"Earth Abides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart George Rippey)

Chapter 2

As Ish had expected, they did nothing. Weeks passed. There was no heaving and grunting of men as they carried the refrigerator up the hill, no click and crunch of spades preparing a garden plot. Ish worried occasionally, but in general life drifted along, and even he could not be much concerned. With his old student’s habit of observing even when he did not participate, he often wondered just what might be happening.

Was it really, as he sometimes imagined, that all the individuals were still suffering under a kind of shock as the result of the sudden destruction of their old society? His studies in anthropology supplied him with examples—the head-hunters and the plains Indians, who had lost the will to readjust and even the will to live, after their traditional way of life had rudely been made impossible. If they could no longer go head-hunting or ride out to steal horses and take scalps, they had no desire for anything else either. Or, with a mild climate and food-supplies easy to obtain, was there now simply no stimulus to change? He could recollect possible examples of this kind also—some of the South Sea islanders, or those tropical peoples who. lived chiefly on bananas. Or was it something else?

Fortunately, he had enough background of philosophy and history to. keep his perspective. He was actually, he realized, struggling to solve a problem which had baffled philosophers from the time when they had first become conscious of problems at all. He was facing the basic question of the dynamics of society. What made a society change? He, as a student, was more fortunate than Koheleth or Plato or Malthus or Toynbee. He saw a society reduced in size until it had attained the simplicity of a laboratory experiment. Yet, whenever he had arrived at this stage of argument, another thought cut across and disturbed the simplicity. He began to feel himself less scientific but more human, to think more nearly as Em thought. This society along San Lupo Drive was not really, a philosopher’s neat microcosm, a small dip out of the general ocean of humanity. No—it was a group of individuals. It was Ezra and Em and the boys—yes, and Joey! Change the individuals, and the whole situation changed. Change even one individual! In the place of Em, if we had had—well, say, Dotty Lamour? Or, instead of George, one of those high-powered minds that he remembered from his University years—Professor Sauer, perhaps! Again the situation would change.

Or would it? Possibly not, for in the test the physical environment might be stronger, and might force the aberrant individuals into its mould.

But in one detail Ish thought that Em was wrong. She did not need to fear that he was worrying too much about the situation and would end up with ulcers or a neurosis. Instead, his observation of what was happening kept him interested in life. At first, just after the Great Disaster, he had devoted himself to observing the changes in the world as the result of the disappearance of man. After twenty-one years, however, the world had fairly well adjusted itself, and further changes were too slow to call for day-to-day or even month-to-month observation. Now, however, the problem of society—its adjustment and reconstitution—had moved to the fore, and become his chief interest.

Then at this point in the recurrent course of his thinking he always had to correct himself again. He could not, and should not, be merely the observer and student. Plato and the others—each of them could merely watch and comment, even cynically, if he so felt. Through his writings he might influence future generations, but he himself was in no appreciable way responsible for the growth and development of the society in which he lived. Only now and then had the scholar also become the ruler—Marcus Aurelius, Thomas More, Woodrow Wilson. To be sure, Ish realized that he himself was not a ruler exactly, but he was the man of ideas, the thinker, in a community of only a few individuals. Necessarily the others turned to him in their rare times of trouble, and if any real emergency should arise, he would almost certainly have to assume leadership.

The thought had already in the course of the years sent him to the City Library after books about scholars who had also become rulers. Their fates were not comforting. Marcus Aurelius had worn himself out, body and soul, in bloody and fruitless campaigns on the Danube frontier. Thomas More had gone to the scaffold, and afterwards, ironically, he had been canonized as a martyr of the Church. The biographers often called Wilson a martyr also, although no Church of Peace had made him St. Woodrow. No, the scholar in power had not prospered notably. Yet he, Ish, in a community which even yet numbered only thirty-six people, was so placed that he probably could wield more influence in the shaping of its future than an emperor or a chancellor or a president in the Old Times.

Heavy rains in the week after New Years had slowed the falling of the water level in the reservoir. Then, a little earlier than usual, came the mid-winter dry spell.

Like the blood of some leviathan oozing from a hundred thousand pinpricks, the life-giving water flowed away through open faucets and leaking joints and broken pipes.

