SIX

The day started for Don with a finger poking his upper arm. When he opened his eyes, Judy was standing over him.

"We need Internet hook up," she said.

Don squinted up at her. "There are computers at the library in town."

"Cool. Can you be ready in ten minutes?"

Don considered this question thoroughly; shower? Out of the question. Breakfast? Something he could take with him in the car would work and coffee he could get in town. Bathroom? He shifted in his bunk. This could be a deal breaker. And he had to brush his teeth.

"Ten minutes? I'll see what I can do."

In the end it took him half an hour to get up to the house, shower -- he decided that it was a necessity, he smelled of old beer -- brush his teeth, and grab a pouch of pop tarts, which he ate on the way.

The Brookstone Public Library was at far edge of town on a street that passed for the main drag. It was three blocks of businesses, including a grocery store, a department store, a bank, several small shops that took hand made items and sold them on consignment, a candy store, a video store, a tobacconist, a Starbucks, and a pizza parlor. Don dropped Judy and Susan off at the library then went to find a parking space and get coffee.

Susan stopped just inside the tall, dark, wooden, double doors and listened to the decades of readers as they whispered to her. Judy convinced the librarian that they had to have the one private room with her tenaciousness and a folded twenty dollar bill.

The librarian led them to a small, dark, locked room and let them in. A whispered thank you later Judy and Susan were left alone.

"What do you think, Susan?"

"Start with the obvious; Civil War."

The search engine was given the topic of The Civil War and it brought back hundreds of web site links. Within these results Judy looked for the name Brookstone. This brought back only three sites. The first was about tombstones, the second brought up an error message, and the third was a page that was part of a well researched, detailed site. There were a number of pictures on the Brookstone page complete with a single sentence description; a shot of partially built homes, "Early Brookstone," a young man with a hang dog expression in full uniform, "Daniel Jeffers, never returned from the war," a group of somber faced women, "the first mothers of Brookstone."

"Why is it that all old photographs make everyone look so sad?" Judy asked.

"Hatred," Susan said.

Judy looked at the pictures again but she could not see any hatred, not even in the eyes of the first mothers. They looked as if they wanted something better, but not as if they hated anyone.

* * *

Don sat on the steps of the library and drank his coffee. He tilted his head back and blocked the sun with his free hand. The sky was blue from horizon to horizon -- it was going to be another hot day. As long as it did not interfere with the work, he did not mind the heat. It reminded him of his youth on Uncle Guy's farm. Uncle Guy, who had always been older than his years, had married at eighteen, purchased the farm at nineteen, and opened his home to Don the following summer. So many of his summer days and nights were spent in Brookstone that he felt as if it were his second home. Other than his parents' home, it was the only place that he entered without knocking.

He knew that the thing to do would be to toss back the rest of his coffee, put the cup into the trash can next to the doors, and go into the library, but he could not bring himself to leave the view of the sky.

* * *

The website had been very helpful, the text files alone were extremely informative. Although nothing was said outright, the text seemed to lead the reader to believe that something very bad had happened in The Battle of Brookstone. Words stood out to the reader; bludgeoned, stabbed, sacrificed, and slaves raped. The author had the feeling that the unit's commander was insane and should have not been put in command. All of this was based on an interview that the web maker had found in an old magazine.

It took a long time for the dot matrix printer in the private room to copy all 10 pages of the text and Susan had to leave the small cramped room.

Don had just entered the library when he saw Susan exit the computer room and watched her cross the large lobby to the door to the children's reading room, where she blocked the way of a man. Don moved toward them as they both stopped. When he was only a few feet away, Don heard her speak.

"Get help."

The man did not say anything. He was watching her with wide eyes.

"Get help now. Before you hurt one of them." Susan looked back into the room, there were kids in the room from ages five to eight finding seats and whispering to each other. She turned back to the man, gave him eye contact that held no sympathy, then walked away toward Don.

The man watched her go. Don saw his expression over Susan's shoulder and knew that the man's darkest secret had been reveled by a complete stranger. If the secret had not been so sickening, Don might have felt bad for him. Susan walked past Don and out the door.

