Drop by Drop

20

The article in The Sycamore Seed occupied the entire front page:

The Wednesday Club had their topic for the evening.

Jack was elated. “I had a hunch the sun had something to do with the Change, and here’s proof. Bacteria use photosynthesis to generate energy.”

“Whoa there!” cautioned Gerry. “Only some bacteria do. They’re called phototrophs and they’re totally different from saprophytes. The bacteria kingdom’s divided into groups; any one of them’s a specialized field of study.”

“Why hasn’t this new bacteria been discovered before now?” Nell wanted to know.

“Maybe it’s like black holes,” said Evan, proud to have something to contribute. “We studied those in school last year. They were only detected when their effects were noticed.”

Gerry looked thoughtful. “By God, Jack, I know I laughed at the time, but maybe you weren’t far off the mark when you talked about an unknown factor dissolving the molecules in hydrocarbons.”

“An amateur’s guess,” Jack said. “But if the Swedes are right about this it means someone’s developed a chemical superweapon. The next question is, who’s behind it? Every country seems to be targeted. Are we talking about a mad scientist with a grudge against the whole human race?”

Nell laughed. “You’ve been reading too many comic books.”

“No, I’m serious. What do you think the atom bomb was to begin with? A mad scientist’s dream. We’ll need to find a poison that will kill the bacteria, then develop a way to administer it.”

“Like spraying antibiotics over the entire globe?”

“The cure would be worse than the disease,” Shay said grimly. “Remember DDT? It wiped out a whole slew of species.”

The Wednesday Club ordered another round of drinks. Strong ones for everybody but Evan. Who took a gulp of his father’s when no one was looking.

With people unimpressed by the Swedish discovery, wars large and small continued to expand or erupted afresh, among nations and allies and strangers. Anger was bubbling to the surface everywhere. The weapons employed were changing too, becoming less technical but no less lethal. Plastic-free equivalents of earlier weapons of mass destruction were being designed and rushed into production. So were the many weapons that had marked mankind’s climb up the evolutionary ladder.

Jack Reece was more disturbed by the Change than he wanted to admit, even to himself. Disturbed by the change in himself. From being a freewheeling risk-taker he had become cautious, like a man who had something valuable to protect. Yet in spite of the chaotic global situation nothing had changed in his own life, except…

After a determined search he located two simple pagers, one for himself and one for Nell, and asked her to keep hers with her at all times. Being much less complicated than AllComs, pagers were not failing as frequently. Yet.

Jack hated that word “yet.” The implications behind it were profound. Nothing was certain, nothing was permanent, the most felicitously arranged life would end.

His.

Nell Bennett’s.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

“Aunt Bea, do you believe in God?”

Bea Fontaine was barely inside the front door after yet another difficult day at the bank. The First Federal in the new shopping center had cut its staff to the bone and was only open on two mornings a week. She suspected O. M. Staunton was planning a similar arrangement. Thank God for the weekend; at least she’d have time to brace herself.

She paused long enough to take off her coat while she digested Jack’s unexpected question. “I suppose I do,” she told him. “I still go to church sometimes—and I took you to Sunday school when you were little, in case you’ve forgotten.” When she opened the closet door to put her coat away a tangle of wire hangers clattered to the floor. Jack always was careless about hanging up clothes.

Bea let them lie there.

“You go to church at Christmas and I don’t go at all,” Jack said. “That’s not what I’m asking. Do you believe in God? God, heaven, an afterlife…”

“What brought this up?”

“The international situation’s ominous, Aunt Bea. There’s going to be another world war in the near future and America won’t be safe, not this time. We’ll be in the front line and a lot of people are going to die. I want to know if there’s a heaven they can go to.”

“What a cheerful greeting! I’d have preferred a cup of hot coffee.”

“I’ll fix one for you if you’ll answer my question.”

In the living room they sat side by side on the couch, facing the dead wallscreen. After Bea had drained her cup she gave a deep sigh. “I needed that.”

