Fred Wilson
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Frederick Augustus Wilson, Jr. (born April 1, 1949) is the head librarian at the Sadie Public Library, who meets [Cash] when he visits the library to review old newspapers. Wilson has spent most of his life in Sadie, except while going to college in Baton Rouge and working in Covington for a few years. He has led an increasingly reclusive life, one founded on a false nostalgia, in the house his parents owned.
Wilson is motivated by stability and consistency nostalgia gives him. Wilson wants to live a quiet, simple life. Wilson is challenged by his connection to [Hal] and [Verge]. Wilson will discover _____.
When Wilson first meets [Cash] and realizes that he is looking for [Verge], he pretends to be helpful but also calls [Hal], who sends the two police offers to scare off [Cash]. The violence by the cops reminds Wilson of the brutality [Hal] is capable of. In response, he begins talking to [Verge] about freeing themselves from [Hal]'s grip.
Biography
Early life
Professional life
After completing his Master's degree, Wilson quickly found a job working in the St. Tammany Parish Library in Covington, Louisiana. He stayed at that job, without any real highs or lows, for six years, when he was hired to take over as the school librarian at his alma mater, Sadie High School.
During his first year at the high school, Wilson had an affair with Henrietta Dupont, the chair of the Science Department, who was both married and several years older than Wilson. Dupont regretted the six-month affair and ended it on the morning of that year's commencement ceremony. Wilson, having little experience with romantic relationships, took it badly and spent the summer in a deep depression, while Dupont refocused her energies on her teaching. Wilson, with the help of [Hal] and [Charly], pulled himself together by the end of the summer, embracing a more stoic attitude.
Wilson would spend the rest of the decade attempting to keep the school library as traditional as possible, often sparring with the administration over technological improvements they felt should be implemented. In 1989, Wilson quit the school after the principal received a grant to install six Apple SE computers in the library.
Within a few months, Wilson was hired by the Sadie Public Library as the head librarian, a job he would keep for the next thirty years, during which he would continue to resist any technological development. During the late 1990s, he considered his crusade justified as the librarian remained untouched by the Y2k panic, but in 2002, the Board of Directors forced him to have two computers installed for public use and to adopt an electronic catalog and management system.
Relationships
Throughout high school, Wilson never felt romantically or sexually attracted to anyone. He was shy and fairly withdrawn. During his sophomore year at LSU, he became infatuated with another Education major named Mitch. While they maintained a close friendship for the next two years, Wilson never admitted to Mitch how he actually felt about him. On May 4, 1970, at the end of Wilson's junior year, during a party on the day of the Kent State massacre, Wilson attempted to explain his feelings, but Mitch thought his exclamations of love were just drunken nonsense. A few days later, Mitch fled to Canada to avoid the draft.
Wilson remained celibate for next decade, completing his Master's degree and working in Covington. Although he occasionally struggled to understand his feelings for Mitch, he focused on his studies, his work, and his budding collections of first edition books and German beer steins.
Henrietta Dupont
In 1980, he moved back to Sadie and began work as the librarian at the high school, where he met Henrietta Dupont, the chair of the school's Science Department. Henrietta was nine years older than Wilson and married. Almost instantly, Wilson had the same feelings for Henrietta as he had for Mitch. Throughout the fall semester, he pined after her, finding any excuse to interact with her. On December 19, two days after Henrietta's 40th birthday, they both drank to much at the staff Christmas party. That evening, they had sex in Wilson's office. Afterwards, Wilson admitted to Henrietta that it had been his first time. Their affair would continue throughout the spring semester, and would be ended by Henrietta on the morning of the high school commencement. Her husband had become increasinly suspicious and she worried that maintaining the relationship over the summer break would be too difficult.
Wilson sank into a deep depression that lasted throughout the summer. He was supported during that time by his old friend [Hal] and [Hal]'s cousin [Charly]. Much of their efforts to boost Wilson's morale were built around criticism of moral collapse of American culture. By the end of the summer, Wilson had suppressed his heartbreak by expanding his desire to see the America of his childhood restored.
