There were the crowds to watch also, and Steeplejack Sam, as long as he was up high on the fancy stonework around the top of the building, though she lost sight of him on the street, right away. There was a lot to hear—the different kinds of music, including the Muzak in the restaurant, and what the nurses said. When Nora finished eating, they asked her if she would like ice cream, but she said not, politely. Then they told her they were going to Toyland in Marker’s store and she could accompany them and they would put her on a bus for home later.
On the way to Marker’s, one of the nurses, Evangeline Treely, decided to go into Vance’s and send her mother some fancy stationery, so they went there, and it look over an hour to push through the customers and find what Evangeline wanted and locate a clerk and pay and get change. Then they did start for Toyland.
Nora had forgotten all about the giant automaton Santa Claus in Simmons Park. The nurses were wonderful people to be with, she thought, and there wasn’t any great hurry about getting home because the clouds had lifted a little and the snow had stopped, and if her family carne home and worried about her any, it would serve them right for leaving her behind.
7
Ted Conner was alone on Walnut Street. He was in the attic. A little snow was falling, but the paper had said it would probably clear in the late afternoon. He hoped so. Reception would be better if it cleared up.
At first he had wished someone was there. The news was tearing in—the unbelievable news which he’d been trained to handle. Its effect on most of the older people in Green Prairie, or any other city, would have been horrifying in the extreme. Some of them, after hearing the broken bits of conversation and the news from the neighboring states, wouldn’t have been able to go on listening. You couldn’t exactly tell what was happening from the reports, direct and relayed, that Ted tuned in on. But you could guess.
Denver had said somebody farther west had said they couldn’t raise anybody in San Francisco. Or Los Angeles either.
A guy he had often talked with in Omaha, an old gaffer named Butts, who had a sender with plenty of oomph, came in laconically. “Hello, Green Prairie…. Hi, Ted, son!… Seen anything?”
“Not here, not yet. Over.”
“You will—and maybe we will, looks like. Dallas got it.”