The alarm bell in his mind rang again.
What did it mean, he wondered.
Oh, yes, now he knew. It was August 21.
Today United Electric began making deliveries. The construction work was already finished, the concrete dry, the forms already off.
Suddenly he was wide awake. Suddenly he was out of bed, and dressing frantically.
Jimmie Blake excused himself from dinner. His dad and mother smiled wistfully as he dashed upstairs.
Jimmie whistled as he shaved. Shaving was really not necessary, but he imagined it was, and in consequence it was a ritual not to be neglected. For he was a man now. Next week he was going off to college again. He would be a sophomore this year. No more green caps, no more hazing. The whistle swelled in prideful strength.
He looked out of the bathroom window. The sun, already at the edge of the horizon, flung its rays over the suburb of Valley Park. The grass was dry and the leaves were beginning to change color. It was September, September 8, 1940. Jimmie burst into song. One more week and he would be off to college.
Over there, perhaps half a mile away, he could see the sunlight shining on fresh concrete. Garth's Folly, they were calling it already. Garth had spent a fortune building a house that would stand to the end of the world. Two million years, that newspaper article had said.