She was a bit surprised when the kids wanted to look at her old Singer. Kids took an interest in the oddest things. She showed it off readily enough. She was rather proud of it; almost a hundred years old, and still worked well.
* * *
Brent was converted. There were all sorts of gadgets and doohickeys, and neat ways of doing things. Figuring out what did what and why, and what they could make, and what they could replace with something else would be loads of fun.
Trent resisted for a while, but not long. A sewing machine really is a neat piece of equipment.
June 16, 1631: Evening, Delia Higgins’ House
As Delia watched David at the dining room table, his dark eyes studying some papers with an intensity rarely lavished on schoolwork, she thought about the incursion of the small herd of teens. David was up to something, she could tell.
She remembered a phone call she had gotten four years ago, from a ten-year-old David, explaining the hitherto unknown facts that Ramona had lost her job two months before, that they were about to be thrown out of their apartment, and there was no food in it anyway.
“Could we come live with you Grandma? Mom can help you out with the storage lot.”
“Where is your mother?” Delia has asked.
“She’s out looking for work. ‘Cept she ain’t. She goes to the park and sits.” David hastened to add: “She looked at first, she really did. But Mom don’t like it when things don’t work. After a while she just quits.”
They had worked it out between them. It was mostly David’s plan. She had called that night and asked if Ramona could come home and work at the storage lot, to give her a bit more time with her garden.
It had been a while after they got back to Grantville before David had gone back to being just a kid. There had been a certain watchfulness about him. A waiting for the other shoe to drop, so he could catch it before things got even more busted. The watchfulness had slowly faded. Ramona had never been aware of it. Any more than she had ever known about the plot to bring them home. But Delia remembered that watchfulness, and it was back. Subtler than before, more calculating, but there. David had decided that he needed to save his world again, and was trying to figure out how.
This time Delia would not wait for a phone call.
She finished dressing the Barbie in her version of a 1630s’ peasant outfit. “David, come give me hand in the garden. I just remembered some lifting I need you to do for me.”
Delia kept a compost heap for her garden. This occasionally involved David, Donny or Ramona with a wheelbarrow. In this instance, it made a good excuse to get David alone for a quiet talk.
David, deep in the process of determining which parts of a sewing machine might best be made by a 1630s’ blacksmith, grumbled a bit; but did as he was told.
It took all of five minutes, and more importantly a promise not to interfere without good reason, to get David talking. This didn’t reflect a lack of honor on David’s part, but trust in his grandmother. Once he started talking it took a couple of hours for him to run down. During those two hours, Delia was again reminded that kids understand more and listen more than people generally gave them credit for. Or than they want credit for, mostly.
The economics of the Ring of Fire were made clear. Well, a little clearer. She learned about Brent and Trent’s talent for making things, how they worked off one another. She learned about Sarah’s understanding of money, and the financial situation of Grantville as a whole, and how Delia’s family’s situation was a smaller version of the same thing. That they had lots of capital in the form of goods, but nothing to invest it in. That what were needed were products that they could make the machines to make. David had to explain that part twice to make it clear. He used the sewing machine as an example.