The prospect of water and electricity sent a pleased murmur throughout the crowd, but Willard wasn’t convinced.
“I still don’t think we can afford it,” he said. “We’ll have to buy a lot of land, and even if we get the city to pay for some of it, what about labor? It’s going to take an army of men.”
“Look around you,” Hercules exclaimed. “We’ve got an army! I’d rather go down fighting than sit here begging for scraps from that girl the city sent to assess our property. This town is worth saving. We are worth saving.”
There was a shift in the air. For years a pall had hung over Duval Springs as their prospects for salvation dimmed. That soul-destroying sense of helplessness robbed a person of dignity, but not today. As he looked out at his friends and neighbors crammed into the tavern, Alex saw the beginnings of hope. The people in this room were strong and loyal, and together, they were going to save this town.
Eloise spent the day evaluating farms that had the misfortune to be located only a few acres below the flow line. Luckily, Fletcher had devised separate formulas for barns, silos, even pigpens. Before today, Eloise had never even seen a pigpen, but she was now intimately acquainted with stalls, watering, and drainage systems. It was late in the afternoon when she returned to the town square to meet the other team members. They would be sharing a carriage back to Bruce’s house, and she hoped she didn’t still smell like pigs.
The town square seemed strangely deserted as she arrived, but the demolition team stood before the general store, staring at a notice posted on the door. She joined them, not certain what to make of the page of work groups and room assignments fluttering in the breeze.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“They are moving the town,” Enzo said in a dazed voice.
She glanced at him in confusion. “Well, of course they’re moving. That’s why we’re here.”
“No, Miss Drake,” Claude said, a note of impatience in his voice. “These hillbillies think they can pick up and move their town to a new location. All of it! The houses, the stores. They have no idea what they’re up against.”
“Oh dear.” Had some shyster sold them a bill of goods? Marie Trudeau couldn’t even speak about leaving her house without tears, and now someone was raising her hopes with a bizarre scheme to move the village?
But Enzo seemed intrigued. “I think it’s a possibility,” he said, pointing to the narrow gap between the general store and the pharmacy. “Look, these are freestanding structures, just built side by side. If they jack the store up off its foundation, slide it onto a—”
“The time for that is long past,” Claude interrupted. “Moving a town takes years, and we’ve already begun plans for the demolition. Who is going to pay for the work we’ve already done if they decide they want to move the town instead? You don’t invite a highly respected demolition team into your town if you don’t want it torn down.”
Except that no one in Duval Springs had invited them in. These people had been fighting the demolition of their town for years.
The page tacked to the door listed teams and meeting places scheduled for this evening. A signature at the bottom of the memo identified the leader of this irresponsible mess: Alex Duval.
The breath left her in a rush. Alex had always been reckless, but now it looked like he was ready to lead the entire town over a cliff. For once in her life, she agreed with Claude Fitzgerald. This was a terrible idea.
“I think we should attend the meeting,” she said.
Enzo nodded. “We will surely be as welcome as wasps at a picnic, but maybe we can help.”
Enzo’s prediction was accurate. By the time they arrived at the school, the meeting was already underway. Alex stood at the front of the room, fielding questions from townspeople crammed into the desks. The blackboard behind him was filled with dates and assignments. Every seat was taken, and others stood along the walls three people deep. The only place for her and Enzo to stand was directly inside the door at the front of the room. Every face swiveled toward them, conversation sputtered to a halt, and the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.
“Get them out of here,” someone grumbled. “Spies,” someone else shouted.
“We’re here to help,” Enzo said. “Maybe that means paying you a fair price for your property and then dismantling it, but if you decide to move the town, I don’t see why we can’t help with that too. The city is paying us either way.”
An old farmer with skin like leather scowled. “The city wants us to curl up, die, and blow away like autumn leaves.” The preposterous statement rubbed Eloise the wrong way.
“Do you think the city cares what happens to you?” she called out over the rumble. “They don’t. They aren’t thinking about you at all. All they want is to clear the valley so they can build the reservoir. They don’t care if you plow the town under or move it to the surface of the moon, but on May 1 they will be here to start building their reservoir, and no starry-eyed delusions of moving the town will stop them.”
“It’s nice to know I can depend on you for a bottomless supply of good cheer,” Alex said. “Now, let’s get back to our starry-eyed delusions. We can’t move anything until we get the railroad built. Boomer, you were up at the quarry when Garrett laid his newest line. How long did it take?”
Eloise recognized Boomer McKenzie as Bruce’s lead explosives expert.
“Laying the rails only took a couple of days, but a team from Pittsburgh did all the steel work in advance. We’ll have to commission that, but I can help lay the rails. I know half a dozen other guys up at the quarry who’d quit in a heartbeat.”
“Can you afford to quit?” Alex asked.
Boomer snickered. “It might hurt my pocketbook, but it would do my soul good to quit working for the Bone-Crusher. I’m tired of sliding up the mountain on my belly to kiss that man’s ring.”
The comment was greeted by a rumble of laughter and foot-stamping.
