course, did no such thing, if the individuals even existed at all. Most families have such an innocently misleading story tucked away in their collective memory. The truth usually proved to be more complex, sometimes even unpleasant. Human lives do not follow nice and easy symmetrical patterns or unfold according to formulas.
But Nick fought another doubt about Max Corban, as well. Was he leading him somewhere for a purpose other than normal familial curiosity? He sensed something lurking within Corban’s story, something dangerous in the subtle details of their meeting. Nothing definite he could put his finger on, but still, certain things about Corban bothered him…the old man’s vehement refusal to consider probably useful overseas research; his peculiar preoccupation with blood; his failure to recall even the name of the ancestor at the end of the interview. Nick had learned to rely on his intuition to lead him through the fog of life; a faint warning was sounding somewhere in his mind.
Ah, forget it, he told himself; get back to work. Maybe he was being too hard on the old guy; maybe it was time to start trusting people again.
He’d decided to check the phone books. It was a long shot that a genealogical search like this one, so devoid of details, would have such initial success–finding the right family of the right name, such an odd one at that, in the most accessible of places: a book everybody has in a kitchen drawer. But Nick was a gambler, especially when the losses came from someone else’s pocket. Genealogists have to be gamblers–the most certain clues can turn out to be nearly useless; the chance discoveries from wholly unrelated sources often point the way. You never know when you’ll draw the joker or the ace.
And if you got lucky, a simple phone call could crack a difficult genealogical case, make the family tree sprout with previously unknown generations. A handful of times he’d located a living survivor of a lost lineage this way, who guarded a wealth of family lore, and who’d waited years simply for someone to ask the right questions. Nick had found few things in life as exciting as those unexpected revelations.
Genealogy is like drilling for oil: lots of dry holes, but the stuff is down there, somewhere, in amazing plenty. The cardinal rule is to start with the simple, then work up to the complex, start with the living and work back to the dead. Corban wasn’t helping him do that, so Nick was improvising.
Was there a breathing bearer of the name Balazar somewhere in the state?
In dozens of Louisiana phone books he could find nothing exactly matching the name. There were plenty of Balthazars and variants, and even a couple of Belshazzars. An unfortunate surname, that one, he thought, scanning the blue plastic cards of microfiche, the transparent writing so small that to the naked eye it looked like specks of sand.
“‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,’” he mumbled several times, enjoying the incantatory sound of the words and remembering the great story of the judgment of a king written supernaturally on a wall. Your days are numbered, you are weighed and found wanting, your kingdom will perish, Daniel told the terrified Belshazzar. Genealogists rediscover the truth of that prophecy each working day.
The woman at the next microfiche machine shot him a worried look and clutched her bulging purse.
He still wasn’t discouraged. Finding no Balazars might simply mean that this family had no phone, or that the number was unlisted.
He tried several current and old city directories–fascinating volumes of data that aided businesses with marketing information about local citizens and other businesses. These directories can sometimes fill in the years between the decennial censuses. Nothing there, either. Not an unusual state of affairs. Many people slipped through the fingers of those who would tabulate them, especially in the days of fierce pioneering individualism, when distrust of the ever-curious government was stronger even than it is today. And there were whole classes of people who, according to the prevailing notions, simply did not count.
Next he searched the genealogical indexes for articles or existing family histories dealing with or referring to the surname Balazar. Nothing again. Even the scholars and family historians of the past were letting him down.
Nick was a resourceful researcher and had more tricks up his sleeve.
He phoned a friend, a volunteer congregant, at the local Latter-Day Saints Family History Library. She made a quick search of the computer catalog of the main Salt Lake City