Out of the few books I read when I was younger, even fewer left such dinstinct impressions on me. I can't say that I remember any of the autobiographies or novels I was required to read for book reports, but I do remember the very large books my older brother would hand down to me after adding them to his even larger bookshelf. He was the reader of the family, with glasses and a hunched posture. All day i'd be busy seeing how far I could see over the house while jumping on the trampoline, and he'd be seeing how close his nose could get to the page. "It
can't be good for your eyes!" my mother would exclaim at Chadwick, my older brother, as he scampered through a paperback before dinner under a unlit lamp. "I don't see why you would
do that to yourself!" she clicked the light on and he would wince. I never understood how he could sit down and quickly swing through pages like a hunched monkey in the dark wearing a wobbly, dirty pair of glasses.
My few books were action-packed and filled with adventures that would have made Luke Skywalker and Spider-Man proud. The one book about a dragon had full color drawings. Even though the main characters never really looked the same in each illustration, it was still neat. The other one about the aliens made me wish that they had landed next to MY window one night. Each story so eventful and suspensful. Probably nothing like the books Chadwick read.
But there was a time when my older brother was not propped against a pillow turning pages. He seemed to have taken a break between books (which wouldn't last long). I walked into his room to bug him, and to my surprise, he looked up and greeted me. After chattering like brothers, he walked over to his closet and pulled out an unmarked, hardbound, grey and greyish blue book. But the thing he did next probably made my face look like it was covered in cherry pie filling. He walked, with book in hand, towards me and handed me this apparently, mothball of a book. He smiled, looked at me through his dusty glasses and tried to hand it to me. Grimacing at him, then the book like it was some kind of weapon, he stated: "Evan, you have to read this book."
But of course I wanted nothing to do with that boring book of his, it didn't even have a picture on the front, which of course means there are no illustrations inside. But he was ready and countered my comment with the dust cover of the book, which shocked me almost as much as when Vader broke the news to his son. The cover of this book was simple, a vague background with an almost superimposed image of a small girl with short hair wearing an ugly shirt holding her hands in her pockets. I was captivated. "Dakota of the White Flats" was the title, and even though I had no clue what the title meant, I wanted to find out. At that moment, the book sitting in the oustreched hand of my older brother became the first book I would ever really
love.
Though this even may not have been as dramatic as it sounds, I certainly did not let Chadwick know that I was instantly infatuated. After I let him pester me a bit more, I took the book from him and back into my room, laid it on my nightstand and went outside to distract myself for the day. But at bedtime, I forced myself to open the book and start reading. This method of reading before falling asleep was a very slow process, but chopping through the book felt good(even though it would fall to the floor, causing me to lose my spot and start over). There was nothing else in the world I wanted to do when I was reading the canvas-covered silver-edged pages of this master work.
Dakota was the girl on the cover, and the vague background on the dustcover soon came into focus more as I read about her Minnesota apartment complex. She lived with her mother and the landlord in a small, dirty apartment. Her younger neighbor was her best friend and accomplice, riding around in a shopping cart that was souped up with cardboard box wings and other things. Dakota of the white flats would save the day, disposing of the helpless bugs for the Entomophobial landlord who would boss her around and sit on the couch like a fat bird in a nest of potato salad, chips, and beverage cans. He was disturbingly ugly and fat, but I don't know how fat, because he was in my head, wasn't he?
He only existed on the written page, but somehow this book made him seem so real and tangible. This book excited my nerves and spoke to my mind like a movie projector. Every word I read felt like it was some story I had experienced myself. I was in the book myself, riding around with Dakota and her laid back attitude! I looked as cool as she did, caused and solved as many problems as she did, but how I longed to visit her cold, northern home to live in the same apartments with her. The way I read this book took me on a ride Spider-Man could only dream about. Dakota didn't need super powers or magic, she was a hero in real life.
My nights spent reading the book took me late into the night and it was like a right of passage. After finishing at around midnight, I carefully hid the dust cover near my bed to look at it later, and walked into my brother's room to give back the platinum-grey, nobel-blue book he had handed me weeks ago. He was still awake, and looked up at me with surprise as I set the book on his bookshelf, eyed the rest of his books with a pompous glaze, and left the room again quietly. He probably saw the grin on my face as I shut the door on th way out as he commented: "Told you it was good."
That is an understatement, I thought, as I fell asleep staring into the dust cover that night, wishing I was Evan of the Grey Chains, or Evan of the Red Bricks. My time was still spent on the trampoline or watching cartoons after reading that book. But no story or character or place or sidekick or landlord or shopping cart will look, feel, smell, or sound the same as they did in the White Flats.