He watched her go and felt ill. What if she knew his secrets? What if she simply turned to him and let loose? They were secrets that were not on the scale with a would be child-molester but they were his and he wanted to keep them to himself.

Judy came out of the room folding the computer printout. When she saw Don, she smiled. He had the idea that she liked him and wondered if Susan knew for sure. Did she know everything?

Susan was waiting by the car when they came out of double doors. Don noticed that she looked sad.

"I emailed the Archeological Society and asked that they come out and check the field for bodies. The automatic message said that it should only take twenty-four hours for a response," Judy said as Don unlocked the doors.

On the drive back Susan rode shotgun while Judy sat in the back seat and highlighted the printout.

"It's not like I want to know," Susan said.

Don gave her a quick look, then licked his lips which had gone dry in panic.

"It just comes to me," she continued. "Like a forgotten memory. Or like part of a collage that will make up a full picture in time. Or a bad sketch where deduction is half the art. Or the spirits come and tell me. But it comes to me like some people have perfect pitch."

She looked out the window at the streaming scenery and remembered the first time it had happened.

Four years old, and not particularly outgoing, she had gone up to a man in the crowd and told him he was bad. When her mother had tried to pull her away Susan had started to scream and cry -- the man was bad, he had hit the woman and her infant son until they were bloody. Until they had stopped breathing. Then he had put them in the trunk of a car and put the car in the lake and pretended that he did not know anything. The woman with her infant son in her arms stood nearby watching and nodding as Susan spoke the truth. When the man had tried to run, the crowd had caught him and nearly beaten him to a pulp before the police had broken it up. In court, it came out as to how Susan had known the man was bad and that was when it became clear as to how the rest of the world would now be treating her. She might as well be sitting in the Freak Show tent as far as everyone looked at her. Moving had helped for a while, but it did not last. Before long she said too much and the stares started again. Most of her time in school was spent alone except when Owen was there. He did not seem to care what kind of a freak she was or what others thought of him for hanging out with her. Bless Owen.

Susan smiled out at the trees.

Don thought that there had to be a way to let it go. Knowing that it was something that nature gave her was not an excuse. She told people that she knew their secrets. He had to admit that the people she had told were few and the secrets themselves were of a desperate ilk. Perhaps they were the kind of secret that would not wait. The waitress needed to get something checked because in a week it would be a cancer that spread or that this would be the afternoon that the man in the library walked a child home and gave in to his desires.

The kind of secrets that Don possessed, (he tried not to think of them now but it was like someone telling you not to think of an elephant for three minutes, his mind was full of pachyderms holding his secrets in their waving trunks) were nothing in comparison. He had spent several weeks watching from his dark apartment as the woman across the way undressed and showered before she had bought bathroom curtains. There was the drunken make out session he had with a married woman from work in the copy room at the office Holiday Party, he was not sure if this counted because he was fairly sure that she had no memory of it. Or perhaps it counted more because he was the only one who knew. He cried at commercials and some unexpected sweet moments in cartoons. Out of boredom he had shaved his legs then had spent an itchy weekend waiting for the hair to grow back.

They were pitiful secrets, but then, he thought, most probably were. How many people had driven a car in a hit and run and had not gotten caught? Or kept a non English-speaking sex slave in an apartment downtown? Most people were nose picking, porn watching masturbators -- small secrets that hurt no one.

As long as Susan did not announce his indiscretions to the group, he did not see that it mattered that she knew. In fact, it was kind of freeing to know that someone else knew what you had done and did not seem to judge you.

It might have disappointed Don to know that Susan did not know his secrets. She could feel that he had some and that he was worried about them becoming public knowledge but she had no clear picture of what they were. Some people were like that. Owen, for example, she only got a general feeling of, well, Owenness from him, and nothing more.

In the back seat Ethan sat next to Judy and watched her read the computer printout and decide what was worth highlighting. She was so focused on the act that she had missed Don and Susan's exchange, which was funny to Ethan. Judy had been sizing Don up since the driveway back in New England and now that there has been a development she was reading.

He watched the backs of Don and Susan's heads, each in their own thoughts.

Ethan thought they made a cute couple.