The company and the government proposed new laws based on "free use policies" to harvest this newfound human resource. It became clear that the female... although large in numbers were at a disadvantage of being enslaved. There were many protests and debates on how to institutionalize "free use" policies that does not lower the quality of life for the women. Nobody wanted those free‐use society stories to become a reality. They are just unsustainable.However, the benefits were clear as well ‐. Jack rose, as if in a daze and followed me. I led him outside and then turned to face him. I waited — not knowing what to say until he finally cleared his throat and said, ‘I — I have to do it, Peg. Don’t you see? Everyone is joining up. It’s my duty.’ In the weeks to follow, I would hear this same line of reasoning repeated over and over as each of my brothers and nearly every male in that age group enlisted in one branch of the service or another. But, at that moment, Jack was the first. Their bodies moved against each other urgently for a long, aching moment. Sweat, skin and silence. India almost opened her eyes before remembering where they were. She pressed her face into his shoulder and breathed in the smell of him.“If only life was just this,” she said. “Just this.”Hunter’s arms went around her.“Things are gonna change,” he said.*Simon had been ignoring his wife's texts all morning. On the street outside his office window, builders were noisily renovating the surgery. No joy. The minister was a droner, the congregation looked like it had an average age of eighty, and nobody -- old, young or middle-aged -- approached me after the service with an invitation to Sunday dinner.Concluding that Rollie Perkins was delusional, I had an early dinner, alone, at a Cracker Barrel just outside of town.“Give it time,” Rollie told me in the dugout during that afternoon’s game with Charlotte. “I never claimed you’d hit it every time. It’s just like being a hitter, Marty –.