A Desperate Hope

by Elizabeth Camden

  But Alex had a secondary motive. He needed to see if there was anything left of the old Eloise, the one who laughed and cried and shrieked with joy. The woman who recited legal codes and counted doorknobs was a stranger to him, but even so, he found her wildly attractive. Her steely, fierce demeanor was mesmerizing. He itched to crack through it, but he had to hand it to her—Eloise had come far in the world.

  As in most town meetings, Alex worked closely with Willard Gilmore, the richest man in Duval Springs and by far the craftiest. People habitually underestimated the middle-aged man who sported a handlebar mustache and colorful suspenders. They thought he was nothing but a jovial, small-town innkeeper.

  Willard could be jovial, but he also had a steel core of ambition and had amassed considerable wealth through the town’s general store, contracting with Western Union for the valley’s telegraph service, and operating the Gilmore Inn. This morning he was strategizing how to glean as much income as possible from the state.

  “We can charge them triple for use of town meeting space,” Willard said. “They’ve got no other choice unless they want to go back and forth to Kingston. We can also charge for stabling their horses.”

  Reverend Carmichael shifted uneasily in his chair. “That doesn’t seem very Christian. Father Thomas told me before he left that people could use his church however they needed. There’s no reason we can’t let the state have that space for free. No one else is using it.”

  Both the Catholic church and the Lutheran meetinghouse had pulled up stakes earlier in the year, and their buildings sat vacant. Reverend Carmichael ran the only church left in town. Alex was grateful to have a man of God on the town council, but his endless goodwill could be frustrating.

  “No deal,” Alex said. “It’s in our interest to require rental fees for every space they use. Not only for the cash, but it also lets us keep an eye on them. I don’t want them wandering in and out of abandoned buildings.”

  “I agree,” Dr. Lloyd said, making the final vote three to one. They were all that was left of the town council, as the others had moved away during the past year. Already the town was sinking into gentle dilapidation. Shop windows were empty, weeds took root in lawns, and each week they lost more residents.

  At precisely nine o’clock, the state’s demolition team arrived. Eloise glided into the room, as poised as a long-stemmed rose as she lowered herself into a chair. Wearing a gown of amethyst silk with a cinched-in waist, she looked as cool as the woman carved into the cameo choker at her throat. Claude Fitzgerald was with her, the buttons on his striped vest straining against his bulk. He wasn’t fat, merely shaped like a brick and wearing an expression just as hard. He tossed a folder down on the table.

  “Let’s get this meeting underway,” Claude said. “I want both sides to outline their position and—”

  “I will be setting the agenda for the meeting,” Alex interrupted. He was the only voice his people had, and he wouldn’t let a city bureaucrat browbeat anyone. “Foremost of our demands is that all building inspections require a twenty-four-hour notice.” If someone as mild-mannered as Mrs. Trudeau could be incensed by an unannounced visit from the state appraiser, it was only going to get worse unless Alex established some ground rules.

  “Unacceptable,” Claude said. “How are we to know how long each job will take? We didn’t bring a scheduling secretary with us, and this sort of hairsplitting will hamper our progress.”

  “Do you know how to use a calendar?” Alex asked.

  “I have a degree from Harvard and thirty years of engineering experience, so yes, I think I can figure out how to use a calendar.”

  “Excellent. Than use it to schedule a twenty-four-hour notice before you invade anyone’s home or business.”

  Claude looked annoyed as he barked orders at Eloise. “Miss Drake, you now have secretarial duties. Draw up a calendar to keep these yokels happy.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, still refusing to look at Alex. Her aloof tone irked him. Eloise Drake was a girl who shrieked with laughter and danced in the rain. Now she calmly took orders like a doormat.

  She took the cap from a fancy silver pen and prepared to take notes.

  “Nice pen,” Alex said before he could stop himself.

  “Thank you,” she replied tonelessly. Funny how a little writing implement could underscore the gulf between them. That silver pen probably cost more than he earned in a month. It also served to redouble his determination to crack through her veneer of ice.

