Drop by Drop

21

Martha Frobisher had never expected to be in a position to buy the florist’s shop where she worked. As long as Gold’s Court Florist was a going concern the owners were content to keep it in their portfolio of assets. One of the results of the Change was a decrease in the sale of luxury items such as commercially grown flowers. When the till receipts diminished enough to be worrying, the shop was put on the market while it still had some commercial value.

Martha’s only connection with the S&S had been as a repository of her salary and widow’s pension. She did not know how to go about applying for a mortgage; her home was the tiny cottage she had inherited from her late husband. It took several days to bring herself to the point of entering the bank.

She was surprised to discover that rough wooden planks had been laid across the floors of the lobby, like paths running in different directions. She was wary of stepping onto one until the receptionist got up from her desk and came toward her. “Can I help you?”

“I’d like to see an officer… a loan officer,” Martha said timidly.

“That position’s been amalgamated with the vice presidency; a reduction in staff, you understand. But the vice president is away right now. Would you like to see the president?”

The mere suggestion sent a shiver up Martha Frobisher’s spine. Presidents were not on her radar. “I don’t think Mr. Staunton would—”

“It’s not Mr. Staunton anymore. Sit down a moment and I’ll get her for you.”

Martha perched on the edge of a chair, a bird about to take flight. The room with its marble surfaces echoed like a tomb. Her nerve broke. She was about to hurry away when Bea Fontaine appeared, carefully negotiating a path of planks.

When she saw who was waiting for her she smiled warmly. Over the years Bea had purchased a number of floral arrangements from Gold’s Court Florist, a few for her own use but most to brighten up the bank. “Martha! What can I do for you?”

At Bea’s request the receptionist brought coffee and cookies into the president’s office—which also had planks on the floor—and left the room. For a quarter of an hour the two women discussed the weather and their mutual acquaintances. From time to time Martha glanced at the portraits on the wall. She couldn’t help asking, “Do they ever make you nervous?”

“I’m starting to get used to them, but at first it was like having Mr. Staunton looking over my shoulder. Sometimes I wonder how he stood it all these years.”

“Is he not coming back?”

“I’m afraid not. We’re going to have his picture painted, though.”

After checking Martha’s financial situation, Bea assured her she could qualify for a business loan. “We’ll give it to you in the form of credit. Not much actual money changes hands these days; people are trying to do all they can by barter. Barter depends on trust to a certain extent, but in a town the size of Sycamore River almost everyone knows everyone and you’re unlikely to cheat a person you’ll see again tomorrow. The situation’s probably different in the cities, though.”

“I used to wish I lived in a city with symphonies and theaters,” the other woman said wistfully. “Now I’m glad I don’t. Still, I don’t understand how a bank can stay in business without using money.”

Bea replied, “Money’s just one way of representing value. The monetary quantity theory recognizes a distinction between nominal money and real money. ‘Nominal’ refers to a unit of currency, like dollars. ‘Real’ refers to the goods and services the dollars will buy.” She did not realize she had fallen into Jack’s lecturing mode, or that Martha was struggling to keep up. “We assume that what ultimately matters to purchasers is not the nominal but the real, so in the bank we’ve become brokers. We take a portion for our services.”

“Oh my,” said Martha Frobisher. “Does that mean I can pay off my loan in flowers?”

“Part of it, at least, as long as we need flowers or have a customer who does. It’s different from the banking we used to do.”

Martha was still nervous. “Are you sure everything’s all right? I mean, is there anyone else who—”

Bea gave her a sad smile. “I’m it. There’s no one left to ask.”

Jack Reece was not the only person cursed with intuition. In Sycamore River as in communities around the world, anxiety was reaching a new level. Supplies of tranquilizers and sleeping pills had long since been exhausted. Patients suffering from hysteria and nervous exhaustion were sleeping on the floors in the hospital. The only questions were what, when and where catastrophe would strike. But it all came back to the Change.

The Wednesday Club discussed little else.

“As far as we know,” Jack reminded them, “the Change still hasn’t affected any living organism. Whatever damage is being done, we’re doing to ourselves.”

Gerry said, “If there’s global war that’ll be more than enough.”

“Edgar Tilbury thinks humans have a biological need to cull themselves every few generations like lemmings,” said Lila. “He says that may explain why we keep going to war: to kill off the breeding-age males.”

“Why didn’t he come with you tonight?” Bill Burdick asked as he set down a fresh pitcher of beer.

“He has a lot of things to get ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“I wish I knew.”

Within the tunnels the smell of the earth was sweet and strong, the way he liked it. Better than coffee, even. Or at least as good as. Except for Jamaican Blue Mountain. Edgar Tilbury wondered if he should start weaning himself off from Jamaican Blue Mountain. Not only had it become nearly impossible to obtain, but luxury coffees were part of the world Up There.

Down Here was sanity.

