council's projector — an old machine, wheeled in from the library, with a fan
that rattled softly like a cricket in a jar — and took out Plat Book 9 in both
hands. It was bound in the dark red buckram of another century, its spine
re-taped twice, and when she laid it open on the projector's glass the whole
chamber leaned, all of them, a degree closer, as if the book gave off heat.
"Plat Book 9," Peg said, to the record and to the room. "Page forty-one.
Recorded March 14, 1979. Subdivision and dedication plat, Wexford Lane,
Goshen Falls." She adjusted the page with two fingertips, not touching the
ink. "The page is original. The seal is the county seal of that year."
On the chamber wall, above and behind the council table, the plat bloomed
up enormous and wavering in the projector's light: the lane drawn in a
draftsman's clean hand, the lots numbered along it like teeth, the curve at the
top where the lane met the county road, and across the bottom of the sheet, in
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letters that the enlargement made six inches tall, the words DEDICATED TO
PUBLIC USE. And beneath that, in the space ruled for it, a signature. Adam
had seen the photocopy in October, in Nancy Greer's office, the size of an
ordinary page. On the wall it was something else. On the wall, Ernest
Wexford's signature was the height of a fence post and it did not waver,
whatever the projector did to the lines around it. Ernest. The loop of the E.
The long cross of the t in Wexford, struck through the whole word like a man
signing a check he meant. There was a stir along the left side of the room,
among the older households, the sound of people seeing a hand they had
known raised up enormous and undeniable on the wall of the town.
Bea did not look up at it. Adam noticed that, and noticed also that no one else
seemed to, and he thought: she has looked at that signature every day for
thirty years on the deed in the drawer, she does not need the wall. It was not
tenderness he felt. He was careful about that, all evening, the way he was
careful about a dosage. It was the professional recognition of a cost being
paid in full, in public, at the going rate.
Bill Trask testified standing, because he said he thought better standing, and
he had brought his own pointer, a brass telescoping thing he had used on job
sites for forty years. He was the surveyor the town had engaged in October, a
man of seventy with forearms like rope. "I retraced Wexford Lane in
October," he said. "I found the original monuments — iron pins, set in 1979,
at the four corners of the dedication and at the angle point. I found every one
of them where the plat says they are. Not near where it says. Where it says.
To the inch, allowing for forty-six years of frost." He extended the pointer
and touched, on the glowing wall, the angle point at the curve. "A plat is a
promise with measurements on it. This one was kept. The lane on the ground
is the lane on the page. The street was given, and the giving was surveyed,
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and the survey still reads true." He sat down with the pointer collapsing in
sections, click, click, click, and the sound was very clear in the room.
Then the clerk read the incident report.
Mayor Price had asked Captain Nakamura to attend, and he had, in his
uniform, three rows back on the right, but when the time came he stood and
said, respectfully, that the report was written to be read, and that he would
prefer it be read as written, by the clerk, without his voice in it — a thing
Adam understood at once, the way you do not read your own chart aloud at
the bedside. So Ms. Ferreira read it, in her level water-bill voice, all of it,
every line, and the levelness was worse than any emphasis could have been.
"Incident report, Goshen Falls Fire and EMS, October 11. Call received
02:21, difficulty breathing, pediatric, 14 Wexford Lane. Unit 2 dispatched
02:22. Unit 2 arrived at the intersection of Wexford Lane and Route 11 at
02:26. Progress down Wexford Lane was obstructed at number 2 by a chain
barrier, padlocked, posted with private signage. The resident at number 2
came to the barrier and disputed the unit's right of passage. At 02:27
paramedic Tierney proceeded on foot with airway bag and oxygen. Distance,
approximately three-tenths of a mile." Adam closed his eyes. He had not
closed them during his own testimony. He closed them now because the
report had reached the part that belonged to his kitchen, and he wanted it in
the dark, exactly as it had happened. "Paramedic Tierney arrived at the
patient's side at 02:33. Elapsed time from arrival at the barrier: seven
minutes. Patient found in moderate-to-severe respiratory distress, cyanotic,
being treated by parent, an emergency nurse, with home nebulizer. Patient
responded to treatment on scene and during transport. Disposition: full
recovery." The clerk turned the page over, though there was nothing on its
back, an old habit of paper, and set it down. "Report filed and signed,
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Captain L. Nakamura, commanding."
Seven minutes, the clerk had read, in the voice of a water bill. In the room,