She laid it flat on the kitchen table and peeled away, gently with pleasure, the Saran Wrap. To read it, in the caboose, with the walls looking down, alone, with what she knew now--this was the moment. She could not remember driving home, not a stop light, or sign, or getting in the car, or walking through the door. She only knew that she was at her table now. She had left the library. All else was breath and thought.
      She lifted its feathered weight, its speckled patina, its brown strokes of ink, her fingers silently probing the not-quite-brittle, not-quite-paper and read, aloud, into the walls:

I cannot adequately convey to you, dear friend, the sense of Eden in the wilderness which surrounds me at this moment. Kate, who continues to bear up well considering the circumstances, has alighted from the wretched conveyance which has borne us through a veritable morass of a journey since seven o'clock this morning, and is consorting with Putnam and Ann who stand lifelessly at the back of the--shall I call it an Inn? This is the fourth stop and consequently the fourth blaring of the [word not clear, probably "horns"] and general lack-luster hubbub about a log structure lying somewhere -- O will someone tell me where? -- through the bog named Ohio. But to be fair, my dear safe and secure Friend, I must write that an original and unspoiled beauty hangs about the boughs of the enclosing trees and the sounds of the forest are much improved with the intelligent glint which lingers in the eyes of the young, pleasant girls who have attended me.
     Let me paint the scene which has just ensued. These two gentle girls, with eyes like young doe, must have watched our party alight from the "extra," myself leading the way through the spring woods where buds are barely beginning to swell, to a substantial, I might even say graceful, log structure where we are to receive fresh horses. The carriage road leads upward to a soft ledge where the log home, complete with gabled windows, perches. From there the girls must watch while they sit at their spinning. Not only the gabled windows but the door marks this forest glen--dare I say [not legible, probably an "enc ---ted"]--or perhaps paradoxically sophisticated. That is, Forster, the door was oddly incongruent with its mother structure. It was brimming with carvings, the image of an animal, perhaps a [illegible but I think "boar"], but I cannot say for sure, garlanded with leaves appearing to be the insignia or crest of the family, or the place. But I did not linger at the door, needless to say, as it was necessary to almost carry poor tired Kate across the portal, with the assistance of Ann. The girls and their mother, a staunch, formidable woman, arose and approached us, the older woman asking about our obvious needs, and the youth timidly plying about her skirts. But here is the astounding fact, good fellow, attend now to the words of the happy sufferer--they had dipped into the words of the Inimitable. Yes, they even brought forth from a precarious shelf a worn leather tome which had made its way into this tiny paradise, for I must concede that these soft hills and this oddly, elegant pile of logs has given me some small [water stain but "sur" and then "e"; maybe "surface"; maybe "surcease"] of homesickness for my own hearth and . . .

Set allowed the final word to hang in the air. The "and" introduced only a section of brown smudge. Below that the right corner was torn, a triangle of precious time entirely gone. Laying it back into its plastic wrap, she sat at the table holding her face in her hands.
     "Could it be that he was here?" she said aloud. "He was here," she answered herself. "Here at Ivy's cottage. He was here." Even as she said it, it echoed, and a ring of exposed teeth and a tuft of hair lifted in a cone of light, then settled clearly before her eyes. Nate had said it as he died. "He wasn't here. He wasn't here."

