"What an ungodly mess," Set shouted over a cloud of dust erupting from a cardboard box. She shifted it out of her path with another heave. As she foraged toward the filthy, cobwebbed shelves directly ahead, she kicked another box. Her toe exploded in pain. "O-o-o-ouch. Really, Darby," she yelled. Her words were absorbed by the damp gray stone. "Do you have to have that wretched light today?"
      "There's no time like the present." A short muted echo marked Darby's location in another den of Shequonur's cellar. "I have less than a week to get the Old Girl ready for open house. I was sure I saw that piece last year in this area. But you keep looking over there," he called. His voice faded with the scraping of boards along cement.
      Set lifted a box from a pile of ancient newspapers propped against the damp wall. Its lid lifted easily and Set sniffed the ancient air of its contents. Something moved. Spider legs emerged from under a faded glove and scuttled up the side of the box. She screamed, pitching the box onto the newspapers.
      "Ooo, ooo . . . uh. . ." she muttered, standing, trembling rigid spasms in the damp. She pulled the soggy box back with two fingers pinching just the rim.
      Delicately, now, she fingered the scattered objects. A tortoise shell comb, a beaded hat pin, two pairs of gloves--one rose-colored, almost entirely shredded--and a smattering of newspaper clippings which crumbled in her hands when she felt for them along the wet floor. These she lifted into the dusty air, believing she could catch the cell fleck from the long-ago hands that had laid them there.
     Usually Set loved this kind of search. In fact, she loved the dirty, dank smell that lingered in old basements and cellars. She wasn't able to adequately explain it, even to herself. A play of mustiness, the damp gray atmosphere of earth and stone holding faded objects. Somehow it was more than the love of outrageous Gothic. These old smells comforted her. It was more like a Keats poem, somehow always a Keats poem. His young emotions held pellucid in time, caught forever like his happy youth in pursuit of a fleeing girl. This cellar was like the urn.
     Now Keats, along with those who had worn the gloves and combs, had passed to some unknown place. But here in the dim cellar and the poem their time and times were recorded. The dust and grit, the brittle pages turned to particle, comforted because they reminded Set that these others had made the journey. The full journey. From life to death. They had lived and pained, and felt the final mystery. If they can do it, I can do it, she thought. I can die. This was her comfort. And here, laying against her hand's pink flesh, something remained of their desire for beauty and order, and that made them kin to her. She valued their frail humanity. Like her own.
      Once, on her honeymoon, when she and Radnor passed an orange barn in Florida--Thelma's Orange Barn--she was suddenly and inexplicably reminded of Keats's house in Hempstead and its little plum tree near the door. That is where he had written it--the Ode. There, near that very door, he had seen the nightingale. She had read about it. She poured over an old postcard that showed the windows and doors.
     She had felt it. At Hempstead Keats had carried on his pathetic, intense adolescent courtship with Fanny Brawne. Maybe the unsettling effect of Set's marriage had entangled her in false perspectives of time and worth. She couldn't tell. But since that odd vision, Set had lingered many times in her classroom over Keats, the biographical part about the day he wrote it. She imagined the scrap of paper tucked behind a case in the whitewashed house. She visualized the exact spot near the plum where he had penned "Ode to a Nightingale." It gave her quick pleasure to think through it again--the brief, traumatic life which left such beauty, words which had become an obelisk of form for thousands of literary critics to explore. Volumes had been turned out on the single line: "Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep." And the cold pastoral, the urn had turned to stone in language, stone language, making beauty truth.
     Maybe it was the sad arches of the gray moss hanging from the trees around Thelma's which touched off the thought of Keats. Maybe the sluggish movements of the two homely women that day in Florida who moved about in worlds unknown, selecting oranges, piling them in net bags and cardboard boxes. Their bending and lifting was aged and dusty. Yet they are alive, she thought. But for Set, they moved behind a veil, dead already.
      Maybe it was the sad recognition of her own lost life as she watched Radnor's face silhouetted against the barn they passed, roaring their way to Ft. Lauderdale. Even then, at twenty-one, she felt with marriage, her life was spent.
      She was old. Whatever it was, Shequnor’s damp cellar air became Keats and the veiled women of Thelma's Orange Barn.
      Set drew in her breath. It felt mossy in her mouth. She imagined it settling green between her teeth. She stretched the rose glove flat over the top brittle layer in the box. She really did not want to be in the cellar today, not even with these objects tempting her down some ancient fragment of time. What she wanted walked in the rooms above the cellar. The rooms skirting the gold conservatory. She imagined David pacing, amber light shifting over the starched cuffs of his Oxford shirt.
     She was thinking of the hard cotton creases in those laundered shirts when she read it: "A Gathering of High Distinction for the Linden Family." Leaning against a dry plank so that the bulb's light shone on the dim print, she made out the faded article. "Dar, have you ever gone through this stuff over here?" she called. When he did not answer, she bent to grab another small pile of clippings. For several minutes she stood reading, caught in the weave of a century-old story. All in a Victorian parfait of language.
      A single wet leaf became the instrument of her fall. Her right heel slid and she found herself stretched under the shelves strung with webs. "Oh, this is repulsive," she said out loud, cringing even while she lay in this difficult position.
      She felt anger. She tried to scoot her body from under the plank where her head rested in a puddle. Now her hair was going to be limp and what if she should catch a glimpse of David? Or more important, what if he should catch a glimpse of her with this wet head? Her hand grabbed at a thick wood plank for support and she scooted her body sideways over the cold, furry stone.
      In her third hip thrust toward freedom, she stopped and pulled her arm close to her body in the cramped space. She reached her hand up and ran her fingertips over the plank directly above her face. It was bumpy, irregular. But not from erosion, she thought. She allowed her palm to rise and fall with the wood, like huge brail. What she felt did not seem random hieroglyphics but something created, vaguely symmetrical and refined. Although she feared at any moment she would be traumatized by something rodent-like or even reptilian, Set traced her hands along the plank's bas relief.
