Cold Fire

be attributed as much to New Svenborg as to his tragic family history.
    To an extent, that was unfair. The streets were lined with big trees, the charming streetlamps appeared to have been imported from the Old Country, and most of the sidewalks were gracefully curved and time-hoved ribbons of well-worn brick. About twenty percent of the town came straight from the nostalgic Midwest of a Bradbury novel, but the rest of it still belonged in a David Lynch film.
    “Let's take a little tour of the old place,” he said.
    “We should be getting to the farm.”
    “It's only two miles north of town, just a few minutes away.”
    That was all the more reason to get there, as far as Holly was concerned. She was tired of being on the road.
    But she sensed that for some reason he wanted to show her the town—and not merely to delay their arrival at Ironheart Farm. Holly acquiesced. In fact she listened with interest to what he had to tell her. She had learned that he found it difficult to talk about himself and that he sometimes made personal revelations in an indirect or even casual manner.
    He drove past Handahl's Pharmacy on the east end of Main Street, where locals went to get a prescription filled, unless they preferred to drive twenty miles to Solvang. Handahl's was also one of only two restaurants in town, with (according to Jim) “the best soda fountain this side of 1955.” It was also the post office and only newsstand. With its multiply peaked roof, verdigris-copper cupola, and beveled-glass windows, it was an appealing enterprise.
    Without shutting the engine off, Jim parked across the street from the library on Copenhagen Lane, which was quartered in one of the smaller Victorian houses with considerably less gingerbread than most. The building was freshly painted, with well-tended shrubbery, and both the United States and California flags fluttered softly on a tall brass pole along the front walkway. It looked like a small and sorry library nonetheless.
    “A town this size, it's amazing to find a library at all,” Jim said. “And thank God for it. I rode my bike to the library so often … if you added up all the miles, I probably pedaled halfway around the world. After my folks died, books were my friends, counselors, psychiatrists. Books kept me sane. Mrs. Glynn, the librarian, was a great lady, she knew just how to talk to a shy, mixed-up kid without talking down to him. She was my guide to the most exotic regions of the world and distant times—all without leaving her aisles of books.”
    Holly had never heard him speak so lovingly or half so lyrically of anything before. The Svenborg library and Mrs. Glynn had clearly been lasting and favorable influences on his life.
    “Why don't we go in and say hello to her?” Holly suggested.
    Jim frowned. “Oh, I'm sure she's not the librarian any more, most likely not even alive. That was twenty-five years ago when I started coming here, eighteen years ago when I left town to go to college. Never saw her after that.”
    “How old was she?”
    He hesitated. “Quite old,” he said, and put an end to the talk of a nostalgic visit by slipping the Ford into gear and driving away from there.
    They cruised by Tivoli Gardens, a small park at the corner of Main and Copenhagen, which fell laughably short of its namesake. No fountains, no musicians, no dancing, no games, no beer gardens. There were just some roses, a few beds of late-summer flowers, patchy grass, two park benches, and a well-maintained windmill in the far corner.
    “Why aren't the sails moving?” she asked. “There's some wind.”
    “None of the mills actually pumps water or grinds grain any more,” he explained. “And since they're largely decorative, no sense in having to live with the noise they make. Brakes were put on the mechanisms long ago.” As they turned the corner at the end of the park, he added: “They made a movie here once.”
    “Who did?”
    “One of the studios.”
    “Hollywood studio?”
    “I forget which.”
    “What was it called?”
    “Don't remember.”
    “Who starred in it?”
    “Nobody famous.”
    Holly made a mental note about the movie, suspecting that it was more important to Jim and to the town than he had said. Something in the offhanded way he'd mentioned it, and his terse responses to her subsequent questions, alerted her to an unspoken subtext.
    Last of all, at the southeast corner of Svenborg, he drove slowly past Zacca's Garage, a large corrugated-steel