It was time for the biography again. She felt it coming on, words slipping onto a phantom page that made meaning, language gathering it up and nailing it down to time and space: . . .and on most occasions, when the family gathered at holiday time, she was isolated within her own mind. (Got to be more.) . . . within her own creative mind. Her parents, neither of whom had been afforded a college education, could not perceive her deep-felt needs and, in general, it could be said that a debilitating hostility emerged during these middle years. (That's not fair, the college education thing. They couldn't help it. And, you ungrateful swine, they paid for your education.) Her parents, neither of whom shared her interest, could not perceive her deep-felt needs and it could be said that a debilitating hostility emerged during those middle years. Correspondences extant from that time reveal a gracious woman (no, too bland) an exciting woman, meticulously dressed in flamboyant garb. Sales slips reveal that she frequented vintage clothing shops where she selected her wardrobe from her favorite eras--the 1930's and 40's. Their subtle smooth lines, yet extreme silhouettes-large shoulders and nipped-in waist-- plus the eye-catching hint at costume, suited her delicate creativity and sensitivity toward . . .
      Toward what? What was her content? She couldn't think of it. The biography had to be closed. Why would anybody write . . .? Set switched on the radio and lifted her sleeve to smell the musty aroma from her jacket. Another find from Connie's Closet, wine-colored velvet binding on flecked charcoal wool. It was perfect. When she turned her head or adjusted her arm, a pleasant dingy odor released into the car. In a dusty, gray second she was far away, someplace in the 40's, her bright red nails, rounded tips, gleamed and drummed on a black and white surface the beat to "Sunny Side of the Street."
      She was thinking vintage again. Today it was an old Gene Autry movie, the cowboy descending into a peculiar pasteboard cavern, assisting a sci-fi queen. In her subterranean prop world she sported an outrageous spreading Elizabethan collar, like the wicked mother in Snow White. Fairytale, cowboy, science fiction--all blended in Set's sleeve and drifted about the Toyota, taking her home to East Worthy.
      She flicked through the numbers fast, landing once on a country-western station. First she allowed herself a few seconds of Nashville passion, but then passed on to a pop station. Secretly, she often tuned in for a whole afternoon of country, when she was feeling big and loud and needy of straight-talk. But this afternoon she was feeling delicate and important, retuning her gauges to the intricacies of mystery.
      Soon she would turn off the interstate and drop down into the patchwork of Ohio's small towns. She would pass through three villages: Abingdom, Dalway, and Kinwood. Even in the snow the towns would be touched with sex, raw passion--in Abingdom, the single public phone with its decaying plastic overhang; in Dalway, the desolate Laundromat and filthy restaurant with its facade painted like a gray cat; in Kinwood, a hunting supply store and dress shop. Its foggy front window displayed garments that appeared to be leftover supplies from 1965. The dresses hung limp and looked wet, yet Set usually saw two or three women peering in through the glass. Streets dark and gothic, with secrets in their mismatched porches, peeling paint, and awkward additions. Set was anxious to be there with their secrets breathing around her.
      After she had decided to make the break early, telling her mother on Saturday afternoon that with the forecast of heavy snow she should not wait until Sunday, the trembling began. Deep in her stomach and up through her chest, behind her breasts molded elegantly within her taut jacket, September felt an exquisite terror building. Like hundreds of agitated butterflies, lunging toward Peru's mountains in autumn, aimless arches and fluttering starts, delicate and driven, like a gossamer obsession. She had downed too many cups of coffee at the house, her stomach burned, but the pain was worth the caffeine high that aided these butterflies in their flight, a flurry toward East Worthy.
      Now that she was safe in the Toyota with the delicious burning and the mounting flurry, the idea of fragility pierced her, a stab of guilt. Three days. She could have spent more.
      Time is fragile, like tissue paper, like their hands. Not like the old days, years of days, spending time as if you were eating a large steak. Rough and wild and hearty. No one thinking that the time could grow delicate and precious. Precious. Then why could she not simply buckle under, shield the core of herself, display courtesy and compassion for four crummy days, a mask for family. For this frail, speeding time. For their hands. She loved them. Set turned the radio up loud.
      It was Aretha. When my soul was in the lost and found. Nothing could have been better to ease her out of fragility, to stop the guilt, to make her live. Living at the time of Aretha. A peculiar idea came to her: she could die if Aretha could die. And Aretha would die. She had lived during the time of Aretha, the time of the cosmos when that elegant African voice spun its silver rhythms above and below a melody, when that soft-paddie face, that non-assuming roundness, bit the air with flame and joy, taking her in a car, dancing her around the Keats room, letting her hurt and laugh beyond the drudge of daily life. Aretha's voice was daily, too, common and rugged, American, African, tribal, and rock. Till your kiss helped me name it. But sparking from every porous line, shot the translucent beauty that would never come again, a Faberge egg, a walk at night, Hopkins under the cupola, the Parthenon, Lincoln, Aretha. She'll get old, too, Set thought. With me. We'll sew it up together, her spinning me with silver thread all the way to the grave. She turned up the volume until the radio's tiny speakers thudded a dull pain through her head. You make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like a natural woman.
      Snow and sleet thickened across the window as she left the interstate and passed the green corporation sign marked "Abingdom--Birthplace of Harry Leonard." Set had never bothered to find out the celebrity of Harry Leonard. She had never even seen his name, except for these passages through Abingdom, but she smiled at the idea that every old woman and small child in the village wore his name with pride. There was probably even a Harry Leonard day. Maybe he wrote a book, or served in the senate, or grew the largest pumpkin in the state. Today Harry Leonard's sign glowed in cold crystal.
