The Long Wagon

Elias Pryor has been driving the same circuit for nineteen years. Eleven towns, roughly two hundred miles, and it takes him about four months to get all the way around, which means every town sees him three times a year whether they want him or not.

The wagon is horse drawn, because horses eat grass and diesel does not grow. The whole box is shelves. Not books at first, though there are books now. It started as records, which is what the Keepers care about: birth lists, death lists, harvest weights, well depths, who owns which field and who says otherwise. Paper, in triplicate, because paper is the only storage medium that survived the Silence intact.

Elias arrives, sets up under the awning on the wagon's side, and takes down whatever happened since the last visit. Then he copies it. One copy stays in the town, one goes in the wagon, and one gets handed off to the next Keeper he crosses, so that no single fire takes anything permanently.

The books came later, and they are the reason the kids run to meet him. He lends and he collects and he does not fine anybody, but he writes down who has what, and everybody knows he writes it down.

His most valuable cargo is a shoebox of photographs nobody has claimed. Faces from before. He shows the box in every town, and about once a year somebody recognizes a face, and then there is crying in the street and Elias writes a name next to a picture that has not had one for forty years.

Nineteen years. Twenty three names.