Ludwig's wagon sputtered, and the gears ground as he shifted. He realized that the car made him something of a cliché, the college professor in the Volvo, but that thought didn't faze him as much as his wish that the car would survive just one more year. He'd had it for ten, and if he could get one more out of it, he'd be happy. He took his hand off the gearshift and patted the dashboard encouragingly.
"Come on, little car. Give me another year."
Is this what my life has become?
He was on yet another county road, out amidst the corn stubble and the farmhouses and the wide, empty fields that stretched beyond the horizon. He had his maps and his papers on the passenger seat, the windows rolled up to keep them from flying away. He'd been driving around like this for weeks, ever since the Foley girl had disappeared, and he was beginning to wonder if he had any sense or sanity left at all. Here he was, two years from retirement, a time in his career when he should be relaxing and enjoying the years of hard work in the rearview mirror and anticipating his escape from the world of student papers and committee meetings and departmental backbiting. He had seen a number of his colleagues retire and move away. To Florida, the Carolinas, Vermont or Tennessee. And he had enough money and a nice enough pension to make the same choices. He was single, in good health, and soon to be free.
So what did he do with his time instead?
He drove around the middle of nowhere Ohio looking for the origins of a group that may never have existed, gathering the loose strands of rumor and innuendo and fear and trying to weave them into something coherent and sensible. And so far, not only had he not succeeded, but he had begun to wonder if his entire enterprise was simply a fanciful lark, a goofy dream that he had allowed to consume his life. He had nothing to show for it except extra miles on the Volvo and countless hours studying documents that didn't add up. And not only that, but his professional reputation had suffered. No one had come out and said it directly, but he recognized the looks and comments from his colleagues. They thought he was off his rocker, pursuing lowbrow research into a silly local legend, the kind of thing that would never get funded or published or respected. They might be right, Ludwig thought, but he really didn't care anymore. One of the benefits of being old and having tenure was that he just didn't have to listen to what anybody else said. He was the captain of his own fate, and if the ship went down, at least he'd been the one whose hands were on the rudder.
He turned on the radio and found a news station. It was the top of the hour, and despite the stream of information slowing to a trickle regarding Jacqueline Foley, Ludwig still felt compelled to listen to the news whenever he had the chance. What if something changed? What if something broke? He wanted instant knowledge, instant gratification, just like the students he complained about so much with their text messages and emails and internet addictions. But the news came and went without even a mention of Jacqueline Foley. Her case had reached that stage where they didn't even mention her name anymore. How long before she'd be forgotten, erased by the tides of time and progress? Maybe he was the one who would keep her from disappearing. Maybe that's what he was supposed to do with the end of his career.
He had been out in the countryside for close to an hour already. It was getting on toward noon, and his stomach started to grumble, making him wish he had bothered to bring something along to eat. So many times he worked through meals and ended up not eating at all. At times like those he wished he had someone looking after him—a wife, a girlfriend. He'd even settle for a nagging mother or aunt. But they were all gone now, leaving him to live out his days as a lonely scholar, crisscrossing roads that seemed to be leading to nowhere.