      "Set, where in the name of God . . ."
     Her feet wiggled. Darby gave a startled grunt. "What are you doing down there?" he asked, sweeping to his knees. "Good God, I leave you alone for several minutes and you literally bury yourself in the dungeon," he chortled when he saw that Set was unharmed.
      "Look, I don't need reprimanded after I injure myself, searching for your light." Their intimacy allowed for moments of pleasant haranguing, a pleasure necessary for both of them. "Dar, before you rescue me, take a look at this." She reached up, but pulled back when she heard it--the insistent scratching of what she perceived as toenails, bony protrusions from gray paws. "Did you hear that?" Her voice was barely a hiss from below the board.
      Dar yanked at her left arm and, in the transaction, Set jammed her forehead into the plank. This second hit made her eyes dim and she, in slow motion, laid her head back down onto the puddled floor. When she groaned, Darby fell to his knees. He worked her shoulders and head to help her out from her coffin.
      "Oh, Set, I'm so sorry." This time there was real distress in his voice. "It was a reflex. Here, keep your head down." Set strained to lift herself out of the brown puddle. But then she moaned and lay her head still.
      "I shouldn't have had you alone in this room. That damn light could have--"
      "Dar, just help me up and shut up about the light." He placed his arm behind her neck and pulled her to a sitting position.
     Finally, when she limped out of the cellar, her arm draped around Darby's neck, she felt her forehead with her free hand. "What an egg. I'm deformed, Darby, and I don't want to be deformed, " she whined.
      "I know, Dear, but we'll fix you up. Doctor Dar has his ways." At the top of the cellar stairs she remembered the plank which had marked her forehead.
      "What I was trying to tell you before you decided I should be lobotomized was that there's something on that board in the cellar."
      "What board?" But they had another limping flight of stairs.
      Dar called from the bathroom where he was fumbling in the medicine cabinet, "Now, what board?" He returned with a band-aid, skinned its sterile wrapper and aligned it over the small cut on Set's hairline.
      "The board I was under. Ouch. Be careful, you beast."
      "Testy, now, aren't we?"
      "When I was on the floor, I could feel some marks, some carvings, or something on that board above me. Sort of a circle, I think. But I don't know." She rubbed her feet together under the afghan, which her companion had tucked snuggly about her legs, and lay back on the couch thinking of the comfort of lap robes. Even the phrase itself comforted her--"lap robe."
      "Do you want milk and lemon in your tea?" She could hear him in the kitchen, clinking spoons, the silver plate grapevine pattern. "I'm sure the Old Girl houses a thousand unturned planks. Why, two summers ago I found a box of flatware, sterling," he said, peeking around the door, his eyebrow arching upward, "which probably last saw the light of day when the General served a party of his compatriots during the war."
      "I know, I know, Dar. You've told me about the General's flatware before. But really, this thing had something massive on it. In a few minutes I'll be able to sit up and then let's take a look."
      "Great Scot, do you mean you want to reenter the dungeon? Just take it easy, seriously, Set. The egg may be more than just a surface deformity." He ducked his head to avoid the pillow she flung at him. Again, this act grew out of friendly spatting, but, also, Set did not want to launch her friend into the General's Civil War exploits. The pillow was a distraction. She had withstood many hours of the General and his wives, their children and their connections with a lost chandelier and their rearrangement of the library, and, although the teacher enjoyed Dar's knowledge on most occasions, she was not in the mood now. Her mind played back and forth between David Owen and the board in the cellar.
      "Just a few more minutes. By the way, did your mother find out any more about the funeral?" Set had been greatly interested in Wednesday's events. But with her anticipation of David's epiphany lecture, she simply had not pursued the subject. Now with a few spare minutes and Darby's presence, she had opportunity to learn from the gossipy Mrs. Lambert.
      "Well, I got what scoop there was, which isn't much." He poured her another cup of tea. "You know Mother said that Sowder's brother was there with a good-looking wife and three kids. That he looked like your typical used car salesman, although the wife actually had some class. Of course, you must understand, this info is from Mother, who is filtering it through Polly Ellison who's friends with Enid Fout's ugly daughter. You know, the one with the funny eye. Anyway, like I said before, nothing happened. The entire congregation strolled up to take a last view of the Reverend and his hair-sprayed coif and . . ."
      "Darby, come on, how can you be so . . . so . . . cruel about him when he can't defend . . ."
      "Look, September, do you want the story or not? You may harbor all the pleasantries in the world about the preacher, but you will hear it my way, with my inflection and my summations." Darby's tone crescendoed with anger.
      "Go ahead," Set said with an outward pout, but inside she was hurt, punctured by her friend's tone.
      "Anyway, the congregation was all there and his wife. Oh, and I guess the daughter did make quite a scene. But then she made quite a scene for you, didn't she?"
      "Darby, seriously, what do you think about that? I mean what Lori said. I cannot believe that David had anything to do with Sowder's death." Set paused for a response but nothing came from Darby on this subject. "Anyway, what happened with Lori?"
      "I guess that she was alright until the end when the family was alone with the departed. Enid's daughter said that she heard commotion in the sanctuary--the rest had gone out--and she ran back in and Lori was screaming into the casket and . . ."
      "How hideous."
      "The kid was trying to kiss him. Yes, kiss the body and I don't know what she was yelling about. The ugly Fout didn't give those details."
      "And she was so afraid to see her father, to see a corpse for the first time, Darby. That's what she said to me that night when she told me about David." Set paused in thought and then added, "Was he there, David Owen?"
      "We are interested, aren't we, in my handsome boarder?" Dar smirked. "Yes, at the back. He stood at the back of the church Mother said. And since she doesn't have your interest, she didn't question Polly about him." Darby stood to re-tuck Set's afghan. But Set kicked her feet out and took her cup from the stand.
      "Let's take a look at the board, Dar. I'm feeling much better," and she tottered to the kitchen. She didn't like Dar's tone about David. What was light repartee before was now striking too close to the fire, the warm spot, grown to a blaze. And, yet, Set was ashamed of this feeling, this adolescent emotion. How much difference was there between her and the big earrings and mountainous bangs at the back of her classroom?
