by Eric Flint
"Don't you look at me like I'm some kind of white trash, Mr. Officer Preston Richards," the woman spat. "If I happen to be down on my luck, it's the damned Ring of Fire that took away Joseph and my boys."
Richards recalled the frantic figure he had tried to help on that day the world had been split apart. She had been in town checking out retirement homes, and had been left with only her car and the clothes she had with her. She was desperately attempting to contact her family. Now he tried for a soothing reply. "I've never thought you were trash, Mrs. Sanderlin. I just keep hoping that you'll stop staying with us on such a regular basis."
He glanced back down at the night sheets. He hadn't made it through to the petty crimes section yet, but if LeeAnn was sweeping floors in the station this morning, he knew he'd find her usual entry: "Public Drunkenness, LeeAnn Sanderlin, Drunk Tank." Sentencing for nonviolent public drunkenness had become so routine by now that most of the regulars and semiregulars didn't even go before the associate judge any more. Not unless they demanded a hearing, and most were smart enough to realize that they wouldn't get a lighter sentence by going that route. Instead they were allowed to sleep it off on the thin foam-rubber mats in the drunk tank. The next morning they were given a good breakfast by Carolyn Atkins, then put to work at odd jobs around the station or downtown until released. LeeAnn, like most of the regulars and semiregulars, didn't even need much supervision on her morning's work.
"Well, if a person needs to take a drink or two sometimes to warm the coldness inside, and doesn't hurt anybody by it, then there's no harm done, Preston Richards." LeeAnn pushed harder with the broom. "I don't mind sweeping your floors or cleaning out your cells to repay your hospitality when you bring me in, so we're square there. I don't need charity from anybody. I pay my debts."
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to talk to someone who might be able to help?" He'd tried hard to get her counseling and other help when she started to come apart. But nothing he'd tried had worked. He knew from experience that there wasn't much hope for LeeAnn unless she worked out the problems that caused her drinking binges. But that just stiffened his resolve to continue to try to help.
"No. I don't need to talk to any more experts. None of them know what they're doing, anyway, and nothing they do helps. I can get by on my own."
Richards shook his head as LeeAnn moved off. The sagging flesh at the back of her arms wobbled as she worked the broom. He went back to the night sheets, only to be interrupted again by a raised voice from the next table.
"Whoa! Karl, you nearly took my eye out with that thing!" Officer Ralph Onofrio was rubbing his forehead. "Can't you ever get that pen back together without launching the spring across the room?"
Karl Maurer, one of the newer down-timers on the force, grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, I was just checking to see how much ink is left. I do not want to run out while we are on shift." LeeAnn reached past him to place the offending spring on the table in front of him.
"Well, be more careful with it. We still have plenty of refill cartridges left, but if you lose that spring, the pen is useless. We don't have any replacement springs." Onofrio shook his head.
Maurer carefully reassembled the pen. "Why can you not simply make another one? It seems so simple a task for your technology."
"I'm not sure why not," Onofrio answered. "I've just been told that coil springs aren't doable."
"Well, it is good then that a pen spring is not critical." Maurer put the pen back in his pocket.
Richards glanced at the revolver Officer Maurer was wearing. He hadn't been intensively trained on semi-autos, then. He decided to interrupt. "Pen springs aren't critical, no. But since it seems we don't have the resources to do anything about making new springs, we'll have to get by without. That means being careful with all the springs we do have." The officer nodded gravely. Richards picked up the night sheets and left the room, passing LeeAnn who was still working her broom by the door.
* * *
Guenther Wendel stopped LeeAnn as she walked toward the women's locker room at the Public Works Department Recycling Center. "Herr Officer Richards called and said you would be in after noon today. He is concerned about you. I also am growing concerned with your mornings off. You need to be more careful with yourself."
LeeAnn scowled at her supervisor. Arrogant little German twerp, she thought. The coldness started to grow inside her again—memories of her comfortable, fulfilled life before the Ring of Fire warred with the bleakness of her current condition. The last thing she needed was to have to deal with one of the Germans she associated with the change. "I haven't used up all my sick days yet. Until I do, you have no cause to complain. I'm still the best sorter you've got."
She pushed past Wendel into the locker room, where he couldn't follow. As she changed into her work clothes, she was still muttering. "They don't pay me enough to put up with this crap. Even the damn Germans leave here as soon as they can. I need to find some angle and get out." Her words ran up against the memories of all those jobs she'd lost when she fell apart in the year after Joe and the boys were taken. She licked her lips, wishing for some liquid warmth as the cold inside her grew some more.
LeeAnn threw herself into sorting. If she thought of it as a big treasure hunt, it sometimes could be interesting enough to take her mind off other things. There was a large pile to work through. Since the Ring of Fire, all metals, plastics, synthetic fabrics, rubber and glass were required to be separated from other trash and set out for recycling. "Strategic Materials" they now were, not just trash anymore. The announcements had been clear: 'You don't have to get rid of anything you want to keep, but if you put them on the curb, Strategic Materials MUST be in the recycle pile.'