"Will all the Tiny Tims sit here at the front? You Scrooges, over there by Kevin. Jill, don't you want . . . "
      "No, Miss Hunt, I want to be in the Scrooge section. Why not a girl? After all, you said this was experimental theatre." Set smiled and nodded above the scraping of desks, and nervous banter of anxious seniors. Susie Baxter sidled next to Set who was directing the formation of these scattered desk islands.
      "Miss Hunt, I don't know. I'm so, so . . . Do I have to read in front of . . ."
      "You'll be just fine, Susie. I'll help. Everyone feels the same. Trust me." The heavy girl retreated into the Marley island where mouthy Tim Bradley announced the Marleys's dramatic turf.
      "Baxter, are you tryin' for Marley? Course, you do have the build for it," and he winked at Brian Saddler who looked down.
      "Tim, that kind of behavior will absolutely not be tolerated. Either you get a grip on it, or dismiss yourself." Set was appalled at the double hurt for the overweight girl. Tim looked surprisingly miffed. But then these tryouts were not to be taken lightly. Set had seen this intensity for drama during all her years of directing high school plays. Teenagers got serious with the potential for performance.
      "Alright, alright," she shouted, tapping a ruler on the desk. The students were immediately silent, turning fidgety eyes toward the front. "Yes, come on in Natalie." A doll-faced, tight-jeaned girl slipped into a front desk. The Marleys became animated but Set ignored them. She had repeated the words a hundred times. "Remember, all acting is reacting. You are reacting to something--a thought, a word from someone with you, a physical hurt--everything must have a source, something that sets it off. So think about that as you read your lines." Jill Eichenberry and Dawn McLeish nodded knowingly at one another, the wise ones. "Please turn to page 12 in your scripts. I need a Scrooge, a Fezziwig, a Miss Fezziwig and a Ghost of Christmas Past." Hands rose up from every island. "Ah, let's see, why don't you try Scrooge this time, Joe, and, ah, Sally, Miss Fezziwig. Pete, you on Fezziwig. Now I want you jolly and middle-aged." The group roared as if she had made the most scintillating piece of wit in the world. The three chosen ones smiled and frantically sought their fame on page 12. "Christmas Past. Let's see," and she looked slowly around the room. Devastatingly shy Mark Miller sat isolated, his skinny arms flanking the desk. "Mark, why don't you try that." Mark looked stunned, and the rest of the group turned their eyes on him at the back.
      "All up here, please." Set watched the intensity of the befuddled and ebullient group and felt satisfaction. What power rested in her at this moment. Each young mind bending toward her, so ravenous for a spot in the light, so bent upon the assumption of another role. Set marveled at the desire for playing life. Not that she had ever used this power for injury to a single earnest student in her control. Instead, she had felt writhing agony for the ardent, untalented soul who clanked woodenly upon the boards, who offered gestures never to be influenced by direction, and she had, indeed, created whole new parts in the Dramatis Personae for these unfortunate blocks of young flesh.
      "Now, Christmas Past, just look bleak and mysterious. Here, pull your jacket up around your head." The room giggled with anticipation. "That's you, Mark. Christmas Past." The fidgeting boy stared about the room. "You don't have any lines in this particular section," she said, apologetically. She omitted the fact that Past had no speaking lines whatsoever in this tryout snippet on page 12.
      As she launched the group into the first of what she knew would be many strenuous hours, she went over it again, and again. The irony of it, the strange glittering mystery of it, the power of it. That she should be saying his lines, his words, enjoining the ink of his distant eloquent pen, when she practically had him, owned him, had boxed him up for real in her old jewelry chest. She had Charles Dickens himself at the caboose. And no one knew. Not even Dar. She had decided not to tell him yet.
      Set uttered a directive toward the weak-voiced Fezziwig. "Pete, I mean, Fezziwig, react on your face while Scrooge is talking. You're a jolly man. Look jolly. Move your head. Smile." Joe produced a clinched-teeth smile and twirled clumsily in place.
      Her memory had been faulty since Aaron handed her the gift. She had almost forgotten these tryouts after school. Tonight, Tuesday evening--lecture, Calvary Chapel. Shocking even to herself, she had placed David Owen somewhere behind the import of the letter. The single page seemed to subsume all of them. Thursday, Messiah practice, at the church, and she knew this was a must. First time with full instrumentation.
      But Wednesday she knew, she remembered. It was set aside for the final search, the ultimate answer. She was determined to conscribe Dar for verification. They would drive to Willenberg University. Certainly, a university library would house the right stuff, details, maps, handwriting, letters. Dar would grumble. He would be worn from Wednesday's open house, the launching of his season, the first public view of his tapestry rooms. But she knew that after encountering several unappreciative gawkers, he would no doubt be ready for the pseudo-sophistication of a college campus.
      "Good, Mark. That's perfect. Now point your finger, trembling, at Scrooge." Set realized as he watched the shy teenager tremble magnificently that she had switched the persona of robust, red-clad past and skeletal future. But now it did not matter. The group looked on, intent. Past's boney finger extended long, quivering from his lanky arm. Shy, stuttering Mark was good at his part. "Wonderful, excellent. Now, page 39. I need a Bob Crachit, a boy with a turkey, another Scrooge, and the ghost of Christmas Future."

What struck Set was the marquis. Instantly, David's words came back to her. Nightclub Christianity. This was it, an outcropping of that gaudy, mismatched philosophy of spirit and flesh, the church and the world. She had always flinched at the sight of these stone piles rising from the front lawns of churches. In the center of a noble stone formation would flash black on white letters, plastic, removable, worthy of the IGA or the Shell minimart. "Mincemeat $.89 a pound, pork chops, center cut, $1.49, Regular, $1.19, Super, $1.23,
      Reverend John Holyhead, pastor. Sunday morning, 9:30. The Way to the Cross--A Gate to Eternal Life." David's phrase was just right, and now, ironically, here he was paraded in exchangeable type across the stone and glass marquis of Calvary Chapel.