“And my question?”

“Well. Yes.” She set down the cup and turned to face him. “Here goes. Humans have grappled with the idea of God, or gods, for thousands of years. It appears we’re hardwired to have faith in something, but in the end people believe what they want to believe. They worship God or sorcery or sports stars… to our shame, anything will serve. Perhaps having faith is more important than what we have faith in. The journey rather than the destination. I must say I never expected to have this conversation with you, Jack. You’ve always seemed so sure.”

“That’s down to you,” he acknowledged. “You gave me such a solid grounding nothing could shake my confidence. But now…” He hesitated, reluctant to make a revelation about his private feelings.

She took off her glasses to study his face at close range. “You’re scared, is that it?”

He was grateful to her for making it easier. “I guess I am, but not for myself.” The old grin flickered but did not hold. “Well, maybe a little for myself. I have this sense of”—he struggled to find the right word—“of foreboding.”

“Because of the Change? We’re not plastic, we’re not going to melt.”

“This isn’t about the Change, Aunt Bea. It’s like when you go into a dark room and you’re aware of danger before you turn on a light. That’s what I’m feeling now. Intuition’s always been my stock-in-trade; if a deal’s going to go sour I usually know ahead of time. I can’t tell you how often that’s saved my neck. It’s my only real talent, but it’s a good one.”

“You’re lucky, the rest of us have to rely on hindsight,” she said drily. “From the direction of this conversation I guess you’re worried about a special person?”

“Perhaps.”

Bea’s face lit up. “Does she feel the same about you?”

“I didn’t say it was a woman.”

“Don’t tease me, I know you too well. You’ve been chasing girls since middle school.”

“Since before that, Aunt Bea.”

“And this one is serious?”

“When I’m certain I’ll tell you.”

The light went out of Bea’s face. “That’s the problem: Nothing’s certain anymore.”

At the next meeting of the Wednesday Club Jack announced, “I’ve been doing a little experimenting around the house and found some materials that can replace plastic. Cork is a good one. Leather’s another. And when our high-perf tires wear out we’ll have natural rubber too.”

Marla Burdick spoke up from behind the bar, where she was stacking clean glasses. “Wool might work if it’s thickly packed.”

“How about felt?” Morris Saddlethwaite asked unexpectedly.

“I went back to RobBenn and did a little scavenging in the ruins of the laboratory before the bulldozers came in,” Gerry admitted. “I had the company ID with me; no one tried to stop me. I brought home things I thought might be useful and I’ve been doing some experimenting myself. Several of the silicates could substitute for plastic under the right conditions.”

By now Jack was grinning. “Just listen to us! If we can get this far on our own, the human race can go all the way!”

As they did almost every Sunday, Gerry and Gloria Delmonico attended the church on the corner of Pine Grove and Alcott Place, where their daughter, Danielle, recently had been baptized. Although the morning had dawned bright and clear, a low bank of dark clouds to the north held the threat of rain later. As they stepped out of the church into the sunlight they exchanged smiles with one another. In spite of the Change, their lives seemed good that day; filled with promise. By focusing on the here and now they had everything they could wish for.

That morning the headline in The Sycamore Seed referred to a foreign country where a new type of tank had been developed that would soon roll onto undefended shores. Some glanced at the paper and looked away before meaning could invade their minds. Others absorbed every word, acquiring another layer of hopelessness.

Fred Mortenson desperately wanted to kill his wife. He refused to think of it as murder. Louise was always complaining about how miserable she was, and that’s what you did, wasn’t it? Put a suffering creature out of its misery?

Killing her should be simple enough. His dry cleaning plant employed a toxic solvent called perchloroethylene that would kill in a matter of minutes, but A: How to get her to drink the vile smelling stuff? and B: Could it be traced to him?

