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 little-used road on their way to school; Eldon Blaine saw their tattered books and lunch pails, heard their 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 variety 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 armload 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 talking 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 firm, 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.
As they walked back together, Mrs. Raub said, “Who are the antibiotics for? Not yourself; you look perfectly healthy to me.”
“My little girl is dying,” he said.
She did not waste sympathetic words; there were none left in the world, any more-she merely nodded. “Infectious hepatitis?” she asked. “How’s your water supply? Do you have a chlorinator? If not—“
“No, it’s like strep throat,” he said.
“We heard from the satellite last night that some German drug firms are in operation again, and so if we’re lucky we’ll be seeing German drugs back on the market, at least on the East Coast.”
“You get the satellite?” Excitedly, he said, “Our radio went dead, and our handy is down somewhere near South San Francisco, scavenging for refrigeration parts and won’t be back probably for another month. Tell me; what’s he reading now? The last time we picked him up, it was so darn long ago—he was on Pascal’s Provincial Letters.”
Mrs. Raub said, “Dangerfield is now reading Of Human Bondage.”
“Isn’t that about that fellow who couldn’t shake off that girl he met?” Eldon said. “I think I remember it from the previous time he rea4 it, several years ago. She kept coming back into his life. Didn’t she finally ruin his life, in the end?”
“I don’t know; I’m afraid we didn’t pick it up the previous time.”
“That Dangerfield is really a great disc jockey,” Eldon said, “the best I’ve ever heard even before the Emergency. I mean, we never miss him; we generally get a turnout of two hundred people every night at our fire station. I think one of us could fix that damn radio, but our Committee ruled that we had to let it alone and wait until the handy’s back. If he ever is … the last one disappeared on a scavenging trip.”
Mrs. Raub said, “Now perhaps your community understands the need of standby equipment, which I’ve always said is essential.”
“Could—we send a representative up to listen with your group and report back to us?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Raub said. “But—“
“It wouldn’t be the same,” he agreed. “It’s not—“ He gestured. What was it about Dangerfield, sitting up there above them in the satellite as it passed over them each day? Contact with the world … Dangerfield looked down and saw everything, the rebuilding, all the changes both good and bad; he monitored every broadcast, recording and preserving and then playing back, so that through him they were joined.
In his mind, the familiar voice now gone so long from their community—he could summon it still, hear the rich low chuckle, the earnest tones, the intimacy, and never anything phony. No slogans, no Fourth-of-July expostulations, none of the stuff that had gotten them all where they were now.
Once he had heard Dangerfield say, “Want to know the real reason I wasn’t in the war? Why they carefully shot me off into space a little bit in advance? They knew better than to give me a gun … I would have shot an officer.” And he had chuckled, making it a joke; but it was true, what he said, everything he told them was true, even when it was made funny. Dangerfield hadn’t been politically reliable, and yet now he sat up above them passing over their heads year in, year out. And he was a man they believed.
Set on the side of a ridge, the Raub house overlooked West Marin County, with its vegetable fields and irrigation ditches, an occasional goat staked out, and of course the horses; standing at the living room window, Eldon Blaine saw below him, near a farmhouse, a great Percheron which no doubt pulled a plow … pulled, too, an engineless automobile along the road to Sonoma County when it was time to pick up supplies.
He saw now a horse-car moving along the county road; it would have picked him up if Mrs. Raub hadn’t found him first, and he would have soon reached Petaluma.
Down the hillside below him pedaled Mrs. Raub on her way to find him his antibiotics; to his amazement she had left him alone in her house, free to nap everything in sight, and now he turned to see what there was. Chairs, books, in the kitchen, food and even a bottle of wine, clothes in all the closets—he roamed about the house, savoring everything; it was almost like before the war, except that of course the useless electrical appliances had been thrown out long ago.