Drop by Drop

19

Shay called from the back door of the vet clinic, “Hold this open for me, will you!”

Paige hurried to help. “What are you going to do with those boards?”

“They aren’t boards, they’re planks. And two-by-fours and… never mind, help me get them inside. We’re going to start boarding up our windows.”

“Do you really think we need to?”

“We keep drugs in here, Paige, but more than that, there are kooks in town who are beginning to go off the rails. I got these supplies from the lumberyard and brought them back in Evan’s cart. A lot of people are starting to buy timber.”

As Paige watched him carry an armload of two-by-fours inside, she said, “I think I’ll keep Samson with me all the time from now on.”

Bill Burdick was not boarding up anything. Bill’s Bar and Grill remained defiantly in business, though Bill was keeping a couple of guns under the bar.

Business was brisk. The usual regulars were always present, their number increasingly augmented by others in search of sanctuary.

“The good old days were good,” Hooper Watson intoned, “because folks didn’t know how bad they were. They lived their lives and just got on with it…”

“Listen to the philosopher of Bill’s Bar and Grill,” said Morris Saddlethwaite.

Watson in full flow was not to be interrupted. “… and just got on with it. They didn’t know where the Ukraine was or what was happening in Korea and they didn’t want to know, nothin’ to do with them. Then along came the internet and instant communication and we were run over with information. Knocked down flat in the street and run over.”

“Don’t be such a Luddite,” said Bill Burdick.

“A wha’?”

“Someone who hates technology.”

“I don’t hate it,” Watson rejoined, “I’m as modern as you are. But I’ve seen the damage it can do. My wife, Nadine, just went on a shopping spree on the internet and ran up bills I’ll never be able to pay off. Then she took off with some salesman she’d met on social media and left all her debts in my lap.”

“Has she come back yet?”

“Naah, why’d you think I’m in here drinking in the afternoon? Speaking of drinking, how long has it been since you refilled this glass?”

“Your daughter was in here only yesterday asking me not to let you get loop-legged again. Angela’s a good girl, Hoop, she’s trying to look after you.”

“She should mind her own business.”

There were days when Watson irritated Bill Burdick. A man behind a bar should be sympathetic, but he might also have his own problems and be sick to the back teeth with hearing about someone else’s. “She doesn’t have much business to mind since you scared her boyfriend away,” he told Watson.

“I didn’t do that! Sunnavabitch is a two-timing liar and she caught on to him, that’s all. If he ever comes around her again I’ll put a bomb down his britches.”

“Plastic explosive, maybe?” Burdick asked sarcastically.

“You know what I mean.”

“I know that kind of talk is dangerous, Hoop. People are hair-trigger enough as it is. The town’s been hemorrhaging jobs since the Change began, and now people are taking the law into their own hands. They say the Nyeberger murder proves we don’t have enough law enforcement.”

“That’s the bloody truth,” a customer interjected. “Hey, Jack!” he called to a man who was just entering. “You think we got enough law in this town?”

Jack Reece sat down at the bar and nodded a greeting to Burdick. “Is this an argument I should get into, Bill?” he asked in a low voice.

“It’s harmless, they’re just blowing off steam.” Burdick cast a glance around the room. “With the exception of you and me there’s not a person in here who still gets a salary, thanks to the Change.”

“I work for myself,” said Jack. “Which reminds me—I’ve taken on another sideline.”

“In addition to tires, you mean?”

“Premium-quality tires are gone anyway, but this is one you’ll appreciate. Beeswax candles. You’re using candles in here already; let me put you on my list.”

Burdick chuckled. “You have a finger in every pie, don’t you?”

“Just the ones that are likely to remain profitable. Banking and IT are seriously crippled and so is retailing. About the only business with a future is war.”

“That’s a grim thought.”

“But a realistic one, Bill. War’s been the biggest business on earth since the Middle Ages, and big business has to be preserved by whatever means possible. It’s in our genes.”

The man who had mentioned law enforcement only overheard a portion of this conversation, but he agreed enthusiastically. “I’ve got plenty of guns!”

Jack ordered a double.

He had spent much of his adult life on the fringes of the military/industrial behemoth that spanned continents. By now he knew his abilities and limitations. He accepted that he would never rise to the top, lazing in a luxurious retreat on a private island while he pulled invisible strings. That would not suit his disposition. He preferred being in the heart of the action.

