The wagon made a gradual turn to the right with the street, and then a sharp right onto yet another street that rose even further above the small lake that Wally would soon find out was named Mill Pond for the lumber mill that stood at one of its ends. Phinney’s drive up this second street ended abruptly in front of a small white Victorian, and then he was explaining that Dr. Reilly was most likely in and would be taking patients if he was. Wally thanked his driver, who continued up the street at a quick clip without looking back at the former passenger, who stood in front of the doctor’s house for a pair of minutes before turning back in the direction of the downtown district.
Wally remade the sharp turn, this time to the left, with a sense of awe and wonderment at the town he had visited as a doctoral candidate at nearby Adams University. He passed the restaurant that would one day become the bar he and a fellow budding physicist had shared a pair of beers in on their first day at Adams. Other than that establishment, and the store of Stuart & Johnson that would still have its white façade in Wally’s year of Two Thousand One, Monroe’s Lake Street was unrecognizable, beyond its layout, to the traveler’s eyes.
The traveler narrowly avoided being run over by a wagon rumbling down from the heights above, and ducked into Stuart & Johnson to take refuge in the nearest thing to familiarity he could find. He walked to a rack of paintbrushes along one wall, and pretended to examine the merchandise as his heart slowed its rapid beating in the calm of the store’s interior.
“Make I help you with somethin’?”
The voice’s volume and proximity startled the contemplative Wally, and he dropped a brush whose wooden handle clattered on the wooden floor. “Just looking.”
Another middle-aged man, this one wearing spectacles and a cloth apron, leaned back from his peering inspection after picking the brush up off the floor and replacing it on the rack. “Fine, keep on lookin’. Just let me know if there’s any way I can help.”
It was to a turned back that Wally answered, after some hesitation, “There is one thing.”
