Rose had expected that the informal candidates’ forum held in July at City Hall would be her time to shine, for Mayor Callahan had never been renowned for his skill at extemporaneous speaking. Her campaign staff had, of course, encouraged supporters to attend, and had even suggested a handful of question topics on which “your fellow citizens might be interested in hearing Candidate Winchester’s thoughts.” As they neared election day, Rose felt certain they were nearing, also, the end of Mayor Callahan’s long run as mayor of Nicolet.
But as the candidates’ forum progressed, the meeting room in the Nicolet Public Library packed with curious citizens, Rose had been caught off guard by one of the forum participants, who stood up to ask, “Isn’t it true that your own daughter won’t be attending Nicolet Public Schools? That she’s being shipped off to an elite boarding school for ‘exceptional’ children? What sort of investment will you have in the schools here if you don’t even trust them enough to educate your daughter?”
Rose, not realizing that word of Lily’s application had reached the ears of the electorate, had fumbled her response, sounding as unprepared for the question as Mayor Callahan when he responded to what Rose thought were obviously questions planted by his supporters.
“Sir,” she managed, finally, after many halting starts and stops, “where my daughter attends school has no bearing on my commitment to this community.”
“Mrs. Winchester.” Mayor Callahan stepped out from behind his podium. “I’d just like to go on record here today as agreeing with you that personal matters should be off the table when it comes to the mayor’s race.” He nodded, as though this was, indeed, a grave and serious matter.
Rose looked at Mayor Callahan over the top of her reading glasses, unable to decide, finally, if he was the bungling yokel she’d always pegged him for, or a far shrewder politician than she’d ever imagined.
Sarala had spent weeks studying the patterns and books on period-appropriate fabric Mrs. Schuster had loaned the girls. She had pulled her rarely used sewing machine from the spare bedroom closet, set it up on the dining room table, and spread the tissue-thin pattern pieces out over the living-room carpet, pinning them to the calico and cutting carefully. She wrestled with long yards of fabric that slowly, under her patient hand, transformed into petticoats and bodices.
The level of excitement in Nicolet over the upcoming Revolutionary War Days was far greater than she remembered from past years. Perhaps, Sarala considered, it was that the town felt able to breathe again now that the specter of the super collider had evaporated. Or maybe it was just that the town, fearful of the future, had chosen, instead, to take refuge in the past.
At the beginning of the summer, plans were announced for a large collaborative collider in Europe at CERN, and with that news it became clear that the Lab would no longer operate on the forefront of the physics community.
In July came the announcement from the Department of Energy that within the next four years they would cease to request funding to support the Lab’s current accelerator. Was this some sort of punishment for not securing the collider, some of the staff wondered? Either way, it was clear that the department’s priorities lay elsewhere.
The day the announcement of the defunding was made, Abhijat had taken a deep breath, gathered his energies, and began to make a list of his options. That facility, this university, yes — all of these were viable, promising possibilities, he thought, perusing the list once he had finished.
But that evening, over dinner, Meena had asked him, her voice, he noticed, halting and uncertain, “Does this mean we’ll have to move?” Sarala watched him, waiting for his answer.
Abhijat looked up and across the table at his wife and daughter, taking in the lines of worry on both their faces.
He decided it then, just as he said it.
“No.”
He said it again, as though to test himself.
“No. The accelerator may lose funding, but there will always be a place at the Lab for the theorists. It will just be—” he paused for a moment, imagining it “—a very different place. No longer the facility it once was.”
He could picture it — the halls grown quiet, a skeletal staff of mostly emeritus-aged physicists still reading and occasionally publishing an article here and there. Abhijat thought of the rusting buildings of the linear collider and wondered how long until the old accelerator’s buildings, once bustling with activity, would begin to look like that. How long until the cafeteria, once filled with chattering scientists, would be populated by one or two physicists sitting together over coffee at a too-large table.
“No,” he said again, “we will not have to leave,” and, watching the looks of relief that passed over his wife’s and his daughter’s faces, he knew he had made the right decision.
CHAPTER 24. The Road to Independence
FOR REVOLUTIONARY WAR DAYS, SARALA HAD SELECTED FOR HERSELF a red, white, and blue sweater, its front decorated with an image of a group of pigs sewing an American flag.
She had been surprised when Abhijat suggested that he join her for the event — he’d lived in Nicolet for over a decade and hadn’t once visited Heritage Village.
As they walked together through the grounds, she turned now and then to point something out to him. Here were all the things she loved about Heritage Village — the blacksmith’s shop, exhibits on colonial life in America, the costumed villagers — but now the grounds were full of elaborately costumed Revolutionary War reenactors from all over the country, regiments and camp followers, Redcoats who imagined they might quash this young republic.
The weekend’s reenactors had set up campsites under the canopies of trees that spotted the grounds — canvas tents arranged around campfires, and from the part of the green that functioned as the day’s battlefield came the sound of cannon blast, the sharp crack of muskets being fired.
Sarala thought back to the times she had brought Meena here as a child, how Meena had loved the smoke and racket of the blacksmith’s shop, how this place had performed for Sarala the America she’d imagined.
Their first stop, she decided, leading Abhijat to it, would be the early frontier log house, surrounded by its split-rail fence.
A junior reenactor Sarala recognized as a classmate of Meena’s was leading another group through the cabin when they arrived. It consisted of a single room — kitchen, dining room, and bedroom all at once — but the group’s attention was on the ladder in the corner that reached up to a loft. “Pioneer families built the loft for two reasons,” Meena’s classmate, in his simple frontier costume, explained. “In the winter, heat rises, so that was the warmest place in the house to sleep. Also, you’ll notice that there are no doors here — just flaps of animal hide. Well, if you were cooking something that smelled good, or your house looked toasty and warm, it wasn’t uncommon for a wild animal to wander in. And when that happened, the whole family could scramble up to the loft and pull the ladder up after them. Then they’d just wait until it wandered back out again.”
“Fascinating,” Abhijat said, smiling. “What kind of animal?”
Sarala, surprised by his interest, turned to observe her husband.
“Oh, a raccoon maybe, or a bear,” the student answered.
Sarala had not expected Abhijat’s delight at the house’s plank floors, the large stone fireplace. In one corner of the single room sat a wooden bed covered with a rough wool bedspread, and he pointed out to her a small, worn doll made of corncobs in a basket at the foot of the bed. Outside, he was intrigued by the children trying their hand at pioneer chores, grinding dry corn into meal using a wooden mortar and hollowed-out log as a pestle, or carrying buckets of water hung on a yoke they wore across their backs. It seemed to Sarala like an entirely new Abhijat who accompanied her through Heritage Village.