Drop by Drop

23

Shay Mulligan was surprised. “I didn’t know Edgar had an AllCom that still worked. Lila never mentioned it.”

“Maybe she didn’t know about it until now. She was sort of whispering, like she’d just found it or something and didn’t want him to know. I was afraid the connection would fail while we were talking, but it didn’t.”

“Do you think she’s ill? Or injured?”

Evan shrugged. “She looked okay, but I could only see her face.”

“Maybe I should head over there now.”

“She seemed to think tomorrow would be okay. The horses have been working all day and they’re tired, Dad.”

“Of course they are; what was I thinking?” It would be foolish to rush off to rescue a damsel in distress when he didn’t know if Lila was in distress. But the whole thing was decidedly odd. During the past year so many strange events had taken place that Shay’s imagination operated at fever pitch. Tilbury was an eccentric; such a person might do anything. He might even…

After he went to bed Shay tossed and turned. Karma, who shared his bed, moved onto each warm spot he vacated until at last she lost patience and went to Evan’s room to sleep with him.

When Nell Bennett was sure her children were asleep she took a flashlight and went through the house, scrutinizing every item she thought might be vulnerable to the Change. This had been her habit since they moved back in. She was alert for the slightest droop or sag—as she had once checked her mirror for the slightest sign of aging in her face.

There were more important things to worry about now. She felt like the guardian at the gates. Beyond those gates the forces of chaos waited. That’s melodramatic, she told herself, but we’re living in melodramatic times.

After a sleepless night Shay was up at dawn. He wrote out detailed instructions for Paige when she arrived at the clinic, took Jupiter from his stall behind the Delmonico house, saddled him and headed toward Tilbury’s. He kept the horse at a spanking trot the entire way. By the time they reached Tilbury’s mailbox the gelding’s hide was creamy with sweat. Shay dismounted and led Jupiter over the cattle guard and up the lane to the house.

Lila met him at the door, with Edgar Tilbury behind her. At one glance she took in the lathered horse. “You didn’t need to rush, Shay.”

“Your call sounded urgent.”

Tilbury cleared his throat. “What call?”

She turned to face him. “I used your AllCom.”

“But it was in my—”

“I know; I went looking for it. I knew you must have one, you’re so careful about being prepared.”

“All you had to do was ask.”

“I guess I’m a born snoop.”

“But you’re not in any trouble?”

“I don’t know, Shay. Yesterday afternoon when I walked down to the Simpsons’ place to buy eggs for our breakfast I thought someone was following me. They live in the valley,” she explained, “and there are a lot of trees. It seemed like a man was hiding among them.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“Every time I tried he ducked out of sight.”

Tilbury said angrily, “Why didn’t you tell me when you came home?”

“It might have been my imagination and I didn’t want to bother you for nothing. But after supper, when you were down in the tunnel, someone looked in my window.”

“You’re sure now?”

“That’s when I got up and went for your phone, Edgar.”

He clenched his fists. “You should have let me take care of the bastard!”

Shay was white beneath his freckles. “The two of you out here alone, and you not a young man—”

“I’m able to take care of any damned intruder!”

“I’m sure you are,” the vet said hastily.

Bill Burdick looked up when Shay and Lila entered the bar and grill. “I didn’t expect to see you two today. Are you here for a drink, or a meal?”

“A couple of drinks,” Shay told him, “and a little information. Do you know anyone in town who might have a room to rent? Someplace on the south side, maybe.”

“Scarce commodity these days. Who’s it for?”

“Me,” said Lila.

“Unh-hunh. You’re not staying with Edgar anymore?”

“I was, but now I’m here.”

“Did you and he have a falling out?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Unh-hunh. Well. I can ask around… but I suggest you go to Frank over at The Sycamore Seed. He runs a few classified ads in the paper, he might know of something.”

Shay waited while Lila went to the newspaper office alone. “She makes her own decisions,” he said to Burdick.

“Why don’t you put her up at your place?”

“The mood she’s in, I’m afraid she’d slap me down.”

“Unh-hunh. It gets complicated, doesn’t it?”

“You can say that again. Give me a refill, will you?”

Lila returned to Bill’s within the hour. One look at her glowing face told the story. “There’s a nice room with a private bath over on Cleveland Street, available right now. It’s in the home of a friend of Bea’s. And better than that… I have a job!”