While watching himself in the shaving mirror Mortenson thought of half a dozen other methods using items from around his house, not to mention his collection of legally held firearms. But if he shot her with a gun registered to himself Sheriff Whittaker would be all over him like ugly on an ape.

Look how quickly he’d found Dwayne Nyeberger. And taken the man back to the hospital with another breakdown.

We’re all suffering breakdowns, Mortenson thought. Innocent by reason of insanity.

He regarded himself in the mirror. Not bad; a little jowly perhaps, but not bad at all. Deserved a young, prettier woman, not someone who whined because he’d hung his shaving mirror too high for her to apply her lipstick.

Why wait? Spousal slaughter was happening all the time now. According to the Seed, murder rates were going through the roof. Okay. No time like the present. First he would get his .22 out of his rifle case and do a little target practice, just to be sure.

The locked rifle case was in the back hall. When he stepped into the hall the first thing he saw was Louise with a metal nail file in her hand and a grin on her face. Then he saw the rifle.

“Gotcha!” said Louise Mortenson.

Colin Bennett stood in the middle of his grandmother’s living room with his fists planted on his hips. “I don’t want to live in our old house again, Mom! Nothing works in it, everything’s ruined. Besides, we’d still smell the smoke from the fire.”

“You couldn’t possibly,” she asserted, “that’s just your imagination. RobBenn was miles away from our house.”

“I can smell it anyway. Why can’t we stay here with Gramma?”

“We’re too cramped here. Besides, it’s a dreadful imposition on her.”

“That’s not the reason,” the boy said. “You two fight all the time, that’s why you want to leave.”

“We don’t fight all the time, Colin, you’re exaggerating. We have differences of opinion, but that’s inevitable when people live together in close quarters.”

“So find some other place.”

“There isn’t another place available right now; don’t you think I’ve looked?”

“How about Jack? Could we move in with him?”

“Jack Reece?”

“He takes you out in his car sometimes, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, but we’re just friends.”

“He’s got a super car and I’ll bet he’s got tons of money.”

Nell could not remember how it felt to love Robert Bennett, but she loved his son; she did not want Colin to become the same kind of man with the same set of values. “I don’t know if Jack has money and I don’t care.”

“When you go out with him you come back awful late. Me and Jess have been talking and we don’t want you to marry some snot-clot who can’t take care of you.” The boy smiled then: not his father’s self-centered smirk but an expression of concern that was purely Colin Bennett.

O. M. Staunton was not a sensitive man. But he could take a hint. Slowly and quietly in the beginning, not enough to cause a ripple on the surface, changes had been occurring in his body long before his daughter died. He had never paid much attention to his health, assuming it would serve him as obediently as did everything else in his life. Then he began experiencing bouts of nausea. A hollow pain at the base of his throat. A pounding heartbeat that awoke him in the middle of the night to find himself bathed in sweat.

Never one to panic, in his own good time he had gone to see his doctor. His doctor sent him to a specialist who sent him to another specialist

On Sunday afternoon Staunton appeared at Bea Fontaine’s front door again.

“Miz Bea, I need to talk to you. Is anybody else here?”

“No, Jack’s out for the day and I have no idea when or even if he’ll return. You know how young men are.”

“I can’t even remember,” Staunton said hoarsely. “Can I come in?”

When they were seated in the living room Staunton refused any offer of refreshment. “Let’s make this quick; I have to. Since I was born the human life-span has lengthened dramatically; ninety is the new seventy and all that. But mine’s done all the lengthening it’s going to do.”

Shock sent pins and needles through Bea’s body. The Old Man had seemed immortal, like the Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire. “You can’t mean…”

“I do mean. The medicos give me weeks, a couple of months at the most; I don’t have enough heart muscle left to use as a shoelace. I’m not a candidate for a heart transplant, my lungs and kidneys are shot too. I’ve got to make arrangements pretty smartly and I need your help. I hate to keep asking you for favors, but…”

She found herself looking at his trousered knees as he sat in the armchair. Bony knees, thrusting sharply up like mountain peaks. When did he become so thin?