 Dr. David Owen
     Lecture/ New Life Conference
     "The Meaning of Epiphany in a Corrupt World"
     Monday-Wednesday, Friday--7:30
     Sunday Morning Services 8:30 a.m. and 11 a.m.
     Sunday Evening Prayer 7:30
     Regular Thursday Evening Bible Study 7:30
     "For me to live is Christ."

     Everything wore a different cast now--the steps into the entry, the doors swinging their slow dubious welcome, the carpet only slightly worn and perky against the blonde accoutrement, the entire rolling light-wooded chamber of worship. Set noticed the wood; she looked into the windows without color, stretching along the walls. Stable, firm, unmodified. No nonsense, crank-out glass. The front, where the pulpit stood, rose like a hollow dome of fruitwood and oatmeal carpet, stretching up onto the dais and on behind, where four flaxen chairs stood to seat the players of the service. Behind these chairs, exactly square--between two chairs and two chairs--hung the curtain. Its pinched pleats and living room fabric were unnerving, even menacing to Set, who scooted quickly, even as she looked, into the back pew, first seat along the inner aisle. She would not give up this position. Safe. Ready to flee.
      The curtain held her, no matter where she turned her eyes. A little block of heavy fabric shutting off what? A tank with water, an empty tank, a pool of blood, an Aztec sacrifice. It was sadistic and voyeuristic, shutting it off like that, and then opening it up to an audience, who would slit their eyes to look on wide-eyed women, and determined children. Ready to dowse it all, shed it all, be clean and wet in a recessed block of wood, ready to be a spectacle for the panting crowd. Did the curtain close, then, when the woman--running spouts of water from her ears and hair--was released, pulled up by the strong-handed pastor? Did the curtain close with her breathing hard in her new body? Immersion or sprinkling. According to David, it was a major stumbling block, a point of salvation, a theological hard place. Set looked down, into the pattern of hymnals that pocked the backs of the pews. She felt a peculiar fear that had not been before, when she had first come to hear Dr. David Owen begin his lectures. Then it had been small town and good will, potlucks and steamy beauty in his Grecian head, then it had been a wholesome mystery into which she smiled and to which she warmed.
      "Miss Hunt, I'm so glad you could join us," a pimpled face spoke into her ear. Jon Phillips appeared radiant in this setting; he was in his element. "Our new pastor--since Pastor Sowders, well, you know--is really good. Really, in tune with the scriptures and knows how to get it across to young people." He raised his hand and Set noticed its skin--the soft, unmarked flesh of a child--this child directing her in a personal relationship with the vast, dark powers of the universe. "Would you like to be a little closer? There's plenty of room yet. Up there by Enid and Bob Fout is an extra."
      "No, Jon, I might have to slip out a few minutes early, but thank you." She assumed what she thought was a correct turn of lip in her smile, but somehow she was confused as to the exact recipe for righteousness in this light, airy dome. There was nothing to grab hold of, no dark Gothic chairs, aged and nicked, or candles, black wicks with lingering smoke, or recesses in stone with unspeakable mystery. Only the blonde recess with the pinched curtain and promise of a wet puppet show where spirit is laid bare. All else was open to the light through the clear panes.
      About her, throughout the congregation, Set made out familiar faces. Agnes Bolton's large gray head rose thick behind the Fouts, whose heads, Set noticed, were smaller, features finer than Agnes's. Does the physiognomy of a person reflect the inner man? Chaucer. The Wife of Bath's wide hips and gap teeth, the Pardoner's blonde, effeminate hair. Her mind wandered. She turned her head slowly, taking in the pews across the aisle. The Hostetlers--Cynthia and Kenny. Cynthia was smiling generally about, with her trademark bow at her throat. How could one woman wear so many bows? Set looked away. Toward the front, barely visible beyond the growing crowd, appeared two dry, brassy, blonde heads, close together, low--Theresa and Lori Sowders, and there, in the front row, where Set had not noticed before--David Owen. His shock of dark hair escaping, his hand pushing through it, his elegant nose and high cheek bones. Tweed and tie, dark and brooding, hidden, the speaker for Calvary Chapel's determined flock.
      Set reached for a hymnal, to thumb through, to read, to busy herself, and then she saw her. Two rows ahead, at the end of the pew, near the windows, sat Faith McDonald. Her head was bowed and her eyes were closed. Set watched her for a few minutes, and then Faith raised her head. Kathy and Rueben Schmidt brushed near her by the window, and Faith opened her mouth as if to speak, her hand in the air. But when the Schmidts slipped into the row ahead, Faith put her head down again. Set watched over the bowed head the pretty silhouette of Kathy's face, smiling at a couple beside her. A sweet turn of expression, a touch of her hand to the girl's shoulder. Kathy Schmidt, too, was in her element. But Set remembered then the sound of sobs and rage at Shequonur.
      "We want to thank Dr. Elwood for filling in during our hour of spiritual crisis. But as Dr. Elwood himself would say, nothing is too great for the Lord's comforting hand. I know many of you have undergone a real challenge of spirit during these past weeks. But the Lord will provide. The powers of darkness are always afoot, and, as the Scriptures tell us, 'There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.' So we know that Satan is working overtime to corrupt Christ's flock, the bride of Christ, and we accept this as a challenge. Let's turn now to Page 37 and let the power of evil know that the saved cannot be moved." Bob Fout spoke with conviction, a midwestern honesty, forthright, plain and sturdy. His persuasive nasal twang comforted behind the pulpit; his knowledge of spiritual definition, fully developed into this auxiliary post--deacon of his church.
      "Let's stand, please." Rustling and then powerful, they stood in a body of heat and flesh, Set with them, shoulders forward, thrusting down into the words, one voice.