      "Oh, if you insist, September," Dar said as he rearranged the pillows in the hollow of the couch where his patient had lain. He looked back to check their elegant tapestry cascade while Set limped to the door. Then they moved carefully down into the lower hall and around the back of the staircase where the cellar door opened. Set looked up at the faded mural, a bouquet of corn leaves and feathers, on the underside of the staircase.
      The morning light from a high window filled the cellar room with new dimension and Set found several more scraps of the newspapers which she had flung to stone corners in her fright. "Dar, do you mind if I take these upstairs? I was reading about a gathering here in 1882, I think. Such a different world with, with . . . probably this glove"--she lifted the rose-colored frayed cloth--"and fans and carriages. Now just feel under that board." She pointed to the edge under which her head had lain. Darby squatted and reached below the plank.
      "Nothing. Just board." He strained to reach deeper, and then knelt on another board to keep his knees from the puddle.
      "You have to get under farther," Set said. "Believe me, it's there. Can't you slide under where I was?
      "Well, if I must, I must." He slid another board under the pile of planks, and lowered onto his back. "Good God, this is murky," and his feet disappeared into the darkness. "Ugh."
      "Well, anything?"
      "What in the world? It's certainly ornate, whatever it is. In the next room . . . a flashlight . . . Can you get it, Set? On the third shelf from the bottom. You'll see it," he grunted.
      Set tugged on the string, throwing a yellow glow from the single bulb over the adjoining cellar room. Standing on tip-toe, she scanned the third shelf as Dar had directed and found shoe boxes, ancient orange crates, and water-stained cardboard boxes brimming with miscellaneous papers which probably held more scraps of Linden history. But there was no flashlight.
     "Dar, I don't see it."
      "Then, can you go upstairs, the second drawer from the sink, on the right. I think there's a little light in there." He sounded far away. "And could you hurry?"
      The kitchen drawer yielded a small plastic flashlight which Set grabbed up. Then glancing toward the window, she stopped. Faith McDowell stood yawning and stretching on the small stoop which marked the entrance to Shequonur's apartment. She wore jeans and sweatshirt, her red hair tousled below a swagged green scarf. She stood only a few seconds, breathing deeply into the mild November morning, and then turned and disappeared into Owen's quarters. Set was enraged and then sick with her own emotion. She had spent great energy in subduing her fantasy-fear about David and Kathy and there was little strength left to fight this new front, this development, this real woman before her eyes. Set had to take a new stance.
      Now she saw herself in a drama, yielding up all contraries in despair, lying limp in her own mind, unable to manage her characters--the dramatis personae of her internal stage. To give them up for even these few moments, to let go her own directorship, would give her a new drama wherein she was the victim, a Hardy character pushed by fate. If there could not be fulfillment or joy in her hoped-for relationship with Owen, there must at least be drama and form. This would constitute meaning, purpose. Set stared at the dead vines which clung to the stone around the door where the character Faith had entered.
      "Set." She had not heard Darby climb the stairs nor his step behind her. "What are you doing?" She turned a blank face to him. "Are you coming back?" he asked softly.
      The couple descended into the cellar for the third time that morning, and Darby took his position under the plank. Onto this he flicked the light. "Well, my dear, you certainly have found something," he said seconds after flashing the light. "It's a carving, quite heavy, high relief. I don't know exactly what but circular like you said. Maybe this in the center, maybe it's an animal. I don't know, but let's see." A grunt and scrape indicated that he was changing position. "Here on the right. Set, I think this is a door, a big door," and the scraping continued. "But in the center, some kind of animal, I think." His investigation was terminated by a barrage of coughing that exploded into the damp air. "This mold and . . .," Dar coughed from his enclosure.
      "Dar, for heaven's sake, come out of there. It's not worth . . ." Set stopped when she heard the soft thud on the cellar steps. "Dar," she whispered to one emerging Ked tennis shoe. She didn't know why she whispered. "Someone's coming down here," she hissed to the torso which was appearing part by part from under the board. The torso flailed from a round of dry hacks. Before Darby's head appeared, Set had padded without sound to the door. She peeked around the wet stone. It was David Owen.
      "Oh, it's you." She brushed a damp strand of hair from her forehead. Her voice was high and pinched.
      "September. I heard voices down here and I've been calling at the door. Is Darby with you?" The estate manager appeared now around the corner. "Darby, please forgive me. I took liberties in entering your apartment but I knew you had to be about and just hadn't heard my calling at your door. So I came in and heard the talking down here. And are you alright?" Darby tried to answer but, instead, bent from the waist with another session of hacking.
      "Dar, I'll get you a glass of water," Set said, already on the third step.
      "Why not . . . all of us up . . .," Darby said, hacking and bending, following behind Set.

After Set had delivered the water to Darby and his attack had been stilled, he approached Owen who was glancing at the row of ear vases. Ninety-two pairs of flowered and fruited pottery scalloped the room on high shelving. Set noticed David's expression ranged between polite concern and vague amusement.
      “May I help you, Dr. Owen?”
      "Really, I hate to bother you in the middle of whatever you were doing to ask this. But I was wondering if I could use one of your outbuildings this afternoon? One of September's students has shown some interest in my car. I thought, maybe, I could pull it into one of the sheds so that we could be a little more comfortable while we examine the innards of my little machine."
      "Dar, Brian Saddler, you know that rough kid, was impressed with David. He listened to the entire lecture, if you can believe that." She realized suddenly that she had misspoken with a comment which could be construed as deprecatory. "Oh, I mean, not that everyone wouldn't want . . ."
      "I'm not offended, Ms. Hunt." David laughed. Set hated that epithet and she was already in a weakened position with her band-aid and her wet hair. She drew her head erect and brushed off the knees of her jeans.
      "I'm so glad," Set said. "And will your visitor be joining you for the inspection?"
