Here Lies the Indie Book Store

It really felt like a funeral. I walked into the local independent bookstore in my small hometown this afternoon to a sombre scene. Many of the displays had already been disassembled or sold. What shelves remained looked like shelves at a Texas grocery store when they call for snow; disheveled, with wide empty spaces between the things nobody wanted. I couldn’t believe it when my mom had sent me a note telling me the store was closing. It had happened to many independent businesses in our little corner of the world as first one, then another multinational chain moved in. But for many years since the globalization of retail, it always seemed like our little bookstore, my little bookstore, was immune. But here was the sign in the window. Closing. Save 25% or more on all in store merchandise.

The same bell tinkled above the door when I walked in as it had when I arrived at 11 p.m. before the midnight release of the last Harry Potter book, or the second last, or the one before that. The same bell had chimed when I got my first job and had disposable income burning holes in my pockets, which I used to buy my very own set of The Lord of the Rings. That was the bell my wife heard when I first gave her a guided tour of my favourite spots, years ago when we were first dating. The little shop must have been something before it was my local independent bookstore, but I don’t remember a time before it.

This time when the bell tinkled, Roxanne, the owner and namesake of Roxanne’s Reflections Book & Card Shop, looked up from where she was at a shelf, trying to keep some semblance of order to her rapidly emptying shop. She beamed when she saw me, and she does whenever she sees a familiar face – and in a town our size, all faces are familiar. She asked me how I was, and I told her. Devastated, I said. I couldn’t believe it. She nodded knowingly, the smile never leaving, and remarked that it was time to move on to the next thing, whatever that may be. We passed the time for a while, as we have hundreds of times before. I told her I had to come back, though I no longer live in town, to say goodbye and to buy a few more books. It wasn’t enough to say; though I was surrounded by books full of them, I found that words escaped me. I think she knows I meant to say thank you.

I wandered the store a while and found some things to take among the remains of a once bountiful collection. I picked up a book of poetry and a novel for myself, and a novel for Angela by an author she likes. I gave a long last look as I walked out the door, the bell tinkling above my head, a lump rising in my throat that still hasn’t settled. It seemed my childhood, my small town upbringing, was still alive somewhere in that shop; but now I will never go back. Roxanne’s bookstore was a safe space, before such things were discussed and politicized as they are today. It was where a young boy, more interested in theatre than sports, apt to spend every daylight hour on a summer day with his nose in a book, went to discover wonders. It was where a young man took the girl who would be his wife to tell her, look, this is who I am.

I can get books anywhere now. I am not bound by the imaginary radius from my house which my parents deemed it safe for me to walk alone. I have a car, and within minutes I can be at a massive store run by a national chain filled with tens of thousands of books. I can even order books online and have someone brings them to me. I can ask strangers or even robots for recommendations based on things I have read before, and they are often right on the mark. But something tells me, for the rest of my life, whenever I smell the unmistakable scent of new books, I will hear the tinkle of a bell and feel at home.