     Bless-ed as-sur-ance, Je-sus is mine!
     O what a fore-taste of glo-ry di-vine!
     Heir of sal-va-tion, pur-chase of God,
     Born of His Spir-it, washed in His blood.

Set was swept along with the ecstatic grind of their single voice; she knew the sound was raw and driven, not the delicate homogenization of holding back, of matching sound for sound, pitch for pitch, at South Hill Mennonite, but she could not force herself against the tide. When she opened her mouth to blend, to hear herself pronounce the words, her voice was lost in their undivided energy. Even though she could not hear herself against the sound that rose into the light dome, she knew she was a portion of that risen heat vibrating against the wood.

     This is my sto-ry, this is my song.
     Prais-ing my Sav-iour all the day long;
     This is my sto-ry, this is my song.
     Praising my Sav-iour all the day long.

With them, she paused in a mighty settling of limbs and adjustments. Babies propped up with pacifiers, Bibles on laps, hymnals returned, faces grim with threads of pleasure.
      "My fellow sufferers in Christ, let us not forget who is on the throne, this very day, waiting for the end time, that glorious moment when we all will be swept away, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye. The Rapture, my friends, for those who are washed in the blood. And then, it all will be made clear." The speaker stood a squat block of educated tones. He wore his theological degree with aplomb. "But while we are here for a while, doing the Lord's work, He would have us learn. And so we come to the second day of the second week of our conference and the instruction of David Owen. Doctor David Owen," he added as if to highlight the mantle that rested upon his own past, to remind the congregation. He turned in a practiced swing toward one blonde chair where David sat. "May the Lord Jesus Christ fill his heart with the wisdom as he instructs us tonight in Holy Scriptures. Dr. Owen."
      "Pssst. Bodark, Teacher. Do you remember?" Like an echo of the Bart Clifford Market, the voice crackled from behind. But she knew who this time. Aaron Lieb sat screened by Ivy Gilchrist on one side and Ora King on the other. Extra metal chairs had been strung behind the last pew.
      "Now, Aaron, you settle," Ora said kindly, pulling the pocked nose back from Set's ear. She turned a brief smile back at them. The world of East Worthy congealed around September--Ivy and her secret son, Aaron and his letter, Kathy and her cries, Faith and her despair, and before them, David Owen, and his hidden rage for those who sat in a sea of expectancy.
      David Owen ran his hand through his hair twice and looked up. On his dark face, a smile resolved itself. "Epiphany. The moment. What can happen in one fleeting moment. During these past weeks we have learned a portion of the criteria. First, 'incongruity': epiphany is not strictly relevant to whatever produces it. Second, 'insignificance': epiphany is triggered by a trivial object or incident. Last night, I spoke on the psychological association of the epiphanic moment and we learned that it is not an incursion of God from the outside. It is a psychological phenomenon arising from a real sensuous experience, either in the present or recollected."
     Several dry hacks barked out of the congregation, near the front. David smiled, waiting for the sounds to stop. Clearing of throats, shifting of legs, turning of heads. Set felt it. "And tonight, the criterion of momentaneousness. That is, dear friends of my youth, the epiphany lasts only a moment, but leaves an enduring effect." He walked from behind the pulpit, calm, moving across the podium, taking his glasses from an inside pocket, sliding them across his eyes, stopping on the far side of the stage, turning square upon the congregation seated on the west side of the church.
      "Do you know what I saw this evening in the dim light, just outside, walking up the steps?" He paused with this rhetorical question; he looked into their faces. "Of course, you don't. But I will tell you now. I saw a stone." Enid Fout turned into her husband's side and whispered. "I saw a stone wedged into the corner of the building, low and gray. On it, chiseled into its surface, words. Perhaps you don't remember the words. I do. Let me say them for you. Calvary Chapel, 1961. Builder Franklin Tracy Owen." Set sensed a catatonic stillness freezing around her. "But even if I had not seen the stone, during these past two weeks, each night when I walked up the steps, I would have remembered. I would have remembered the words. You see, I was there. On the day when the stone was inserted into the wall. I was there. But then, so were many of you." He extended his hand, sweeping it across the room. "I was thirteen years old, a boy with his father, proud, cold. It was a cold day. A wind blew off the field, a treeless lot. November. Do you remember, Enid? And, Bob, do you remember? You were there." Nothing moved, not a hair, not a twitch of a shoulder. "Now that was a moment, wasn't it? One with an enduring effect? Jean and Zed Zinwell, you were there, too. Do you remember?"
