Eager Eagle's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Eager Eagle left the meeting with the sketchbook shut on the pressed leaf. He walked the ground path home and tried to plan the Thursday route. He would need more than one leaf and one line. He would need stops, and marks, and times. The reader had said noon. Noon meant a full route with hours attached. He sat on a low wall and opened the book. He read what he had written. WEST CREEK BEND. TRAIL CLEAR TO MARKER. He did not know when he had passed the bend. He did not know when he had passed the split maple. He had a watch in his sling pocket, but he had never once looked at it on the walk. The notes were true. They were also useless. A noon report needed times, and he had none. He went to the clinic before the light dropped. The green door was still open. Valerie sat at the front desk in her blue scrubs, sorting cards into a tray. He set the sketchbook on the counter and opened it to the leaf. "My notes have no times," he said. "I cannot make a route report from this. I walked all morning and wrote one line." Valerie looked at the page. She tapped the leaf with one finger. "You wrote where. You did not write when." "I forgot the watch was in my pocket." "Then it was not a tool. It was weight." Her mouth tightened. She pulled the tray aside. She took a pencil from behind her ear. She drew a line down a fresh page in his book. On the left she wrote TIME. On the right she wrote PLACE. She marked six empty rows. "Every stop," she said. "Watch first. Write the hour and the minute. Then look up and write what you see. Watch, then eye, then pencil. In that order." "What if I miss a stop?" "Leave the row blank. Do not guess." She closed the book and pushed it back across the counter. "A blank row is honest. A wrong time is a lie." He held the book against his chest. "I will not guess." "Read the watch out loud each time. It slows you down. That is the point." He pulled the watch from his sling pocket. He read it aloud. "Four. Thirty-two." Valerie wrote 4:32 CLINIC DESK on the first row in his book. She turned the book so he could see it. "That is the shape of your report," she said. "Fill the rest on Thursday." He left the clinic with the first row written and the pencil clipped to the cover. The jumble was gone. The book had columns now. He still had to walk the route. He still had to reach every stop before noon. But the report would not be a heap of loose lines. It would be a list of hours, and each hour would be true.