Roland Williams' salt-and-peppered head bobs from bookshelf to bookshelf. He thumbs crumbling spines and raised text until, finally, he settles on a coffee table tome of Duke Ellington's life in pictures. He cracks his back upright and groans.
"I was looking just for some jazz books, and he's got a few on hand," Williams said as he looked down at his aftermath and chuckled. "You could spend all day in here if you really wanted to."
The 67-year-old life-long Capitol Hill resident always does his shopping in Eastern Market, just a block away from his new-found jazz treasure trove. But this is the first time he's even seen Capitol Hill Books, let alone cracked this vortex of verbiage's door. Considering Capitol Hill East's transformation over the past five years, that's not surprising.
Williams and his neighbors watch as new bars deluge 14th Street and more corporate businesses sink their teeth into Eighth Street. Condos are going up and small businesses are shutting down. However, after 27 years, Capitol Hill Books still holds fast to number 647 on tiny, pothole-pocked C Street S.E. It's easy to miss among the multiplying manors.
"I just happened to see all these books in the window and outside," Williams said of what finally grabbed his eye. "I thought I'd go in and see what I could find and the things I've missed out on."
Williams discovered he's missed out on a lot of things - over 20,000, to be exact. The used books call the crowded three-story row house home. Ancient oak bookcases rise like trees from floor to ceiling, and daylight peaks through Mailers, Capotes, Austens and Sartres stacked sky-high on windowsills. This is their world - Williams is just living in it.
Guarding the door in his paperback fort, the king of this literary labyrinth is retired Navy admiral, AU alumnus and 71-year-old Capitol Hill stalwart Jim Toole. After 30 years, 26 days and two hours in the service, Toole got tired of working for other people. So when the bookstore's founding owner Bill Kerr died in 1994 and his sister looked to sell it, Toole quit his Navy job bartering for contracts from the Department of Energy and began selling books. After the building's owner died in 2005, Toole "went into debt up to [his] keister to buy it."
In 1994, Kerr's collection amounted to 2,000 books in two rooms. Now Capitol Hill Books bursts with content as volumes continue to creep up - and downstairs.
"I have used the bathrooms -that's for foreign languages, 'cause foreign languages in this country are in the toilet, and the backroom used to be a kitchen, so I said 'Well, let's put the cookbooks in the kitchen,'" he said. "Business books, I don't sell very many, so I put them in the closet."
Toole takes advantage of every nook and cranny to help him afford rising property taxes.
"The city is greedy," he said. "My property taxes have gone up 150 percent in the last three years. I can't raise used book prices 150 percent - that'd be the price above and beyond new books. So I've had to fight that problem by cutting staff, and that's why you see me sitting here."
Who you don't see sitting there on weekdays are Toole's three princes of prose, his men in waiting. They are the "T-Shirt Insurgency": three 30-something Capitol Hill residents who design ironic and politically pejorative shirts.
"See these shirts up here?" Toole said, gesturing toward a store-length clothesline with "Blood For Oil," "Best War Ever" and Lou Dobbs' salty visage on shirts hanging from clothespins. "Their mission is to try to sell T-shirts and buy this bookstore [from me]. They all have other jobs during the week. But on the weekends they help me by shelving."
Toole sounds like a proud father and says his favorite is the Guantanamo Bay one: it reads "Come for the beaches, stay for the waterboarding."
The T-shirt Insurgents and Capitol Hill residents - Kyle Burk, Aaron Beckwith and Matt Wixon - met and bonded during volunteer work for an environmental fundraising group. They were the "non-believers" in the cause - the only "not-so-activist types" of the bunch. Friends ever since, they do, however, believe in the sacrament of used books.
"Insurgent Kyle," a.k.a. Burk, 32, has lived in D.C. for almost five years. He and the rest of the insurgency have spent their weekends with Toole for nearly three of those years. They hope to take over for Toole when he retires.
"I'd really like to keep [the bookstore] in the neighborhood and keep it a historical part of the community," Burk said. "I like that idea and I want it to stay around and do service to the community. I think it does that right now, so I'd like to be a part of keeping it that way."
Burk, who works at multiple non-profits during the week, remembers the first time he visited Capitol Hill Books. Like Williams, he didn't expect what was coming.
"From the front I think it looks a lot smaller than it actually is," he said. "So when you walk in, it's kind of overwhelming, which I think is the most said word in the store. You walk in and there's just books everywhere - they're tumbling down on you."
Burk braves those book slides every week. Each Saturday at 9 a.m., Burk walks the short distance from his home to open up the store and read the paper. He greets the first customers, usually around 9:30 a.m., drinks coffee and reads. Then Beckwith comes in, followed by Toole, and the three start shelving books. For the rest of the day, the men hang out and talk about bookstores, books and T-shirts until the clock strikes 6 p.m. Then the store closes and they huddle over beer at a local bar.
There are a variety of hazards involved in being an employee in a bookstore.
"There's a spill everyday there," he said. "We're more worried that a 50-pound copy of 'Anna Karenina' is going to take someone's head off."
The word "work" rarely wheedles its way into Burk's sentences when he speaks of the shop.
"It doesn't feel like a store," he said. "When customers come in, it feels like they're in our house."
Like Toole, Burk knows that gentrification in the area threatens the Insurgency's dream of a used book bunker on the Hill. But as long as nearby Eastern Market continues to attract curious shoppers, there's hope for Capitol Hill Books.
"We make almost all of our money during Saturday and Sunday, and that's because the market's over there," Burk said. "So we definitely try to support the market as much as possible. Without it, all the businesses up the block will start to go under."
"It's an institution and it's got to stay that way."
You can reach this staff writer at hcrowe@theeagleonline.com.