Hmm, this may be promising, LeeAnn thought. She pulled out a ripped and tattered piece of nylon luggage. Yes! It was one of those bags capable of being used as a backpack. The zippers were all popped, and the rips made it unsuitable for further use as a backpack. But the contour bars were still there. She felt the two flat bars that ran under the nylon on the side of the bag the shoulder straps were on. She easily bent the bars with her hands. She sliced open the nylon and removed the precious aluminum.
She dropped the aluminum bars into the aluminum bin. Not much here, she thought. Now that most people knew they could get good money from various scrap dealers for any aluminum articles they didn't need, they didn't send them off in the recycling for free. She glanced over as Berta Hess dropped some bent tubing taken from a camp chair into the bin. LeeAnn pulled out one of the tubes. It felt too heavy to her.
"Berta!" The German woman turned. "You can't just assume that any silvery metal is aluminum. You have to check." LeeAnn pulled out her magnet and nodded as it went "clack" and clung to one of the legs. "See, plated steel tubing."
Berta nodded shamefacedly. LeeAnn shook her head. They need to train these people more, she thought. Berta isn't dumb, she just doesn't have the training or experience to recognize the difference. LeeAnn glanced over to where Herr Wendel was sitting, filling out paperwork. I do more supervising around here than he does. Instead of training people to do their jobs right, and watching to make sure they do, he just sits around. She turned as Berta moved past her, carrying the tubing toward the steel scrap bin. Arrgh . . .
Shaking her head again, LeeAnn stepped over to Berta and redirected her. "Remember, Berta. Tubing is on the Special List because it's so difficult to reproduce. It goes into the Special List bin." The tubing would be evaluated further on to see if it could be reused in its current form. If not, the plating would be stripped off and the steel itself would probably end up on the scrap heap to be melted into new steel.
LeeAnn collected the remains of the backpack suitcase and dropped the nylon in with the other synthetics. At some point, "when the budget allows," all the collected synthetic cloth would be further evaluated for possible reuse.
A broken brass candlestick was next. It went into the brass bin along with a bunch of spent .22 caliber cases. All of th
at went for military use, to make the bases of new shotgun shells for the army.
Her next find made her flinty eyes narrow. She nodded to herself in complete satisfaction; it was too heavy for aluminum. "So Herr Wendel wants to give me trouble, does he? I'm the only one here who knows enough to recognize this for what it is. He won't dare push things and try to get me fired." LeeAnn weighed the heavy pot-metal ornaments in her hands as she carried them to the zinc bin. The experts were still pushing hard for zinc from any source, again for military production. Even now, the zinc was still carefully stripped off from any unusable galvanized steel. Later date American pennies had gone out of circulation quickly once the "experts" finally twigged to the fact that they were mostly zinc and worth far more than their one-cent face value. The one who finally figured that out was awarded the Strategic Materials Prize. "I sure could do with the cash that comes with one of those," LeeAnn muttered.
* * *
LeeAnn luxuriated under the hot shower after work. The oil, grease, food and beverage residues on the recycled trash made for a messy job. The showers the department provided as a result were one of the best benefits of working there. LeeAnn used them every day after work, even when she was running short on soap or shampoo. Today was one of those days. Her shampoo bottle was almost empty, and her binge last night meant that the budget couldn't handle a refill until next payday. So she used soap today to cut the grease on her hair, and only a little shampoo after. That meant her hair would be dry and frizzy when it dried, but she was the only one now who cared how she looked, so that was okay.
As she dried herself, she finally identified part of what had been bothering her all through work that afternoon. Something Preston Richards had said had been nagging at her ever since. And she thought she knew who might have some answers for her. She hurried to dress so she could catch him when he left work.
* * *
Ed Barger, the equipment procurement specialist at the Department of Transportation, stopped warily as the bag lady stepped in front of him on his way down the walk from the department offices. "Uh . . . hello . . . ."
"I'm LeeAnn Sanderlin," the bag lady said. "I work over at the recycling center. You're Ed Barger, right? I have some questions for you."
Okay, Ed thought, I have seen her over at Public Works before. So she's not really a bag lady. Still, her worn and stained coat, the shapeless knit hat covering her frizzy hair, and the big roller bag she was pulling sure made her look the part. Ed couldn't help reacting to her that way. "I . . . uh . . . I really don't have any time right now."
"This won't take long," the bag lady said, moving in closer. "I just have some questions about springs, and I remember reading what you told the paper when you-all were pushing for people to turn in their cars for tax deductions, about how the springs and things were needed for the railroad and other equipment." Ed had been moving back away from her as she spoke, but she kept moving forward after him, and now he was trapped against the wall. He glanced quickly to both sides, but couldn't see a way to escape.
"Now," the bag lady continued, grinning up at him, "I heard this morning that we couldn't make coil springs anymore, and I want to know why."
