Devil, No!

We never noticed the art in the library. All those paintings and little sculptures that seemed to come with the walls. The faces blended in the best.

     A child pointed them out the first time. Maybe two years old, just really figuring out that the finger stretched and fixed was able to communicate beyond "I want that." The little one wore a cute yellow slicker wet with rain. His first trip to the library.

     "Devil," the child said and pointed at the faces on the library walls.

     The mother said, "No, baby, that's… Let's ask the librarian."

     "Devil, no!" the child said and hid behind the mother's legs.

     The mom, a nice woman with one of those haircuts that said she would shave it if she could, flagged down the reference librarian. She asked him what those faces were.

     The reference librarian had no idea about the faces she was talking about. The mom held up her child and the kid pointed, shouting, "Devil, no!"

     "Well, that's just weird. I don't think I've even noticed them," the librarian said. He told her they had a book, a binder really, with all the art in the library. He stepped away to get it.

     Thing is, the faces were not in the binder. Sure, there was the fountain sculpture of a book surrounded by sparrows and snakes called "Mountain Calling." The pastoral painting hanging in the children's department called "See No Knowledge" depicting a librarian handing a book to a lion while crows pecked her eyes out was listed. Even the stain on the rug next to the fiction section was noted as "Jackson Pollock Peed Here." But no faces.

     The child began to cry. Long wails that caused heads to turn. The woman decided to take her young one. The librarian offered to call her when he found the answer. He would keep looking. She glanced at the faces and gave a firm, "No" that told the librarian he should look no further and never tell a soul.

     The reference librarian asked the longest employed person, a page who used a book cart as a walker, about the faces. The page said that he had never noticed them, not since he began shelving books to save money to join the war.

     The library director said the same. All the employees did. Until the child, no one had noticed the faces hanging above them yet at the same time no one was surprised. The faces seemed natural. A part of the whole library.

     "Maybe I'll decorate them for holidays," the children's librarian said.

     Without thinking, the reference librarian said, "Devil. No."