In the past if a payout was sufficiently lavish he had used it to take a chunk of his retirement, indulging himself while he was still young enough and healthy. Or sitting on his aunt’s front porch with his feet propped on the railing, watching the world go by until restlessness seized him again.

Being a small-town entrepreneur was not what he had envisioned as a lifetime career.

Lifetime…

Jack set down his glass.

For a supposedly smart man you’ve been a damned fool, he told himself. You never really thought about how you’d spend the rest of your life. What a bloody jackass. You assumed you’d always be young and the world would be the same forever.

Until Nell Bennett came along. That gentle woman who just might complete the riddle of me.

At a time when it looks like all hell’s going to break loose.

Bea Fontaine had not discussed Oliver Staunton’s proposal with her nephew. She knew what he would say, and he would be right. Chaos was lurking on the horizon; it would be ridiculous to add five unmanageable children to their household. For once she was thankful for Jack’s basic selfishness. He would not let her take them even if she wanted to.

Which was a good thing. What those boys might do to her cats didn’t bear thinking about.

Yet while she was cooking supper she did think about it. And about five children, all of them still suffering from injuries both physical and emotional, who now had no responsible parent. Waiting for someone to decide their future.

Gerry and Gloria Delmonico wanted to keep the world at arm’s length, but it was no longer possible. Gloria was on leave from the hospital, but she could not just sit at home and worry about her unborn baby. She rode with Gerry in the new carriage, which meant that the paying passengers were able to give her all the news she did not want to know.

She was waiting.

They were all waiting. For an event, an enemy, a nightmare. Something they could feel in the atmosphere but not see.

Evan Mulligan was worried about Rocket. “She’s off her feed, Dad. I’ve given her oats and bran mash and alfalfa…”

“Alfalfa’s too rich for a mare in foal, I’ve told you that.”

“But she has to eat! What d’you think’s wrong with her?”

“Animals are more sensitive than we are, Evan. Even that Rottweiler of Paige’s is refusing his food; not all of it, but some. Don’t worry about Rocket, I’ll give her a feed supplement tonight and an appetite stimulant. She’s going to be a mother and she has good instincts; she won’t let her foal starve.”

While Lila Ragland lay on the narrow bed in the Spartan chamber Edgar Tilbury called his “guest quarters,” she ran a parade of favorite scenes across the screen of her mind. It was her favorite way of unwinding and courting sleep. Trees in a Swedish park, black against a startlingly bright sky. Sipping a mug of hot chocolate on the topmost platform of the Mont Blanc ski lift. A marble sculpture in the Musée d’Orsay, depicting the nature god Pan as a little boy playing with two bear cubs.

The next image came unbidden. Shay Mulligan cradling a black cat.

Since the afternoon when Jack and Nell met the Delmonicos there, Bill’s Bar and Grill had become their frequent meeting place. All over town people were forming little groups, tribes composed of friends rather than relatives. Bill’s exercised a magnetic attraction and not just for Hooper Watson and Morris Saddlethwaite. The central location combined with good food and a relaxed, convivial atmosphere encouraged other patrons to linger.

As Bill remarked to his sister-in-law, “Funny thing, Marla; people don’t seem to be in as much of a hurry as they used to be.”

“But you want me to hurry up with that last order, right?”

“Right,” he affirmed.

When Shay Mulligan brought Lila Ragland to join the band of regulars, Hooper Watson glowered fiercely at him. Unabashed, the younger man gave him a cheery wave. “Hi, Hoop! How ya doin’?”

Under his breath Watson muttered to Morris Saddlethwaite, “Not gonna let him drive me outta my place.” He spent the entire evening firmly planted on his stool, like a frog on a log.

When the regulars ordered a round of drinks Shay made a point of having one sent to “Sheriff Watson.”

That set the pattern for subsequent occasions.

The group discussed regular meetings. Perhaps on a Wednesday. “I go to my office every Wednesday morning to check my mail,” Nell said, “but I wonder why I bother. No one’s making any offers on property; almost the only letters I get are from people trying to sell theirs, and I can’t help them. It would be easier to visit the office in the afternoon and then drop by here for an early supper. Jess and Colin want fish fingers or hamburgers and my mother fixes those for them.”