      "Visitor?" Owen seemed genuinely puzzled.
      "Faith McDuff or McDowell, isn't it?"
      "Oh, Faith. Yes, it's McDowell." He looked straight into Set's eyes which she turned away. "Faith is treating me tonight. How is the cuisine this season at the local pub? I know they changed hands last year and I was hoping to avoid powdered potatoes. I want her to go away with the proper impression of our little burg."
      "Well, I guess it's okay," Set said, irritation creeping into her words. Owen must have forgotten that after his school lecture he'd first asked her to go out. So Faith McDowell was his previous appointment. "Dar, what's your opinion of Duane's?"
      "Passable, but I'd still avoid the potatoes. We have another eating establishment, you know. The Brownstone. You know, there on the corner of Main Street. Smaller, but Mother says their blackberry pie is scrumptious."
      "Does Faith enjoy the bed and breakfast? It's new, you know, and I was wondering if that new family is making a go of it." Set's tone provided a thin veneer of interest in village enterprise.
      "I believe she said it was, let's see, the word was 'quaint.' Yes, quaint and friendly. She's been pleased," David returned, smiling. He stuffed one hand in the pocket of his khaki pants and Set thought suddenly that he appeared like an innocent, a teenager, the black and white intense face in the hallway photo at school. "Would you like to join us for the grease-monkey session, Set? Under the hood and all. Could be quite interesting with this 'rough kid,' as you call him. Maybe he'd have another vision of his English teacher, an added dimension. It could be revolutionary."
      "Revolution is exactly the word; that's what I've feared from the boy on occasion. But perhaps you're right. Maybe if he sees me joining in with something other than Keats, he'll be less hostile," Set said. She was laying an easy path to a few more legitimate minutes with Owen. "What time did you plan for?" She pretended not to know that Owen had suggested between two and four. She remembered the exact phrase.
      "I think I said two. So, Darby, may I use one of the sheds?"
      Darby calculated for a few seconds. "Yes, the little one out by the oak grove. That would probably be the least offensive. I've tried to clear most of the family's junk furniture out of there. And there's a small space heater in there which might provide some relief from the wind. I hear the temperature's going to drop dramatically this afternoon. You could never tell this morning. The sun is elegant and warm." He propped his small bottom on the deep window ledge.
      "Thanks. By the way, September, have you injured yourself. I noticed your forehead," Owen said. He came near her and pushed back her hair gently, a gesture of familiarity.
      Set rambled in a flurry of words. "Just a little. We were down in the cellar scrambling through old things. Darby's looking for a certain light for the Holiday through old boxes and I fell and I fell under something that was . . . Well, Dar thinks it might be . . ."
      "Set fell under a plank and now she's all aflutter with the secrets of Shequonur," Dar interrupted with his mocking tone. "She loves old things, don't you, Dear? She loves even the mossy smell of the stone, isn't that what you said, Set?" Dar seemed to be using too many words. "Wet stone, old stone. I would say that's most appropriate, wouldn't you, Dr. Owen. Shequonur - stone. The stone, the rock. Shawnee, you know. Being a local boy, you must have known that."
      David Owen flashed a quick look of recognition. "A long time ago I did. We learned it in seventh-grade Ohio History class. In fact, I wrote my first prose piece on the Shawnee. Cornstalk and Moluntha. That was a good time," he said. He turned toward the deep window. "Mrs. Kimley, she was my teacher, wrote across the bottom of my notebook paper, 'Maybe you'll be a writer some day.' I can still see those words in red. Mrs. Kimley, she'll never know what she did for me. She's probably gone now. I should have told her," he said. He turned to Darby and then to Set. "Yes, Shequonur means 'stone.’ I think even a stray Shawnee spirit would approve of this building linked with that word. His word." The trio had edged toward the door where David lifted Set's face with his forefinger under her chin. This second intimate gesture threw Set into chaos. "So, will we see you this afternoon under the hood?" Even the double entendre was inviting.
      "Perhaps, David. Dar and I still have to find that light, so maybe." She lingered at the door a few minutes, watching her character enter into the wings of her stage, into the unknown world behind the set. But this hero, or was he an anti-hero, was spending his free time backstage with another character - the red-headed McDowell.
      Set dropped the dirty lace curtain and flopped into the kitchen's stuffed chair. "I didn't know that that's what Shequonur means," she offered as a transition between Owen's departure and the inevitable conversation with her friend.
      "Beautiful, isn't it? The General, I'm sure, wanted to keep the integrity of the land by involving a few Indians. As much, that is, as a Victorian country gentlemen with an eye for young women, wanted to keep the integrity of anything." He lifted Set's chin in the manner of David Owen and said, "So shall we to the lower regions, my Dear? Perhaps we could uncover the mysterious plank."
      "Dar, why didn't you want David to know about the board?" she said. She looked at herself in a small kitchen mirror.
      "Truly, Set, I don't care to divulge what lies in the bowels of the estate. It's nobody's business, least of all, a man who has unsavory links to a death. It's not that I mind the death so much, particularly Sowder's. But it occurred here at Shequonur. No, Set," Darby said lowering his pitch into a serious tone, "I don't want David Owen, whether he be a local boy or a stranger, to know what is on the estate. In fact, I don't want anyone in this entire town to know about my personal life or my keep. And I don't expect any information to be forwarded through you, you who are my friend." He was focused. "Now, what you care to say about yourself to the village worthies is your own affair." He gave a chuckle and patted Set on the back. "Have I made a play on words, my teacher friend?"
      "I guess you have," she said softly. "Darby, let's look at it later, alright? My head feels a little out of kilter. I need some time at home on the couch."
      By the time they parted, Set and Darby had resumed an easy conversational manner. But still Set felt a series of small wounds at the base of her mind. Fragments of auburn hair, enigmatic smiles, and broken glassy words had made small pricks in her skull.
