William Henry Devereaux, Sr.'s Books

William Henry Devereaux, Sr.'s books make intellect physically present—and, at Allegheny Wells, physically difficult to get around. Hauled during the move, stacked in a garage until they block the kitchen entrance, and later associated with a book-lined dining room, they connect the older Devereaux's scholarly reputation to the practical labor and domestic spaces that reputation occupies. Their weight in the story is both literal and symbolic: the books are treasured evidence of a mind, but their accumulation also interrupts the lives and rooms around them.

The Collection in Transit

During the move, Charles Purty tells William Henry Devereaux, Jr. that the trailer is full of his father's books, while the furniture has been put in storage. Purty notes that some of the furniture was valuable, adding that nobody had wanted his opinion. The contrast is concrete: the books travel with the older Devereaux, while the furniture is stored separately, and Purty's assessment of what matters has not determined how the possessions were handled. The collection is not introduced as an abstract scholarly legacy; it is cargo in a trailer, part of a move that has left Purty and the Devereauxs reckoning with what was taken where.

Purty also says that the books were stolen, pointing out the bare bed of the pickup. He emphasizes how quickly it happened: they had been gone for only twenty minutes. His complaint gives the collection a further material vulnerability. Books that signify their owner's learning are also goods that can disappear from a vehicle, alongside the practical disruption and loss surrounding the move. When the characters look at the U-Haul, the scale of the relocation is present before anyone tries to make sense of it.

Claims About Their Number

The collection's size becomes part of a friendly exchange between William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and Purty. Purty says that his father claims to have read every book out there, but he does not believe him. Asked why, he answers, "Because it ain’t possible," explaining that there are too many. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. grins and asks whether Purty is calling his father a liar; Purty admits that he is, grinning back.

The joke depends on the books being numerous enough to challenge a claim about reading them all. It does not establish that the older Devereaux has or has not read the collection. Instead, it stages the gap between a scholarly identity and the sheer quantity of its material signs. Purty's skepticism is affectionate rather than a formal accusation: the exchange ends in mutual grins, turning an enormous library into a measure of character that can be questioned without ending the conversation.

The Garage as an Obstruction

When William Henry Devereaux, Jr. returns to Allegheny Wells to help Purty, he finds that Purty has disregarded his advice to walk away. The U-Haul trailer is gone, but the books have been neatly stacked along the back wall of the garage. There appear to be about a hundred boxes, arranged three deep and six feet high. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. wonders whether Purty completed the work alone or whether Julie helped; the boxes' arrangement makes the labor visible, even as its precise authorship remains uncertain.

The stack has an immediate domestic consequence: it completely blocks the door from the garage into the kitchen. There is also no longer room for William Henry Devereaux, Jr.'s Lincoln, which had barely fitted before when he edged it close to the wall. The books therefore do more than occupy space in a general sense. Their placement rearranges access to the house and displaces a car that already had little room. What can be treated as the legacy of the older man's intellect becomes an obstacle in the younger man's home.

William Henry Devereaux, Jr. recognizes the books as the physical manifestation of his father's intellect and thinks of them as having cut him off from his own house. The image makes the collection's double meaning unusually direct: it is an embodiment of intellectual achievement, but also a barrier between family members and between the garage and kitchen. The books need no human intention to exert this pressure; their stacked mass changes how the house can be used. The symbolism arises from that practical arrangement rather than replacing it.

The Library and His Mother's Faith

Elsewhere, the books occupy a formal dining room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. When William Henry Devereaux, Jr. enters with his mother, she looks at the room and smiles with a sense of vindication. Her imagined scene includes the best graduate students, visiting poets or other dignitaries, and an English department faculty eager to attend to her husband's ideas. The passage contrasts that vision with the conditions at the university: there are no graduate students of the imagined kind, no budget for the visitors, and no assured faculty audience.

The room consequently holds more than volumes. For his mother, the books make her belief in her husband's stature visible, furnishing the world of intellectual company and recognition she imagines around him. Her satisfaction is described as faith made manifest. At the same time, William Henry Devereaux, Jr.'s response—"Mother, you take my breath away"—registers the force of seeing that conviction embodied in the room. Across the episodes, the books shift from precarious cargo to a cramped garage wall and then to the ordered setting of his mother's hopes. In each place, their material presence measures the distance between intellectual reputation, domestic reality, and the people asked to live among its remains.