Chapter Five

As their booth and the booth across the aisle that was with them settled into eating, the voices around them and occasionally among them began to weave themselves into a running chorus.

"As if! She didn't even know."

"I'm not going to have that man mow my lot this year. I'm not interested in all the complications."

"Mickey Power will be dead by Christmas."

"Do you see her often, or did you just run into her?'

"We'd best get some rain, or I'm going have to start buying hay again."

Hazel picked at her salad, just letting herself listen and pick out the various statements floating around her, feeling the sense of life and community around these tables. Around the formica and tubular steel and naugahyde, people whose lives were all different from hers, and from each other, had in common a need to eat, a desire to find listening ears, and a hope to catch a response to their words that confirmed they were being heard themselves.

That's what these students were telling her they hadn't found on campus, she thought. Our food might be better, the buildings designed for communal living, with each lodge meant to be a sort of family the students would be part of for their whole time at Cyrus College, but there wasn't that much going on to promote people coming together for simple communication. Or for caring, for that matter.

Those women behind her, talking about Mickey Power. Who was she? Why would she be dead by Christmas? Should Hazel care, or is her situation no different than fifteen other global tragedies on the TV too distant to care about?

The younger woman, the girl really, who had wedged in last on Hazel's side of the booth, awkwardly turned her head and asked "Would you like to join us tomorrow?"

"Join you?"

"Come, I mean. To the Salvage Yard. I think you'd like it."

"So this is that warehouse building down at the crossroads, towards Newark, right?"

"That's it. We have a few of us who drive, maybe eight or ten of us who go. It's probably about forty people, mostly from Upper Sharon and the area, a few who come up from Newark."

"And what's a service like?"

The young woman directly across from them both chimed in: "They usually start with some songs; Bobby plays guitar, and sometimes there's a dulcimer or a bass and a keyboard. Cicely plays keyboards, but it depends on if someone brings out the Fender Rhodes from the storeroom."

"No," said Cicely, "Nicholas sold the Fender Rhodes. So we don't have anything but that giant out of tune upright piano, and I don't think it sounds right."

"Oh, I didn't realize. I missed a month when I was in England." The girl across from her turned to Hazel. "I got an award from the Linnean Society to study lichens in Syria, but since you can't go there, they let me use the funds to look at their archives and do a cross-referencing with the British Museum."

"I'm sorry, help me with your name?"

She smiled without any suggestion that Hazel should already have known it, putting her at ease before hearing "I'm Priscilla," and stretched her hand out across the table. They shook and nodded to each other, with Priscilla adding "I really do hope you'll come join us. Maybe you play keyboards?"

"As a matter of fact . . . " All three women smiled broadly. Hazel went on ". . . I have an electric keyboard in my hall closet that might just need some dusting off, literally and musically."