“I thought you were planning to move,” said Shay.

Her expression was rueful. “I am; I just don’t know where. Much good it does me to be in real estate.”

“I can make this the regular stop for my supper break,” Gerry decided. “Now that we have Danielle I can pick up Gloria and the baby and bring them too… if Bill’s not averse to one of his customers breast-feeding.”

Bill Burdick responded with a thumbs-up. “Only if you’ll let me be her godfather.”

The group took a proprietary interest in the newest Delmonico. Gerry enjoyed boasting, “She’s the first baby in Sycamore River to be born in a pony and trap; the hospital’s only working ambulance was on another call. Young Evan Mulligan helped with the delivery. That boy has a great future as an obstetrician ahead of him,” he added with a chuckle.

Among Rob’s effects at home Nell had found a very early AllCom that still worked. Battered and grimy, it had been in the bottom of Colin’s sock drawer. Gerry Delmonico had another reclaimed from a locker at RobBenn; Shay’s son had a third he had been given on his tenth birthday. Joined with the AllCom at the vet clinic they formed a sketchy network not to be trusted, but better than nothing.

On the strength of his AllCom and his assistance with Danielle’s birth, Evan Mulligan was invited to join the group.

And Lila invited Edgar Tilbury.

“Those youngsters won’t want an old fart around,” he told her.

“You’re the most interesting man I know, and they talk about things that would interest you. Don’t be a hermit, Edgar.”

“I’m not a hermit,” he said indignantly. And accompanied her to the next meeting.

The Wednesday Club commandeered the largest booth and augmented it with a table pushed against the end. If he was not busy Bill himself was invited to sit in. He enjoyed the conversation and often had something to contribute.

Watson and Saddlethwaite retained their familiar stools, but made no secret of the fact that they were listening too. What was happening in Bill’s was more interesting and more entertaining than anywhere else. When it was time to buy a round of drinks the two men began to chip in, which entitled them to call out, “Say what?” if they missed something.

Conversation was the glue in the Wednesday Club.

One evening Shay said, “Thanks to the Change we know less and less about what’s happening abroad, it’s like the expanding universe after the Big Bang. Other countries are becoming distant galaxies.”

“But we know more about what’s going on in Sycamore River,” Gloria interjected. “The Seed is down to only two pages a week, but the paper has more subscribers than ever; I know because we deliver a lot of them. We’re taking more interest in our neighbors because they’ve become our world.”

“Which is no bad thing,” said Lila. “People were almost surgically attached to their electronic communicators. I’ll bet whole families went to bed without ever speaking to each other.”

“I liked it better when the wife didn’t speak to me,” Saddlethwaite volunteered. “Long as she was busy with her social network she wasn’t finding jobs around the house for me. Being retired is hell on a man. But tell me, Jack: What did you mean about an expanding universe? I never heard of that. Are we blowing up?”

On another evening Edgar Tilbury asked, “Has anyone considered the Change may be natural?”

“What do you mean by ‘natural’?” Bill inquired.

Tilbury cleared his throat. “The discoveries of Darwin, Mengel, and Watson and Crick have demonstrated that all life on Earth is connected and is subject to natural law. And natural law is determined by nature.”

“The Change can’t be natural, Edgar. Someone’s behind it, everybody knows that.”

The older man gave a lopsided smile. “Don’t believe anything everybody knows.”

Gloria, with her sleeping baby cradled in her lap, asked, “Don’t you think there’s something rather hesitant about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… when I’m introducing new things into my garden I try them out first to see if the site and the soil agree with them. If I’m doing a bedding arrangement I start seeds in several different places and watch how they grow before I commit to a mass planting. With expensive shrubs I put them in pots and move them around until I find a location where they thrive. The Change is like that. It’s as if somebody’s trying ideas out, not destroying everything at once.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “What have you been drinking? That’s like saying a tornado can choose what town to strike.”

“How do you know it can’t?” asked Hooper Watson. “When I was a kid we lived in the Midwest, that region they call Tornado Alley, and I can tell you there’s something fiendish about those storms. One can turn a man’s entire house into splinters but leave the front porch untouched with the swing still swinging and the cushions on it. I’ve seen it myself. It’s like the damned wind’s laughing at flesh-and-blood people.”