before we get to the school.'
'Fwoooo whooosh,' said Jonathan. 'The river moves. It rolls over in its sleep.'
The papers fluttered.
The woodland left them, moving south. There were fields on either side now, flat, rich, and the road was straight for miles. Zeandale village was a blur ahead of them, blue with distance, wavering with rising heat. There were lanes to the right. Bill slowed. PLEASANT VALLEY CEMETARY, said a sign pointing right. They passed another lane, with a clump of trees.
'It's supposed to be on the right,' said Bill. They both grew more anxious, leaning forward, peering.
'That's it,' said Bill suddenly, flicking on the turn signal and pulling over to the right, the sound of dust under tires.
On the wrong side of the road was the schoolhouse. It had been painted gunmetal blue.
'That's not it,' said Jonathan, very quickly, very firmly.
'I think it is,' said Bill, and got out. Dust from the soft shoulder still drifted across the road. The silence was very sudden, very complete. Their footsteps sounded very clearly as they crossed the road.
As they neared the old building, a droning noise started. It was as if a hollow tube were being whirled over their heads. Locusts.
'It's the same building,' said Bill, holding the photograph.
The front porch had been turned into an extension, its door turned into a window. There was the bell tower.
'That's not it,' said Jonathan in a wisp of a voice.
Bill chuckled a bit with exasperation. 'It is. Look, everything's there.'
Suddenly Jonathan was shouting. 'It's the wrong goddamned side of the road!' He ran out of breath. He began to make noises as if he were about to sneeze. 'Huh ahuh ahuh ahuh.'
'Breathe slowly,' Bill said. Jonathan knocked away his hand.
'The memoirs say it's on a lane! Ahuh ahuh. The plat book says it's on a lane!'
'Roads move.'
'On a lane that leads to the hills. Where are the hills? A big, bald hill where Dorothy made snowmen!'
Bill went still and cold. That's what the old lady had said. Snowmen, with Wilbur, on a hill. Angels in the snow.
'It's on the wrong side of the road, it's pointing the wrong way. It's the wrong goddamned schoolhouse!'
As if clubbed, Jonathan dropped. He sat down in the middle of the road.
'Jonathan, that's kind of a dumb place to sit.' Bill tugged at his arm. Jonathan started to cry with frustration.
'That place was built about 1890!'
'Look, it says Sunflower School. Stand up, Jay, out of the road.'
'It was rebuilt in a different place!' Jonathan had flowered into full tears.
'How do you know it's 1890?'
'My clock. My clock is never wrong. Look, the teacher's wearing mutton sleeves.'
'Jay, get out of the road!'
'It's my last day, and we haven't found it!' He pounded the asphalt with the flat of his hand. 'We've fucked it.'
On the horizon, a car was coming.
'Jonathan. Please stand up.'
'What for?'
'So we can keep looking.'
The car was shimmying like a dancer.
'I just want to stay here. I don't want to go on.'
Bill leaned over. 'Jonathan. You know what we're going to do? There was a sign back there for a cemetery. Remember? We're going to go to the cemetery.'
'What good is that going to do?'
'You're asking me? What are cemeteries good for, Jonathan? Names. Names and families.'
Jonathan looked up. 'Yeah,' he said.
'Come on, let's get up.'
The other car began to flash its lights.
The road to the cemetery went up the hills to bald grassy slopes and down again through thickly shaded ravines, over shaded rivulets, toward a place called Deep Creek.
