No Certain Rest

She said she would be the short, dumpy blond woman carrying a thin, green leather valise. He told her he would be the tall, skinny man wearing rimless glasses and an Indiana Jones fedora. There she was. There was Rebecca Fentress of the Marion County, Iowa, Historical Society. And here he was, Don Spaniel of the National Park Service. He had guessed, from the sound of her voice on the phone, that she could be somewhat elderly, as old as seventy possibly. But fifty-five or even less was his best estimate now upon seeing her in person. Not only did she talk older than she was, she was dressed that way in a two-piece dark blue cotton dress with a skirt that fell a good two inches below the knee. "Doctor Spaniel, I presume," she said to him. "Ms. Fentress?" he said, removing his hat. A friend had given him the fedora two years ago as a thirty-fifth birthday present. It was meant as a joke because Don, like Indiana Jones, was an archeologist. But Don so loved the hat that he had made it part of who he was, wearing it routinely. Reg Wom- ach, his laid-back Smithsonian anthropologist friend, often called him Harrison, as in Harrison Ford, the actor who played Indiana Jones in the movies. That didn't bother Don. He figured there were worse things in life for a skinny guy in glasses to be called than Harrison Ford. "I have always wanted to say something like 'Doctor Spaniel, I presume,' " Ms. Fentress said. Don Spaniel smiled at her. His impression was that here was a woman who was as pleasant as she was plain and who most probably, in his instant analysis, was very smart. He was prepared to like and admire her even more if the private Civil War papers of the late Albert Randolph of the Eleventh Connecticut Volunteers were in that green case she was clutching to her body. They were standing just inside the main entrance of Washington's majestic Union Stationa six-foot-four gawky man leaning down to a speak to a five-foot-four solid woman who was looking almost straight up. In silhouette, they could have easily passed for a Norman Rockwell painting, possibly a small-town high school English teacher speaking to the basketball coach about a star player's D2 theme on a Charles Dickens novel. Rebecca Fentress had called Don from Union Station less than twenty minutes earlier to announce her surprise arrival in Washington, D.C., and to arrange an immediate meeting with him. He had suggested she get in a taxi and come to his office, which he assured her was barely ten minutes away in an area called Potomac Park. She said she really would rather not leave the station. All right, he said. How about meeting me in front of the huge electronic schedule board at the main entrance of the train station? It was three in the afternoon. There were many people going to and from trains and milling about the many shops in Union Station, which had been very successful since being rehabilitated into a retail center as well as a train station a few years ago. He noticed the several open restaurants there in the main rotunda were not crowded and he suggested they find a quiet place in one. "I don't fly on airplanes," Ms. Fentress said to Don. "It takes a long time to get from Iowa to here by train, it really does. You have to go through Chicago, for one thing; Pittsburgh, for another." Soon, they were seated in the quietest corner of a place which, according to its menu, offered at least one food specialty from each of the fifty states. "I'll bet the one from Iowa has something to do with corn," said Rebecca Fentress. "Corn is what people think of when they think of Iowacorn and pigs." She was right. Iowa's representative was listed under sLehrer, Jim is the author of 'No Certain Rest' with ISBN 9780375503726 and ISBN 0375503722.