It was growing dark and the breeze seemed stronger. On the road to the south, the Range Road, the house identified as the old Fisher place revealed one light in a first-floor room. There were two cars in the yard.
Doak turned back toward town but paused over the crest of the hill and sought cover. There was a small grove of hickory and oak to his left. He walked into their shelter until he was out of any passerby's range of vision.
Readers wouldn't be any trouble. But printers? If the old mummy was right in his guess Doak could have more trouble than one man could handle.
He put his back up against the rough bark of an oak tree and sat hugging his knees, waiting for the darkness. Studious let me sit.... Oh, yes.
Printers—and what would they print? Had any poets been born since the Arnold Law, any writers? Was there some urge to write in a readerless world? In the Russian homes, he'd heard, under the machine gods, the old religion persisted, from parent to child, by word of mouth.
But writers without an audience? An art that persisted without followers?
That girl, that lovely poised girl-creature had been quick to identify Thomson and he wasn't one of the giants. If there were others with equally fertile memories, and they got together, it would be like a small—what was the word?—a small library.
They could write or print or type the remembered offerings of all the readers and have a book. Or at least a pamphlet.
It grew darker and he thought of June and wondered, if her memory were searched, just what would be dredged up. He'd bet it would be one word—no.
And now it was dark enough and he rose and made his way back over the hill, toward the Fisher place, following the field instead of the road, keeping to the tall grass, conscious of the crickets and the night breeze and the light in the first floor room of the Fisher place.