“We are going to need a lot of manpower,” Alex said. “Any quarryman who wants to quit working for Garrett will have plenty of work here in town. I can’t afford to pay wages, but if we pool our resources, no one will go hungry. The town will provide food and supplies for any man who throws his lot in with us.”
“Garrett won’t rehire anyone who quits,” someone warned. “If moving the town doesn’t pan out, anyone who quits might as well leave the valley. He’ll put the word out on you.”
“I’m not afraid,” a man with a wiry build said. He stood and held a newspaper aloft. “My cousin lives in New York City, and he sent me this announcement from the newspaper.” He slipped on a pair of spectacles and read from the newspaper. “‘The State Water Board is looking for two thousand able-bodied men to work as land grubbers, cooks, oxen drovers, machinists, water boys, pipe fitters, pump men, plumbers, stonemasons, powder men and general laborers.’” He put the newspaper down. “Does anyone think you’ll be out of a job if Garrett won’t hire you back?”
“I don’t mind the cut in pay,” Boomer said. “I’d rather salvage my dignity than be that man’s paid lackey.”
Others joined in to recount the indignities Garrett had foisted on them during the strike five years ago. Eloise stared at Alex, growing ever more disillusioned. Why did he let these people ramble on? While they were unleashing their vitriol against Bruce, they weren’t accomplishing a lick of progress toward the monumental schedule on the blackboard, and Alex showed no inclination to rein them in. Even to her uneducated eyes, the timeline seemed terribly unrealistic.
She thought of the young woman who owned the creamery. Rebecca Wiggin had been in tears as she shouted at Alex, castigating him for building up her hopes all these years. Alex was about to ruin more than a young creamery owner’s future. He was on the verge of destroying the livelihood of everyone in this town.
Eloise approached Alex. “Would you please step out into the hallway?” she asked quietly.
“I’m busy, Eloise.” All he was doing was
listening with a faint smile on his face as people bellyached about Bruce.
She stepped closer and turned her back to the crowd so only Alex could hear her. “How can you hope to lead this town to a new location if you can’t even lead a meeting? You’re building castles in the air for these people, and yet you’ve got no money, no expertise, and precious little time.”
The only sign that he heard her was a tightening of his jaw. “The people will help me.”
“The people will gamble with you. I did that once, and it didn’t work out so well.”
“I’m pretty good at what I do, Eloise.”
“And what is that?”
A look of fierce determination she’d never seen before transformed his face. “Building castles in the air,” he retorted, throwing her own words back at her. “If a cause is worth having, I’ll fight for it and make it happen. I can motivate people and drag them across the finish line. Your accounting ledgers don’t have a column for the size of a human heart. That’s where I come in.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how badly you want something. If the numbers don’t add up, it won’t happen.” She turned to look at the people crowded into the schoolroom, all so hopeful as they clustered into groups and talked over one another in their excitement. It was hard not to pity them.
“You’re leading these people over a cliff,” she said softly. “I followed you once and have regretted it ever since. Think carefully before you ruin these people too.”
She turned and left the room.
Chapter
Nine
Eloise was ashamed. There had been a time when Alex brought out the best in her: the brave, the funny, the curious. But at last night’s school meeting, she’d been mean and short. It wasn’t the sort of person she wanted to be. She needed to heed Fletcher’s warning and stop allowing emotion to cloud her judgment.
But it was hard when Eloise rode out to appraise Alex’s apple orchard. The orchard was his only form of income. While Hercules had inherited the family tavern, Alex received a sprawling two-hundred-acre orchard that had fallen into disuse decades ago. She had been dreading the appraisal, as it meant putting herself back in the overgrown orchard where they once met. She remembered it choked with brambles and shrubs, and overtopped by fast-growing oaks that dwarfed the apple trees and starved the fruit of sunlight.
She rode out alone, unwilling to venture into this dangerous territory alongside Alex. At first, she couldn’t believe her eyes. It looked like a completely different orchard, with neatly pruned trees stretching as far as her eye could see.
She looked in vain for the old cider mill, but where it had once stood was now a two-story building of brick and timber. Was she in the right place? She dismounted, went to the building’s front door, and wiggled the handle, but it was locked. Peeking through the window showed her nothing but empty, unfinished rooms. What was this place? And what had happened to the tumbled-down cider mill?
Only Alex could provide the answers.
After counting the number of healthy apple trees and making note of a fine pump-irrigation system, she headed back into town. She already had an appointment to discuss the valuation of his orchard, so he would be expecting her, but they had scheduled the appointment before she groused at him in the schoolhouse. Would he even be willing to see her?
He was, but he eyed her with a guarded expression as she appeared in the doorway to his office.
“I come in peace,” she said, still embarrassed by her loss of temper last evening.
The corners of his eyes crinkled in humor. “Too bad. I kind of like crossing swords with you.”
She set her paperwork on his desk, refusing to be drawn in to a flirtation. “I’ve drafted the appraisal for your apple orchard. Nothing so exciting as swords or pistols at dawn.”