      Later, when she had fallen into an uneasy sleep at the caboose, she dreamed that she had entered the cellar at Shequonur where she heard voices laughing uncontrollably. On silent feet she walked down the steps and found herself in a cavernous room dripping with water which hung solid in spots like stalactites. But then the tiny wounds in her head ripped open when she saw Darby and David bent in laughter. They were looking under a pile of boards. She approached them and fearfully looked under the pile herself. She lifted a board and saw red hair spread in a fringed fan about the upturned face of Faith McDowell. Faith was smiling. When Set cried out, neither Darby nor David responded, except to look straight into her eyes. She desperately tried to form words with stone lips. She tried to move her mouth. She wanted to ask "What are you doing?" but the struggle made her ache. She heard herself grunt unintelligible sounds, as if she had undergone a massive stroke. And into the solid bedroom she urged real groans. Her head twisted on a palpable pillow and when the characters had disappeared into the damp rock, she was left with a figure sitting cross-legged on a higher pile of planks. A man in buckskin, an Indian with a passive face, his lips moving mechanically as if he were speaking. But like a film where the watcher is maddened by sound and action out of sync, the noise of words came after. The stylized Indian opened his mechanical mouth and Set, in catatonic agitation, heard the trailing sound, a record playing at slow speed, "He was not here."
     Emerging, sweating, into the bedroom, her lips turned rubbery against the starched sheet where she had dribbled a small pool of saliva.

Before her dressing table mirror September Hunt outlined her bottom lip with liner and brushed in red color. All bright red, like the Duchess of Windsor might have worn. That is what Set thought at her rituals before the mirror. Radnor had found that charming in her, attention to detail. She was well-groomed. But that was a long time ago. And what should have been real and solid, old and careful, prepared and managed, had lasted only six months and had been, in essence, a teenage bust, although Set had already lived a substantial twenty-one years by her wedding day. Both Set and Radnor had decided on a whim in college.
      Now she prepared herself, at age thirty-nine, with an even younger eye. That is, she felt younger, because she could see herself wanting young things. When she was twenty-one, she felt ancient and panicky and desired the comfort of something aged and permanent. And yet now she perceived the chase, the romance, as a ridiculous act. From her desk she watched droves of panting teenagers enact the hormonal dance each day. It was nauseating, particularly in herself. She blotted her lips on a Puffs and pulled her gold antique bracelet over her right wrist.
      When she checked herself in the vertical door mirror, she saw the letters reflected over her head: "I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head." She said the words aloud. Yes, a fire is in my head, she thought. The Yeats line played itself over in her mind all the way to Shequonur.
      On the road, Set thought about looking good in her knickers. This was the perfect day for them. It was a tweed day, a Duke and Duchess day, a day to be British. She was forced to rearrange the landscape in her mind. These rolling cornfields were not the patch-worked quilt lots of England, rimmed in stone, tilled for a thousand years. She would not allow herself to think long on the fact that she almost went on an NEA tour. But the thought of a busload of gawking, pamphlet-clutching teachers chewing gum in her ear dissuaded her. Besides she was low on funds.
     Now that decision was almost ten years old. The passage of time was depressing. The shorn Ohio field before her was inadequate for this day, naive and tattered, a fringe from an old coat. In November these fields were brown and pocced with ochre stubble, baring all of their American adolescence, their ungainly, awkward youth, to a knowing sky. Today she wanted centuries of use, confined well-worn spaces, gold-edged books, not the Shawnee watching a bird over the creek and the dirty-faced pioneer man with his squalling children and oily wife who miraged themselves across the icy dirt. They were not old enough. But she could not erase their figures from her eyes as she scanned the scene beyond the road. What had been illuminated glory Friday night--before they found Sowders--had become nebulously unpleasant, shifting her own drama out of control.
      Set switched her heat lever to the right. Shivering, she wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and felt the blowing heat through her wool socks. The temperature was dropping. A weather change was always good. But the lever was plastic and the oily figures still limped through the field. And what is sickening, she thought, is that I have to glorify this bit of history to the Ten R's next week. At this moment she felt disgust in having chosen a historical novel for her sophomores, who, although they were designated by the educational hierarchy as "Regular Sophomores," were far from "regular." Or if "regular" was indeed the proper adjective for this group of squirming, surly-toned grease monkeys, then American education or American home-life or American something had hit a new low. Pete Rogers, Marilyn Helder, and a pathetic transfer, a soft-spoken long-haired mongrel from Upland, couldn't even read. Or had to be assisted on every third word. Several, the best in the class, could skim along with some ease, but even most of these smooth ones contained abysses of confusion, non-comprehension. Out of twenty-seven students in the class, one kid, Ron Sidders could actually both read and understand. And these are our regular students, Set thought.
     She would assign bits and pieces of the book. Thank God Behold the Land had a decent cover, a buckskinned movie-eyed woodsman emerging from a bright green forest, bearing down on a meadow where a big-breasted starry-eyed girl stood gleaming in color form daisies. Cheap, glitzy--provided for the Ten-R's who would relish the cartoon. For some of them, the cover would be all there was, and she would have to give them the exact pages of the Indian torture scenes.
      When Set turned the heat down--for the Toyota filled quickly with warmth--she had a minor relief from this dismal frontier. She remembered that she had assigned her seniors the introduction to the Victorian Period for Monday morning. Ah, Tennyson and Arnold and Dickens and, of course, Hopkins. She loved the poetry, but with Dickens she was going to have to go with another novel. That's alright, she thought, David Copperfield is long, but it's so blasted funny. And, besides, there's a movie. She rehearsed again the characteristics of Victorian England. She tried to recall her penciled notes and remembered a vague list beginning with "Loss of faith." Yes, good old Darwin.
      She liked big ideas which shaped words. I do love to ramble on these opening days, she thought. She lifted her hand from the steering wheel with a flourish as she steered around the big curve on 236. That's when she saw it. Shequonur rose massive behind the stubble field and, just as she had experienced it first three years ago, she felt again a chill of satisfaction. Satisfied that something large and stately, something beautiful, dominated the fields, and the fields were made right and meaningful by the structure. They fed one another. The buckskinned man, his greasy wife and kids, along with the Indian, disappeared near the creek's bank where Set watched their heads wither beyond the blanched grasses.