And now, where the still-standing gauge showed that the depth had recently been twenty feet, only a thin skin of water covered the bottom of the reservoir.

When Ish woke up that morning, he realized that it was a fine sunny day, and that he had slept well and was rested. Em was gone from the bed, and he heard the familiar little sounds from downstairs which meant that breakfast would soon be ready. He lay still for a few minutes, thoroughly enjoying himself, coming back more slowly than usual to full consclousness. He felt it a very fortunate circumstance to be able to lie in bed a little while longer if you wished, not merely on Sunday morning, but on any morning. There was no sharp looking at clocks, in the life that they lived now, and no need for him or for anyone else, to catch the 7:53 train. He was living a life of greater freedom than anyone could possibly have lived in the Old Times. Perhaps, with his special temperament he was even living more happily now than he could have lived then.

When he felt ready, he got up and shaved. There was no hot water, but he did not care about that particularly. As a matter of fact, nobody would have minded if he had not shaved at all, but he liked the sense of cleanliness and stimulation that the shave gave him.

He dressed—a new sport shirt and a pair of blue jeans. He stuck his feet into some comfortable slippers, went slopping down stairs, and steered toward the kitchen.

As he came to the door, he heard Em say, rather more sharply than she was used to speak, “Josey child, why don’t you turn that faucet farther, so you can really get some water?”

“But, Mommie, it is turned on, as hard as I can turn it.”

Ish, coming into the kitchen, saw that Josey was holding the tea-kettle in the sink under the faucet, and that only a trickle of water was running.

“Morning!” he said. “I guess I’ll have to get George to come over and fix up that plumbing a little bit. Josey, why don’t you run out into the garden, and get some water from one of the outside faucets?”

Josey trotted off agreeably, and when she was gone, Ish took the opportunity to kiss Em, and to tell her what he was planning for the day. Josey was gone for a little while, and then came back with the kettle full.

“The water out there ran faster for a little while, and then it just died out to a trickle, too,” she said, setting the kettle on the gasoline stove.

“That’s a nuisance!” said Em. “We’ll need more water for washing the dishes.”

Ish recognized the tone of voice. This was one of the times when a crisis was laid directly at the feet of the menfolk to do something about.

Breakfast was served on the dining-room table, and the table looked just about the way it might have looked in the Old Times. Ish sat at one end, and Em at the other. They had only four children at home now. Robert, who was sixteen, and almost fully grown up, according to the standards of The Tribe, sat on one side. Beside him was Walt, who was twelve, and very big and active for his age. And on the other side, close to the kitchen door, sat Joey and Josey, part of whose work was to help with breakfast, by aiding with the cooking and setting of the table, and running in and out to wait on table and helping to wash the dishes afterwards.

As he sat down, Ish could not help thinking how little this particular scene differed from what it might have been in the Old Times. To be sure, he would never have expected then to be the father of so many children. But, granting the numbers, the family group was just what it might have been at any time in almost any society—father, mother, and children, tightly grouped to form the basic social unit, so basic in fact that it might be considered biological rather than social. After all, he thought, the family was the toughest of all human institutions. It had preceded civilization, and so it naturally survived afterwards.

There was grapefiruit-juice, out of cans, of course. Ish had long since begun to doubt seriously whether after all this time there was anything valuable in the way of vitamins left in canned juices. Even the taste had gone flat. But they continued drinking it, because it felt good on the stomach, even though there might not be any vitamins, and at worst it probably was doing them no harm. There were no eggs, because there had been no hens since the Great Disaster. There was no bacon, either, because canned or, glassed bacon was hard to find now and there were no pigs in this vicinity, as far as they had ever discovered. But they had beef-ribs, braised and well browned, which were a fairly good substitute for bacon, even to Ish’s taste. The children, of course, liked nothing better. In fact, they made the principal part of their breakfast on the beef-ribs because they had grown up being largely meat-eaters and expecting or wanting little else. Ish and Em, on the contrary, had always been used to having toast or cereal, and now that the rats and weevils had ruined all flour and packaged cereals, they had hominy, from cans, cooked up so as to be something like a breakfast-food. They ate it with canned milk and to sweeten it there was white corn-syrup, because lately they had been unable to find any sugar that rats and weather had spared. The grownups also had coffee. Ish used milk and com-syrup in his; Em had always preferred hers black and unsweetened anyway. The vacuum-packed coffee, like the grapefruit juice, had lost much of its flavor.