  “We are agreed that no homes will be appraised without proper notice,” Alex said. “What about commercial properties? Are those your responsibility as well?”

  She nodded. “I have separate valuation formulas for retail and agricultural properties.”

  “What about apple orchards? There are a dozen below the flow line, some with old cider mills.”

  It was a deliberate provocation, meant to shake her composure, but it didn’t work. She looked directly into his eyes as she replied. “Apple orchards are agricultural properties, and I have the forms to make an efficient assessment. Old cider mills are of no interest to me.”

  He admired her sangfroid even as he scrambled for a way to shatter it. “The land surrounding Duval Springs is famous for its attractions,” he said. “Hiking trails, scenic views. Do you have a formula for those? There’s a swimming hole only half a mile from here. I can show you.”

  “In September?” Claude asked incredulously, but Alex didn’t take his gaze off Eloise.

  “It’s only for the brave,” he continued, remembering those golden summer days when he taught her to swim. “Swimming holes aren’t for everyone, but some people seize life with both hands, willing to embrace the good, the scary, and the challenging. What do you say, Miss Drake? Can you be tempted by a bracing autumn swim?”

  She lifted a brow. “You might call it a bracing autumn swim, but to me it sounds like a flirtation with pneumonia and an unwholesome association with mud.”

  “Speaking of mud,” Willard Gilmore said, breaking into the conversation and steering it back to the business at hand. “Lumberjacks from the state have been littering and making a mess of my inn. Tracking in mud and using foul language in front of the maids. They’ve also been loitering in the town bandstand, smoking and scattering cigar butts. They’re leaving trash all over the village green.”

  “How is that our fault?” Claude asked.

  “It’s Miss Drake’s fault,” Alex said impulsively.

  “Me?” she asked incredulously. “I’ve never seen a lumberjack in my life.”

  “Precisely. But your office sent them here and didn’t pay for an on-site supervisor. You should have anticipated the problem.” Why was he doing this? If his mother was alive, she’d box his ears, but the compulsion to crack through the ice and down to the real Eloise was irresistible. The old Eloise wasn’t dead; she was just buried beneath a layer of permafrost.

  She frowned at him. “You’re really grasping at straws, Alex.”

  “The floor of the bandstand is a disgrace,” he continued. “It will be demolished soon, so maybe the state doesn’t care if the lumberjacks ruin it with cinder marks, but we’ll be using it for the next eight months, and I want it in good condition.”

  Pounding footsteps interrupted the conversation, and the door to the meeting room was yanked open. Alex shot to his feet at the disheveled appearance of Rebecca Wiggin, the young woman who had recently inherited the creamery from her father.

  “Alex, you need to order Zeke to hold up his end of the bargain! He’s trying to worm off the hook.”

  Zeke Himmelfarb, a dairy farmer from the county, sauntered in behind her, a stubborn look on his leathery face.

  “What’s going on?” Alex asked. He was no lawyer, but people often asked him to settle disputes, and this looked like a big one.

  “Zeke said he wasn’t moving out of the valley until the spring,” Rebecca said. “Now he’s trying to back out of our deal.”

 
“I changed my mind,” the dairy farmer said. “I found a farm for sale outside of Newburgh, and it can’t wait. Today is my last delivery to you.”

  “How am I supposed to operate a creamery if I don’t have milk?”

  “Not my problem, girlie.”

  “Don’t call me girlie,” Rebecca snapped. “We have a contract! I’ve been paying top dollar for your milk because you promised to stay in the valley until the May deadline.”

  “She’s got a point,” Willard said. “If you break the contract, you’ll need to reimburse her for the premium she’s been paying.”

  “I don’t want to be reimbursed, I want to have milk!” Rebecca shouted.

  Alex held up his hands. “Calm down, let’s think this through.” But this was going to be bad. If the dairy farmer left, the creamery couldn’t stay in business. Zeke was the largest dairy farmer in the county, supplying more than half the town’s milk.