      The road's glazed ice and drifted snow relieved Set of some guilt. She really should have started early, not waited until Sunday. It was only 3:30, but that wasn't a minute too soon to be on her way back to East Worthy. On the other side of Abingdom's five blocks, she was forced to 45 MPH and by the time she reached Dalway, she had slowed to an abysmal creeping. She had passed three cars already pulled off the side of the road to sit out the worst of the storm. But Set pushed on, torn between real fear, as she skidded on patches of ice, and the surging flurry in her chest.
      She had planned it all. She would go straight to Shequonur. Darby was not expecting her until Sunday and would be thrilled. She wanted to be there, to see his face when she said, "The Reverend Nathaniel Sowders is the son of Ivy Gilchrist." But most of all, she wanted to be in the same air as David Owen, to feel him in the stone and under the glass of the conservatory, to think that he, drawn by some overwhelming force, would sense her through the walls and come to her.

The snow spread in great swaths across the driveway . Cold flawless curtains of white draped down the stone gate posts and both wire gates had almost disappeared. Set's passage was blocked. She parked near the north pillar, pushing her door against snow drifted almost as high as the driver's window. Although she did not know if she could get her car out of this spot, she did know she was going in. Up the lane to Shequonur. Walking. She liked the idea. Against the elements, one woman, alone, tramping in perfect snow, in the dark under the trees, making black shadow prints below the oaks' shaggy white arms. Darby huddled in aesthetic comfort, burning candles, feeling wild and historic. She could see it. She would surprise him, fling her scarf dramatically over her shoulder, and shout lines about winter's hoary blast.
      But the darkness was more complete and frightening than she expected. She saw Shequonur's dim outline ahead and that steered her heavy steps, but most of the way she found herself sinking in cold above her knees. The wind had stopped and the trees stood in tall silence, like sentinels, questioning her prints. Missing the lane now and then, she registered the tangle of stubby, frozen weeds under her feet, and once she snagged her boot and staggered down onto her knees.
      It was a long march, at least twenty minutes she thought, a drag of cold to the main door, but she felt pleased with herself when, breathing heavily, she stepped under the stone overhang. Usually she would have entered at the back, the employee and kitchen entrance, but not tonight. She scraped her boots against the piles that blocked the door and admired its heavy Victorian oak parfait. Difficult to manage even in summer's calm, she thought.
      Suddenly she realized no electric candles shone in the windows to light her way. Only Shequonur's dark form had guided her. Darby was really playing the primitive tonight. And David must be gone. Not a single light flickered across the windows of the house's three stories.
      When Set had kicked the snow away from the threshold, she turned the knob and pushed the door—heavily--onto a desolate and shadowy front hall. The huge French mirror that covered the south wall reflected itself only as plate of gray metal and Set touched it to find her way to the staircase. Up the stairs, at the door to Dar's apartment, she would shout her flourish.
      She edged along the mirror, thinking of Adelaide Linden's massive coifed head above, staring down from its gilt frame. Her foot bumped against the first step. She felt safe. She knew the hall by heart. She had been this way with Dar a hundred times, taking advantage of post-tourist hours, dancing--in the dark front room-- under the great sunflower fresco. She grabbed the wide oak banister for equilibrium.
     Catatonic. Instantly. The stilled pose of one in the dark, for her touch had triggered a splintering of glass. A ragged shock. Remaining still and ready for a second blow, she stood for several moments. She eased her foot off the step and down to the floor, thinking that somehow she had toppled one of the much-taunted Ming vases at the entrance. Maybe Darby had changed their position in preparation for the open house. Now she, with her stupid little intrigue, had destroyed a Linden treasure. But the thought was intercepted by a voice, angry strikes at the air, somewhere beyond the staircase. There where the door opened into the downstairs apartment. David's apartment.
      Set was shocked more by the violence of the voice than by its presence. Even muffled at a distance, its brutality burned the air. The words blurred and thudded. And then another voice, a weak croak, edged up around the first. Set inched her way along the floor, along the stair support, in the damp hall, nearer to the door, fearing what she might hear. Needing to go forward. She edged into the tiny alcove that lay under the stairs, and stood stony, her heart pounding, snow from her boots melting onto the parquet wood.
      "And so you gave him a little gift, didn't you?" a guttural ferocity growled. "You gave him many gifts, didn't you." It was David, just as she thought it must be, but it was not the David she had ever heard before, even the passionate Oxford heart of their talk. There was a burning viciousness, a savage cruelty in these words spiked in the air behind the door. A weak response struggled to the surface of a voice, a sound between a groan and a cry, but David's quick return did not acknowledge it. "So in your own coy, righteous way, you gave it away. A kind of betrothal, was it?"
      "I was. . . I was not thinking about that . . I was wrong, I was wrong," the groaning voice said. A woman, yes, but so low and dull of spirit that she seemed drained of gender. Faith McDonald. Yes, although Set had not heard Faith speak at great length, she knew this weakened voice was hers. But why would he, how could David Owen speak to her, to anyone like that, particularly one who had come a great distance to hear his lectures. What was their relationship? Set remembered clothes on the floor of the apartment.
      "Please, please, David, don't," Faith said, and then came a scraping sound, and then the drag of something across the floor.
