short stories / By Heidi Walters

The chopper

“Space is our biggest issue,” Winker says. St. Vincent de Paul drops off about 1,000 pounds a week. The Eureka City Schools brought in 6,000 pounds last Monday — they’ll be back in two months with more. The county libraries dump a ton a month. Many books go across the street to a warehouse. Others are piled into a gigantic barrel — free pickings, if you can reach them.

Winker scours the free table. “What is ArcGIS?” — outdated. “Excellence in Leadership” — nobody wants it. Certain preachy works — outta here. “Some covers are pretty derogatory,” Winker says. “Fundamentalism and angry people — that doesn’t do anything for anybody. I kind of shoot that stuff to the chopper. But if it’s got a compassionate aspect to it, if it’s giving — those are the things I want to see in the world. I love spirituality. If it’s a really nice Bible, I tend to enjoy that and I would love to have people have that. International, multi-ethnic books, I keep those. I want people to be exposed to the world. I want people to learn. So, dictionaries I leave out here, too.” Kids’ books in good shape are always keepers. “Look at this one: ‘High Country Adventure’, Winker says, excited. “There’s a raccoon, there’s a canoe, there’s a river — I’m gonna leave that. Some kid, 10 to 13, they’re gonna love that.”

This pick-and-choose method infuriates some people. In an interview last winter, Arcata resident Patsy Givins — a booklover who also sells books online — said she wished the recycling center would make more space for books and hire a librarian to judge their worth.

Inside the chopper room, employee Julius Huck lifts several heavy medical tomes circa 1968, dropped off by HSU, and lays them spine-first against the blade of the three-ton Polar Mohr, a metal behemoth (also circa 1968). Huck pushes a button — crunch, the pages separate from their covers. He tosses the landfill-bound covers in one garbage bin, and the pages — which can be sold as recyclable “office pack” for $170 a ton — in another.

But even here, at the moment of doom, there is occasional reprieve. Two towering stacks of last-minute saves, whose covers caught some chopper operator’s eye, sit on a ledge; they’ll go back to the sale shelves. Winker, pointing to a piece of paper taped to the chopper, says, “We also have a list of wanted books from The Booklegger.”

Huck loads more books. Pushes the button. Crunch. Loads more books.

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