      The General was right when he chose that little hill, she thought. The chateau dominated the rise, its stone laid in an effort to duplicate a French structure which the eccentric Linden had seen on his single European adventure. Set tried to imagine what the East Worthians of 1867 must have thought when they saw this foreign structure growing on the soft hill beyond their fields. But maybe there weren't cornfields then. Maybe only meadow lands. Maybe the town fathers drove out from the village in their open wagons and black carriages to ogle at the new pile of stone growing daily across the high grass of untilled land. Whatever they felt when it first went up, they must have been proud in the end. The organized stone with its two towers, one higher than the other, had to have been the mysterious composer of their mental landscapes. While brick townhouses, even cabins and precarious wooden structures, surely changed their daily scenes dramatically, Shequonur became the landscape. It appeared to join the hill permanently and those early watchers knew deep in their minds, whether they could verbalize it or not, that their children and their children's children would see the same distribution of space, hill and home, which they admired from their wagons, their faces turning to watch the dots of men and horses dragging quarried limestone to the sprouting vertical tower. It was stone and towers and it wasn't even a church.
      For Set, Shequonur increased the drama of her life, and David Owen expanded the outer reaches of this need. To think--he waited for her now, there on the hill. In a grove of trees, she added mentally. It all came together, so that when she drove through the entrance gate, she shook her hair with a jaunty twist and lifted her chin.
      Before she could get out, Darby appeared at the side entrance, the wind whipping his slender body toward the car and then against it. Set rolled down the window. "He's out in the shed already. The kids are out there, too." A burst of vicious wind slammed against his cheek and lifted his spindly hair in odd tufts. "I'm still looking for the light. Maybe later," he called through the loud air. He turned and bent into the wind and closed the door against the weather change.
      Lines of light lazered through the shed slats and loud music pulsated into the slender young trees that sprouted in this back field. Set pulled hard against the weak door, finally dragging it to an opening through which she could squeeze. The group was larger than Set had expected. Huddled around the Porche's front section, all were peering into a maze of metal organs under the gleaming gray hood. No one looked up because no one had heard. Set's entry had been masked by wind and the heavy pump of rock.
      "Oh, Miss Hunt, didn't see you there," Lori Sowders said suddenly realizing Set stood behind her. The rest of the heads turned briefly to acknowledge the teacher's presence. "Cool outfit," Lori added, checking out Set's attire. The girl's manner revealed nothing of Monday night's trauma at the caboose. Set tried to hold the teenager's eyes for a few seconds in order to detect a strain, uneasiness created by the presence of David Owen. But in those seconds, Lori looked blank and then turned her gaze away. She leaned her arm against the curved spine of Brian Saddler who was bent under the hood. He grunted a greeting at Set.
      David looked up. He came to Set and took her hand. "Welcome to our den of thieves. Can you take the volume?" He spoke against the pulsation. A CD player maximized the thump of already powerful speakers. Brian and Lori were relishing the release of pure, swallowing, swimming sound.
      Set laughed, but lightly. "I, who have chaperoned, can certainly take this." She would assume an attitude only casually involved with teaching. She probably should not have mentioned the chaperoning.
      "Faith, could you grab that rag in the back seat?" David said. Faith McDowell leaned into the bowels of the car and Kirsten Schmidt's slender body, beside hers, inclined into the car at the same angle.
      "I'll get it, Dr. Owen," Kirsten said. "Hello, Miss Hunt, you know me, I guess. Or you know Mom and Dad." Her teeth were even and her legs were long and slender. "The little one or the big one?" she asked.
      "Bring both please, Kirsten. I want Brian to get the full beauty of the oil gauge," Owen said. He directed his attention away from Set and assumed that focus on others which made them feel intelligent, insightful.
      Set looked at Faith who smiled a generic smile at the general company. Set knew those kinds of smiles, open on the front but somewhere disconnected in the skull of the smiler, somehow not attached to real meanings or emotions, or perhaps leading back surreptitiously to an emotion not displayed on a chalky face. "Faith, I hear you are treating Dr. Owen tonight at the local pub."
      "What dish do you recommend, September?" She was still smiling. The rock pumped louder. Billy Joel spiraled again in the shed's air. "We didn't start the fire. It was always burnin . . . since the world . . . "
      It made Set uneasy, about the burning. And it made her wild. She wanted to twist Faith's blank, secret face. "Really, anything is good. It's all home-cooked, I think." Her voice was low, disappointed. "Kirsten, are you interested in cars?"
      The girl giggled and shifted her delicate black flats on the dirt floor. "Not really, but Lori was coming over and we're both going to a party afterward, so I came along."
      "Wow, a Saturday afternoon party. That sounds fun," Set said, attempting to join the mood of the shed. "Is it a school party?"
      "Well, kinda," Kirsten said. She looked toward Lori. "We're on the committee for the Winter Festival. Our youth group has a really awesome activity after the last football game and we thought we might as well make the most of planning. We only have about four weeks. Can you believe it, Lori? This year's theme is real good - Winter Light. Isn't that awesome? You can do so much with it," Kirsten was enthusiastic.
      "Oh, so you have something after the Winter Prom? You guys amaze me. I suppose you go on till all hours of the night."
      Lori stroked Brian's back. "Nah, Miss Hunt, this is our own get-to-gether, our prom. I mean, the church's. We don't go there, to the school," she said.
      Set looked at both girls quickly. "Oh, I see. I'll bet you have a really good time," she added trying to cover up her mistake.
      "Yeah, real good. Nothin' like it in the church," Brian said. A twisted smile softened his face. He leaned up from the car. "I went last year and we just had a rip-roarin' time." Lori slapped his back. "Nah, actually it wasn't half bad. They had a real cool movie."