      "You will look. Now look carefully. An innocent face, a Christian face." A groan, low crying, Set thought, followed by several muffled thuds. "You gave it away. A little thing, a simple thing to do, to keep that single vow. That's what we had. And then to him. To him, Kathy. How, how in the name of Christ could you?"
      Set flashed white flame. It was Kathy. Not Faith. And then she remembered, she had heard that tone once, almost that tone, before, at the epiphany lecture, toward Kathy, in front of her husband. Yes, there had been a hint of this acid fury. "And was he pleased with your token of--shall I say it, Mrs. Schmidt--with your token of love?"
      "Please, David, no, not that, not love. I never loved him. I have always . . ."
      "Don't finish that sickening, wretched lie. I won't endure your lying. Your faithlessness is enough, don't you think. Before that, years of your laughable union with that righteous bastard of humanity. Then your little intrigue with him, with that pretender to God's throne, a cruel usurper. Do you know the term usurper, Mrs. Schmidt? Has that been offered to your little mind from the pulpit of Calvary Chapel by your glorious leader, your lover?" No answer came to this and several empty seconds seemed interminable to Set whose boots now sloshed in small puddles. She feared sliding if she shifted her weight in any way.
      "And you've given it away. But I suppose that's only right. It's fits the rest, doesn't it? But now that you have done that, you have also ruined a valuable gift for the world. Can you comprehend that, Christian?"
      "Don't, don't keep saying that. Please, please, David." Kathy shouted in a surge of strength. "You always make me feel so completely, completely ignorant. And then, now, you mock my faith."
      David's bitter laugh spewed into her words. "You mock my faith." He laughed the wretched laugh. "Let's think of something important, like finding the letter, alright? And quit that ridiculous crying. You know for sure it was in the box?" Set heard several weak thrusts of nose blowing.
      "Yes, he sometimes would take it out and look at it. With me."
      "And now the box has nothing, right?"
      "Yes, Lori told several of the congregation that she found it empty."
      "Well, my little redeemed coquette, it's up to you to make inquiries into what might have happened to it. Do you understand?" No answer. "Do you know what I'm most pleased about? I'm quite satisfied that Nate Sowders went to his long sleep not knowing that he was here."
      "You really think he was here, David?" Her words were threaded with small sobs.
      "I know he was here and I . . ."
     The loud shout nearly created a slide for Set and David's words jerked to a halt. "Set, my pretty, I know you're in here. Come out, come out. Your lame steed is at my gate."
     Darby was slopping down the front hall near where Set stood, hovering in the alcove. "Come out." Set was horrified. If Dar should find her there, standing in the dark, and then react, the results would be catastrophic. She remained still. She heard a quickening in the apartment, she pictured abrupt standings and straightenings, and then silence. Except for Darby who padded down the hall, flickering a flashlight ahead.
      A long cone of light cast about near her for several seconds and then ascended the stairs. At the top he opened his door and closed it. She heard him shout here and there about his apartment, thinking she was hiding. There was only one thing to do since David and Kathy would probably remain silent, incognito. She must make her way unheard around the staircase and up the stairs, alerting Darby to be silent at the door.
      Her boots squished and squeaked several times but she executed the hall and then the stairs with little more problem. When she finally could twist the knob, Darby turned around from his desk where he stood depositing plastic bags.
      "Well, where in the name of St. Aloysius have you been?" Set raised her finger to her lips.
      "Shhhh. Downstairs," she whispered, although no one could have heard her below.
      "What, downstairs?"
      "David and Kathy. Kathy Schmidt is in the apartment and something weird is going on."
      "Well, now, isn't it always?" Dar looked Set up and down. "Where were you hiding? I saw your vehicle submerged." He began to crackle about in his Wal-mart bags as he talked, pouring out onto the floor styrofoam balls in various sizes and then setting up cans of spray paint in a row on his desk. "So, my dear, what is the weirdness below?"
      "Darby, they were talking about the letter. You know, the letter. And David is positively--I can't believe it--he's violent. I think he was actually pulling her around or something." Set panted with a high breathlessness. Darby continued with his bags, pulling forth an assortment of plastic holly and plaid ribbons. "And, Dar, I think Kathy Schmidt was having an affair with Nate Sowders." Darby looked up and cocked an eyebrow.
      "Well, there's just not a pure one out there, is there? That little sneak. With Sowders? Really, I knew she was tasteless, no style, and all, but truly that particular choice reeks with, let me see, with decay. Yes, that's it. A truly unholy union."
      "And now Kathy is supposed to find the letter, because it's gone from the box. Just like Theresa told me. But he said she had to find it. When he talked to me about it, he acted as if it was, just some token thing, between teenagers. But he was horribly adamant. She is to find it."
      Darby propped himself on the arm of a weathered chair. "And why, according to the good doctor, must the letter be found? "
      "I can't remember exactly, he was so strange and violent, but--a something for the world--a gift--yes, that's it, he said that she had taken away a gift from the world or for the world. The letter has to be something important. It has to be." Set jittered to the door and cracked it in a sliver of gray.
      "If you think you'll hear anything through the Old Girl's walls, you have a long wait." But Set stood, her ear against the crack. Finally she eased its weight into the latch.
      "You know, if you didn't get in and I didn't get in, how did they? They must have been here all afternoon."
      "I must tell you there is no vehicle about. I went round half way, almost to the kitchen entrance, and there are no cars. If they are in here they came in by foot." Darby was maddeningly nonchalant and uninvolved in this scene she had heard. Her heart still raced and she paced back and forth across the worn carpet. A styrofoam ball shot weightlessly into the corner .