      He moved now to the east side of the stage. "And Paul and Mariette Bratley, you certainly remember. I remember you, Paul, holding the stone with Dad." Set could not move her own head. She could barely breathe. Would he do it now? What would he do? She could not take her eyes from him, where he paced across the front, a stony smile engraved on his face.
      "So since the Reverend Nathaniel Sowders, another friend of my youth, invited me to speak for this conference, I have thought much of that particular moment in 1961." He walked now behind the pulpit and adjusted some loose papers. "But do you know what, friends, and you, Dr. Elwood," and Owen gave a punctuating nod to the chairs behind. "Do you know what moment I remember most?" He removed his glasses. A baby wailed in anger. A mother jostled the infant down the middle aisle and into the Sunday School complex beyond the windows of the sanctuary. "Not so distant, this other moment in my memory, but real, inscribed across my mind. Cut deeper than the stone outside." David Owen paused and did not smile. He opened a folder. Silence in the white ceiling.
      "But I have gone on too long about the past. Each of you remember his moments, each of you carries an epiphany in his heart. Something not sought. Only there." Set could not follow this line of reasoning, and she wondered at the reaction of the audience. But then, most of these minds would not be reasoning at all, only shifting with palpable emotion. "T.S. Eliot wrote, "'And what you thought you came for is only a shell, a husk of meaning from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled, if at all." He lifted a page into the air. "In your bulletins, the insert, you will find these magnificent lines from 'Little Gidding,' Eliot's fourth poem in his great Christian work, Four Quartets. It is from this text that I would like to draw tonight's lecture."
      From here, David Owen bore down upon the subject of epiphany in a traditional manner. Set heard it, but offhand, not deep into the matter, for she was reeling with the sense of impending drama. He almost said it. And she was not the only one to know. As Owen outlined two more criterion for epiphany, several individuals made their ways down the center and side aisles and out the back. Set tried not to look, but could not help notice the faces of those who stared straight ahead as they walked into the crowd. First, a couple, early seventies, Set thought, attractive and well-groomed. The woman padded on brown suede heels and wore a matching brown suede two-piece dress. At her neck hung heavy loops of pearls; more pearls studded her ears, rich, peeking through her bobbed hair, contemporary and unusual for East Worthy. After her, walking softly, came the man, trimmed out in a dark tweed jacket and elegant wool trousers. Set had not noticed them before tonight, and was surprised at their manicured couture. Within a minute, a second couple, an extremity of mismatched and eccentric physical assemblage, smiled themselves down the center aisle. The woman was round-featured with a strange haircut that made Set think "40's." Her graying brunette was swept into rolls and twists, even the bangs turned into a tunnel of pinned hair that spoke World War II. Certainly their age made them of that period. Young and vital while the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The man looked square. Even his body, donned in a wrinkled brown suit, looked square, a farmer, his big hands, and square finger nails folded about his Bible, hanging at his side.
      Set saw several others move out, from the corners of her eyes, but her peripheral vision was not good, and she refused to stir more of the waters for David, who, although he continued seemingly unobstructed, must have sensed the turning tide of his time at Calvary Chapel. Set fiddled with her hymnal and pretended to make notes on the bulletin. Instead, she had written nonsensically, Owen, Owen, D. David, Letter, Inimitable, D------, and Owen.
      She was scrawling circles with sticks piercing through them, when it came again, singing in her ear. "Bodark. Bow meat," it giggled. A whisper. A grunt. Circles and sticks.
      Only one more event marked the lecture on epiphany. Brian Saddler stalked like a stray wolf up the center aisle where he slid in beside Lori. Set watched his long, oily hair touch the side of her dry blondness and thought of the worlds bound up within the eggshell of the mind.