“I didn’t know you were looking for a job.”

“Of course I was, Shay; I have to be able to pay my rent, don’t I? Frank Auerbach said my arrival was providential, he’s been looking for a typist to transcribe the news. I didn’t train on the typewriter, but it’s not that different from a computer keyboard. And I can certainly write a simple declarative sentence.”

Another hour was spent getting Lila settled in her new room: a large bedroom and bath on the second floor of a private home overlooking Cutler Park, one block over from Elm Street. There was a Colonial-style double bed, a matching chest of drawers, a mirrored dressing table in an alcove. Clean sheets were on the bed and clean towels in the bathroom. The striped dimity curtains on the windows looked new.

“Everything’s within walking distance,” Lila pointed out to Shay.

“I guess you won’t need me, then.”

“Of course I will. Aren’t you taking me to the next Wednesday Club meeting?”

He was tempted to point out that now she could walk the short distance, but he didn’t.

Before he left her Shay went around the corner to Gold’s Court Florist to buy a flower arrangement to brighten the room. “Is this for someone special?” Martha Frobisher asked coquettishly.

“Yeah.”

“Then you’ll want real flowers and not artificial ones. The artificial ones last longer, but we used to have trouble with them dissolving.”

“Used to?”

“It’s not happening anymore. I sold a lovely arrangement of artificial peonies just last week.”

As Shay returned home he felt a little guilty about Edgar Tilbury. The man had been kind to Lila; she had revealed enough of the story for Shay to understand what had been done on her behalf. Tilbury was probably lonely and his intentions were good.

He wondered how much the old man knew about Lila.

He wondered how much he really knew about her himself.

When Jack arrived on Wednesday evening to take Nell to the bar and grill, she got into the car with a spiral notebook in her hand. “I’ve discovered something fascinating!”

“Fasten your seat belt first. I just had them installed; they didn’t come standard with the car.”

“Wait a minute.” She twisted in her seat. “There. Now can I tell you about this?”

“Aren’t you going to put on your scarf? The top’s down.”

“Jack, you’re becoming a regular fussbudget. Please, listen to me. Since we moved back into the house I’ve been writing down every item that dissolves so my contractor can replace it. I’ve been recording them all by date, and it’s been a month yesterday since I found anything wrong. Here, look at my notebook.”

“I’m driving,” he said patiently.

“A month yesterday! Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

“Only that your contractor’s using better quality materials than the last one did.”

“Oh, you. Do you think it’s possible the Change is stopping?”

“How could it stop without us knowing?”

“It started without us knowing. Just a bit at a time, remember? It took a while for the news to get around, so we don’t know exactly when or where it actually began, but I doubt if it was in Sycamore River. We certainly aren’t the center of the universe.”

“It’s a nice idea, Nell, and I’d like to believe you’re right. But the Change isn’t the catastrophe it used to be, not with actual war looming. We have something worse to worry about now.”

She closed the notebook and put it into the glove compartment. For the rest of the drive into town she watched the scenery go by.

They were almost the first members of the Wednesday Club to arrive. Some of the other tables were occupied and there was a lineup at the bar, including Hooper Watson. He waved but did not get off his stool. That honor was reserved for the arrival of Shay Mulligan, who could be expected to buy the former sheriff a drink before joining the others.

“While we wait for them,” Jack said to Nell, “how about taking a poll to see if anyone else has noticed a lessening in the Change?”

Bill’s customers agreed to participate, but the results were inconclusive. Like Jack, most had stopped paying attention to what had become a commonplace event. Art Hannisch, the jeweler, told a different story. “A few months ago I bought a porcelain tea set to display in my front window. Quality merchandise; you could almost read a newspaper through one of the saucers. Several customers came into the shop to inquire about it, but I’d marked it at the price the sales rep recommended, which was pretty stiff. Sooner or later someone would buy it, though, and I’d make a good profit. I was sort of counting on the mayor’s wife, in fact.

“Then one day that damned tea set… slumped. Not exactly melted, you understand; it sort of collapsed. Stuck fast to the expensive silver tray it was on. I had to scrape the stuff off, which ruined the tray too. If I ever get my hands on that sales rep again I’ll break his damned neck.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Three weeks, Jack, give or take a day or two.”

“And nothing like that’s happened since?”

“No. Wasn’t that bad enough?”