      "See, Brian, there's lots you'd like if you'd just come," Kirsten added. "Wouldn't he, Lori?" Her openness was inviting. "Two weeks ago at group we had pizza and nearly died laughing at Jake Knight; he's one of the new YFC speakers and I could have listened forever. And Jon was there - you like him, don't you, Brian?" But when Brian looked down and Lori turned away, Kirsten realized her inappropriate comment. "Oh, Lori, I'm sorry; I just can't believe that Rev. Sowders , your dad, is . . . gone. I can't connect with it so I say stupid things, like . . . like about death."
      "Aw, she'll be OK, won't ya, Lor?" Brian said, his tone suddenly masculine and empathetic. He grabbed Lori's hand and wrapped his scrawny arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him.
      "You know, I remember my prom; we didn't have a separate thing at the church then and we didn't have what you call winter prom. Ours was the old spring-time thing. In fact, Kirsten, I went with your mother. Or she went with me, both years." Owen looked in the round eyes of Kathy's daughter. "Maybe she's never mentioned it, so I shouldn't have."
      "Wow, so you're the David. I mean, Mom's talked about her prom before, but I guess I just never listened. Not well, anyway. So you're the David, Dr. Owen. I just haven't connected it with you since you've been here for conference."
      "Yes, I'm the David," he said and he quickly swept his arm about Faith who tried to pull away. "We danced through the night." He forced the reluctant woman into a parody of dance, pushing her away and then pulling her to him in a caricature of rock and roll. Keeping an exaggerated motion to the pounding CD, he pulled Faith close for several seconds. Set noticed the blood rising in Faith's cheeks.
      "Please, David, no," Faith said, her face crimson. "Please don't," and she managed to wriggle away from Owen who laughed as he let her escape.
      "What's wrong, Ms. McDowell. The kids can see that we're human, that we can have a good time. Isn't that your philosophy, Ms. Hunt?" he said. He turned to Set. Her heart was thumping hard now.
      "Tight fit, Bud, Brian said. "See, I told ya, Lor, this dude's OK."
      Faith was standing against the shed's wall. She was smiling, but Set saw that her hand trembled as she pushed back an auburn curl from her temple. The three teenagers were oblivious to Faith's agitation and Brian and Lori were actually sporting full smiles. Kirsten stood away from them and Set noticed that her smile was smaller and looked forced.
      "Well, of course, the kids know we're human, David," Set offered to ease the moment.
      "I didn't know Mom danced then. Did you dance, Dr. Owen? I mean with one of those rock bands or a disc jockey? I just can't see Mom doing that." Kirsten tried to giggle. "Did she have one of those sixties prom dresses with the layers of gauzy stuff?
      "She had the works, my dear. And we danced in the good old gym of East Worthy High. She's never said anything about those tender years?" Owen was forcing a casual tone.
      "Well, yeah, sometimes; but, you know, I just always thought it geriatric nostalgia. Isn't that horrible of me?" Kirsten looked at Faith who was still adjusting her polyester jacket about her, fingering a necklace at her throat, and generally realigning herself. "I guess the part that got me was Mom dancing. I never saw her dance. I mean that's not what we do at our festival, our prom." She pronounced the last word carefully.
      "You don't dance at your party, Kirsten?" Faith was composed now and dealing sympathetic tones. "Do you play games? I thought all, or at least most teenagers danced." Her tone was playful. "I must admit I was somewhat of an adolescent wallflower; that's why Dr. Owen's impromptu fling threw me into a tizzy. But you should enjoy your youth. All of you." She cast an instructional glance about the shed. Set nodded in agreement, but she was still puzzled by the woman's extreme redolence at the dance.
      "We don't dance," Kirsten said simply. Lori and Brian, who had crouched on a board which acted as a small bench in the shed, gave each other a nuzzle and then Lori broke her silence.
      "You see, it's just the stuff that comes with dancing. You wouldn't believe all the stuff that goes on. So, like Dad always said, it's not that the dance is so bad, it's just not the testimony we want to give to our peers. I mean, I love to mess around at home and me and Brian sometimes do a little, don't we?" She slapped his hand and he responded with a false incredulous mouth and a shrug of bony shoulders. "But this festival thing, our group, is really a lot more fun. Jon Phillips said, and he's just a new Christian . . . he came to the Lord, was it a year and a half ago, Kirsten? Anyway, he said that group, the festival last year, was about a zillion times badder than what he did before. He's cool, too."
      David stepped forward running a rag down the oil stick. "In the old days we danced. I forgot that that doesn't happen now. Ms. McDowell belongs to a different tradition, kids. She grew up Roman Catholic and our Calvinistic ways might come as a little surprise in the entertainment department. Right, Faith?"
      "Oh, I see. No, I didn't take that into consideration, but, of course, there are things beyond dance," Faith said, watching Kirsten. The girl's eyes were down and when she glanced up she looked confused. "I often forget that you wouldn't be that familiar with Catholicism. You don't have a church here in town, Dr. Owen has told me. Anyway, the world is made up of lots of traditions and each of us is influenced in her or his own way. One has to choose. I think it's charming that you have things to replace dance."
      "I've never known a Catholic, Miss McDowell. Well, I met a girl last year at County Chorus who was Catholic, but we only talked a few minutes and I only found out at the end what she was. Catholic, I mean. That thing about choosing, you mean you think that you can choose anything and still be Christian?" Kirsten did not accuse but seemed to ask for real information from an alien being. Faith McDowell might have been green-faced, saucer-eyed, and horned to Kirsten Schmidt.
      Owen stuck the stick into the oil pan. "Well, we could open up a theological can of worms, couldn't we? In general, Ms. McDowell would believe that more paths existed than what you've known in your background, Kirsten."
      "I can speak for myself, Dr. Owen," Faith said, her tone bolder than when he swept her about the shed. "Kirsten, yes, I believe that there are many paths. But you needn't worry yourself about that now. You need to be thinking about your party plans."
      "But I do have to think about it and so do you, Ms. McDowell." Set saw the metamorphosis of the pretty sophomore into a stick figure which reminded her of the illustration in the pamphlet from Agnes Bolton. There had been a teenage girl standing near the flames with open Bible. Kirsten now was that cartoon girl.