He was carrying a heavy-duty flashlight as he made his way down the sloping tunnel, but he hardly needed its light; his feet knew every inch of the passage. Or so he thought until he tripped and fell to his knees. He made a mental note to smooth out the footing.

At the end of the passage a right turn gave way to another tunnel lined with wooden shelves holding several years’ worth of dried legumes, rice and oatmeal in sturdy cotton sacks. An angle to the left led to the pasta stores—Tilbury was particularly fond of pasta—and tightly sealed cellophane bags of cookies and crackers. Beyond these were the fruits and vegetables. He loathed prunes only slightly less than he despised dried apricots, but healthy bowels and an adequate supply of vitamin C were necessities.

On other shelves hundreds of glass jars gleamed like jewels with the gold and red of canned peaches and strawberries and rhubarb, the dull green of runner beans and the fleshy hues of pickled mushrooms. Row upon row of cans held more soups and stews than a man could consume in a lifetime. Fruit cocktail and dill pickles, tomato paste and powdered milk, bottled lemon juice and packaged spices, salmon and mackerel and sardines and herring—it was all there, everything Edgar Tilbury liked to eat and a few things he was prepared to tolerate for the good of his health.

Deep in the ground below the barn, sound from Up There was muffled. Tilbury had taken the precaution of equipping his property with a highly sensitive alarm system that worked on sound vibrations and would warn him of any visitors. It was connected to the house, the barn and the cattle guard at the end of the lane. Whenever he entered the tunnels it was turned on.

The cattle guard was the first line of defense. Its warning was a shrill whistle that would galvanize Edgar Tilbury.

Finding himself confined to a hospital bed—and the suddenness with which the event took place—had unnerved O. M. Staunton. He issued the staff at the Hilda Staunton Memorial Hospital specific orders that he was to have no visitors. He did not want anyone to see him in his present condition.

Almost at once he rescinded the order and demanded to see Bea Fontaine.

The chief of the cardiac unit came in person to tell Staunton, “I’m sorry, sir, but we haven’t been able to contact Miss Fontaine by AllCom. At this hour the bank is closed, of course. We dispatched an orderly to her house, but he reports no one home. Do you have another address for her?”

The once-sturdy frame beneath the bedcovers was hardly enough to lift the sheets. With a trembling hand Staunton shoved the oxygen mask aside. He regarded the doctor with baleful eyes. Every word was an effort. “Am I going to die? Or not?”

“We all die sometime, but—”

“Today!” Staunton rasped. “Am I dying today?”

The doctor was acutely aware of the money the Stauntons had pumped into the hospital over the years, and reluctant to do anything that might damage the relationship. The Old Man was going to die, and soon. Was it better to tell him the truth? Or to mollify him—at least until the next shift came on duty?

Buying time, the doctor picked up Staunton’s chart and studied it intently, looking for the hope that wasn’t there. His patient’s labored breathing filled the room.

“Mr. Staunton, you’re a strong man. We have every confidence that you will still be with us by the time Miss Fontaine is located and arrives here.”

“I’d better be,” Staunton growled.

Life gurgled in his throat.

Later—he had lost all sense of time—he heard her step in the hallway. Another moment and she was in the room, pushing aside the curtain that encircled his bed.

“You’re here.” His voice was unrecognizable.

“I came as soon as I could. I was in the—”

“Doesn’t matter. You came.”

“Of course I did.” She pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down beside him.

Through failing eyes he tried to keep his vision fixed on her. “Miz Bea.”

“Yes.” She managed a tremulous smile. “Miz Bea.”

“Bea,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Remember?”

“Remember what, Oliver?” She stood up and leaned over him, placing her warm hand on one of the cold, liver-spotted hands lying on the sheet.

“You remember what to do?” he asked again with the last of his strength.

“Everything.”

“Good.” The Old Man gave a satisfied sigh. And was gone.

When she returned to the bank she took the safe deposit box from his desk and opened it again.

The death of Oliver Morse Staunton was announced to a stunned town by The Sycamore Seed. Death had become shockingly routine, but his funeral would be the largest in local memory. The River Valley Transportation Service draped its newest vehicle in black crepe and conveyed the coffin to Sunnyslope behind a team of black horses purchased from a breeder in Nolan’s Falls.

Shay Mulligan handled the reins himself, with his son, Evan, sitting beside him. Both wore black.

So did Lila Ragland, who walked alone just behind the hearse.

Dwayne Nyeberger was furious once again. “That’s crazy; my wife was his daughter, I should have been the principal mourner!”

In a signed and legally witnessed codicil added to Staunton’s will a few weeks before his death every detail of the funeral had been specified, including the horse-drawn hearse “to be followed by my granddaughter Lila.”

Everything was done as the Old Man wanted.