"My god, they look young."
      "I know. Try not to look. It's too depressing. Think of yourself as wise and refined. A shadowy, mysterious beauty." Both Set and Dar puffed as they walked the steep incline to Moulton Memorial Library. "And, besides, if you're feeling ancient, think of me. I'm practically Methuselah." Set rarely mentioned her age to Darby and he, graciously, did not refer to it, sensing his friend's aversion to boundaries. They seemed to exist in biological stasis, highlighted only when they encountered the shock of undeniable youth. A group of East Coast preps passed them, hair cropped, shining, leather bookbags casually draping from shoulders, loafers without socks, indifference. Dar smiled seductively toward the tallest of the three young men.
      "Young, but good," Darby said. Set ignored the remark. "When I think I matriculated at Klondike Co-op, I truly must chuckle at these lads with their Ralph Lauren scarves and rosy cheeks." Darby's associate degree was an embarrassment to him, having achieved only a modicum of status from Klonerd Community College. With his innate knowledge of what looked right, his sense of style, his understanding of class and what excluded one or kept one behind impenetrable, invisible walls, a commercial art degree from a technical school was a perpetual thorn in his flesh.
      Inside the stone entrance of the Moulton Memorial library, Willenburg revealed itself as well-endowed from the big pocket books of East Coast wealth--wealth, however, that could not obtain entry into Harvard and Yale. Here in Waterford, Ohio, their sons and daughters could stroll among ivy-clad, vaguely Gothic structures, leaving their BMWs and Porche parked along tree-lined lawns, and consider themselves at par with those who remained on the coast. Because of its monetary gifts, a wide no-man's land separated this jewel of the Midwest from the other universities--private and state--prolific in Ohio.
      Impressed with this show of wealth, Set assumed a nonchalant, uninvolved expression, holding her head unnaturally high--a position she sensed also marked the few students who sat studying at tables. At the card catalogue she propped up her leather briefcase, sweeping her hair casually behind her ear. No one looked up at her or Dar. "Darby, I'm trying the name first," she said, purposely excluding a direct reference to her prize. "We'll try to get a sense of what their collection is."
      "Well, what do you want me to do, pull the drawers open for you?" Darby was incorrigible.
      "No, I don't want you to pull the drawers open for me," she hissed. "Here," and she shoved a clean paper at him. "I'll give you the call numbers when I find something. That way we can move faster."
     Set fingered the "D's," arriving at a substantial six-inch pack of cards all listed under "Dickens, Charles." The intimidating codes at the tops of the cards grinned up at her, reminding her of her library impediments, but she had girded herself against this moment. She was looking for "Dickens" and the "U. S."--only that. Biography, yes, what about letters, definitely, maybe a formal piece. She would keep her mind clear. She knew the year--1842.
      "Darby, write it down. 832.8 D 584. This seems to be the latest biography. We can use that. Kaplan, Fred. 1988." She pushed and propped the cards, irritated with numbers. "American Notes. That's right. I know the title but never thought much about it."
      "And the number, my little investigator?" She replied and Darby penciled in the information.
      "Yes, here's one. Dickens on America and the Americans. 1978." Darby's list was growing. "His letters. Letters from his trip. Yes, his correspondence. Let's go through that first, Dar."
      "Excuse me, please." A fresh-faced girl with smooth dark hair falling over one eye stood smiling at September. "I wondered if you were finished with that particular drawer?" She was not catty or malicious but Set felt pressed.
      "We'll be done here very shortly," Set said, trying to sound abrupt, yet friendly, cool and contained. Nervous now, Set felt she must push herself to finish. The dark-haired girl stood by watching, smiling. Set did not smile and assumed a teacher's persona. "I think this one, also. PR 4582 W5 1911." Dar wrote and Set flipped to the last Dickens card quickly. "Do you want me to leave the drawer out?" she asked without emotion. The girl took the drawer, still smiling.
      Set was enraged that a snip of a girl, Willenburg, or not, could make her great task suddenly secondary to some idiotic research, probably a five-page term paper. With a toss of her own shining hair, she signaled Darby to follow her up the steps to the main holdings. "Let's just find the stuff and get out of here. It unnerves me to be here with these . . . with these East Coast . . . East Coast children," she said in churning whispers as they climbed the stairs.
      Within ten minutes after they had found the PR's, Darby came bearing a tower of books that reached his nose. He carefully lowered them to a wide table. Set flicked the florescent study lights.
      "Look, Darby, this volume deals with 1842 through 43." He scraped his chair close to her and they were silent as she looked for the numbers that hung in her mind. "No, nothing for the twenty-second, but look, Dar, the name. John Forster. That's it. The one in the letter." Her heart-rate increased. " Something for the nineteenth, from Cincinnati. And then," and she drew in Moulton's bookish air, "and then April twenty-fourth to Forster. He's in the right place, right? I mean, it's possible?"
      "Of course it's possible. Isn't your home--I mean Ludway-- near Sandusky? That general direction anyway?"
      "That's it. Get a map. Let's look at the route between Cincinnati and Sandusky."
      Dar gentled a book from the pile. "Doesn't it make sense, my dear, that in a book about Dickens in America there might be a map?" He sounded vaguely fatherish.
      "Yes, yes," and she grabbed the book from his hand. It was in the end papers--a simple but clear map that revealed an arrowed path from Cincinnati to Columbus and then Sandusky. "Look where it goes. Isn't that, I mean, doesn't that go through or near East Worthy?"
      Dar took the book and traced the arrow with his finger. "I don't know. It looks like it's a little east of the county, don't you think?" They scrutinized the page.
      "But he wouldn't being going on superslabs or anything like that. Maybe it's not as straight a route as it looks, or maybe nothing like today's road."
      "Good thought, September. But what about the letter?"
      She had almost forgotten Dickens's words before her. She began slowly, and then raced-- ". . . went ashore at Louisville . . .got in at Cincinnati by one o'clock . . . we remained at Cincinnati, all Tuesday the nineteenth . . . At eight o'clock on Wednesday morning the twentieth, we left in the mail stage for Columbus: Anne, Kate and Mr Q inside; I on the box." Set whirled in the words. "Dar, think of it, Dickens on a stage coach, riding through this part of Ohio. And on the box. Up front, I guess that would be."
      "Yes, that's it." Darby now was pacing with the thought, losing some of his simulated pomposity. "Go on, what then?" Set read aloud, lowering her voice, although no one was near--not at the tables or in the rows of books.