“Somebody’s going to have to take over the bank while I’m still able to oversee the transition,” he went on. “My son-in-law’s off the rails. After Tricia’s funeral I urged him to come back into the bank, hoping it would steady him, but… I want to appoint you as president of the Sycamore and Staunton. You know more about this bank than anyone else and I can trust you to do what I would. It’s a poisoned chalice right now, but things are going to get better, they always do if you hang on long enough. What do you say, Miz Bea?”

Miz Bea did not say anything. To the dismay of them both, she began to cry.

She recalled that the stone face of the Old Man of the Mountain had crumbled away to nothing.

The bank of dark clouds that appeared in the morning sky had spread throughout the day, keeping the temperature unseasonably low, yet there was the faintest shimmer on the air, like heat waves rising from the earth.

Staunton stood beside Bea on her front porch, surveying the weather with a dubious eye. His familiar black car waited at the curb. “Is this supposed to be summer or winter?” he asked.

“Are you sure you’re able to drive? What about your car?”

“I’m able to do anything I want to do, I just don’t want to do much anymore. And that car’ll go where I tell it to. You still haven’t given me your answer, Miz Bea.”

She drew a deep breath, like someone on a high diving board about to jump off for the first time. “If you really want me to…”

“I do.”

“Well, then…”

“Well, then be in my office by seven in the morning, before anyone else gets there.”

He did not say thank you. Or good-bye. He got in his car and drove away.

Dwayne Nyeberger was furious. “I’ll go to the board of directors!” he shouted at Bea when she gave him the news on Tuesday morning. In his office, with the door closed, and him pounding his fist on the desk.

Bea was determined to remain calm. The Old Man expected her to be able to weather this storm, and she would. “Stauntons have chosen every member of the board since the bank was established,” she reminded Dwayne, “and it’s always rubber-stamped them. Don’t worry, your job is secure. You’ll continue on the same salary, he’s insisting on that. But—”

“No buts! I’m going to take this to the banking commission and the board of trade; I’m going to have the whole rotten deal overturned! I’ll have that old fool put away!”

“You’ll be wasting time and money,” Bea warned. “Don’t you know him by now? He has every contingency covered.” She lowered her voice to cushion the blow as she added, “He’s already filed copies of your medical records to show that you are unstable; the authorities won’t take your word over his. Be thankful for what you have, Dwayne.”

Dwayne responded with the worst temper tantrum of his life. Bea insisted that he take the rest of the day off.

As she returned to her office—with its gallery of former bank presidents watching from the walls—she became aware that the parquet floor was sticky. She stopped. Bent down. Ran her fingertips across flooring made of imitation teak laminate that was just beginning to dissolve.

Bea straightened up. The eyes of Oliver Staunton’s grandfather appeared to meet hers. The stern visage expressed mild disapproval.

Every portrait had been painted in the same style.

The Nyeberger boys were still recovering from their injuries at home; still cared for by Staunton’s housekeeper and a rotating assortment of nurses when required. Haydon Leveritt, a stocky woman with frizzy hair and deep frown lines, was doing the best she could, but her temper had worn very thin. Years ago there reputedly had been a Mr. Leveritt, but according to town gossip, “He stepped outside one day for a quick smoke and just never came back.”

Keeping house for the town’s richest banker had been the height of her ambition. Being saddled with the young Nyebergers and their problems was a step too far. When their father rampaged into the house cursing and shouting, the boys were alarmed. Haydon was terrified.

Since the disaster at RobBenn, Flub, the elder—by eight minutes—of the Nyeberger twins, had not spoken. There was no physical reason, according to their doctors. As his father’s uncontrollable outburst reached its peak Flub tugged on the housekeeper’s arm. “Daddy’s sick again. He’s always sick. I wish he’d melt.”