They had settled gradually upon this menu as their standard one for breakfast. Except perhaps for lack of vitamins, it seemed to offer a fairly well balanced meal, and to supply vitamins they had fresh fruit whenever they could find any, though now that blight and insects and rabbits had ruined the orchards, there was little fruit to be had, except for wild strawberries and blackberries, a few wormy apples, and some sour plums from trees gone wild. On the whole, however, Ish found it a satisfying breakfast.

After he had finished, Ish slumped into an easy-chair in the living room, picked a cigarette from the humidifier, and lighted it. But the cigarette was not very satisfactory. They were no longer able to find vacuum-packed ones, and the ordinary ones had dried out almost completely in the packages now, no matter how well sealed. You had to keep them in the humidifier a while to get them decently smokable, and then the trouble was that you were likely to get them even too damp. That was what was wrong with this one. And then also, he could not quite enjoy the cigarette because his conscience was bothering him. From the kitchen he could hear uncertain sounds from Em and the twins, and he gathered that they were still having trouble getting water.

“Might as well go over,” he thought, “and see George, and get him to clean out that pipe or whatever it is.” He got up and went out.

On the way to George’s, however, he stopped at Jean’s house to pick up Ezra-not that Ezra could fix anything, or that he needed Ezra for any negotiation with George, but just because he always liked to see Ezra. He knocked, and Jean came to the door.

“Ez is not here now,” she said. “He’s over at Molly’s this week.” Ish had the ftumy feeling that he often had when fac Ing the actual practice of bigamy. He did not exactly see how Jean and Molly kept on such good terms, and even helped each other out in all the little emergencies of housekeeping. It was merely another triumph of Ezra’s at getting along with human beings and making them get along with each other. Ish turned to go, and then he recollected, and looked back.

“Oh, Jean,” he said. “Say, is your water running all right this morning?”

“Why, no,” said Jean. “No, it isn’t. There’s just a little trickle coming out.”

She closed the door, and Ish went down the porch steps and headed for Molly’s house. He felt a sudden little chill of apprehension.

He picked up Ezra at Molly’s, and discovered that she at least had had no difficulty with water. That, however, might be the result of her house being several feet lower than Jean’s so that the water might not yet have run out of the pipes.

They went over to George’s house, which stood neat and trim inside its freshly painted white picket-fence. Maurine showed them into the living-room, and told therif to sit down while she went to get George, who was puttering around somewhere as usual. Ish sat down in one of the big velourcovered overstuffed chairs. Then, as always, he looked around the living-room with a sense of amazement, mingled with an almost perverted pleasure. The living-roorn in George and Maurine’s house looked exactly the way the living-room of any prosperous carpenter would have looked back in the years before the Great Disaster. There were bridge-lamps with pink shades, and tassels hanging from them. There was a very expensive electric clock, and a magnificent console radio-phonograph, which had four different bands of reception. There was also a television set. On both tables were scarves carefully crumpled up to give an elegant look to things, and on one table were neat piles of several popular magazines.

The bridge-lamps did not work, because there was no electricity, and the hands of the electric clock always stood at 12:17. The magazines were at least twenty-one years old. There were no programs on the air for the radio to pick up, even if there had been any electric current by which the radio and the phonograph could run.

Yet all these things were the symbols of prosperity. George had been a carpenter in the Old Times. Maurine had then been married to a man who must have been about the social and financial equal of George. Such people always wanted to have fine bridge-lamps and electric clocks and radios and all the rest, and now that it was possible to have all these things, they had merely gone out and got them and put them into the house. Their not working was secondary. In the evening Maurine merely brought in a kerosene lamp, and stood it on the table and they got their light from it instead of from the bridge-lamps, and they had a wind-up phonograph for actual use. It was ridiculous, and also a little pitiful. Yet, when Ish considered the matter, he always remembered Em’s first reaction to it.