Next morning, that is to say on Friday the 22nd at seven o'clock exactly, we resumed our journey. The stage from Columbus to this place only running thrice a week, and not on that day. I bargained for an "exclusive extra" with four horses, for which I paid forty dollars, or eight pounds English: the horses changing, as they would if it were the regular stage. To ensure our getting on properly, the proprietors sent an agent on the box; and, with no other company but him and a hamper full of eatables and drinkables, we went upon our way. It is impossible to convey an adequate idea to you of the kind of road over which we travelled. I can only say that it was, at the best, but a track through the wild forest, and among the swamps, bogs, and morasses of the withered bush. A great portion of it was what is called a "corduroy road:" which is made by throwing round logs or whole trees into a swamp, and leaving them to settle there.

"Swamps, Darby, can you imagine this place swampy? That doesn't seem quite right."
      "Of course, there must have been swamps. Farmers have drained Ohio for two hundred years. But, for heavens sake, go on."

Good Heaven! if you only felt one of the least of the jolts with which the coach falls from log to log! It is like nothing but going up a steep flight of stairs in an omnibus. Now the coach flung us in a heap on its floor, and now crushed our heads against its roof. Now one side of it was deep in the mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now it was lying on the horses' tails, and now again upon its back. But it never, never, was in any position, attitude, or kind of motion, to which we are accustomed in coaches, or made the smallest approach to our experience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle that goes on wheels.

"What's wrong?" Set looked at her partner who had made an odd snorting noise.
      "He's so funny. That last line about making the smallest approach to our experience." Darby laughed outloud. "I know exactly how he feels. Just about life in general. You know, in other areas.."
      "What he is is Dickens and Dickens is being quintessentially Dickenish here in this passage," she said majestically. Then she grabbed Darby's shirt sleeve and tugged like a child. "And he's being so Dickenish about here, our place, our land, or at least somewhere close. I can't believe it." Her voice almost squealed with these realizations.

Still, the day was beautiful, the air delicious, and we were alone: with no tobacco spittle, or eternal prosy conversation about dollars and politics (the only two subjects they ever converse about, or can converse upon) to bore us.

Dar snorted again, but now Set almost verged on being offended. After all, she was Ohio. But then, the great Dickens was describing the very things she had felt about her surroundings. Somehow, though, she had always expected a more mythical and therefore pleasant past.

We really enjoyed it; made a joke of the being knocked about; and were quite merry. At two o'clock we stopped in the wood to open our hamper and dine; and we drank to our darlings and all friends at home. Then we started again and went on until ten o'clock at night; when we reached a place called Lower Sandusky, sixty-two miles from our starting point. The last three hours of the journey were not very pleasant, for it lightened--awfully: every flash very vivid, very blue, and very long: and, the wood being so dense that the branches on either side of the track rattle and broke against the coach, it was rather a dangerous neighborhood for a thunder storm.
     The inn at which we halted was a rough log-house. The people were all abed . . .