Maybe if I humor her, she'll go away, Ed thought. It's that or call for a cop. "Uh . . . well. It's not that we couldn't make them if we had the steel to do it with. It's easy to draw the wire and wind the coils. Heck, Europeans were drawing and winding iron wire for centuries before the Ring of Fire dropped us on them; it's how they made chain mail." It looked like the bag lady understood, because she asked an intelligent question.
"But we're starting to make good steel now. I know that Public Works sells some of the steel we get at the recycling center to be remelted. Why don't they make coil springs out of that?"
"Some crucible steel is being produced. But . . . uh . . . that's just high carbon steel at best, and even wire made from that won't work for coil springs. It weakens quickly and the spring becomes useless. You need a special kind of alloy for reliable coil springs. It will be years before we can get the elements for the alloys in large enough quantities to be able to produce much of it. That's why we needed the cars—most all the coil springs from their suspensions can be used as-is for all the equipment and railroad suspension elements where coil springs are critical."
The bag lady thought that over for a bit. "What else are coil springs critical for?"
"Uh . . . let's see. Lots of things, I guess. I think I heard that some medical equipment uses them. I don't know much about that. But, I know that modern gun designs use coil springs a lot. They power the firing pins and return the bolt after ejecting the empty case in semiautomatic pistols and rifles. And they make the tubular magazines in shotguns work. We can't duplicate any of those kinds of guns until we're able to make reliable springs."
"Thanks. I appreciate your time," she said.
Ed sighed with relief as the bag lady ended the interrogation and moved off. He continued on his way home, shaking his head about the difference between her appearance and her apparent intelligence.
* * *
Walking back home under the low overcast, the cold and rainy spring weather made LeeAnn feel every one of her sixty-seven years. And something was still bothering her—she couldn't quite pin it down—something about this whole spring thing just didn't make sense, and she couldn't get it out of her mind. She trundled her work clothes and towels along behind her in her priceless roller bag. She needed to swap them out for a clean set tomorrow, and get to the Laundromat before the end of the week. She looked up in disgust as she passed the Hoffman house two doors down from hers. The brats were out again.
The four Hoffman children were all in the front yard, and all concentrating on her. They stared at her the whole time she walked by, waving their hands and fingers at her in hex signs, and all the time jabbering on in high-pitched German. LeeAnn sighed in relief as their mother came to the door and shooed them inside, then she stiffened as the other woman sniffed loudly and tossed her chin as she followed her children through the door.
"Damn arrogant foreigners," LeeAnn mumbled as she turned up the driveway toward her rented room in her landlord's garage. "Herr Hoffman thinks he's a big man just because the Army gave him some training and now they're moving him up to a better job. And of course, Frau Hoffman thinks she's better than me just because they can rent a house. Damn Germans taking jobs and houses, and they can't even speak English." The coldness, and the thirst, were growing inside her.
LeeAnn dumped the dirty work clothes and towels from the roller bag into the hamper and replaced them with a clean set. Then she sighed and looked around her small portion of the garage. Before the Ring of Fire, her section had been set up as an office, partially partitioned off from the main part of the garage, with a small bathroom with sink and toilet off one wall. Now it was home, for which her landlord charged exorbitant rent. Still, it had the bathroom. No shower, but she had that at work. And it was heated. Thank God natural gas supply wasn't a problem in Grantville. The heater was on now, and handled the coldness, at least that on the outside.
LeeAnn looked up as someone knocked on the garage door. "Come in," she said, but her landlord had already pushed through the door, holding a cardboard carton in his arms.
"Evenin', LeeAnn," Rafael Ugolini said. He carried the carton into the main section of the garage and placed it on a new stack of similar ones. The label on this one declared its contents to be: "Catalogs: Reagan Years." He turned back to LeeAnn. "I hope you'll be on time with the rent this month."
"I'll be on time with my rent as always," LeeAnn answered. "And you've got no call to suggest anything different."
"Well, yes. But I'm going to need the money regular-like now that the new baby's coming."
"You'll get it."
"Whatever. For right now, though, I need you to be sure you keep all your stuff in your section. I'm cleaning out the back room of the house for the nursery, and I'll need all of the space up here."
Le
eAnn looked over the front section of the garage. That section was filled with what—her nose wrinkled in irony at the thought—was trash. Many of the garages in Grantville were that way now. "Why don't you just recycle this stuff? Then you won't have to move it again later."
"Hah. Just 'cause you work for the recycle place that's all you think about. Well, I recycled my car when the gov'ment asked. I only got the little tax deduction for a regular car though. If I'd a bought that SUV back in '99, I could have gotten the big money for it, and the army would have another armored car sometime down the line."
"There's a lot of stuff here that should be recycled. It's not worth anything." LeeAnn gestured at the broken bed leaning over in the corner by the big door. The side rail of the frame was splintered, and shredded cotton batting was hanging out of big rips in the mattress. She moved over and nudged a twisted mass of wire and plastic clothes hangers with her toe.
