy.”

I get a lot communications from people wanting to know the value of their books or to sell them or to just get rid of them.

This picture came in on Instagram with the question, “Do you buy books?”

“Yes. What city are they in?” Geography is important. These appeared to be common old books, but maybe we could use them in Books by the Foot.

The reply was: “UK Been told there werth abit like” [sic]

My reply: “Not for us. Plenty of booksellers over there. Wish I had better news.”

Never a reply or thank you. Probably thought I was incompetent.

Should I still be doing this?

It took forever to get in to see the doctor. Plus, I’d gotten there 45 minutes early to fill out insurance forms.

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A lost day after a lost week after the previous lost week…

It is Thursday. June 12th. I should be packing for Portland. I was looking forward to seeing old friends mostly. But I’ve never been there or to Powell’s. One friend assured me, “Portland is sane again and much prettified…”

(It’ll be nice when I can bend my knee again. It is hard to write in bed unless the laptop is propped up on my knees.)

Too bad. I’ve never canceled trips, but in the last two years, family matters and injuries have forced me to cancel at least 4 trips.

We had 50 or so bookcases installed at Gaithersburg on Wednesday. We can finally complete the final category layouts. History and military categories will get large expansions.

The 5 for $5 section is huge. We got a very big collection of old Jewish books in—from a rabbi, I think. Most are tough to sell and can’t go to Books by the Foot. Maybe we can get a buck for some.

The kids’ books section is growing astronomically. I’m proud of that. It is a kind of evangelism. I didn’t understand that until I had kids. (I didn’t understand a lot of things about the world until I had kids.)

The outdoor painting finally got started.

When the window covering signs are installed, the venerable old Book Alcove’s latest incarnation will really “POP”! This experience has been like opening a new bookstore. Lots of stress and expense, time and labor, worry and brainstorming. I think it will become a great and memorable bookstore. I’m targeting it with a lot of great books that in the past would have been put online.

We’re not done yet!

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On Tuesday, so much of the day was eaten up with insurance matters and other distractions that it was mid afternoon before I got out on the floor.

“We are out of boxes?” I asked in disbelief. There were no empty boxes for me to use. Zero. Anywhere.

“They were all taken.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?”

“He doesn’t listen to us.”

!!!!

“What about the backup flats?”

(We’ve always kept a tall stack or two of cut-down boxes that can be quickly taped together.)

“We used them up.”

“We crush hundreds of those every day.”

No crying over spilt milk. But you try to prevent further leaks.

Inside, I was furious. But a screaming boss is not effective in the long run. I learned this from experience. (Observing other booksellers at work—LOL.)

I became “Book-adier General” Chuck and pulled troops from their regular duties and assigned ways to generate empty boxes. The company cannot function without them. This was not only a distraction, but also a waste of time and money.

There had not been a single empty box in the building. In a couple hours, there were a couple hundred. Enough to get through the day. But a logjam had already begun, and it will take a few days and a lot of extra work on my part to get back to equilibrium.

“I don’t need extra work,” I texted the culprit who had stripped us clean. I avoided using ALL CAPS, but made my point clear.

So between doctor appointments and insurance calls, texts and emails and other necessities, I limped out onto the sales floor and sorted books.

“The Memoirs of Robert E. Lee. A nice copy.”

“And a signed note from Longstreet tipped in?!”

One degree of separation from just about everyone in the leadership of the Civil War.

When Robert Maxwell was filing Gettysburg (based on the iconic novel The Killer Angels) near us in 1993, many of the actors would visit the stores—especially the Hagerstown store. Maxwell was a customer too.

If the battle was the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy”, the movie was the high water mark of historical interest and the huge cult of re-enactors of the era.

When the movie came out on VHS, I don’t know how many copies we brought in for rent. It was a huge hit—especially in our region. We’d have lines out the door for releases like this.

Though the stores have rebounded from the Great Bookstore Purge around the turn of the millennium, there’s nothing physical being released like that which brings people out to us in droves anymore.

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This week, we were also tagged in this fun Instagram story by a designer who picked out the books from our stores:

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It has been a hot week. Thursday was the first in the 90s.

My Jeep was condemned, and I went to retrieve the license plate from the junkyard yesterday.

I’m glad the dogs weren’t hurt.

Poor old Jeep.

Skinny Giles is melted in the bed next to me. He’s become a great companion. At night, I’ll often reach over and give him a pat or a rub. It is comforting for both of us.

Maybe the scalping will mitigate some of the shedding he does—EVERYWHERE.

It will cool off a bit over the weekend. Then summer will be settling in.

I wonder when I’ll be able to get out and work in the forest again?

I wonder what the future holds for me.

Maybe this was a wake up call, a warning shot, a cannon ball over my bow.

“I resolve to… I dunno.”

My weekend will certainly be chipping away at the enormous backlog of old books.

What else is there?

I do resolve to do anything I can to avoid needless exercises like being the Lord of the Boxes.