Bea Fontaine had authorized the loan with which the transport service had bought their latest carriage and horses. The church where the funeral was held, as well as the hearse and grave, were spectacularly heaped with flowers from Gold’s Court Florist.

Jack escorted Bea to the services. He noticed that her eyes were red, but she was not crying. “You were fond of the old tyrant, weren’t you?”

“He wasn’t a tyrant. He hated sentimentality, but you always knew where you stood with him. Oliver was a rock; the last of the bedrock this town was built on. There’s hardly a family here today that didn’t have reason to be grateful to the Stauntons at one time or another.” She shook her head. “There’s been an awful lot of changes, Jack; I’m afraid this might be one too many.”

“I doubt it, Aunt Bea. You’re a rock yourself, that’s why he left you in charge.”

“No, he left me in charge because I could keep a secret.”

“Lila Ragland?”

“Her mother was Oliver’s illegitimate daughter. He’d lost track of her—maybe he’d wanted to, he wasn’t what you’d call tolerant. But when we opened her safety deposit box it contained papers identifying her, together with Lila’s birth certificate. No father’s name on it, of course. I almost thought the shock would kill Oliver then, but it didn’t.”

Once Staunton was in his grave, Dwayne Nyeberger set out to wage war. He had been robbed. Robbed! Under the terms of Staunton’s will, half of his estate would go to his granddaughter. His five grandsons would share the rest, as well as the family home or proceeds from it. Nothing had been allotted to his son-in-law.

Obviously the will must be set aside.

Bea tried to reason with him. “Oliver provided for his blood kin, he was that kind of man. He wanted you to stand on your own feet, Dwayne, the way a man should. You’re a bank executive with a good salary; what more do you want?”

“Recognition! That old snake recognized his bastard granddaughter, and I demand what’s rightfully mine!”

Bea and Staunton had discussed this. His wishes had been specific and she remembered them to the smallest detail. She presented Dwayne with a large cardboard carton containing all of his clothes, toiletries and golf clubs. The label read “Rightfully Yours.”

Frank Auerbach put a black border—or as near black as his ink substitute would allow—around the front page of The Sycamore Seed.

“The funeral of Oliver Morse Staunton was a tragic milestone in the history of Sycamore River. His death followed a tragic anniversary; it has now been over a year since the onset of the Change. O. M. Staunton represented all that was solid and constructive about our town. The Change, which has damaged modern technology and mechanization around the globe, is a force for destruction. In this badly crippled world the Change goes on, but O. M. Staunton is no longer with us.

“May he rest in peace.”

At the next gathering of the Wednesday Club Jack asked, “Anything around here dissolved lately?”

“Nothing I can name offhand,” said Bill, “but not a day goes by that my customers aren’t bellyaching about something.”

“Out of curiosity, when was the last complaint?”

“I dunno; yesterday maybe. Folks love complaining to a bartender. They pound my ear about everything under the sun—except the Change. Not so much about that anymore.”

“Maybe it’s become the new normal,” Gerry suggested.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “The Change the new normal? Not likely.”

“You think things will get better?”

“I don’t go in for wishful thinking.”

Nell turned toward him. “If you did, what would you wish for?”

Jack smiled. “I plead the fifth amendment.”

She smiled too. “One of my wishes has been granted: my children have agreed to move back into our old house. It won’t be easy, not for any of us, but it’s for the best. Since your car’s still running I was hoping you’d lend a hand. We have a lot to move over; I hadn’t realized the kids had so much stuff.”

When he took her back to her mother’s apartment later Jack could feel a change in the atmosphere. Instead of getting out of the car immediately Nell sat still. They both leaned in at the same time, resulting in a tender collision.

When the kiss finally ended he said, “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

And that was that.

Before the Bennett family could return to their former home Nell hired a contractor to replace every damaged article in it, from the light switches to the chandeliers. “I can’t give you a guarantee on any of these,” he warned. “If the Change destroys them you’ll have to buy more.”

She also purchased new appliances and had the rooms repainted. “This will cost you a fortune, dear,” her mother fretted. “And it’s so unnecessary.”

“Exorcism can be expensive, Mom. But in this case it’s very necessary.”

When the work was finished Jack drove her to the gated community west of town to inspect the results. The mock-Normandy château stood like a silent sentinel in the midst of a vast, freshly mowed lawn. Larger, more lavish, more conspicuously expensive than any of its neighbors.

Nell sat in the car gazing at it, recalling how impressed she was the first time she saw it. How proud of himself Rob had been.

“Do you want me to go in with you?”

“Thanks, but no, Jack. I have to do this myself.”

He leaned against the scarlet Mustang and watched her approach the double front doors. Because of the problem with AllComs they were now locked with old-fashioned keys. Framed by the antique copper carriage lamps she had chosen in what seemed the distant past, Nell took a key from her handbag, squared her shoulders and inserted it in the lock.

One small step for womankind.

She opened the door and went in.