Chapter 2 – The Librarian

 The rain had let up by the time Ronny pulled into his driveway, but the sky was still bruised and low. The dogwood trees along the fence looked ghostly in the mist, their blossoms half-blown and soggy from the downpour. He parked the truck, carried the map inside under his arm like contraband, and dropped it onto the kitchen table beside the salt shaker and a forgotten bird catalog.

He stood over it for a long time.

The big map was fragile, flaking slightly at the seams. The smaller one, however, was something else. It was personal. Hand-drawn, annotated, and unmistakably specific. It didn’t look like a child’s doodle or someone’s old hiking notes. The handwriting, the deliberate sketching of fence lines, ridge notations, and place names—it was meant to be read by someone who understood the clues.

And something about it wouldn’t let him look away.

He poured himself a glass of iced tea and sat down. The quiet buzz of the refrigerator filled the silence. He hadn’t spoken out loud to another human being all day except for the eyebrow kid at the thrift store, and even that had only been four words.

He unfolded the hand-drawn map again and squinted at the details. The words "Collier Barn" and "Rayburn Field" were written near what looked like a creek bend, marked with the faint outline of three fence lines, a cattle gate, and what appeared to be an “X” drawn next to a dogleg in the road. Whoever had drawn it knew this place intimately.

But who were the Colliers? Or the Rayburns?

He didn’t know the names from local history, at least not off the top of his head—but there was someone who might.

He stood, grabbed the map, and again reached for his truck keys.

Fifteen minutes later, he walked into the Henderson County Public Library, the one place in town that still felt exactly like it did in the 1980s. The smell of dust and plastic book covers. The quiet hum of a single overworked HVAC unit. The faint clack of an old barcode scanner.

Behind the front desk sat Maya Caldwell, head librarian and unofficial historian of the county. She was in her early forties, wore glasses only when reading, and could out-research anyone Ronny had ever met. She’d once helped a farmer track down a Civil War land deed using nothing but a torn envelope, an oral story, and a 1911 plat book.

She looked up as Ronny walked in, pushing her glasses onto her head.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Mr. Ellis. Haven’t seen you in here since you tried to fix our broken microfilm reader with a pencil eraser and chewing gum.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“For about ten minutes.”

He smiled and held up the map. “Got something weird.”

Maya’s eyes lit up. “Good weird or police-report weird?”

“Too early to tell.”

They moved to one of the long oak tables in the back corner, away from the small group of teenagers half-heartedly working on a group project in the study room. Ronny laid out both maps carefully. Maya leaned over them, tilting her head like a mechanic listening to a strange noise under the hood.

“Where did you get this?” she asked after a moment.

“Thrift store. One dollar.”

She ran a finger lightly across the small map. “These aren’t random names. The Colliers owned a dairy operation southeast of Slaughters back in the ’30s. Went under after the war. Rayburn Field... that might’ve been an emergency landing site for crop dusters or mail planes. Never officially registered. I’d have to dig.”

Ronny raised an eyebrow. “You know all that off the top of your head?”

Maya smirked. “You taught high school history. I spent ten years organizing the Local History Room. Different tools. Same brain damage.”

They both leaned in over the table. The map crackled faintly.

“What about the date?” Ronny asked. “June 12, 1939.”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “That’s a Monday. I could check the newspaper archive. Why?”

Ronny hesitated. “My grandfather went missing that day. For three days. Never explained it. Just came home wet and weird and said he ‘wasn’t alone out there.’”

Maya looked up slowly. “You think this is connected?”

“I don’t know what I think,” Ronny admitted. “But I want to find out.”

Maya sat back, eyes narrowing. She wasn’t the type to get excited easily, but he could see something click behind her gaze—something that said she smelled a story, and maybe a little trouble.

“I’ll dig through the archives,” she said finally. “You mind if I keep a copy?”

“Go ahead. But I want to stay in the loop.”

Maya folded her arms. “Deal. But if this turns into something like National Treasure, I will get to be the smart one.”

“You already are.”

She smiled.

Outside, the clouds finally broke apart, revealing a sliver of pale blue sky over the river. Ronny stood on the library's front steps, the map still in his hand, and watched the sun break through like it had decided to try again.

He didn’t know where this was all headed. He just knew something had started.

Something old.

And he wasn’t ready to walk away from it.