      Owen carefully slammed the hood of the car, wiping his hands on the rag. "Did you know, Brian, that the man who invented this pretty machine worked for the Fuhrer for a while?'
      "You mean Hitler? I figured the Porsche was German or something, but I didn't know the Hitler thing."
      "Porsche, Professor Ferdinand Porsche, was a genius and I guess we can't blame him too much for his early involvement with the butcher. But, anyway, this machine is one of the prettiest, don't you think?"
      "God, you know it. You said it was a 356 C, right, Dr. Owen?" It was the first time Brian had pronounced Owen's name and the boy's tone was low and cautious. He saw Kirsten's eyes momentarily narrow. "Sorry, Women, about the God thing."
      "Well, Brian, my lad, how'd you like to take the buggy on a little spin?" Owen was smiling now. Brian did not respond. He reached out a hand to touch the rich gray paint and his head raised to Owen's face.
      "Man, I didn't expect that, but if you're askin' I'm buyin'," the teenager said. Now his tone was subdued, a rural reverence in the pace of his words. Lori and Kirsten punched each other with soft taps.
      "In fact, take the girls with you. Why don't you take a spin on into town. Give the old ladies something to talk about." Brian Sadler was forever won to David Owen in that moment. The kid snapped the bottom of his jean jacket and took the keys this machine. So if you feel an urge to gather up an East Worthian youth gang, resist it. Be back in twenty minutes or we'll send the constable."
     The girls were giggling uncontrollably now, making decisions about where to sit in the leathered compartment. Set heard snatches of names and the anticipated reactions of individuals who might chance to see these three teenagers wheeling through the main street.
      "How about you, Set, or Faith? Would you like a ride with the kids?"
      "Not a good idea, Dr. Owen. This is their spectacle. Can you imagine how we'd mess up the moment," Set said. "Oh, but, Faith, I don't mean to speak for you. Of course, go, if the kids will let you in," she laughed. Faith leaned down to the back window where Kirsten's porcelain face glowed.
      "Don't you worry, people; I wouldn't dream of poisoning this opportunity with a. . . a . . . chaperone. The word makes my skin crawl," Faith offered jovially. But Set could not help but remember, she herself had used the term earlier.
      Kirsten looked sad for several seconds. "Oh, really, Miss McDowell, we'd like you to come along, or you too, Miss Hunt, wouldn't we?" As Faith motioned her to roll the window completely up, David pulled the back shed doors open. "You know," Kirsten said, leaving a crack in the window, "that's the neatest necklace you have, Miss McDowell. I noticed it a while ago in the light. Looks like a starburst. Is it . . .?" But her careless words were lost as Brian backed the machine through the doors.
     Faith lifted her hand to her throat and waved with the other. Watching the car disappear under the trees and down the lane, the trio of adults turned toward one another awkwardly, and before any one spoke, Darby scraped the door open at the far end of the shed.
      "Do you mean to tell me that you allowed a group of teenie-boppers to actually take your elegant machine out, Dr. Owen?" he asked incredulously. "I nearly dropped my precious find when I saw that young ruffian behind the wheel." He lifted an odd light fixture, metal and glass, to the group.
      "Why not? They need a taste of it all; besides that 'young ruffian' seems a decent enough fellow. And the girls are harmless." He chuckled when he heard Set clear her throat. "O, my apologies to the women for that sexist innuendo." His gave a sweeping bow and then began to arrange several cans of oil and fluids along the shed wall. Faith reached down and picked up several rags which had been strewn about.
      "Dar, you found it. Now the Christmas season can go forward," Set said. She peered into a red pane of glass. "That's the whole thing, what you were looking for? It's alright, Dar, but not what I had in mind when I sacrificed myself in the cellar. Looks like you have some work to do." She pointed to a blood-colored shard in the octagonal metal structure.
      "September, it's a rare piece," Dar returned, a bur in his voice. "One of the original pieces from the old Judge. I think it probably made the journey here across the Appalachians by mule pack, down the Ohio by steamer, and then packed in Sarah Linden's cedar chest until it found its rightful home in the valley. Anyway, its part of the Judge's household and now will be reinstalled in an appropriate setting for the holidays." Faith stepped forward to admire the light and Darby gave his forehead a disgusted tap. "O, dear, Miss McDowell, you received a call several minutes ago. That's why I was coming out here - to tell you." He spoke rapidly in order to make up for lost time. "Mrs. Harrington called to say you received a call from St. Louis." Frown lines formed between Faith's eyebrows. "You're to call back, to call home, just as soon as possible. Please forgive my forgetfulness. That was very rude of me," he finished with sincerity, but also with an irritating flourish.
      Faith McDowell looked at Owen and cast about to find her purse. "I was going to have to get back to my room anyway. David, did you say five or five-thirty?" The woman drew out a long black-green scarf and wrapped her head, swinging the ends over her shoulders. Her face, sculpted by the rayon swag, accentuated the deep lines now curved above her eyes. With her shiny jacket, pink pastel pants, and silhouetted face, she looked like a cheap Madonna to Set. A Virgin Mary. But Set realized that she was making weird transitions again. The Catholic comment lingered. Besides, this was one Virgin Mary who obviously didn't know her place.
      As she watched Faith McDowell face into the November wind, Set chastised herself for the vitriolic language which trailed through her mind. "I hope everything's alright at home, Faith," she called after the woman, who bent forward, walking the path to the big house where she had left her car. Set watched Faith push downward against heavy gusts, but then turned to hear what Set had said. One end of the scarf flipped into her face like a green mask. The violent velocity scraped her skull in a clean silhouette.
     Set yelled out again. "I hope there's nothing wrong at home." Faith McDowell nodded and resumed her stance against the wind's force. Set felt Owen standing behind her. "Maybe you should have gone with her."
      David Owen latched the shed door. "She'll be fine. She's a strong woman."