     "Wait a minute. He's talking about Sandusky now, or Lower Sandusky. That's it. He's already through here." Set scanned it again, and then read it again carefully. But there Dickens was--in Sandusky, and not a word on the girls and the mother of her letter or anything that made the letter authentic.
      "But still it could have happened, don't you think, Darby?" Her friend looked tired.
      "I don't know. You would think that it would be . . . what did the letter say exactly?" Set reached into her briefcase and pulled out the House of Seven Gables book. From the center of this she brought out the plastic wrap. "What's that?"
      "It. The letter." Set handled the clear seal gently, unwrapping slowly.
      "You put it in Saran Wrap?" Her friend was incredulous. "My dear, there are specially made containers for old documents. You should not be encasing it in plastic."
      "Alright, alright. Just listen to this now." She leaned close to Darby. "These two gentle girls . . . graceful log structure . . . girls watched spinning . . .the thing about the door, you remember, Dar . . . their mother, a staunch, formidable woman . . . they had dipped into the words of the Inimitable . . . and then that about the soft hills and this oddly elegant structure . . . " Set was worn with her own energy. She had read it over and over and she had now meshed the book letter with the brittle page in Saran Wrap.
      "I suppose he could have had the experience and not written to--what's his name--"
      "Forster."
      "To Forster about a particular incident." Dar lifted a book wearily from the top of the pile. "Anything's possible, but, September, it all seems too fictionally good. I mean, it seems that it's a literary fairy story come true and here, with us. It's possible, but not probable. Why wouldn't this letter have come to light earlier? It's too important." He leafed through the tattered book in his hand.
      Set's eyes felt wrinkled, tired, with the fear of suspension of her drama, the end of the search. She was not a scholar, she was not adept at the needle-in-a-haystack search that might yield the barest proof of her letter. No, it was not even her letter. An icon of sentimental friendship for three long-ago teenagers. Aaron Leib's letter? No, he stole it from Nate Sowders. Kathy Schmidt's? Not really. Held jointly. That's what he said. They would pass it between them. And before that? The house, I guess. It belonged to the house. Left in a wet pile of old dresses. It was the house's letter, if it was anything at all.
      But then she remembered the grown man David Owen and his words. Gift for the world. That's what he had said. Set skimmed through the book again.
      "Darby." Set's animation returned. "I didn't even think about this. Copies of his letters. Handwriting . . ."
      "Shhh." Darby's face bent low to a yellow-ochred page of the tattered book. And then he looked up. His face was flushed. "Listen to this, Set.

At the next place for changing horses--a log cabin and stable standing all alone in the forest--we alighted for a few moments and went in. An elderly woman received us and gave us seats. In an adjoining room there were two tall, good-looking young girls, her daughters, spinning. They seemed, quite desirous to know, and were too bashful to ask, who the strangers were. Being curious to see if, in the midst of the almost unbroken forests of Northern Ohio, the inmates of that lone cabin had ever heard of Charles Dickens, I incidentally mentioned his name. "Is it indeed!" said the girls, and with brightened eyes and looks of pleasure they could see Mr. and Mr. Dickens. The coach was soon ready, and with a few words and kind "goodbye" to the woman and her daughters from Mr. and Mrs. Dickens, we went on our way. I told Mr. Dickens that the girls had read his books and were happy to have seen him; and the incident seemed to gratify him, as well it might.

     Darby looked up to see her face and then he bit his lip hard. Down Set's cheeks streaked two rivers compounded of makeup and tears. He wanted to keep the tightening in his throat from emerging wet through his own eyes.
      "Who?"
      "A Mr. Putnam, his secretary."
      "And the date?" She spoke in a monotone.
      "The right one, my dear. Arrived at Louisville Sunday April fourteenth."
      "Yes, dear old friend. Yes, Mr. Charles Dickens. Mr. Inimitable. You were, indeed, here."

Within fifteen minutes they had photocopied Putnam's entry from the tattered book, Charles Dickens in America, compiled in 1911 by a William Glyde Wilkins, two of Dickens's letters in his own hand, and the April twenty-fourth letter to John Forster.
      Out in the chill air, under the well-lit Moulton walks, they breathed deeply, filling their lungs with the bare trees and the window's reflections into the stacks, the distant Gothic doorways and the young pink faces of East Coast men and women. September Hunt looked up at her friend under a circle of Willenberg light and smiled from deep inside her mind. Darby Lambert did not look twice at the passing pink faces. He smiled and took his friend's hand, interlocking her fingers, and held it all the back way to the car.