It was summer, a good time for working out of doors. After some initial wrangling over the selection of the site between the Army engineers and a geologist from Rutgers (who hardly shaved!), a flat, fertile field was selected with two feet of topsoil and mostly free of stone for another fifty down. Richard’s fifteen acres had grown to over two hundred when his farm neighbors fled to join his march and would not return, they’d told him.
He scarcely saw his two strong sons; they had from day one joined in the construction of the Amwell Commune. Under Colonel Walker’s and the teenage-looking geologist’s direction, a hole was dug, scooped or dynamited through layers of shale the size of a football field. Over part of it, when the Colonel and Richard worked out the dimensions, was set an enormous glass Geodesic dome, with several domed wings off it.
Dubbed by one soldier ‘The Glass Pimple,’ another ‘Mother Nature’s left Tit’, the dome proper rose to twenty-four feet and stretched to over a hundred. Surprisingly, once the triangular, heavily-glazed windows arrived with a consultant from the factory, it was up and ready for occupancy by the first week in August. Although Don Walker wasn’t a construction expert—quite the opposite--it was he whom Richard most often consulted along its progress. He was careful not to engage him socially, for Anne did not find him all that friendly (or was she perhaps jealous of any close ties with anyone other than the general and his sons?).
Wandering outside the dome was a fellow Anne kind of recognized but to whom she wasn’t introduced, or invited to the long chat with him and Richard. He was a former astronaut and connected to NASA. Richard took in what amounted to a lecture on the physics of space travel and possible life on another planet, and before he could outline his own thoughts which were to set up colonies inside air and climate controlled Geodesic Domes on Jupiter. The man listened then coughed a chuckle then offered the more practical alternative of our own moon, light years closer and more manageable (we’d been there!), until we found a planet whose atmosphere was less hostile.
He left, excited at resurrecting the space agency and aligning it with the private sector. Richard too was relieved; another thorny issue out of his mind and on its way to possible fruition.
Inside the perimeter of the vast, bright, humid space were dozens of tents; simple private bed-sits. Outside was a regulation camp latrine with running water. To one side of the air-lock vestibule was a kitchen. In the center of the dome a dining area with benches. Consulting with the chefs, it was decided to place the entire kitchen below with numerous dumb-waiters. In the vast open space, Richard planned to hold seminars and meetings that Anne, again with her vast contacts, would organize. The first of them was to be political, with ex-members of the government and governors and mayors who had fled. Then, after licking the last of the two hundred cream linen envelopes, he gathered them up in his arms and unceremoniously dumped into their large trash bin.
Anne, at a desk across the cabin, gave a shriek of alarm. She had hand addressed each and every invitation! Was this something to do with his phone conversation with General May and without her early this morning?
He stood. It was his way with important questions to deliver them on his feet. “Darling, (another warning of its significance) I’m thinking of first inviting a group of high-ranking military—“
“ What?” she cried, also getting up. “You can’t be serious. Yes, Clark May is a good man, but we can’t trust any of those desk jockeys in the Pentagon who award themselves medals for lunches with arms dealers or golf handicaps! Don’t you dare! I’ve met most of them. Their job description is finding a country to bomb, preferably one without an air force so they can buy the latest military hardware!”
“Yes, I know, but a lot of them have seen war, and I don’t believe they want it as much as do the politicians who almost to a man have never seen it. Those in the military have spent their lives serving and fighting for their country. They’re disciplined, and they’ve a code of honor and . . .”
Anne sank noisily down into her swivel chair. What’s the use? He’s made up—no, changed his mind—again. Worse, she was his secretary, his gopher, asked to reach sociologists, shrinks, geologists, soil scientists, even that mad inventor, Buckminster Fuller, who’d died last year and she had to track down one of his acolytes, and for what? When she saw the ‘what’ she was astounded and grudgingly pleased for him.
For most of the summer she’d been stuck in the cabin behind a mountain of paper-work; out of the loop with his meetings, even his plans; having to probe as they lay together at night but receiving mumbles or snores. Small consolation that it was she herself who’d said a secret was not a secret if it were shared, and he was heeding it, damn him.
She sighed and went to their books piled under the ladder to the boys’ loft to find and drag out a heavy tome that listed current Armed Services personnel of rank and slapped it before him. Then she moved to the tiny kitchen area to add the limp vegetables the boys had brought in to this week‘s watery stew. Then to steam the pasta. Then wash the few dishes and set their table, then . . . it never ended, the house chores, the office work. It was infinitely more and less than she was meant to do.
She thought of the time when she was about to abandon them and was recaptured by his middle-of-the-night Big Idea. Now, every morning the impetus to run, to return to a network anchor desk in New York, took only moments to shake off. He was too good to lose, this man who---her man. She shrugged wryly and stirred the pot.
