“I’ll grant you that,” Stuart said, “but it was the start.”
Overhead, now, the balloon was drifting back the way it had come. Perhaps it had run out of little messages and was returning to Hamilton Field, over on the other side of the Bay or wherever it was.
Gazing up at it, Stuart said, “Talk to us some more.”
“It can’t,” Ken said. “That’s all it had to say; it’s a very simple creature. Are you going to play, or should I move your pieces? Either is satisfactory to me.”
With great caution, Stuart moved a bishop—and again knew at once that it had been the wrong move; he could tell by the dying man’s face.
In the corner of the basement, among the cement blocks, something agile and frightened plopped to safety, scurried and twittered with anxiety as it spied them. Stuart’s attention wandered from the board to the rat, and he looked about for his broom handle.
“Play!” Ken said angrily.
“Okay, okay,” Stuart said, feeling grumpy about it. He made a random move, his attention still on the rat.
VII
In front of the pharmacy in Point Reyes Station, at nine in the morning, Eldon Blaine waited. Under his arm he held tightly his worn briefcase tied together with string. Meanwhile, inside the building, the pharmacist removed chains and struggled with the metal doors; Eldon listened to the sound and felt impatience.
“Just a minute,” the pharmacist called, his voice muffled. As he at last got the doors open he apologized, “This was formerly the back end of a truck. You have to use both your hands and feet to make it work. Come on in, mister.” He held the high door aside, and Eldon saw into the dark interior of the pharmacy, with its unlit electric light bulb which hung from the ceiling by an ancient cord.
“What I’m here for,” Eldon said rapidly, “is a wide-spectrum antibiotic, the kind used in clearing up a respiratory infection.” He made his need sound casual; he did not tell the pharmacist how many towns in Northern California he had visited in the last few days, walking and hitching rides, nor did he mention how sick his daughter was. It would only jack up the price asked, he knew. And anyhow he did not see much actual stock, here. Probably the man did not have it.
Eying him, the pharmacist said, “I don’t see anything with you; what do you have in exchange, assuming I have what you’re after?” In a nervous manner he smoothed his thinning gray hair back; he was an elderly, small man, and it was obvious that he suspected Eldon of being a napper. Probably he suspected everyone.
Eldon said, “Where I come from I’m known as the glasses man.” Unzipping his briefcase, he showed the pharmacist the rows of intact and nearly-intact lenses, frames, and lenses in frames, scavenged from all over the Bay Area, especially from the great deposits near Oakland. “I can compensate almost any eye defect,” he said. “I’ve got a fine variety, here. What are you, near– or far-sighted or astigmatic? I can fix you up in ten minutes, by changing around a lens or two.”
“Far-sighted,” the pharmacist said slowly, “but I don’t think I have what gou want.” He looked at the rows of glasses longingly.
With anger, Eldon said, “Then why didn’t you say so right off, so I can go on? I want to make Petaluma today; there’s a lot of drugstores there—all I have to do is find a hay truck going that way.”
“Couldn’t you trade me a pair of glasses for something else?” the pharmacist asked plaintively, following after him as he started away. “I got a valuable heart medicine, quinidine gluconate; you could most likely trade it for what you want. Nobody else in Marin County has quinidine gluconate but me.”
“Is there a doctor around here?” Eldon said, pausing at the edge of the weed-infested county road with its several stores and houses.
“Yes,” the pharmacist said, with a nod of pride. “Doctor Stockstill; he migrated here several years ago. But he doesn’t have any drugs. Just me.”
Briefcase under his arm, Eldon Blaine walked on along the county road, listening hopefully for the pop-popping noise of the wood-burning truck motor rising out of the stillness of the early-morning California countryside. But the sound faded. The truck, alas, was going the other way.
This region, directly north of San Francisco, had once been owned by a few wealthy dairy ranchers; cows had cropped in these fields, but that was gone now, along with the meat-animals, the steer and sheep. As everyone knew, an acre of land could function better as a source of grains or vegetables. Around him now he saw closely-planted rows of corn, an early-ripening hybrid, and between the rows, great hairy squash plants on which odd yellow squash like bowling balls grew. This was an unusual eastern squash which could be eaten skin and seeds and all; once it had been disdained in California valleys… but that was changed, now.
Ahead, a little group of children ran across the littleused road on their way to school; Eldon Blaine saw their tattered books and lunch pails, heard thcir voices, thought to himself how calming this was, other children well and busy, unlike his own child. If Gwen died, others would replace her. He accepted that unemotionally. One learned how. One had to.
The school, off to the right in the saddle of two hills: most of it the remains of a single-story modern building, put up no doubt just before the war by ambitious, public-spirited citizens who had bonded themselves into a decade of indebtedness without guessing that they would not live to make payment. Thus they had, without intending it, gotten their grammar school free.
Its windows made him laugh. Salvaged from every var iety of old rural building, the windows were first tiny, then huge, with ornate boards holding them in place. Of course the original windows had been blown instantly out. Glass, he thought. So rare these days… if you own glass in any form you are rich. He gripped his briefcase tighter as he walked.
Several of the children, seeing a strange man, stopped to peer at him with anxiety augmented by curiosity. He grinned at them, wondering to himself what they were studying and what teachers they had. An ancient senile old lady, drawn out of retirement, to sit once more behind a desk? A local man who happened to hold a college degree? Or most likely some of the mothers themselves, banded together, using a precious annload of books from the local library.
A voice from behind him called; it was a woman, and as he turned he heard the squeak-squeak of a bicycle. “Are you the glasses man?” she called again, severe and yet attractive, with dark hair, wearing a man’s cotton shirt and jeans, pedaling along the road after him, bouncing up and down with each rut. “Please stop. I was talldng to Fred Quinn our druggist just now and he said you were by.” She reached him, stopped her bicycle, panting for breath. “There hasn’t been a glasses man by here in months; why don’t you come oftener?”
Eldon Blaine said, “I’m not here selling; I’m here trying to pick up some antibiotics.” He felt irritated. “I have to get to Petaluma,” he said, and then he realized that he was gazing at her bike with envy; he knew it showed on his face.
“We can get them for you,” the woman said. She was older than he had first thought; her face was lined and a little dark, and he guessed that she was almost forty. “I’m on the Planning Committee for everyone, here in West Marin; I know we can scare up what you need, if you’ll just come back with me and wait. Give us two hours. We need several pairs… I’m not going to let you go.” Her voice was finn, not coaxing.
“You’re not Mrs. Raub, are you?” Eldon Blaine asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You recognized me—how?”
He said, “I’m from the Bolinas area; we know all about what you’re doing up here. I wish we had someone like you on our Committee.” He felt a little afraid of her. Mrs. Raub always got her own way, he had heard. She and Larry Raub had organized West Main after the Cooling-off; before, in the old days, she had not amounted to anything and the Emergency had given her her chance, as it had many people, to show what she was really made of.