“Well, I’ll think on it. I’ll think on it. Maybe I’ll decide to tell you. But don’t bother me about it any more, you hear?”
“Yes, Gramps.”
“All right. Now go on and get out of here. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”
Ronnie was tired too, but he stopped in the dining room on his way upstairs to take another look at the candlesticks. They were beautiful. Twelve cut-glass, diamond-shaped crystals hung by spun glass chains in a circle from the rim of the candle holder. The base and stick itself were of solid frosted glass, embellished with intricate designs of rose and turquoise embossing. He set one of the crystals in motion and it tinkled like a bell against its neighbor crystal.
He climbed the stairs to the upstairs hall. Phil was in his own room, working at his desk. Ronnie poked his head inside and watched his brother cutting out baseball players’ pictures from the backs of cereal boxes he had been accumulating. “Bill and I are starting a business in the morning. You can come in with us if you want.”
“What kind of a business? If it’s work, you can count me out.”
Ronnie explained what they had in mind. Phil seemed interested. “I’ll sleep on it,” he told Ronnie and went on with his work.
Ronnie moved down the hall and entered his own room. He didn’t turn on the light, but instead went to the window and, brushing back the curtains, stared out into the blackness.
The moon was at the quarter, but there was enough light from it to light up patches of the St. Lawrence River so that it looked like stretches of a concrete highway cutting through the darkness. Below and a little to the left, the night was blackest, and here Ronnie located the deserted village.
For a moment he thought he could picture the black, inky water covering the land as the floodwaters rose behind the proposed dam. The thought of such a thing happening sent his stomach sinking.