  “Come sue me in Newburgh,” Zeke said. “I suspect we all have better things to do than sue over an extra three cents for a gallon of milk.” He left the room, leaving Rebecca with a crestfallen look on her face.

  “Don’t panic,” Alex said to her. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “Would you stop saying that?” Rebecca said in a choked voice. “You’ve been telling us not to panic for years, but things just keep getting worse!”

  He swallowed hard, for she was right. He’d lost every court case and appeal. Steel bands constricted around his chest, making it hard to breathe. He rubbed his neck and looked away—straight at Eloise, who witnessed his helplessness in the face of this latest defeat. Everyone else had heard too. Claude was smirking.

  Alex turned away as if burned. He’d once been so confident about this battle. David was supposed to defeat Goliath if only he was steadfast and had faith. For five years, that image had sustained Alex, but now it was ordinary people like Rebecca Wiggin who were drowning, and he had precious little to offer her.

  “I’ll find a dairy you can contract with higher up in the valley,” he said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “Just stop!” Rebecca shouted. “Stop raising our hopes and stop telling us to trust you, because I can’t anymore!”

  She stormed out of the meeting room, slamming the door so hard that the windows rattled in their frames.

  “That’s some arm she’s got!” Claude chuckled. “If she’d thrown a bit more muscle into it, she would have helped us knock this old building down.”

  Heat flooded Alex’s body. It wouldn’t hurt so badly if everything Rebecca had just said wasn’t true. He’d give anything if he could avoid the next eight months, for things were going to get more difficult as May drew near. He swallowed hard as he sat back down. He had another two hours of scheduling ahead of him, and it had to be done no matter how awful.

  Across the table, Eloise looked at him with pity in her eyes. Somehow, the loss of her respect was hardest of all.

  After the excruciating meeting concluded, Alex turned to the only person with whom he could truly be himself. He and Hercules were more than just brothers. They shared the same blood, the same lawless sense of adventure, the same sentimental streak a mile wide. Growing up, they had shared a bedroom above the tavern. Even after Hercules got married and moved into a bigger room, Alex welcomed Sally into the fold and took part in raising their boys. Neither of them had ever planned to live anywhere else.

  They walked out onto the footbridge on the outskirts of town. Standing in the middle of the bridge above the swift-moving brook guaranteed there would be no eavesdroppers. Ever since the flurry of sabotage began, Alex had grown increasingly concerned about who was behind it and why. The circle of people he implicitly trusted was growing smaller.

  “I really hate this,” he whispered to Hercules as he leaned his elbows on the railing, staring at the water rushing beneath the bridge. Some days the weight of despondency made it hard to even stand upright. “This has been the biggest battle of my life, and I’ve failed.”

  Hercules clapped him on the shoulder but said nothing. What was there to say? They’d lost on all fronts, and their entire world was about to be wiped off the map. He didn’t even know where he would go after the town was pulled down.

  On the opposite side of the bridge, a train rumbled past. These trains were becoming more common as forest was cleared and construction workers started erecting aqueducts stretching across their valley. The slow train lugged earthmoving equipment and concrete blocks. A flatbed car carried a pre-built dormitory up the mountain to the new work camp. It was one of dozens being delivered to the valley to house thousands of construction workers.

  Alex stared hard at the boxy dormitory as the train carried it to higher ground.

  An idea hit. The vision was so powerful it drove the air from his lungs. He couldn’t move; he could only stare in dumbfounded astonishment at the train lugging the dormitory to higher ground. Elation filled him as the vision rapidly took shape.

  He knew how to save this town. It was possible. He could do it.

  “Hercules,” he whispered, “why can’t we put our houses on a platform and lift them out of the valley just like that train is carrying a dormitory up to the work camp?”

  “What are you talking about?” Hercules asked. “To what end?”

  Alex straightened and pointed to the train still snaking around the bend. “Mrs. Trudeau’s house is smaller and more compact than that dormitory. I think we can move her house.” It was hard to keep talking when he was smiling so wide. “And after we move Mrs. Trudeau’s house, we move the tavern. And then the creamery. The school. We can move the whole town.”