When Shay and Evan arrived they had Edgar Tilbury with them. He glanced around the room. “Is Lila here?”

“Lila Ragland?” Bill called from behind the bar. “I imagine she’ll be along as soon as she gets off work.”

Tilbury’s shaggy eyebrows rose in surprise. “Lila has a job?”

“Didn’t she tell you? She’s working for The Sycamore Seed.”

“That girl’s just one surprise after another,” Edgar remarked.

The first topic of the evening was Nell’s theory. Laying her spiral notebook on the table, she invited the others to have a look. “You’ll notice that the meltings—dissolutions, whatever you want to call them—appear to be tapering off.”

“Martha Frobisher in the florist shop told me their artificial flowers used to melt,” Shay said, “but they don’t anymore.”

“You sure this isn’t wishful thinking?”

“I’m not sure of anything, but can’t it be a possibility?”

“Anything can be a possibility,” said Gerry, “if you have the science to back it up.”

“I’m not a scientist, but you are. Could the Change be reversed?”

“Well…” Gerry considered while the others watched him eagerly. “Look at it this way. Plastics are organic compounds that’re held together by the polarization of the electronic charge cloud on each molecule. If they’re being destroyed on a molecular level, as I believe they are, then when the molecular destruction stops the destruction of plastic stops. Would the Change be reversed? No, but it could be over. And we would have dodged a very large bullet.”

Jack said, “You’re leaving out the most important part: what caused it in the first place. You talked about tracking the cause of the Change ‘to its lair,’ but are we any closer than we were?”

“Maybe we don’t have to be… not if it’s stopping on its own, the way it started.”

Jack shook his head. “Nothing in the universe starts or stops spontaneously.”

“Now, wait a minute here!” Morris Saddlethwaite interjected. “What about that Big Bang you talked about? Wasn’t that spontaneous?”

“They’re still trying to determine—”

“Aha! So you don’t know!”

Edgar Tilbury gave a snort. “We don’t know anything, Morris, until we admit how much we don’t know.”

“You’re one of those folks who talk in riddles, you are. I don’t like that; I like black or white, yes or no.”

“In this world there are no absolutes,” Jack stated emphatically.

Nell’s shoulders drooped. “And there may be no end to the Change.”

“Don’t take it like that,” Jack said to her. “People everywhere will be working to find substitutes for what they’ve lost, same as we are. The world is going to go on. Different, maybe, but it will go on, and who’s to say it won’t be better?”

Something was being born, something so fragile they dare not expose it to the light. A nascent hope.

When Lila entered Bill’s Bar and Grill she was carrying the latest edition of The Sycamore Seed. The headlines were enough to crush hope.

She laid the newspaper on top of Nell’s notebook. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Frank Auerbach was monitoring the shortwave this morning and it’s pretty certain. We’ve got more hard copy, we’ll use it in the next edition.” Lila gave a self-conscious smile. “He’s letting me try my hand at writing.”

Nell was puzzled. “What do they mean by ‘conventional’ warfare?”

“It means no nukes,” said Jack. “Looks like neither side has any computers left.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Depends on your point of view, I guess. Dead is dead, whether it’s ten people killed or a hundred thousand. No matter what weapons they use, there’s no way America can stay out of it. Because of our international treaty commitments we’ll have to support one side or the other. Hobson’s choice.”

“In spite of all we can do,” Gloria mourned.

Tilbury’s response was acerbic. “Just exactly what did we do? Like lambs to the slaughter we’ve allowed a few power-mad individuals to gain control of the world. We’ve been led to the edge of a cliff and—”

“And we have to turn around and run like hell in the opposite direction!” Jack slammed his fist onto the table so hard he knocked off the newspaper and notebook.

“What else can we do?” said Gerry. “Stage a coup in every belligerent country? Convert all the soldiers into farmers? Even if it were possible, and it damned sure isn’t, we don’t have enough time. And World War One didn’t use nukes.”

Tilbury exchanged glances with Lila Ragland. She was standing straight with her shoulders back and her chin lifted. Life had pummeled her until she was no longer afraid of anything. There was an admantine quality in the woman.

He could almost feel the levers shift inside himself.

If the bombs came he would not go into the tunnels either.

Nell bent down to retrieve the papers from the floor. She gazed at the Seed for a moment, then held it up. “Look, everyone. The newsprint isn’t blurred!”