“Hmm—look, George, do you like it here? Are you glad we came?”
Dad was silent for a long time. At last he said, “I’m worried about Peggy, Bill.”
“Yeah, I know. But how about yourself—and Molly?”
“I’m not worried about Molly. Women have their ups and downs. You’ll learn to expect that.” He shook himself and said, “I’m late. You go on inside and have Molly fix you a cup of tea. Then take a look at the rabbits. I think the doe is about to drop again; we don’t want to lose the young ‘uns.” He hunched his shoulders and set off down toward the road. I watched him out of sight and then went back inside.
16. Line Up
Then suddenly it was spring and everything was all right.
Even winter seemed like a good idea when it was gone. We had to have winter; the freezing and thawing was necessary to develop the ground, not to mention the fact that many crops won’t come to fruit without cold weather. Anyway, anybody can live through four weeks of bad weather.
Dad laid off his job when spring came and we pitched in together and got our fields planted. I rented a power barrow and worked across my strips to spread the living soil. Then there was the back-breaking job of preparing the gully for the apple trees. I had started the seeds soon after Papa Schultz had given them to me, forcing them indoors, first at the Schultz’s, then at our place. Six of them had germinated and now they were nearly two feet tall.
I wanted to try them outdoors. Maybe I would have to take them in again next winter, but it was worth a try.
Dad was interested in the venture, too, not just for fruit trees, but for lumber. Wood seems like an obsolete material, but try getting along without it.
I think George had visions of the Big Rock Candy Mountains covered with tall straight pines… someday, someday.
So we went deep and built it to drain and built it wide and used a lot of our winter compost and some of our precious topsoil. There was room enough for twenty trees when we got through, where we planted our six little babies. Papa Schultz came over and pronounced a benediction over them.
Then he went inside to say hello to Peggy, almost filling her little room. George used to say that when Papa inhaled the pressure in the room dropped.
A bit later Papa and Dad were talking in the living room; Dad stopped me as I was passing through. “Bill,” he asked, “how would you like to have a window about here?” He indicated a blank wall.
I stared. “Huh? How would we keep the place warm?”
“I mean a real window, with glass.”
“Oh.” I thought about it. I had never lived in a place with windows in my life; we had always been apartment dwellers. I had seen windows, of course, in country houses back Earthside, but there wasn’t a window on Ganymede and it hadn’t occurred to me that there ever would be.
“Papa Schultz plans to put one in his house. I thought it might be nice to sit inside and look out over the lake, light phase evenings,” Dad went on.
“To make a home you need windows and fireplaces,” Papa said placidly. “Now that we glass make, I mean to have a view.”
Dad nodded. “For three hundred years the race had glazed windows. Then they shut themselves up in little air-conditioned boxes and stared at silly television pictures instead. One might as well be on Luna.”
It was a startling idea, but it seemed like a good one. I knew they were making glass in town. George says that glassmaking is one of the oldest manufacturing arts, if not the oldest, and certainly one of the simplest. But I had thought about it for bottles and dishes, not for window glass. They already had glass buckets on sale at the ‘Change, for about a tenth the cost of the imported article.
A view window—it was a nice idea. We could put one on the south and see the lake and another on the north and see the mountains. Why, I could even put in a skylight and lie on my bunk and see old Jupiter.