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knowledge about some particular thing—the history of the carrier pigeon, for example, or the terra-cotta soldiers of Emperor Qin, or the life cycle of skinks. These self-taught experts were then questioned by renowned authorities in the field. The audience rooted for the commoners, as they always have.
    “You should watch it with me tonight,” Jeremy’s father said. “They’ve got a woman who knows everything about chasing tornadoes.”
    “What we need is somebody who knows everything about dodging foreclosures.”
    His father seemed not to have heard. “Tornado chasing could be real interesting.” He smiled hopefully at Jeremy. “You’ll watch it, won’t you?”
    “I’ll try,” Jeremy said again. “But it’s finals week.”
    His father’s eyes faded slightly, and he slowly raked his fingers through his unkempt beard. “Okay,” he said. I believed I knew what troubled him. He was afraid that Jeremy would go away to a university and leave him alone. But that is the way of the world, is it not? Every day a child steps away from the parent by the littlest distance, perhaps just the width of a mouse-whisker, but every day it happens, and the days go by, one after another after another.
    So Jeremy sat at the long table in the other room, removed his shoes and stockings so that he could feel the age-worn Persian carpet underfoot, and opened his books. After studying geometry, there was world history, but then he folded his book over a finger and whispered, “Jacob?”
    Yes?
    “What do you think of Ginger Boultinghouse?”
    What I thought was that she was a saucy girl whose saucy ways could become a distraction from Jeremy’s studies. But over my long life as a mortal I had learned that it is best to answer such questions as positively as the truth will allow.
    She does not allow herself to be bullied by Conk Crinklaw and his friends
, I said,
and she is kind to Frank Bailey. I think well of her for those things
.
    Jeremy nodded. “That it?”
    Well, she is very comely
. I watched his face.
Would you not agree?
    He tried to manufacture a casual response. “I guess so, yeah.”
    And she is clever
, I said, and then—I could not keep myself from it—I added,
Perhaps a bit too clever
.
    Surprise registered in Jeremy’s face and he seemed about to ask something more, but at this moment his father shouted loudly from the other room, “Two minutes till
Uncommon Knowledge
!”
    “Okay,” Jeremy called back, but he did not stand up. Nor did he question me further about Ginger Boultinghouse. He silently resumed his studies, though more than once his eyes drifted toward the window, his expression softening, as if he were thinking of something pleasant, and I would have to whisper a reminder, just as I did long ago with my younger brother, Wilhelm.
    The studies now. The studies
.

    As the sun’s last rays soften the room’s light and Jeremy turns his pages and makes his notations, I will tell you a short tale about Jeremy and his beloved grandfather, who opened the Two-Book Bookstore in his old age.
    Lucian Johnson had spent his entire life working as a steam-fitter, dynamiter, water witcher, cardsharp, and coffin maker, andwhen his working days were at last behind him, he thought a written account of his life might be of interest to the public. He spent several years on the project, and it grew to two volumes in length. But when he was finally done, no one wanted to publish it, so he had the book printed at his own expense, and he converted Johnson’s Custom Coffin Shop to the Two-Book Bookstore, the store’s two books being
My Life & Times by Myself, Lucian A. Johnson
, volumes I and II. He lined the walls with bookshelves, rolled out a soft Persian carpet, set an old oak library table in the middle of it, and brought in a red velvet sofa and two stuffed armchairs purchased at an estate sale. Then he hung out a sign that said OPEN .
    For a time, his doddering friends came to the bookstore to play dominoes