“Well,” she had said, “don’t you remember in the Old Times people would have a piano, maybe a grand piano, in the living-room, even though nobody could play it? And they had a set of those books-what did they call them?-the Harvard Classics, though they never read them. And maybe they had a fireplace that never even -had a chimney attached to it. All those things were just to show off that you could afford them. They were proof that you had arrived. So I don’t see much difference now if George and Maurine want to have their bridge-lamps, even if they can’t get any light from them.”

They heard George coming in from the back, and then his bulky form filled the doorway. He held a pipe-wrench in one hand, and was wearing his usual costume of carpenter’s overalls, rather dirty and well stained with paint smears. He could have used new overalls every day, but apparently he felt more comfortable in ones that were well broken in.

“Hi, George,” said Ezra, who usually managed to say the first word.

“G’morning, George,” said Ish.

George seemed to chew his tongue for a moment, as if really considering what the situation demanded. Then he said: “Morning, Ish…. Morning, Ezra.”

“Say, George,” said Ish. “No water over at Jean’s or at our place this morning. How about here?” There was a pause.

“None here, neither,” said George.

“Well,” said Ish, “what do you make of it?”

George hesitated, working his mouth and lips, as if he were chewing the end of an imaginary cigar. Ish felt a sense of irritation at George’s lumpishness. Yet he reflected, controlling himself, that George was a solid person and a very good one to have around.

“Well,” he repeated, “what do you make of it, George?”

George made a motion as if to put the imaginary cigar into one comer of his mouth, and then he replied. “Well, if she’s off over there too, I guess there’s no use looking any more for some block in my pipes around here, way I was. I guess she’s broke or clogged up somewheres on the main pipe that comes to all these houses.”

Ish caught a sidelong glance from Ezra, and a ghost of a smile on his face as much as to say that after all any of them might have figured that out and that George’s pronouncement was not exactly the word of a mental giant.

“I guess you must be right, George,” Ish said. “But what are we going to do about it?”

George shifted the imaginary cigar again, and then spoke: “Well, I dunno.”

Like Em, George obviously considered this to be out of his province. Give him a dripping faucet or a plugged toilet, and he would be happy taking care of it for you. But he was no mechanic, and certainly no engineer. So, as it always happened, Ish had to fake the lead.

“Where did all this water come from anyway?” he asked on the impulse.

The others both were silent. It was curious. Here they had been for twenty-one years merely using water that continued to flow, and yet they had never given any real consideration to where the water came from. It had been a gift from the past, as free as air, like the cans of beans and bottles of catsup that could be had just by walking into a store and taking them from the shelves. Ish indeed had vaguely thought about the matter sometimes, and wondered how long the water would continue to run, and even considered vaguely what they should do to develop another supply. But he had never got round to doing anything. Water which had already run for many years might well continue to run for many years more, and so there was no pressure for action. In all those years there had never been one single day, until this one, when there had been any immediate reason why he should say to himself. “Today I must do something about the water-supply.”

So now Ish glanced from George to Ezra, and had no response to his question. George merely stood, shifting weight from one foot to the other. Ezra had a little twinkle in his eyes, to indicate that this was not his department. Ezra knew people. When he had clerked in that liquor-store he must have been good at jollying his customers along and making tie-in sales. But when it came to handling ideas and things, Ish was better than Ezra. Ish saw that he would have to answer his own question.

“This water must come from the old city water-system, somewhere,” he said. “Must have come, I mean. The old pipes are still there. I think the best thing for us to do would be to go up to the reservoir and see whether there is any water in that.”

“O.K.,” said Ezra, agreeable as ever. “Maybe, though, we should see what the boys think about it.”

“No,” said Ish. “They won’t know anything about it. If it was a question of hunting or fishing, we could ask the boys. But the boys wouldn’t know anything about this.”