      "My dear, you are booting about the golden apples of the sun or of the moon, or whatever it is you so elegantly spoke when we last met. Soon these Wal-mart trinkets will be transformed with the rich gleam of beauty." He held up two stiff white globes. "The open house, you know. Even though the buffalo who range through here on Monday will not appreciate what the Old Girl offers, still it must be done. This year, all metallic, gold and silver with a hint of antique plaid. Piled on every mantel, oozing from above the doors, hanging from the ceiling in the drawing room. I'm really intending to do it up. And since you've come back to me early, you may assist me with weed gathering and general cross country aesthetics tomorrow."
      Set stood at the window, intent upon a single agitation of dark against dark in the distance. "Dar, turn off the light. Quick."
      "Now, what . . .?"
      "Please. Do it." Darby flicked the switch and the darkened apartment illuminated a framed world on the white lawns and woods beyond.
      "Look. They're there. Out there, by the oaks."
      Darby pressed his nose to the glass. "I don't see a thing."
      "O look, for heaven's sake. Out by the farthest oak at the edge of the lawn. They're walking away. Into the woods."
      "Well, then, that makes sense. To the cottage. Ivy Gilchrist's. They've stowed their carriages there and rendezvoused at Shequonur. I salute their taste in settings."
      Set turned on Darby, irritated. "Car, Darby, they're cars, not carriages. Can't you get a grasp on the Twentieth Century for just a moment.?"
      "Well, now, aren't we testy?" He came to Set and placed a warm hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry, September, I'm caught up in this massive job for the open house, and, quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn what Doctor David Owen and his women do. Just don't screw up my activities. That's all I ask of him as he violates his concubines, under the roof of the Old Girl."
      "They are entirely intimate. I can't believe it. And her with Sowders." Set looked up at Darby, remembering. "And you won't believe what I learned at home."
      "Don't keep me in suspense, then. What?" He was more aligned with Set's mood now. He held her hand.
      "Nate Sowders is the son of Ivy Gilchrist."
      "My God, that is a big one." He dropped her hand.
      "Old Sowders, I guess he was another reverend, impregnated Ivy when she was a young girl and then he and his wife passed the child off as their son. All these years. Second thought. I don't know if it was all these years. I don't know who knew. Or if that makes any difference. I just know that it's altogether--well, unsavory--or something. Do you remember Ivy running to Nate's side here, here in the driveway? That makes sense. But how could she go on without acknowledging or something?"
      "I wonder if the good reverend himself knew. Now that would be strange."
      Set lifted her eyebrows, startled at the possibility. "That would be really weird if Sowders didn't know." Set grabbed up a tapestry pillow emblazoned with an ragged ring-necked pheasant, and pummeled it over and over. "The weekend was fairly horrible, Dar. I'm so tired and this Kathy thing makes me sick."
      "You, my dear, are going no where tonight. We're both stuck here--a glorious fate, I might add--and so I'll just make a cozy nest for you right here on the couch and brew you up a cup of tea. Then, tomorrow, a day of assembling the wild, bare branches of winter will be just what you need." He tapped her hand and pulled her up, beginning his preparation of the bed.
      "But all my make-up and--no, it's at the end of the drive, isn't it?" She sighed a hollow breath and gazed at the window. "Thanks, Dar, you are a comfort."
      "Besides, if we can't get to your makeup, you can just use mine." Darby winked, a commitment to perversity. "Just kidding. I don't wear your color."

By midmorning they had filled the bed of the truck Darby had borrowed from his father. Brambles, teasel, various grasses, mare's tails and straggling corn stalks left in the field by ranging combines. Snowplows had chugged passed them on the county and township roads around East Worthy. A fully present sun ignited the criss-cross of tracks created by earlier vehicles, those committed to their faith, eager to drive through hazards to chapels and churches. Bright-faced and determined, men and women looked particularly rosy and clean on this morning, leaning into their stirring wheels, their stiff collars and old suits clean and fresh against the high drifts.
      Set felt rosy herself. Dar backed the truck almost against the dog house. She liked its gothic size, its absurdity. And although, at first, she'd pack down in her mind last night's image of the two, she gained a spirited velocity as the morning pulsed on in the chill wind and red sun. She brushed snow caps from brown weeds and Darby cracked their dry stalks for his cache. Now and then, however, her mind's eye would return to the double set of footprints they had found, leading across the lawn, toward the cabin. She knew the indentations would be there, but their crystalline presence on this sunny morning somehow seemed more depressingly tangible than her memory of last night--David and Kathy--two black dots receding smaller over the snow, fading into the woods.
      Now with the truck bed bristling with bittersweet vines and frozen tassels, Darby and Set chattered about heat, lunch, and vignettes sprawling on mantels, tucked in corners, and crowning doors. At the corner of Township 89 and Route 240, Dar let the engine rumble at the sign. Set peered through the back window to make sure their weeds hadn't lifted out.
      "I must have hedgeapples this year, September."
      "What?"
      "Texture. That's what I want. More texture in the composition."
      "Hedgeapples? Aren't they those big green bumpy balls? Those things that kids throw? Always laying in ditches in the fall?"
      "By Jove, you've got it. But to call them big green bumpy balls is to miss their potential. What if they became the golden apples of the sun? Think of their bulk against the mare's tail and the plaid. I must have them."