“Oh, Eloise, you underestimate yourself. The sight of you in that riding habit is enough to excite any red-blooded man.”
She sat in the chair opposite his desk, wishing she didn’t enjoy his flattery so much. She pushed her ledger toward him and sank into the safe discussion of finances.
“Your trees look healthy and obviously productive. The irrigation system is an excellent feature for which you will be handsomely paid. The new building on the property was locked, so I couldn’t perform a full appraisal. What can you tell me about it?”
His humor fled, and he got down to business. “It was supposed to be a fruit-drying facility. Apples, dates, pears, grapes. I bought kilns and commercial dryers. I would have been able to process fruit for hundreds of farmers. It should have made a fortune.”
“What happened?”
“The reservoir happened,” he said sourly. “When the state announced the location of the reservoir, the bank pulled my funding. They repossessed the kilns and ovens. The building was useless after that. I lost three thousand dollars on it.”
Eloise was surprised. Somehow she had never imagined Alex as a man of business, but he’d had an ambitious plan for capitalizing on his orchard that collapsed through no fault of his own. Nor was she sure he could be fully compensated, as the formula didn’t account for potential value, only what actually existed.
She took out her clipboard and form. “You still have four thousand healthy apple trees.”
He nodded. “I sell the fruit to a distributor in Albany. Fresh apples don’t earn half what I could have made from dried or canned, but it’s a living.”
She wasn’t so sure about that, but another question itched for an answer. It was dangerous even touching the subject, but she needed to know. “What happened to the old cider mill?”
He looked at her in amazement. “You don’t know?”
She shrugged and shook her head.
“Garrett tore it down. Hercules said a bunch of his thugs came and knocked the last of it down, dumped kerosene on it, and set the place on fire. It killed a bunch of the apple trees too. I had to clear the rubble before I built the new place.”
“Oh, Alex,” she whispered, shocked by the wrath Bruce had unleashed against the boy she once loved without limits or restraint. The crook in Alex’s nose would be a lifetime reminder of that terrible day.
There was nothing she could say to heal those old wounds, but Alex didn’t seem bitter, merely wistful as he gazed at her.
“I really missed you, Eloise.” His face was open with honesty. “Is there any chance left for us?”
His voice was a strange combination of hope and curiosity, and it hurt to hear. Even as a girl, her fling with Alex had been out of character. She craved the safety of a predictable world. That wasn’t Alex and never would be. She owed him the truth.
“Bruce was right to separate us,” she said. He looked flabbergasted, and she rushed to explain. “We were too young and too reckless. I had no business meeting you like that, but I was consumed with the fires of some unquenchable yearning, and nothing else mattered to me when you were near. Bruce said you were only after what any eighteen-year-old boy wanted.”
“It was more than that,” he insisted.
“Maybe, but if Bruce hadn’t intervened we could have gotten into much deeper trouble. I will forever be sorry about the way he did it. You didn’t deserve what he did to you, but it was right to separate us.”
Alex looked like she’d punched him in the gut. He stood and held out his hand, palm up. “Come with me.”
“Why?” His serious tone put her on guard. She didn’t know what to expect, and that was always dangerous where Alex was concerned.
“Just come with me,” he repeated.
She stood but refused to take his hand. He didn’t insist, merely turned to stalk out of the office, and she followed him down the hallway and out the door of the town hall. He marched across the village green to a towering, twisted old elm tree. The ground at its base was lumpy with gnarled roots. He pointed to a spot in the bark a little higher than his shoulder. Her eyes widened when she read the weathered scar carved into the silvery bark of the tree:
“Is that . . . did you do that?” she asked.
“Yep. Twelve years ago. I thought you and I were going to be one for the ages.”
She had too, but wasn’t it normal for people in the throes of love to believe it would last forever? An oddly wonderful ache bloomed in her chest as she pressed her fingers into the scar on the bark.
“I wish I’d known,” she finally said.
“I told you often enough.”
“I didn’t believe you.” Over time, Bruce’s harsh words had taken root. He took advantage of you because he could. She lifted her fingers off the old trunk and spoke from the heart. “I was so hungry for affection during those years that I would have given you anything and everything. I can’t blame you for taking it, but afterward I was so ashamed. It was the only time in my life that I broke the rules, and given the way it ended . . . well, I’ve been a stickler for rules ever since.”
He grabbed her hand and laid it flat over their initials on the tree. “I loved you back then and still love what we had. You call what we did back then a mistake, but I will always, always love the memory of us together. I’m even delirious enough to hope that we weren’t wrong. That we can find our way back to each other.”
This conversation hurt. For twelve years she had believed she’d been seduced by a boy eager to take advantage of her, but that wasn’t true. He had cared. He had suffered too.
But that didn’t mean he was the right man for her. Fletcher Jones was solid and dependable, and she was counting the days until she could get back to her safe, normal world in the city. She didn’t belong here amidst these boisterous people. She craved a secure home, and perhaps she and Fletcher could build one, but she needed to put Alex and their wild, glorious summers behind her before that could happen.
A Desperate Hope Page 8