They went out and began calling the dogs, and getting ready to harness up the teams to the wagons. The reservoir was not more than a mile away, but ever since he had been mauled by the mountain-lion, Ish was not good at long walks, and George was beginning to suffer from the stiffness of old age in his legs. Getting the dogs together and making everything ready always took some time. At moments like these, Ish regretted that horse-taming had come to be a lost art. There were no wild horses left in the immediate vicinity, but he was sure that they could find plenty of them farther east in the open plains country of die San Joaquin Valley. But the trouble really was that all three men had been city-people who were used to driving automobiles; not one of them really knew, anything about horse-keeping or horse-managing, and so they had never made the effort to keep horses. Actually, the dogs were in many ways more convenient because they demanded little care, and fed on the less choice cuts of the many cattle which could be killed easily in the surrounding country. But to have horses, you would have had to see that they were kept on good pasture, and protected from wolves and lions. So on the whole, now that automobiles were difficult to keep running, the dog-teams were probably the simplest answer to their modest requirements for transportation, and George was very happy to make the little wagons and keep them in repair. It had taken Ish years to get over the feeling, when he was driving in one of the wagons behind four dogs, that he was acting in some kind of ridiculous pageant, and made a ludicrous spectacle. But, of course, no one else felt the same, and he had gradually come to accept the situation. After all, people had thought it natural to have dogs pull sleds. Why not wagons?

They left the dog-teams at the foot of the final slope, and climbed up along the old path, breaking their way through thick blackberry bushes. They stood at the edge of the reservoir, and looked across its empty expanse. There was a little skim of water in two or three low spots, but the outlet-pipe stood up into the air. They took a long look, and it was Ezra who spoke at last:

“That’s that!”

They discussed the possibilities a little, but without much interest or conviction. They were already half way through the rainy season, so that there was little possibility that rainfall would put water into the reservoir again. They went down the path, picked up the dog-teams, and started home.

As they neared the houses, the dogs began to bark, and the house-dogs barked back at them. Everyone had time to assemble at Ish’s house to hear the news. When they had heard it, the older people looked so glum that the children caught the infection, and one little fellow, who was probably too young to understand anything actually, began to cry. In the babble of conversation it soon became evident that no one was much worried about actual thirst, but that the women were greatly concerned that the toilets would no longer work. They did not mind this one day, but it was the thought that they would never work again! It seemed that all life had taken a step backward.

Only Maurine accepted the situation philosophically. “I growed up my first eighteen years on the old farm in South Dakota,” she said. “I run out to the outhouse, all kinds of weather, and I never seen a flusher except maybe when we was in town on Saturdays. That was one of the things I liked best when pappy piled us into the old Chevy and we went to California. But I always felt it wouldn’t last, and I’d end up, a-runnin’ out in all weathers, way I began. Rushers was nice. But it’s all over now, and I say, ’Thank the good Lord the weather ain’t so cold here as in South Dakota.’”

The older men were more concerned with the problem of drinking-water. At first, like the confirmed city-dwellers that they had been, they thought in terms of finding where supplies of bottled water had been left in the stores and warehouses. But soon they saw that even in the approaching dry season, there could be no real lack of water. In spite of the long rainless summer, the area was not a desert, and the little streams in the gullies, though no one had ever paid much attention to them, must actually be supplying the water for all the cattle and the other animals which wandered in the region.

Just at this point, a distinction between the older generation and the younger began to show itself. Ish, in spite of having been a geographer, could not have told off-hand where there was a single spring or dependable stream in the neighborhood, although he could still locate positions by names of streets and intersections. The youngsters, on the other hand, could quickly tell him where there was a stream of running water at this season of the year, or where there would be pools of water, or where there were springs. They could not locate these places by reference to streets, but they could tell in general where they were, and could go to them without hesitation. Ish suddenly found himself being instructed by his own son Walt, who assured him that at this season of year there would be running water in a little gully which Ish had scarcely ever noticed because it flowed through under San Lupo Drive by means of a storm drain.

Before long, the original consternation changed to a kind of warm excitement. Some of the youngsters were sent off with the dog-teams and some five-gallon cans to bring back water from the nearest spring. The older ones began to dig holes vigorously, and to set up outhouses.

