He had been replaced at Harvest by Ted Keening, eighteen, who had been described by his high-school guidance counselor (in a private joke in the teachers’ lounge) as “not exactly college material. Too dumb for an academic scholarship, too fat for a sports scholarship, and too poor to buy his way in.”
Ted was a television junkie and still some twenty pounds bigger than he’d like, but he’d lost weight since he started working at the store. There was a fair amount of physical labor involved, hauling stock up from the basement and so forth. But Ted was beginning to realize that his future contained more than a career in measuring chain and weighing nails. He had awakened this morning with the knowledge that he didn’t have to die and that pretty soon no one would be liable to call him fat or stupid—which was how he had thought of himself even before he paused by the east window of the teacher’s lounge and overheard his guidance counselor’s joke. His reaction to this morning’s revelation wasn’t triumphant or gloating, just… he guessed “astonished” might be the best word. He didn’t completely understand what was happening. It was too big to understand. But he felt the future. His own. The world’s. The future had become a curious and wonderful thing. It shimmered on the horizon like a heat mirage, as hard to see, as achingly bright, but much more real.
He told his boss he might not be working at Harvest much longer. Mr. Webster, who had also said yes to an unvoiced question during his long sleep, told him he understood and that, as far as he could tell, there might not be hardware stores much longer. Which would be kind of a shame, given the years and money he had invested in this place. “But what the hell. I’m sixty-five years old. I’d have to give up the store one way or another. I guess I’d sooner walk away from it than get shut in a coffin. Ted, I think we’re all bound for something we can’t even guess at. It’s as strange a thing as I have encountered, and you probably feel the same. But unless you’re done with us already, would you mind ringing up these items for Mr. Porter?”
Billy Porter, Beth’s father, was a fairly steady customer. Usually he came in for car parts from the automotive section. Billy was always fiddling with his ten-year-old Subaru, a car that stalled at intersections no matter what he did to the choke or the idle or any other part he could get his hands on. Or he came in to buy shells for his hunting rifle, Billy being an occasional hunter whenever his friends offered to drive him up into the mountains. Today he had bellied up to the checkout with a selection of garden tools, which Mr. Webster found vaguely amusing: The idea of Billy down on his hands and knees in the mulch… planting tulips, maybe…
But maybe it wasn’t so funny. “Becky always kept the garden in such fine shape,” Billy said. “I’m ashamed how I let it go. I thought it wouldn’t take much cleaning up. A little work, what the hell.”
“Taking the day off?” Mr. Webster asked.
“Taking an easy shift, anyhow. I don’t know how much longer they’ll need me down at the mill.” Billy had also said yes.
Some few had not.
Billy’s daughter Beth had answered No!—had understood the offer and rejected it. She couldn’t say exactly why. Something in her had grown sullen and hard and had drawn away from this alien touch. No, not me. You won’t steal from me my dying.
But she woke knowing what she had turned down and it made her a little sad. The real question was, What next? What threats and possibilities lurked in this soon-to-be-new world?
She hiked down to the mall and called Joey Commoner from a pay phone.
Joey didn’t want to talk about it, but Beth understood from his cryptic responses to her careful questions that Joey had also said No.
Wouldn’t you know it? Birds of a feather, thought Beth. Well, damn. The last real people.
The last Aztecs, Rector Ackroyd might have said.
There were others.
Miriam Flett, who woke that morning with her agonies and virtues intact, but with a new idea of whose Hand had touched her during the night.
Tom Kindle, who had lived on the slopes of Mt. Buchanan for five years in a cabin without city electricity. He came into town summer weekends, when he operated a private ferry to the bay islands, but he spent his winters alone and liked it that way. What he didn’t like was the shape of the miracle he had been offered in the night. A lemming future, Kindle thought. No damn privacy.
One junior member of the City Council and one city clerk. A salesman at Highway Five Buick.
Matt Wheeler.
Chapter 9
Many Mansions
When he woke, Mart’s first observation was that his fever had broken. He felt clearheaded and alert—there was nothing left of the sedation of the night before. But something was wrong.
He rolled over and reached for Annie, but his hand touched empty sheets.
Like everyone else, he had spent the night dreaming. His dream had seemed vividly real… was real, some part of him insisted. But Matt was equally determined that it must not be real, and he screwed down that determination like a carpenter’s clamp over all errant and contrary thoughts. A dream, he instructed himself, was only a dream.
The house smelled of frying bacon and buttered toast. Matt dressed in weekend clothes, Levi’s and a sweatshirt, and headed for the kitchen. A bar of sunlight crossed the tiled mosaic floor. A window stood open and morning air plucked at the curtains.
Annie and Rachel were collaborating on breakfast. Matt stood in the doorway a moment before they noticed him. They were giggling at some joke, heads together, Rachel in shorts and an old khaki shirt, Annie still in her nightgown. They cracked eggs into a blue plastic bowl.
It was Annie who turned and saw him. Her smile didn’t fade, exactly. But there was a hitch in it—a blink of uncertainty.
“Breakfast coming up,” she said. “For late risers. Jim and Lillian left early, by the way. They said thanks for the party and they’d stop for food at McDonald’s.”
“Wasn’t much of a party,” Matt said.
“Some wine, some friends. What else do you need?” Annie shooed him toward the table. “Go on, Matt, sit down. If you try to help you’ll just get in the way.”
He watched her move around the kitchen, tousle-haired and pretty in her nightgown. They hadn’t made love last night. Blame it on the Taiwan Flu. But it had been much, much too long since the last time. Matt recalled five separate occasions when he had considered asking Annie to marry him, and each time he had shied away from the question, diverted by some lingering guilt or just a fear of disturbing the status quo, their fragile dalliance. Should have asked her, he thought. We’d have had more of these mornings. More nights in bed.
Rachel was curiously cheerful serving up the scrambled eggs. It was a rare pleasure to see her smiling. When she was a toddler, that grin had been big and infectious. Celeste would take her shopping and strangers would offer compliments—“Such a happy baby.” She’d been a happy baby, happy toddler, happy little girl. It had taken Celeste’s death to erase that smile, and Matt was surprised at the depth of his own reaction now that he was seeing it again. How long since she’d smiled like that? Not a brave smile or a halfhearted smile but a big Rachel grin?