      He lurched out onto 240 and chugged for less than a mile. Set eased her head against the back window, admiring the whitened hills beyond Puck-a-chee. He turned onto a road barely more than a wide path. Here, the smaller township trucks had been unable to make the mighty swaths of the state equipment. "Up until last week Ki-te-hi was brimming with them."
      "What's Ki-hi-ti?" Set asked, stumbling over the word.
      "Ki-te-hi. Just a road. My favorite in the county. It's always been called that. Strange word, I know. Everyone around here just calls it that."
      Ki-te-hi, graveled and grown up close to its edge, wound around steep hills and opened onto small perfect scenes, fences, white sheep-- cold statues with dark faces in the snow--shaggy woods, and one farmhouse. Ki-te-hi's drive was like a minor tour through an adjacent country. Dense foliage prevented snow from mounding and only a thin film covered gravel, weeds, and leaning stands of trees.
      "See, there they are, just bulging everywhere. Gorgeous, with a winter coat." He let the truck run and Set dropped down into puckered green. She stretched her gloves around two bumpy spheres.
      "These are so weird, Dar. They almost look dangerous. Are they edible?"
      "God, no. Well, I take that back. Let's just say I haven't heard of any of the locals brewing up hedgeapple tea or stew." He placed three rounds of green gently on the tailgate. "But what do I know? Ivy Gilchrist would be the one to ask. Obviously the one for several things." He looked carefully at Set who had not expanded upon last night's events. But Set was not looking back. She stood watching down the road where another truck was slowly grinding toward them. "Could it be that another seeks the apples of the sun?" Dar said.
      The truck, battered and old, black, rusted in huge spots, jangled like a kicked can. This abrasion bumped towards them along Ki-te-hi's still path. Set and Dar fixed their eyes on the cab's lone occupant as he approached. He appeared bundled up beyond need, a soft pile of scarf, hat, and coat. Finally the clanking sputtered and stilled. Set's eye's widened as the bundle of plaid coats lowered its short legs to the ground.
     "It's Aaron Leib," Set whispered, her eyes still wide. "I don't believe it." The little man made an odd teetering run at them and stopped dead still before Set, moving his nose uncomfortably close to her face. She suddenly had a sensation that his nose was a transplanted hedgeapple, grotesquely sprouting from his face.
      "Hedgeapples, eh? Osage-orange. You two planning something, maybe? Maybe you are and maybe you're not." His eye blinked and squinted in the sun. In a squatty bend he swiped up a hedgeapple and thrust it close to Darby's face. Darby stood silent but there was a tilt in his stance, almost perceptible, away from the plaid-coated man. "Sometimes bodark." Aaron grinned. His yellowed uneven teeth seemed cluttered between his cracked lips. An uncomfortable silence with the grinning teeth made Set speak.
      "Bodark, Aaron. What is bodark?"
      The grin forced itself into the air as a suppressed giggle. "Bo-dark. Indian wood. Bow wood. Archery meat." He suddenly heaved the green ball in a fierce swing through the trees. He was not grinning or giggling now, but intent upon something in his plaid pocket. With a holey glove he fingered about for several seconds, finally drawing out a folded paper, ecru, colorless. "So I said, Aaron, I said, she doesn't deserve it. No, no more. So who could keep it for now, for just a little while, till everything gets straight. And then I thought, the teacher would. The teacher would be safe, just for now, just for a while, till David gets it straight."
      He lifted the paper slowly holding it between two hirsute fingers and his bottom lip quivered. Set reached to take what Aaron meant for her and watched her own hand move in slow motion like an altered film, reaching, reaching, grasping, pulling down and back, lowering her eyes through the air, through the snow and the trees, over the sun-flecked scattering of green in the truck, looking down at what her hand held, opening her lips, beginning a word, beginning.
      "Bodark. You remember that, Teach," he called. Aaron was already at the truck, clicking at a rusty latch, and then attempting to lift his weight into the cab. A startle of muffler and a white exhaust cloud marked his going, but he rolled his window down in jerky rounds as he passed. "You see, she shouldn't have it now. Archery meat. Bow wood," he shouted over the clanking. And then he rattled past them, a mound of rocking plaid, grinning, over the hill, and down Ki-te-hi's way.
      Neither one moved, both simply following the sound and white cloud over the hill. Finally, in monotone Darby spoke. "My God. I have seen some demented things in my time, but this. . ."
      "This is it," Set said carefully like a recording. "This is the letter." She pulled up at one tip. The single page had been folded, creased for interminable years. But a newer fold, a distressing crumple at one edge, appeared haphazard and dangerous. She gently smoothed the wrinkles and lifted the page out of its crease. "Look, Darby, the writing, the old, old writing." Her eyes skipped to the upper right hand corner. "Can you read the date?" She was calm. "It must be a date."
     A short, stalky faded script paraded itself across the paper in so much hieroglyphics. Her twentieth-century eye, unable to unravel at an instant the pattern of seraphs and spacing, the strange unfinished characters--made more undecipherable, by diminished ink--scanned the lines again but continued to see only lines, not words. Except the date. Twenty-second April 1842. Something before that though, some phrase followed by two exclamation points, teased her eye. "Dar, what is that before the date? What is it?"
      "Here. Let me see."
      "Oh, please, careful. Please, gently." Darby lifted the paper from her hand as if it was a robin's egg or a butterfly's wing.
      "'The'. The first is 'The'. I'm sure there. "The, The moods. No. That doesn't make sense. The . . . the . . . That's it. The Woods. See it?"
