“Wait a minute!” Lila protested.
Conversation swirled around Nell as if she were in the eye of a storm. Which was how she felt. Questions, suggestions, recollections of other weddings… the Wednesday Club was delighted with the unexpected turn of events: a happy topic to replace all the gloom and doom.
The threat of war was so close now. The air almost smelled of death and destruction.
But two people were in love.
Champagne was ordered. She and Jack were given seats in the middle of the booth. “So you can put your arm around her,” he was told.
She was almost painfully aware of his physical presence. He seemed to radiate heat.
I’ve been married before and it was nothing like I expected. Will this be any different?
I love him. And I’m in love with him, at least I think I am. They’re not the same thing, but I know the difference.
“About the date…” Nell said tentatively.
Jack looked down at her. “Don’t worry about that; like you said, it’s too early.”
Is she trying to back out? Suddenly he realized how very much he wanted this.
“About the date,” she reiterated. “And making all the arrangements… it won’t be easy, the way things are. But… it’s going to get better.”
They were all looking at her now.
I have to believe in something, and here it is.
“The Change is slowing down,” she said, “I’m convinced of it. As soon as it’s over we’ll get married.”
“That’s what I’d call a giant leap of faith,” said Edgar Tilbury.
Little things. Knobs on kitchen cabinets. Buttons on clothes. Covers on checkbooks thrust into the backs of desk drawers.
Did not melt.
Cessation was not instantaneous. The Change had taken months to build to its full fury; it would not abate for months more.
But the end was coming.
The members of the Wednesday Club devoted themselves to sniffing out every instance of returning normalcy.
Lila wrote an article about it for the Seed. She did not mention Jack and Nell, but she reported that people were making plans for the end of the Change. She encouraged her readers to watch for examples and report them to the paper.
Within a week the letters began to come in.
Bit by bit, a sense of excitement pervaded Sycamore River. It was like a giant treasure hunt. At the end everyone would win.
Beyond the Sycamore River Valley, across America and around the globe, others also were aware of the improving situation. The puzzle that could not be solved was starting to go away. Soon it would be possible to concentrate on other matters.
In the meantime the race to provide acceptable substitutes for plastic continued. The Change had disrupted too much for the modern lifestyle to be restored completely, but some of the discoveries and innovations forced on the human race had proved themselves better than the originals.
Bamboo surgical stents, being organic, were more readily accepted by the human body and did not need to be replaced as often.
Some though not all of the people who had substituted real horses for automotive horse power found the slower pace of their lives too pleasant to relinquish. For them, returning to the combustion engine was viewed as a retrograde step.
But.
The international armaments industry continued to move ahead. The old-style weapons they had begun producing could be manufactured more cheaply and required less training to use than their modern counterparts. Battle would become the preserve of the infantry again, rather than a technological game played out by opponents who never saw each other. The nuclear option was shelved. For the time being.
However, the genii had been let out of the bottle and might find a way to escape again in the future.
After an absence from toy store shelves, startlingly realistic guns and other weapons—with no plastic parts—became available again, and were heavily promoted.
War had never gone out of fashion.
25
“I’m sorry, Nell, but there’s nothing I can do about your trees.”
“They aren’t my trees, Finbar, they belong to my grandchildren and their grandchildren. Did you explain that to the people you were talking to?”
“In the federal government? I didn’t even try. They’re too busy with everything else that’s going on to—”
“What about at state level? Surely—”
“They reminded me quite firmly that we have a perfectly good state park in this area, at Nolan’s Falls. To fund another so close by would be—”
“But they don’t need to fund it,” she argued, “it’s already there. We just have to keep the authorities from destroying the trees.”
He tried to placate her. “You don’t know they’re going to do that.”
“Yes, I do. My friend Lila Ragland works for The Sycamore Seed and they’ve learned the entire forest is going to be cut down. To make room for a military airport!”
“I’m sorry,” O’Mahony said again. “My hands are tied. At a time like this—”
“Blast you and the ‘time like this’!” Nell was almost screaming.
When Jack arrived to take her to the Wednesday Club she was still tense with anger. “Don’t take it so hard,” he counseled. “Sometimes you have to walk away.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Why not? You lived close to that forest for years and never got involved with the conservancy, so why’s it upsetting you now?”
She had no answer for him. She did not know the reason herself, but the feeling was very strong in her. If he loved her, really loved her, he should take it on blind faith.
Bill’s Bar and Grill had become more than a meeting place; for each member of the club it was, in one way or another, a haven. Among themselves they talked more freely than they would anywhere else. Trusting their friends to understand.
A haphazard mix of disparate personalities had turned into something greater than the sum of its parts.
Shay Mulligan understood when Nell bemoaned the projected fate of the forest. “It’s going to break Paige’s heart,” he told her.
“Paige?”
“Paige Prentiss, in my clinic. She’s the girl who took your Rottweiler; he goes everywhere with her now. And she’s one of the most dedicated members of the conservancy.”
“Do you suppose she could draw up a petition of protest and get lots of signatures?”
“I’m sure she could, Nell—but would it do any good?”
“Not with the federal government,” Edgar Tilbury interjected. “We’re like ants at a picnic to them. What you need is an appeal to a higher authority. And there is no higher authority.”
Tilbury felt sympathy for Nell. She was an intelligent, sensitive woman—perhaps too sensitive. She had never acquired the armor plating Lila Ragland possessed.
On his own he wrote some letters, made some inquiries—and had to admit that Finbar O’Mahony was right. In a matter of months Daggett’s Woods would cease to exist.
Scorched earth, he thought. Some folks just can’t resist pushing the destruct button.
As the Change loosened its grip the sun seemed to shine more brightly over Sycamore River. Spirits began to lift. People greeted each other on the street again instead of lowering their eyes and hurrying past.
The five Nyeberger boys had returned to normal—or what was normal for them. They were living in their parents’ home as temporary wards of the court, being cared for by Haydon Leveritt because their father was rarely home. Even when he was, Dwayne Nyeberger was not an acceptable parent figure.
Flub was usually speechless, but he could talk if he wanted to. When someone mentioned the approaching war he said, “The best thing about dying young is you’ll never get old.”