Four miles east of Rockwood Lake, there was a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge and a green exit sign that said CHELAM next right. I got off and followed a state road for a mile and a half through woods and farmland and there it was, a little place of clapboard and brick buildings around a town square, maybe two blocks on a side. There were plenty of trees and lawns, and the streets were narrow and without curbs and looked more like they were made for velocipedes than for automobiles. The overcast and the cold gave a barren quality to the town, but there was still enough green in the lawns and color in the leaves to let you know that, come spring, Chelam would look like one of those quaint little upstate hamlets that are always pictured on the postcards your cousin Flo sends.

I let the Taurus roll down the main street past a Texaco station and a White Castle hamburger stand and the First Chelam National Bank and a barbershop with an honest-to-God barber’s pole. A whitewashed gazebo sat on the town square across from a courthouse that was big and old, with a second-floor balcony ideal for mayoral speeches on the Fourth of July. Several big elms dotted the square, their dead leaves a fragile brown carpet over the lawn. Two young women in down jackets stood in the leaves, talking. An old man in a bright orange hunter’s parka sat on the gazebo steps, smoking. Next to the courthouse there was a mobile home permanently mounted on cement footings. A big gold star was painted on the side of the mobile home along with the words CHELAM POLICE. Across the square there was a little building just about the size of a pay toilet that said U.S. Post Office. Eight years ago Karen Nelsen had gone in there and mailed the letter to Miriam Dichester. Maybe she had been on her way up to Maine, just passing through when she thought, oh, Christ, I’ve gotta get this money back to Miriam, and she had stopped and bought the money order and mailed it and continued on her way. But maybe not. Maybe she had stayed the night or had gotten something to eat and had said where she was going and someone would remember.

One block past the post office the town ended. I turned around and drove back to the Texaco station and pulled up to the full-service pumps. An old geez in a stained gray Texaco shirt and a cammie hunting cap was leaning back in a chair beneath a sign that said WE HAVE PROPANE. I turned off the engine and got out and said, “How about some high-test?”