Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

But the final stanza was missing, carefully excised like a coupon clipped from the newspaper. “What happened here?” Rob asked.

“No one knows. According to notes left by the original librarian, it was like this when the library received it, back when the town was founded. Considering that he used to personally go collect late fees and overdue books from people’s houses, I’m inclined to believe him. If one of the locals had mutilated a book, he’d have skinned them.”

“Any idea why somebody would cut out the last verse?”

“Well, the academic gossip says this is one of those ancient symbolic books that held mysterious secrets coded into its passages. And whoever glued the poem in here originally might have thought the last verse contained some magical secret, or perhaps the code key to decipher everything else.” She rolled her eyes to show how little she thought of this concept. “By removing it, the meaning of the symbols can’t be decoded.”

“And you don’t think it’s anything like that?”

“ I suspect someone wanted to include the final verse in a card to his lady love, and lacked the patience to simply copy it. Sort of like those people who tear whole pages out of phone books to get one number. But be that as it may, I do know that this poem’s complete text has never been found, because back in 1992, we had an intern who got a grant to try and find it.”

He stared at the space in the book. “Sorta leaves you hanging, doesn’t it? Don’t know what ‘wonder’ appeared to him.”

“You said you found two verses on tombstones?”

“Yeah, these two. Over in Needsville.”

The mention of Needsville made her look up at him. “Ah. I thought you had the Cloud County look to you.”

“It’s just a coincidence. My grandmother was from the Philippines.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it. A lot of people come through here tracing their families, especially since Needsville doesn’t have its own library. And, of course, all the town’s records prior to 1925 burned up in the famous courthouse fire. So unless they want to drive to Nashville and try searching the state archives, they usually come here.”

“Do you have a lot of Needsville material?”

“No, not really. We’re more of a museum than a real library. We have nothing from the last century.”

“So you wouldn’t have back copies of the local paper?”

“No, you’d have to go to their office for that. The Weekly Horn covers Needsville. They’re a small operation out of Unicorn, so you might want to call ahead and make sure someone’s there before you drive all that way.”

He took photos with his phone of the nearly complete poem—the library naturally did not have a copier—and made one last visit to the strange painting for a photo. There was no way, of course, that it could be Curnen, since the painting had been finished in 1864. Then again, Doyle swore that Curnen didn’t even exist, and the artist had painted this while insane; should Rob take that as a warning?

On his way to downtown Unicorn, Rob passed the Waffle House were he’d plotted with Doyle. He wished he had time to stop for lunch, but as it was, he’d just barely make his appointment. When he’d called from outside the library, the editor said he’d only be in the office until three.

The Weekly Horn was between a State Farm Insurance agency and an antique store. As soon as he entered, a man with a gray crew cut, clad in a button-down shirt that barely contained the bulky muscles of his shoulders and arms, stepped from an office to greet him. He spoke with the nasal accent of the Upper Midwest. “You must be Mr. Rob Quillen.”

“Yes, sir,” Rob said, and shook the man’s hand.

“I’ve seen you on TV. I’m very sorry for your recent loss.”

“Thank you. Are you Mr. Howell?”

“Call me Sam, please. Mr. Howell’s my dad. What happened to your eye?”

“Pulled out in front of a fist.”

“Well, I went ahead and found the articles you asked about when you called. It’s a shame when a young person takes their own life. So was the girl who died a friend of yours?”

“A friend of a friend,” Rob said evasively. He’d told Howell only that he was passing through the area and would like to see the news articles associated with Jillie Rae Keene’s death. “I just wanted to see what the official version of the story was, since we only heard the broad strokes.”

“Not much but broad strokes to it,” Howell said as he led him to the back. The place smelled of ink, sweat, and cigarettes. A stack of back-issue volumes bound in heavy faux-leather card stock rested on a table. “You know, we don’t get many celebrities through here. We’re pretty far from any beaten path.”

“What about Bronwyn Hyatt?”

“She had her fifteen minutes, true enough, but she went back up in the hills with her family and, as far as I know, hasn’t come out.”

“I can understand that. I’m ready for my fifteen minutes to be over, too.”

“That reminds me: Before you leave, would it be too much trouble if we took a picture together? Just for a ‘look who stopped by’ thing, I won’t mention why you’re here.”

“Promise to Photoshop out my shiner?”

“It’s a deal.”

Rob looked around. The newspaper’s equipment, except for the laptop computers, looked like it came from another era. “You run this place by yourself?”

“Mostly me. Got one full-time writer on staff, and some folks in the little towns around here who write up the high school sports and community news.” He patted the stack of bound volumes. “One of these days, I’ll get these all scanned and posted on the Internet, but until then, folks have to go through ’em by hand. And as you can tell from the dust, that doesn’t happen very often.”

“So where should I start?” Rob asked.

Yellow Post-it notes marked specific pages. As Howell opened the first book, he said, “I found the main ones for you. Here’s the original news story.”

Dated 2009, the indicated headline on the yellowed paper read, NEEDSVILLE TEEN SUICIDE BLAMED ON ROMANCE.

The county sheriff reported that Jillian Rae Keene, 17, of Needsville, died Sunday from an overdose of prescription painkillers.