  “Move the town where?” Hercules asked, his tone half-amused, half-appalled. “To Kingston?”

  “No!” Alex laughed. “We’re not moving to Kingston or any other city. We are going to pick up Duval Springs and move it to higher ground right here in the valley. Everything—the church, the tavern, all the houses. We’ll build a new town square. We’ll take the bandstand. I’ll order those city workers to quit smoking on it because we’re going to save it all. We’re going to cart it up the mountain and build a new town. We’ll have running water and electricity.”

  He smiled as the final detail clicked into place. “And we’re going to make New York City pay for it.”

  Chapter

  Eight

  It didn’t take long for word of Alex’s plan to race through town. Within an hour the tavern was packed to capacity. The town council was present, as was every teacher in Duval Springs. As soon as Alex’s idea took shape, he had run to the school and dismissed the classes, for he needed as many brains on this task as possible. In all likelihood, school had just had its last day of class in its present location. The move to higher ground would require the planning, organizing, and manual labor of every able-bodied person in the town, and that included the students. This move would give them a priceless education in real-life civics, math, and engineering.

  Marie Trudeau sat at the front table, her face a combination of delight and trepidation. “But where?” she pressed. “We can’t just plant a new town in the middle of wilderness.”

  “The old Hollister farm is for sale,” Reverend Carmichael said. “Six hundred acres of buckwheat and rye that have been laying fallow ever since the old man died last year. It would be a start.”

  It would. The Hollister farm was above the flow line and already clear of trees. It had a rudimentary road leading to it, suitable for the construction of a railway, for they would need one to transport the buildings.

  “How much will buying that land cost?” someone shouted from the back.

  Alex had no idea, but the town was going to be paid for their public buildings. They were owed for the school, the town hall, a post office, a railway station, and the library. That money could be used to purchase land, but that was only the beginning of their expenses. They’d have to build a railway from here to the new place. They’d need platforms and pulleys and cranes to get build
ings on and off the train. The people of the town might donate their labor, but they’d still need to hire engineers for specialized planning.

  Willard shifted uneasily in his seat. “There’s no way a four-story hotel with thirty-six rooms can be loaded on a train and moved up the hill.”

  The Gilmore Inn was the grandest and most distinctive building on Main Street. It was hard to imagine a new Duval Springs without its most elegant feature, but there were going to be hard choices ahead.

  “I was in Paris when they moved a sixteenth-century cathedral,” Mrs. Trudeau said. “If they can move a cathedral, why can’t we move a four-story hotel?”

  Mrs. Trudeau was the last person Alex expected support from. She looked as frail and timid as a wren, but as the idea of moving the town took root, she seemed eager to be part of it. And who was to say she wasn’t right? Maybe they could move the hotel.

  “What about the tavern?” someone asked.

  “We’re moving the tavern!” Hercules vowed. “We’ve still got unclaimed wishbones on that rail, and as long as there is breath in my body, this tavern will be here for any man who wants to come home to Duval Springs.” He cleared his throat. “Even if we have to move the town a few miles.”

  “It seems like a lot of work,” Rebecca from the creamery said. “It will be cheaper and easier to take the payout and move somewhere else.”

  Alex didn’t want a town without a creamery and was determined to change Rebecca’s mind. “Have you seen what New York City is building in its work camps? Those men have dormitories, canteens, and recreation buildings. They will have running water and electricity. I’m going to demand the city put our new town on the lines for water.”

  “Would they do that?”

  “They’d better,” Alex said. “We’re losing our valley so that people a hundred miles away can drink our water. We’ll insist the city build the necessary lines so that we have access to the new reservoir. They’re doing it for the other nearby towns above the flow line, and they’ll do it for us too. Sewer as well. No more outhouses. While they’re at it, they can build us one of those electrical plants. I’ll see to it that every house and building in the new town gets power and water lines supplied by the state.”