Neither had he told her in advance about the dome or its purpose, nor the boys who were part of the crew; nor anyone, with the lame excuse it would only have the politicians or the military brass railing against him about the waste of time and materials and manpower on yet another environmentalist’s dream while the world needed policing. It wasn’t the world, of course. Naively, complacently or self-centeredly, Americans were raised to believe the United States was the world.
Indeed, the world beyond our borders, Richard knew, had treated the march as just another foreign news story. He was glad of that, too. His focus was on America, and not even all of it. And no matter how long it took, if he could somehow turn his own country—even a small dedicated portion of it—toward healing the planet, others surely would follow. And if not, and they threatened us, well, we had General Clark May, his war muscle, including a stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Anne sat up, startled, realizing she’d dozed off at her desk. What was that awful noise? Sounded exactly like an un-muffled motorcycle, and right outside the cottage. Before she got up, the door opened with a bang and an upper-crust British demand. “Pink, where the devil are you?”
Standing in goggles and full cycle regalia was a tall woman with wisps of grey curls escaping her helmet. “Missus Amwell!” was her next Oxonian exclamation, and it brought a burst of laughter from Anne. Fully awake, she shouted for Richard. In a jiffy, he charged into the living room in his nightshirt (summer nights were cold at Amwell). The boys, too, came bouncing down the ladder.
“What’s the matter—what’s happening?” asked Richard, then he laughed as the smiling lady who unhitched her back-pack and let it clamor to the floor. “Penelope Ursula Shaw!” he exclaimed in the musical way he’d written an ode to her. He marched up to her, lifted her off her feet in a hug and kissed both her ruddy cheeks. “Where the devil’ve you been, Penny? We’ve missed you—haven’t we, darling?”
Anne agreed if less vociferously as she went back to her desk and lifted just one of the piles of papers. Penny, from who knew where with her glorious theatrical accent, had been heaven-sent. With a background in office management, she had joined the march early and quickly became its secretary—that is, for the nightly campfire confab. Using a cassette recorder, each morning she delivered to Richard a neatly-typed transcript of the discussions—which he had shared with no one, not even Anne or his sons.
After the hubbub of greeting and cups of coffee, this rosy-faced wonderful woman, the boys lugging her belongings and followed her down the hill to find a bed amongst the snoring mob of dead-to-the-world crew of soldier/builders inside the dome.
Next morning Anne received two surprises on dragging herself from the bedroom; first to find Penny at her—Anne’s—desk, paper-clipping a clump of papers she’d gather and clamp between her teeth. Richard was at his own desk devouring eggs and toast prepared quietly by Penny. He rarely had breakfast, and never this early, just tea. After being nodded away by Penny, Anne began dusting shelves, wandering about the cabin, waiting for his response to the draft of a letter to military leaders that sat prominently . . . damn, under his plate!
“Richard,” she cried. “Last night I worked for hours on that and you’re dripping—“
“Oh,” he moaned apologetically. “Sorry, darling, but—“
Seeing his sad frown of contrition, hearing the snorts of laughter from Miss Shaw, she shook her head. Damn him, had he changed his mind again? She felt tears form and turned away from them and sniffled them back. Oh, how she could despise him sometimes! At the door—she’d taker her emotions outside—suddenly she felt his arms about her and slowly allowed herself to be turned and—surprise, surprise—kissed warmly, lastingly.
Deep approving hum from Penny, still with a mouthful of paper-clips.
Richard sat them down on the old creaking glider and she had to laugh through tears at his excited expression. What, she wanted to ask the grey haired little boy, come on, out with it, hit me with the latest brainstorm. She would have shrieked at him, shown a deep anger and resentment except for the heaven-sent appearance of Miss Shaw. ‘Anything is possible’ and ‘the morning sun blows away the dark night’s problems’ were her watchwords and her jolly helpful self was enough to mollify Anne’s feelings.
Richard raised his head, closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. Oops, not just a brainstorm, was it to be a revelation? She forced a grin at the little boy with grey hair and waited until he opened his eyes which—another surprise—were moist.
“The first conference I want to host—no, no. Excuse me.” A deeper sigh and now tears and a rumbling sob. Oh, dear, what’s going on? His own sniffles, another breath before, “Anne, the first conference I need you to organize—yes, you! And host, is to be made up entirely of women. Yes, and—a lot of whom you’ve known, met, interviewed, respect. Female members of Congress, the few in the Cabinet, ambassadors, journalists, nature organizations, charities—women business leaders. And some of the wives, our wonderful First Lady and, well, you know them, the ones who really ran things, the nurturers, caretakers, the wise and reasonable women behind the . . . what do you say?”