Морган Лливелин - Drop by Drop

“My wife’ll be delighted if I retire. Carol enjoys fishing almost as much as I do; you should taste her grilled trout with herbs and bacon. We might get us a nice little boat and start drowning worms in Crystal Lake. Didn’t Rob buy a vacation home up that way some years ago?”

“He did, a lovely cabin right on the lake. All the latest improvements and a small boathouse. Then he could never find time to go up there and he resented it if I went alone with the children. So there it sits.”

“Ah. Yes. It’s just as well; the cabin will go into the portfolio of assets Nyeberger’s after. In the meantime I’m sure you can use it if you want to; you must be a bit crowded here. Carol and I would love to have you join us on our worm-drowning expeditions,” he added. “You and the children and your lovely dogs too, of course.”

“That would be nice, Finbar, thanks.”

After he left the apartment O’Mahony spent several minutes fussily brushing silky red dog hairs off of his coat and trousers.

Edgar Tilbury did not visit his rural mailbox every day. He was superstitious about it. If he went to the mailbox too often he believed it would encourage more mail. Earlier in life when he was running a successful business he had endured unrelenting communication; constant bombardment from people who wanted something from him and wanted it now .

In retirement he preferred quiet.

His tin mailbox with its red metal flag stood on a dangerously leaning wooden post at the end of the laneway. On a cold morning Tilbury ambled down to the mailbox to see if anything worth reading had arrived. A single envelope awaited him. Not brown like a government envelope, or windowed like missives from the bank. This one was plain white with no return address.

“Personal letter,” Tilbury informed a mockingbird sitting on the rail fence beside the laneway. Creosote had been liberally applied to the fence at one time to protect the wood, but now was nothing more than a stain on the earth.

The mockingbird cocked its head. Man and bird were old acquaintances. Sometimes it would imitate his out-of-tune whistle, but today it had nothing to say.

Recognizing the handwriting—an unusual combination of printed and cursive—Tilbury glanced at the postmark. The official stamp was smudged but still legible.

The mockingbird turned its head and precisely rearranged a single wing feather.

Tilbury examined the postmark more closely. When he rubbed it with his forefinger the red ink smeared.

“‘Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night…’” he remarked. “Something will keep the postal authorities from their appointed rounds, and damned soon too, if ink is going to dissolve on paper. Better read this while I still can; find out when she wants to come. Fly on off, bird. There’ll be seeds in the feeder later.”

Half an hour later Edgar Tilbury emerged from his house and went to the barn some distance behind it, perched on the rim of a hill near the rear of the property. He had more work to do on the coach he was building for Shay Mulligan, a custom design that was presenting him with several challenges. If Shay and his son, Evan, were not such engaging people he would have refused the commission, but Tilbury could not say no to people he liked—which was why he thought it best to avoid people.

Shay had been confident he could find a team to pull the carriage. “Several of my customers have retired hunters and event horses whose teenage riders grew up. They might be happy to sell their animals to a good home. But what about a harness for them?”

“Ordered a set for you from a fellow over in Coldbrook, the man who made a set for your son. Grumbled a bit; don’t think he really wanted to get back into leatherwork.”

“Is he retired in the same way you are?”

Tilbury gave him a lopsided smile. “Trying to be, but these days anyone with a practical skill’s in high demand. Notice how the definition of practical has changed? Time was, people liked to live next door to a cyber nerd in case the home PC crashed. Now they want to live next door to a plumber.”

“My nextdoor neighbor’s an industrial chemist,” said Shay.

“Any use to you?”

“Nope. And he’s out of a job too. I’m thinking of offering him one driving the new carriage. Could you find time to show him the ropes?”

“Nobody finds time, son,” stated Edgar Tilbury.

The Change was relentless.

The nation’s trucking industry made every effort to keep business going; millions of tons of merchandise needed to be delivered every day. A percentage of high-performance tires was still intact, though no one could forecast how long they would last. Unfortunately the trucks themselves had been dispatched through a complex network based on computers.

Meanwhile another official missive arrived on Staunton’s desk. “The United States government plans to withdraw all paper money in future. Coins will be minted in denominations from one dollar to five hundred dollars, and distributed throughout the banking system. You will be notified of the date in due course.”

The Old Man didn’t need to ask Bea to explain this one; he already knew. As usual, Frank Auerbach had heard first, and shared more details.

The Sycamore Seed reported, “The Change has destroyed the insulators in machines employed by the US Treasury to stamp out coins, but an enterprising federal employee has tracked down several nineteenth-century stamping machines that used cotton and silk for insulation. They are being rushed into service while new ones of the same model are manufactured.”

An unanticipated consequence of the return to coinage would be a boost to the leather industry. Even before paper bills were withdrawn, designers were promoting masculine handbags with reinforced leather bottoms.

When the petroleum naphtha in newspaper ink dissolved, the effect on paper stock was equally catastrophic. The national dailies claimed to have discovered acceptable substitutes, but the public did not agree with them. India red was made of ferrous oxide, a reddish substance that came off on everything it touched and often left the text unreadable. In Sycamore River only the Seed retained a customer base: diehards who felt that even red news was better than none.

Against the odds the printed word struggled to survive.

Eleanor Bennett closed her office in December. No real estate was moving anyway; coming to work was only a face-saving exercise. She went in to collect her mail—there wasn’t any—then checked the newspaper dispenser in front of the bank in hopes of some snippet of heartening news. She wasn’t ready to go back to the apartment and make small talk with her mother.

The smeared headlines did not improve her state of mind.

Plus ça change , Nell said to herself, plus c’est la même chose.

She dumped the paper into the nearest trash can and walked the short distance to Bill’s Bar and Grill in the lane behind the Williams’s insurance agency. Fortunately Bill’s was open. Many businesses in town had closed. Shuttered, boarded-up, deserted. It was getting hard to find a nice café or cozy coffee shop.

In normal times the wife of Robert Bennett never would have gone to a place like Bill’s.

She paused at the heavy glass door, then pushed it open.

The dimly lit interior of Bill’s Bar and Grill had been a welcome relief to Jack after the icy glare of the street. He usually carried a pair of aviator sunglasses with him, a habit born of necessity in the Middle East, but today he forgot them.