One winter afternoon I was shelving books in the library of Vermont’s high security prison with my inmate assistant Frankie, when I realized that I hadn’t seen the copy of War and Peace in weeks. It never moved because no one ever checked it out.
“Frankie, where’s War and Peace ?” I said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“The big heavy book with a skinny-faced bearded man on the cover. One of the great Russian novels people say they’d read if they were ever marooned on a desert island.”
“Oh, that one,” he said flatly and resumed shelving.
Later, I noticed that two hardcover copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix were gone. This fifth Potter book was the heftiest in the series. The reference shelf also had a gaping space, left by the 1,000-page Oxford Companion to United States History. Now that really frosted my socks - I’d paid $70.00 for it out of the library budget. Over the months the list of stolen hardcovers grew - all too expensive to replace.
Then one spring morning I unlocked the book return and out tumbled piles of hardcovers - super-sized Stephen King novels, the complete Harry Potter, fat anthologies and weighty tomes of history and geography. Buried among them was War and Peace and the gigantic compendium of U.S. history.
“Frankie, can you believe this?” I crowed. “Those books are back! All at once. How weird.” He rolled his eyes.
“There was a shakedown on Delta Unit last night and officers found pillow cases full of ‘em,” he said. “You wanna know what they were using them for?”
“Weren’t they, like, reading them?”
“No way - who would actually read War and Peace or those stupid books about a kid who flies around on brooms?” He paused for effect. “The guys stuff pillow cases with heavy books and pump iron by working out with them in their cells. They always use sand stolen from the yard, but this winter the ground was frozen hard as a rock. Books are the next best thing.”
Frankie had known about this all winter. “This library is like a free buffet that they heap into their baggy jackets and walk away with,” I shouted.
“Welcome to corrections,” said Frankie. “Why sign out a book if you can just take it?” He looked at me with a poker face. “Another thing - it’s never about the book.“
“Oh really?” I said.
“Nope,” said Frankie. “It’s about how much it weighs.”
