Diaries are tricky beasts. Often fulsome and prattling, yet insightful and nostalgic, they shout our lives to souls who shouldn't read their contents. But written words, painstakingly scrawled on paper, demand an audience. It's a dirty secret few will admit to even themselves.
– Dr. Florence Gastonbury, anthropologist
May 17, 1887
Papa let me help plant the fields today! I walked behind his brand new Gilpin Sulky plow with a bucket of seeds and filled the ruts. He winked at me whenever I tired of the burdensome seeds and escaped to rest beneath the big weeping willow. I hope I didn't slow him down! But he didn't complain, and I basked in the breeze, letting the hanging branches and tiny leaves sway through my fingers. I wish I were stronger, even though Papa always smiled.
Kyle had never seen a weeping willow himself, secluded in parts of the country without their wide and graceful bulk. If there were any in Tammond Dale, they were doubtlessly stripped bare by fall, resembling nothing but a large tumbleweed or the metallic skeleton of an umbrella. The girl, it has to be a girl, seemed excited lugging an old bucket around a field, but Kyle couldn't relate. A Gilpin Sulky? Whatever happened to John Deere? He rolled his shoulders, avoiding the mental image of a girl walking bowlegged, hunched over with both hands tightly gripping a wood handle, trying not to soil her dress. He silently vowed to never complain about doing the dishes again.
He fanned a few more pages, looking for strong, dark lines unbroken by mold or water damage that turned ink into a blackened wasteland of torpid swirls.
May 23, 1887
He has Papa's eyes, and they glimmer like starlight when he smiles at me. I'm not yet smitten, but if I were to marry, perhaps I could be persuaded. I blush even as I write this, how embarrassing to feel alive, caught in the dew of spring butterflies and blooming fancy. I–
Kyle mentally gagged, closing his eyes in mock nausea and turning his head, spilling his tongue and choking out a throaty gag. Gross. Next she'll blab on for pages about daffodils and kissing, and how their children would be so beautiful. Not that Kyle didn't have lusty thoughts, but the dripping sappiness turned his stomach.
He flipped through yet more pages, hoping the next meandering blurb didn't consist of several detailed paragraphs on dollhouses and cooking. Even if Arin wasn't a walking cliche, the last entry soured Kyle temporarily to all girls and their alien ways.
April 4, 1887
Mother is most cross! Our vegetable garden is being invaded by some pest, laying waste to lettuce, carrots, beets, spinach, turnips, nothing is safe! She's positively aghast! Papa laughed and promised to stop the destruction, but he looked doubtful. It could be a rabbit. Oh, I do so hope it's a rabbit! I've always wanted a pet. Papa has his Rufus, mostly for protecting the sheep, but I want a pet of my own.
Maybe I can catch him before Mother. I'd hate to have rabbit stew tomorrow. I can't eat my pet! If I can sneak out tonight...
April 5, 1887
It was a rabbit! I caught him! Papa showed me how to set traps last year. The bunny is in a wood crate in the shed, and Mama wants to eat him! She can't cook him! I cried and begged Papa, "can't I keep him?" He's just a poor, defenseless bunny that was hungry. We have lots of alfalfa for Old Samson, so a little more for the bunny would be easy! He shook his head and frowned before shooing me outside while he talked to Mama. I promised to be responsible, but I didn't want to sound like a little girl, so I went to sit under the willow and think about Jimmy. I'd practice with the bunny, like our first born son.
Kyle was starting to become genuinely queasy. Old enough to think about marriage and children, but young enough to obsess over a worthless rabbit. Considering the era, that probably meant she was twelve or thirteen. He reeled at that realization; how times had changed!
But it was readily apparent that the diary was a lost cause. Stories of plowing fields, meeting boys in school, and new pets, reeked of mundane qualities just shy of absolute banality. It wasn't inspiring, captivating, or even slightly interesting. It was like reading the innermost thoughts of a janitor as he painstakingly described the breathtaking challenges and adventures of cleaning bathroom three on the second floor of a small office building in Detroit.
Found an especially slushy puddle of vomit today, it would say. Used my patented 40% bleach solution with a hint of lemon and it smells like new!
No thanks. But Kyle felt obligated to keep reading anyway. The "rabbit story" was the only series of sequentially legible pages, and Jason still hadn't returned from... wherever he disappeared in his inspired investigations. It was something, anyway.
April 6, 1887
I've named him: Rue. What else could I choose as a name, for a creature almost consumed for the mere sin of being hungry and nibbling on some lettuce in our garden?
Kyle stopped, stunned and momentarily breathless. Rue? Didn't Adriana say that was the name of her pet rabbit? The diary slid from Kyle's nerveless fingers, eliciting a dull whump and cloud of dust as it hit the desk. He coughed and waved away the invading particles, suppressing a sneeze with an arm thrown like cords of firewood, across his nose.
"What the..." he whispered, baffled and concerned. Was Arin Adriana's Great, Great Grandmother? Was it some crazy tradition in her family to name pets Rue? The word itself suggested remorse or regret, certainly not aspects commonly associated with a glorified, carrot-gnawing rodent. He tapped on the dusty cherry, fingers drumming out a dull rumble while he considered the unexpected connection.
But Kyle was no detective, and his oblivious manner made him a terrible candidate for Sleuth of the Year. The connection was tenuous at best, and the town itself reflected subdued melancholy thanks to its relative seclusion in a cusp of towering mountains and cliffs. Maybe it was just how people reacted, those quiet and isolated souls contemplating life and God in a small town.
Still... Rue. Rabbit Rue. It generated a tinge of poetic heat, a contrast unencumbered by lackluster complacency or cliche happiness cuddly bunnies demanded as a birthright. That both disturbed and terrified him, without reason, beyond measure. A harsh chill flowed through his body, freezing his very soul even while his fingers thrummed a monotonous dirge.
Kyle decided he was overreacting. Though the unique name stirred some primal fear in his psyche, he was composed of sterner stuff. Filthy rabbit. Bah! He had work to do. Important work, for a teacher who bequeathed a mission of utmost importance, and he refused to allow a measly coincidence to sidetrack his singular objective: get a camera. He wanted to come back here, in a day, maybe two, and take pictures. Pictures of dilapidated piles of crusty detritus sagging in ancient basements. Photos of the schoolhouse precariously balanced between preserved chance and stark obliteration. Snapshots of the poem in the doorjam, historical and artistic backdrops all!
So Kyle read, through uninspired drivel, to frantic scribbling wrought from inspired depression and panic, he drank the words like a thousand-year-old sponge. He'd keep the diary, of course, but Dr. Z would want a summary. And a firsthand account of Old Town, from any source, could mean special favors.
Kyle could hardly wait to triumphantly return with his prize.