      Set's heart pounded. That was it. The Woods!! Twenty-second April 1842. "Let's get out of here, Darby. Let's go back. It's so much. So much, standing here in the snow, on the road. Let's go back and figure it out together."

For the first half hour Darby sat with his head next to Set's, bending close over the square of paper. A desk light shone into its ancient fiber and lighted tiny flecks of rags laid out by hands now dust. Set was a pointed mind to one purpose and time did not come or go. Time, an entity, resolved itself in brown marks that became letters and then words.
      "That's it. Listen, Dar. I've almost got the first section."
      Darby opened a Walmart advertisement newspaper and laid out the pages over the kitchen floor. "Yes, yes, I'm listening."
      "I cannot adequately something--convey, I think--convey to you, dear friend, the sense of Eden in the wilderness that surrounds me at this moment." Set read slowly, forming her lips carefully around each discovered phrase. "Kate, who continues to bear up well . . . something the something . . . maybe circumstances . . . something the circumstances, has alighted from the wretched conveyance which has borne us through . . . I think the next is 'veritable', veritable morass of a journey since seven o'clock this morning--isn't that odd, Darby, a seven o'clock in 1842, a seven o'clock just like ours."
      "Simply an arbitrary marking of time, my dear. Of course, they had a seven and an eight . . ."
      "Oh, Dar, this is something. Really something. Can't you humor me?" She was passionate.
      "More than humor you, dear September. I am fully with you. But I like to stir you once in a while." His voice turned warm and kind.
      "I know. But, truly, I don't need much more stirring now."
      "I'll be better. Now cover the page. I wouldn't want a stray drop or fume to settle on our prize."
      In a second, with a sweep of his hand, a twine of gray was transformed into silver filigree. He turned the weed over and again ejected a metallic glaze from the can. "Go on. Seven o'clock. Eighteen forty-two. I'm with you."
      " . . . since seven o'clock this morning, and is consorting with Putnam and Ann who stand lifelessly at the back of the--the writer has a dash after the 'the'--then--shall I call it an inn? This is the fourth stop and consequently the fourth blaring of the horns and general lack-luster hubbub about a log--structure, it looks like--I mean, I'm saying that, Dar. It looks like 'structure.'"
      "I've got it, Set. Go on. The thing about the blaring of the horns is quite tantalizing, isn't it?" Another weed danced in the afternoon light.
      "Wait till you hear the next part. I finally got it. The part with the smudge. . . . Lack-luster hubbub about a log structure lying somewhere-O will someone tell me where?-through the bog called Ohio. But to be fair, my dear safe and--another smudge--but I think 'secure friend'--I must write that an original and unspoiled beauty hangs about the boughs of the enclosing trees here, and the sounds of the forest are much improved with the intelligent glint which lingers in the eyes of the pleasant girls who have attended me. That's the first section, Dar." Set was breathless and precise. "The Ohio thing and the log structure. Dar, I have an idea and I can't believe what this might be."
      "Well, spill it. Don't keep the man waiting."
      "I have seen a word in the second part that makes me think--If only the last part was there. The damage, if only the water or whatever did this. I guess that's ridiculous. To lament what probably happened years ago. I should be happy for this." She looked up, amazed at her possessiveness. "Darby, I don't know quite what to do. Think about it. This was taken from Nate Sowders, I assume. Probably Aaron. I don't know how, but he got into the Sowders's and got it out. Now I have it. And I know David wants it. But I have it."
      "Yes. I'm registering the tone in your voice. You have it."
      Set looked straight at Dar who held a hedgeapple at arm's length. In the other hand, a can of gold. But he didn't move. "I'm keeping it. At least for a while, a few days, maybe more, until I find out."
      "You are living dangerously, Miz September Hunt." A depression of air. The green apple metamorphosised into hard sun. "And what is it that you will find out when you keep the letter?"
      "I wouldn't have known, but for the word. I have seen that word, just recently at school. You know, with what I'm doing. And that's making me think about what this might be."
      "For God's sake, Set. Tell me what you think. Quit stepping around it. What is the word?"
      "Inimitable." She rolled it over her tongue. "The Inimitable."

Set decided she would keep this morsel for herself. For the rest of the afternoon Darby was miffed but didn't press it. She told him she would tell him her idea within a few days, maybe even tomorrow, after she could get to school and check references. Besides, by early evening Darby paraded literally up to his waist in remnants of metal vine, leaves, stalks and fruit. At 6:20 he was ready to descend to the first floor and transform the nooks and crannies of the Old Girl.
     Animated and babbling at the door with Set, he cacooned his fabricated wealth down the stairs in five separate trips. Each time he ascended he babbled with more detail. The mammoth mistletoe ball for the great room fresco. The braided cornstalk cascades for the library mantle. Dar's second favorite object in the old girl was a mantel. Carved in beryl, walnuts and pheasants clumped decadently near Colonel Linden's leather-bound Carlyle. The Carlyles lined the shelves in a gold-embossed frieze . Set smiled up at Dar now and then in her mindless, pointed state. But behind the smile, she was held mesmerized, out of time, by the paper square.
      Set stood up from the table twice while Darby worked below. First--to go to the bathroom, a tiny cubicle with shower, stool, and sink. This Darby had transformed to a nineteenth-century gentlemen's alcove. A collection of shaving mugs, ensconced with silver accoutrement--collar hooks, nail files, tortoise combs and square fine-bristled brushes--lay in harmonious clutter on a dark walnut shelf beside the medicine cabinet.
