Along the other wall there are narrow, high windows that let in as much daylight as they can, a few armchairs underneath them. The rest of the lighting is warm, comforting, soothing. Above all, the Sprucevale public library is cozy.
And we’ve got the basement all to ourselves. Old, very dry books about the lives of the early Sprucevale settlers aren’t the most popular of reading materials.
“I have a confession,” Levi says, looking over the machine.
I’m standing in front of the microfiche cabinets that line the wall, looking like a cross between a card catalog and a filing cabinet.
“You’ve never used a microfiche reader before and don’t even know how to turn it on?” I ask.
“Is it that obvious?” he says.
I pull open the drawer marked Sa-Sil and pull out a stack of microfiche about an inch thick. There’s more — way more — but we’re not going to get to those today.
“Using a microfiche reader is a dying art,” I say, and take my seat next to him, plopping the microfiche on the table between us. “Step one, the switch is on the side.”
He looks around, finds it, flips it, and the big black screen glows dark blue. I slide the first sheet of fiche from its paper envelope and hold it carefully.
“See that glass plate below the screen?” I say, pointing. “Flip it up.”
Levi just looks, frowning.
“Here,” I say, and reach in front of him. When I do, my shoulder brushes his arm.
“Ah,” he says as I flip it up, slide the fiche underneath, close it again and the logging records flash bright on the screen: row after row of notations in thick cursive.
I show him how to rotate the screen, how to zoom in and out, how to move it around, how to focus the reader.
His hands keep brushing mine. Our shoulders touch. His face is close to mine, maybe too close, and I keep my eyes locked on the microfiche screen while I show him how to use it.
Again and again, I wonder about what Rusty said. Figure what out on his own?
“That’s pretty much it,” I say, adjusting it one more time. “It’s not hard, they’re just a little fiddly.”
“Why do you know all this?” he asks, eyes on the screen as he twists dials, moves the plate around. “I’ve never used one before.”
“I worked in the library during college,” I say, taking another slide from its envelope and switching on my own reader. “More and more stuff is digital, but every so often we’d get someone who needed to use one of these things, so all the student workers had to learn.”
“I see,” Levi says, and leans in toward the reader.We look at microfiche for two and a half hours. Most of the records are written and simply denote an area that was logged, places like Pine Deep or Boxfir Canyon or Deerlick Run. Sometimes there’s a map, but they can be even more indecipherable than the written record.
It works like this: once we decipher a record, we mark that area on the map in colored pencil. There’s some guesswork involved, obviously. The records are missing for some years. At one point, there was a fire, and we’re missing a full decade of logging records.
But the idea is that once we’re finished here, the areas that aren’t shaded are the areas that haven’t been logged since 1820 or so. Meaning they’re the areas with trees old enough for the treasure to be hidden in.
“June, I’ve got a growing suspicion,” Levi says. He’s behind me, leaning over the scarred wooden table that our map is on.
“Go on,” I say, adjusting the focus on my reader. It doesn’t help the bad handwriting.
“I’ve got a feeling that the tree hiding the gold was logged long ago,” he says. “Some lucky lumberjack probably found himself a fortune and never told a soul.”
“Now we just need to tell the vandals that and maybe they’ll stop cutting down your trees,” I say.
“Our trees,” Levi corrects, and I laugh.
“They’re much more yours than mine,” I tell him.
I make a note, move to the next page on my microfiche. My eyes are starting to cross, but the library’s only open for fifteen more minutes, so I may as well make the most of our time here.
The only problem is that I’m pretty sure the next entry is nonsense.
I lean in toward the reader, my nose practically touching the screen. I lean back. I adjust the focus, tilt my head, trying looking through just one eye, but no luck. The area logged is a word I’ve never seen before.
“Hey, can you read this?” I ask Levi.
He comes over and stands behind me, his hands on the back of my chair. I point at the gobbledygook on the screen.
“I think that might be a W or something,” I say as he leans in.