The enthusiasm lasted for several hours, and resulted in a noticeable amount of work. Steady pick-and-shovel labor, however, was something to which no one was accustomed, and by noon there was widespread complaint about blisters and weariness. When they separated for lunch, Ish suddenly became aware that no one was coming back for work. It was amazing how many important matters seemed to be planned for that afternoon—such as going fishing, and wiping out an ugly-acting bull who might prove dangerous, and shooting a mess of quail for dinner. Besides, by now the enthusiastic youngsters had brought in a supply of water which was plentiful for all immediate needs of drinking and cooking. The difference between having a small water-supply and no water at all was tremendous, psychologically. A five-gallon can sitting in the kitchen-sink took away all sense of strain.

After lunch Ish again relaxed with a cigarette. He was not going to go out and dig by himself. As the story-books told things, this would have been setting a noble example. Practically, it would make him look ridiculous.

Little Joey came, and stood nervously for a moment on his left foot with his right leg bent at the knee, and then reversed. “What’s the matter, Joey?” said Ish.

“Don’t we want to go out and work some more?”

“No, Joey. Not this afternoon.”

Joey continued balancing, letting his gaze wander around the room and then come back to his father.

“Go along, Joey,” said Ish gently. “Everything’s fine! We’ll have the lesson at the regular time.”

Joey went off, but Ish was touched, even if a little humiliated, by the wordless sympathy which his youngest son was offering. Joey scarcely could understand the larger issues, but his quick mind had sensed that his father was unhappy, even though there had been no argument between him and the others. Yes, Joey was the one!

Since that idea had first come to Ish on New Years Day, he had been pressing the lessons, and Joey had been absorbing them eagerly. There was even danger that he might turn out to be a learned pedant. He showed little ability at leadership among the other children, and sometimes Ish had begun to doubt.

This small incident just now, for instance! It might show intelligence and thought for the future, and it might show a tendency to escape from contacts with those of his own age, who were better at games than he, and to seek security in the presence of his father, by whom he felt himself appreciated. Ish hoped that the other children did not feel how strongly Joey had become his favorite. It was not right for a father to play favorites, but this situation had arisen suddenly and involuntarily, that New Years Day.

“Oh,” he thought, “don’t worry about it!” And suddenly he felt as if he were explaining it all to Em. “There on New Years Day, I was suddenly sure that Joey was the Chosen One. Now of course it’s all blurred. Maybe this is only the feeling a father gets for a small son. Later we may squabble, just the way I do with Walt now. Yet, I hope! The other boys were never like this—bright, I mean, lightning-quick at lessons. I don’t know. I wish I knew. I’ll keep on trying.”

Then, as he lit another cigarette, he was suddenly angry. He himself had not been so very bright! He had missed the opportunity. During the years he had been saying, “Something is going to happen!” It had not happened, and they had smiled at him for a gloomy and not-to-be-regarded prophet. Now this morning it had happened! It had been a shock! He could remember the scared faces when he and Ezra and George had first come back with the news. Then was the time to have made his I-told-you-so speech. He should have rubbed it in. He should have painted the future with disaster. That might have got something done.

As it was—perhaps he himself had been a little scared at the moment—everyone had made as light as possible of the matter, searched for the easiest makeshifts, and thus dulled the edge of what might have been made to seem a disaster. The Tribe had really taken the matter in its stride. Or—the identity of the word popped an old comparison into his mind—it had rolled off, “like water off a duck’s back!” Four or five hours later, and everybody had apparently settled again into the old happy-go-lucky life!

“Apparently,” yes! But after all, some sense of shock and uncertainty must still be lingering. Some had gone fishing and some had gone quail-shooting, and already he had heard two reports of a shot-gun. But all of these must certainly feel a slight sense of irresponsibility, even of guilt, at having left the more important work. They would come in tired at evening, and then the reaction might go the other way. He would get everybody together for a meeting then. If the iron would not still be red-hot, it might at least have rewarmed a little.

Then he himself incongruously crunched out his second after-lunch cigarette, and settled back to rest, comfortable and unharassed by worry, in the big chair. “This is comfortable,” he thought, “This is…”

In those days they will look toward the sea, and cry out suddenly, “A ship, a ship!… Yes, a ship certainly!… Do you not see the plume of the drifting smoke?… Yes, it is making for our harbor!” Then they will be merry with one another and say gaily: “Why were we despondent?…. It stood to reason that civilization could not be destroyed everywhere!… Of course, I always said…. In Australia, or South Africa, one of those isolated places-or one of the islands.” But there will be no ship, and only a wisp of cloud on the horizon.