      With one of the tortoise combs Set teased a section of hair at her temple to give herself width at the eyes. Then she ran its firm tortoise teeth down the back of her head, sweeping with her hand after, feeling her smooth, silken hair. A paint of red lips and she smiled, slowly opening up into the mirror, onto a full realization of her ownership. Maybe temporary ownership, most certainly temporary, but still at this moment, she was in control of something that was probably an historic treasure, but also, and--strangely just as important to her--she held a controlling element in the relationship between David and Kathy. For only a darting second she felt guilt. That she should keep it. For several seconds, though, she felt like a teenager, playing in fiction. But she smiled her red lips again and spoke outloud, into the medicine cabinet mirror. "It's my life, too."
      The second time she rose from the table she went to the window and scanned the white lawns, now graying into early winter evening. With only several words yet to go, she was rich with images of a distant time, caught in flecked page. Her smile was controlled and powerful.
      "Set, could you spare just a few minutes away from your blasted letter?" Dar puffed at the door, hanging one lanky arm against the frame. "The colonel's mantel is just not coming together and I need you to hold the apples aloft while I tie them up."
      She smiled all the way down the staircase. The hall opened up onto a tapestry of antlers, burgeoning mantels of jeweled light and metallic twine, blinking candles, and red plaid ribbon scrolling, poking up here and there among the weeds. "This is gorgeous. Absolutely wonderful, Dar." She breathed in acrid smoke and shivered. A frigid tapestry. The first floor, except for the apartment, was not heated.
      "I thought it turned out awfully well myself. Here, just hold those three if you can while I tack the ribbon." He twined himself like a ribbon about a step ladder and twisted and turned while she held three golden hedgeapples above her head.
      "It's so cold." she shivered into the room, jerking the apples in tiny frigid spasms.
      "I should have told you to don your coat. I don't feel a thing at this point. I'm used to the cold . . ."
     This time they both heard it--the sobbing. Shocking--because both had kept a tentative gaze on the lane for his return, and because he did not return. The crying held them pinned to the door from where it bled.
      "My God, he's at it again," Darby squeezed between his teeth. "What kind of a beast is the man?"
      Before Set could answer, the door flung open and a woman appeared, her eyes wild and red, her hands at her ears, and her mouth coughing great globs of choking breath. She did not look toward the mantel where Dar and Set stood like statues, their mouths open.
      "You said there was nothing." Her strangled breath hissed. "You said it was over and nothing with her, nothing between you." She lunged down the hall toward the bottom of the stairs.
      Set expected Kathy, but a bob of auburn hair showed Faith McDonald. David appeared at the door and signed toward the watching couple. His lifted right hand indicated that he was attending something that he must attend, that he was in control, that he knew what to do, that the sobbing was an incident he could handle and that Faith was his occupation at that moment. He was in control. Set read all of this in a single gesture, as David moved toward Faith who stood humped over the banister, her shoulders heaving silently in the dim light.
      "Didn't you say that, didn't you promise?" came a tortured reprise.
      "Faith, come back now. Just come with me. Back in." Set and Dar stared at the foot of the stairs. David looked up. "She's had a very difficult weekend. Her family." Faith lifted her head, her eyes, circles of sunken rouge, finally focusing on her audience. Still, protectively, his arm about her waist, David led her down the hall and through the apartment door.
      When he reappeared, his eyes focused on Darby. "I am very sorry for this disturbance. Her father is quite ill and she's been home. She was in St. Louis this weekend." He's offering more information than his nature allows, Set thought. When Set and Dar did not speak, David Owen plunged forward. "So since I retrieved her from the airport, she's been highly emotional." He flicked a side glance at Set. "Again, I apologize." Slouching now inside the door, he said, "She'll be alright. Faith is a strong woman. Thank you."
      He shut the door softly. There had been no reason for the thank you, only uneasiness and defense of what was not spoken, as David had said to her a few days ago when she apologized for having called him.
      Set knew why Faith was crying, at least the general source of her agony. The only difference between Faith and herself was that Faith had gone beyond fiction, and suffered now in the fire of making it come true.

She had waited all day for it to end. The congested halls, the doors opening, the loud, abrasive greetings that eventually arose out of Monday morning stupor--these were all so much material to move through until she could get to the library. Between second and third periods, Kirsten and Joannie Madden had stood giggling at the door, Set forcing a plastic smile.
     "The deacons said it would be just fine for you to chaperone our winter banquet," Kirsten said, lowering her eyes shyly, appearing for a second like her mother. Set then had given an answer, something about a previous engagement, she couldn't remember exactly because of the distraction, but she did remember the fallen, shocked expression on both girls' faces at the news. That she had been chosen to enter such narrow ways, after they had made the effort, struck them like a bell, that sounded on their soft faces. Set felt little and cheap watching them, both subdued, covering soft mutterings when they scuffed down the hall .
      Even Maggie's usually welcome Monday morning cynicism--something about Ray and the snowmobile--resembled irritating chatter and Set excused herself profusely for having to continue on a pile of ungraded paragraphs. Finally, the last bell rattled and her ninth period study hall drifted toward the door and out, fully charged, into the beginning of the week. Hurrying down the hall toward the library, Set gave a wary glance at the senior composites, unable to avoid the hundred glass eyes of the 1965 seniors.
      Madeline Swartz sat hunched behind an ancient typewriter, pecking away at cards for the catalogue. Looking up to see if a stray student had entered her keep after hours, she dismissed Set with a tightening around her eyes that said, Let me be.
