Was

Then the car seemed to plunge into permanent shade. Huge trees sheltered the roofs. Who had had the wonderful idea of building a town in a forest?

And he was there, Back Then. The white frame houses had French-looking, sloping tile roofs and front porches with pillars shaped like Greek columns. There were white trellises and window frames that were not quite square and painted dark blue or khaki. How old? How old? Jonathan's internal clock answered. 1896. 1910. 1880. 1876. He kept stopping the car and fumbling with the camera. Other cars growled behind him, drove around him, beeped their horns. Jonathan thought they were Santa Monica friends, saying hi. He beamed and waved.

30 30 30, said his camera. Too dark. Too dark.

A beautiful girl sat on a porch eating ice cream.

"Whatcha doin'?" she called.

"I'm in love with your house!" Jonathan cried back.

"Well you can't have it!" she answered.

"I can't even photograph it!" said Jonathan, holding up the camera helplessly.

"Oh yeah? Lemme look."

Seventeen and fearless, never having had to be afraid. She wore white trousers and a fawn sweater. She took hold of the camera and looked through the viewfinder.

"The flashing numbers mean something's wrong," said Jonathan.

"Well, s'okay now," she said, mystified. She took a picture. "Here you go. Hope you find a house. This one's not for sale." She strode off. Jonathan looked through the viewfinder. This time a lightning bolt flashed inside it. That meant the flashlight was attached. It wasn't. Jonathan turned to ask her where there was a good place to stay. He saw the screen door swinging shut.

The car nearly lost its oil pan driving over an intersection. The cross streets had high humps and dips for drainage. BLUE MONT, said a drive. Jonathan turned right, and beyond a confusing series of traffic lights and franchise restaurants, there was another sign.

BEST WESTERN.

It was the name that drew him. Jonathan was chorused with car horns as he drove straight through two sets of lights into what he thought was its parking lot. He showed his credit cards at the desk and signed.

Was it the same girl behind the desk? She chewed gum and gave him a map.

"I can't read it."

"I know," she sighed. "Nobody can. The whole town's run out of maps. Everybody just keeps photocopying the old ones, till you can't read them. Anyway they're all so old none of them show the new town center or any of the new shopping malls."

She tried to tell him about the shopping malls and the cinema complexes.

He asked her where the Registry Office was. He asked about historical museums.

"You go up Blue Mont, only you can't read it, and turn right on Denison onto Clafin, only you can't read it."

"What time is it?" Jonathan asked.

"Three-fifteen.''

"What's your name?"

"Angel," she said, smiling. "Dumb name, huh?"

It's the right name, he thought he replied. Only he didn't speak. Outside there was the rumbling in the sky. Gosh, that skateboarding is loud, thought Jonathan. He went hunting.

The Registry Office was in the new county offices. Like everything else in Manhattan, Kansas, they were lost in trees. An old limestone tower rose above the new civic space. 1900, said Jonathan's i

The offices were air-conditioned. There was a mural over the reception desk, but it looked to Jonathan's fevered eyes like a video screen seen too close: the image dissolved into lines.

The Registry Office itself was up one flight of stairs. It was full of desks, slightly outdated equipment and enthusiasm.

Jonathan kept himself standing straight behind the counter. "I'm trying to find someone in the past," he said. He was maintaining, in the way someone on drugs maintains, by conscious focus.

"Okay, we'll do what we can for ya," said one of the women at the desks. She was about Jonathan's age, well groomed, bronzed hair cut short and swept up. Her name was Sally, and she invited Jonathan into the tiny back rooms where records were kept. The first small room was lined with shelves on which thick volumes lay flat.

"How long ago ya talking about?" Sally asked him.

"Eighteen seventies."

That did not surprise her. "Uh-huh. Do you know what section or range the people lived in? Township would help."

Jonathan didn't. He gave her the names, spelled them for her. G… A… E… L. Branscomb. Sally wrote on the sloping surface of a kind of house for records that stood in the middle of the room. Jonathan looked at the walls, at the books. Mortgage Record, Riley County, 217. Record of Military Discharge 3.

More huge books lay suspended under the roof of the little house. On the walls were maps, in colored sections.

"Now," said Sally. "Let me show you what the problem is." She led him to one of the maps and pointed with perfect, frosted fingernails. There was the Kansas River. There was the land, divided into squares which were divided into further squares.

"If you knew the township, we could then start to look for what sector they lived on. You see, when the land was settled, each township and range was divided up into these sectors. And each sector was divided up into quarters, Northwest quarter, Northeast quarter. Sometimes they were divided up even further."

Sally turned and reached under the roof, and with a grunt pulled out one of the huge books. Laid open, it consisted of a page to each half sector. Names and dates were written in lines.

"This tells us who had what sector when and how it changed hands," she said.

Jonathan read:

4-1-72 / Webster J.M. to Louise R.B. Rowe / Book B / page 308

"That tells us where to find the deed on microfilm. And that can tell us all kinds of stuff."

Jonathan sca

"Yup," she said with a sigh.

The dates were out of order. The land seemed to change hands every two years.

"You can see how tough things were for them," said Sally. "They mortgaged the land, then sold some of it off, then bought it back, then mortgaged it again. It sure gets confusing. The deeds are great; you find out that someone couldn't pay his taxes, or someone else has been jailed."