The Man in My Basement

tin plates, each broken into different-size segments like a 17

TV-dinner tray, and a portable toilet unit that was to be 18

connected by rubber tubing to a canister designed to 19

empty the contents of the toilet. There was a box of books 20

and various elastic exercising devices. A cigar box held 21

three pens and two pencils with a dozen cream-colored 22

envelopes along with a small ream of blank sheets of 23

notepaper.

24

It seemed as if Anniston Bennet had everything he 25

needed to live in that hole for a very long time.

26

The books were all hardback. The Wealth of Nations, The S 27

Prince, the complete collection of Will and Ariel Durant’s R 28

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Walter Mosley

1

Story of Civilization. Maybe ninety books in all. About fif-2

teen of these were nonfiction (not including the Durants’

3

eleven volumes), and most of these were economic texts 4

and not titles that I knew. The fiction and poetry was of a 5

high quality, for the most part. I recognized The Alexan-6

dria Quartet by Durrell and The Adventures of Huckleberry 7

Finn. He had the collected works of the poet Philip Larkin 8

and Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. Moby Dick was there and 9

a book called Vineland. He also had the Bible and Koran.

10

He had one very large atlas that didn’t have any publica-11

tion information in it. I got the feeling that it was privately 12

published and contained specialized geographic informa-13

tion. Many of the maps were color coded with initials that 14

made no sense to me and were not explained in any table.

15

They were all books that I would’ve liked to have read 16

at some time in the past. I mean that I would’ve liked to 17

know what was in the Bible and the history of the world 18

so when I had arguments with Clarance I could sound 19

smart. But I can’t concentrate on that kind of reading. My 20

mind just drifts when there are too many facts or tough 21

sentences on the page. That’s one of the reasons why I fi-22

nally left college. As long as classes were lectures, I picked 23

up most of what I needed by ear. But as soon as I had to 24

read some heavy text, I was in deep water.

25

There were two sets of powder-blue pajamas decorated 26

by red dashes at all angles to one another. All in all it was 27 S