Chapter 9

"Thank you officer."

"You're welcome, Miss."

"Mrs."

"Excuse me. Mrs Slagle. You have a doctorate? Kinda young for that, aren't you?"

"I got skipped a few grades in High School," she said, all the while thinking, 'Mostly.' That brought a slight smile to her face.

The two policemen tipped hats to the room, thanked the owner for her time and left. Daisy showed them out.

"I know this isn't the time or place for it ... it might even sound like levity, but, I'm going to check the microfiche..." that brought a look. "In my time newspapers were too bulky and too fragile ... not to mention downright dangerous because of fire ... so some bright Masters candidate thought up the idea of photographing the material and storing the film instead of the paper. It worked ... Eastman Kodak figured out a way to put the negatives for a whole month on a four by five secondary negative and someone made a reader for it. Fifty years of newsprint fits in a box about so big." She demonstrated by hands.

"Amazing."

"Yes, it is. First, I need to get home ... even though I am ... now that's weird ... then I'm going check the fiche to see if Amos Honeysprings died today. If he didn't then I've changed history and that is unacceptable."

"You should check the colored cemetery too. Some deaths are ... unimportant, they never get published in the newspaper ... I can tell, by the way you've acted, that events in the future will change the way people think about men and women. Tell me, will the nineteenth Amendment finally pass?"

"Yes, next summer on August 18, Tennessee will narrowly ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, making it the law throughout the United States."

"Tennessee? Amazing."

"Mississippi doesn't ratify it until 1984."

"Surely you're joking."

"Nope. 1984. The last state to ratify. The deep south fought it to the bitter end." Andi shook her head. "Colored cemetery? There's a Colored cemetery in Ann Arbor?"

"They also buried many victims of the Spanish Flu there."

"No doubt about it ... I need to study history more." Then she laughed. "Right now I need to find out how this watch works." Andrea thanked her profusely and said, "I'm probably going to disappear. Leave me a message in the attic."

"The attic?"

"Yeah ... I live there ... don't make it easy to find. I say that because I haven't found it yet." She sighed, "It's too bad about Amos ... and If I wasn't married, I'd love to stay ... my time rushes so. Thank you ... Imagine ... I've made a friend who will be dead before I'm born. Bye ... I think." And that's what she did ... think.

'Lessee ... I wound the watch ... what happens when I wind it some more? Well ... that didn't work. The house is gone and it's deep woods ... mosquitoes are real. Maybe wind it backwards?'