      Set glanced over the shelves. This random glancing was useless. She was too nervous to make a thorough check. Particularly since the hub, the network of this morass of information, sat within earshot, clicking away at better avenues to retrieve information. "Madeline, I'm such a dunce at detail. I've never been good at libraries. How is your biography section?"
      "It's according to what you're looking for," the librarian returned tolerantly.
      "Oh, I just like biographies. I enjoy the trials of others. Makes me feel if the rich and famous had trouble and survived, I've got a chance." This offering of frailty, and mention of the human condition, in light repartee, did not move Madeline.
      "Well, unless I know what you want, I really can't help." She punched several severe clicks at the typewriter.
      "I'll just browse then." If you only knew, you little worm, what I am doing you wouldn't be so all-fired hostile in your stupid health shoes and dowdy gray blouse. That I should be pleasant to the likes of you. Set stooped to the lowest shelf and attempted a methodical search, but the biographies appeared to be shelved with fiction, adventure journals, the history of crayfish, and high school pabulum dating sadly back to the sixties. Libraries had always intimidated her, particularly since college. She knew, as an English major, she was to be intimate with their mysterious labyrinths, their interlocking forms, Readers Guide, vertical files, MLA Index, indexes to indexes. As a teacher, she was to be positively enshrined with this ethereal information, this in order to produce even more refined seekers of knowledge than herself. Most of the time she hid her fear, her ineptitude, and comforted herself with the frumpiness of librarians. In fact, she had happily concluded that the drabness of any librarian in question was the true index of library prowess, and lay in direct ratio with that creature's ability to meander the hidden ways. But now Madeline Swartz's drabness was of no use and Set's patience with shelf-gazing had dissipated.
      "My, we are dedicated. After hours research?" Dan Peerman stood in the door in a splattered rubber apron, smirking. It was comforting to Set who could not have endured cheeriness at that moment. Dan limped forward and stood stockily, short legs apart, at a shelf.
      "Well, what about you, Mr. Art Whiz? I notice you're still here gleaning information to entrance your little darlings."
      "Entrance is not quite the word. Shoving the Renaissance down their throats is more like it. Madeline, whata' ya' got on DaVinci and Michelangelo?"
      Madeline huffed and turned, her hands on her hips. "Have you tried the card catalogue. It's always the first place to go when in question." She turned back, shoving her big shoes under the table. "Then the vertical file might help." She huffed again.
      With exaggerated lips, he formed words across the room. "What a bitch," he articulated in silence to Set, who smiled and nodded.
      "Well, I think I've seen all that I need to see," Set said. "Thank you, Madeline, for your help. The county library is my next haunt. Dedicated, you know, Peerman. May you uncover the Renaissance." Behind her she heard Dan's low, vicious laughter, and clicking keys.

At the Dame County Library, Set kept the strap over her shoulder. Even when she pulled out the drawers on the wooden catalogue, even when she walked the short aisles of shelves. Set couldn't take a chance. Her leather case held the secret, covered in Saran Wrap and laid flat between the pages of a glossy-covered cutout book--The House of Seven Gables. Set had picked up this literary toy during a summer trip to Salem but had never taken time to cut and paste Hawthorne's house together. Somehow the book seemed right to house the secret.
      Two heavy women, one in turquoise polyester, the other in a yellow knit top, with big hoop earrings, sat at a round table, ensconced in books and papers. They looked intent and vaguely professional, like the irritating epithet--the nontraditional student. This was always a portent of age or disability.
     Set rubbed the side of her leather pouch. A child, probably two, skittered away from her teenage mother, who sat chewing gum and thumbing through Country Living. "Come here right now, Lisa Sue," she called half-heartedly toward the round paperback rack where the child was attempting to push it to a twirl. But then the mother squeezed her gum between her teeth and cracked, and looked down at the page.
      Lisa Sue edged uncomfortably toward Set who was piling books at her empty table. The strap dug into her shoulder, but she only adjusted its weight. Set peered over the journal rack toward the mother, who did not look up.
      "Now, you better go on back. Your mommy is calling you," Set said in a singsong voice nauseating her own sensibilities. The child galloped away and steered toward the oversized book collection. Relieved, Set assembled her books, several sheets of unmarked paper, and three sharpened pencils about her. Into this cave she took her mind, then laid down her pouch, and picked up the first biography. This one had a shiney plasticized cover and appeared to be the kind of book that might answer one of the questions. Maybe even all three.
      Contents first. A date, to find the date.
      There it was--"Chapter IV Away From It All and Back Again 1840-50." Page 145. Set noticed her breath rising short and shallow as she skimmed the text.
      Yes, there it was. "America." Page 153. Skim. The information--disappointing. Sketchy and indeterminate.
      The second question would need the index. She ran her finger, trembling, down the "I" listing. Yes, again. The word. Pages flicking under her red polish, past the page, back, open, glancing, breathing, and there it was. ". . . but years later he gave him something far more lasting, when after the success of Pickwick Papers he sent his former pupil a snuff box inscribed to the Inimitable Boz--a title that Dickens with careful, precautionary self-mocking loved most to use, for no other so completely expressed his great certainty that he was somebody quite exceptional and apart."
      Set could not see Lisa Sue spinning the bookrack, or hear the mother's biting gum cracks, or hear the woman in yellow drop a dictionary and say "damn." She only felt--her heart, her breath, and the name on the page.
      Charles Dickens.