Or one will wake from his nap in the afternoon, and took upward quickly. “Surely!… I knew it must come!… That was the motor of a plane…. I could not be mistaken.” But it will be only the locust in the bush, and there will be no plane.

Or one will rig batteries to a radio-set, and sit with earphones, fingering the dials. “Yes?” he will say sharply. “Be quiet there, all of you!… Surely, surely!… Just at 920!… Someone talking. I heard distinctly, sounded Spanish…. There again!… Now it’s faded!” But there will be no words on the air, only the tricks of the far-off thunderstorms.

“Yes, this is comfortable,” thought Ish, resting in the big chair…. And then suddenly he started! From the street came the noise of two loud reports, and he knew at once that they could be nothing but the backfiring of a large truck! Then, so quickly that he did not seem to take time at all, he was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, and there was the truck in the middle of the street. It was a fine large truck painted bright red with blue trim, and in large white letters on its side he saw: U.S. GOVT. A man got out of the truck, and though he had been driving it, he was now (quite understandably) wearing a cut-away coat and a high silk hat. The man said nothing, but Ish of course knew that this was the Governor of California. Ish felt himself filled suddenly with an inexpressible happiness. For again there was security and constituted authority and the strength of the many, instead of only the few in the midst of surrounding darknessi, and now he, Ish, was no longer a weak and neglected child wandering alone in the vast unfriendly world….

In that bewilderment of happiness too great to be bome, he awoke. The insides of his hands were moist, and his heart pounded. As he looked around the familiar room, the happiness faded out like a dying light, and in its place succeeded a woe, equally unutterable.

After another moment the woe too faded out as his conscious controls took over. That intense happiness of the dream, so overwhelming that it had awakened him—he knew now that it had sprung again from that often-repeated dream—“wish fulfillment,” they used to say. How many times throughout these twenty-one years had he dreamed it in some form or other! Not during the first year or two indeed-his sense of loneliness and insecurity had seemed to grow cumulatively with the years, piling up faster than the birth of new children could counteract it.

Yes, today the symbolism had been very plain. It varied, though usually it was plain enough. He felt a little surprised that it so often took the form of the return of the United States Government. In the Old Times he had never considered himself a flag-waving patriot, and he had not thought often about such things as the benefits of citizenship. But no more, indeed, did a person think of the air he breathed, until it was taken away. A sense of the vastness and solidity of the United States of America must have affected the sub-conscious feelings of its citizens, he reflected, much more than most of them had imagined.

By now he had brought his mind back to his actual world. He stirred in the chair. By the position of the sun he judged that he had slept an hour. Again he heard the distant report of the shot-gun from the quail-hunters. He smiled wanly, associating it with the back-firing truck. Anyway-now he would set about getting the others together for the meeting which he had planned for that evening.

Water supplies remained scanty throughout the day, but at least no one suffered from thirst. That evening the older ones, including Robert and Richard who were only sixteen, gathered at Ish’s house at his invitation. Ish found no one very much disturbed. It would be a good idea (this seemed to be the general opinion) to try digging a well near one of the houses, rather than to move to some houses nearer a natural water supply. Yes, they probably would have to watch sanitation carefully under the new arrangements and see that the children were instructed in such matters.

There was no presiding officer. Occasionally someone deferred to Ish to settle a point, but this deference, he realized, might be because he held a faintly recognized natural leadership of intellect or even for no better reason than that he was the host. There was no secretary taking a record of what happened. But then, there were no motions made and no votes taken. As always, it was more a social than a parliamentary gathering. Ish listened to the conversation back and forth.

“Come to think of it, though—how’s anybody know we’d get water in that well?”

“Can’t be a well till you do get water.”

“Well, that hole-in-the-ground then?”

“You got something there!”

“Maybe this would do better…. Run a pipe over to some click or spring, and hitch it onto our old pipes.”

“How about it, George? That sound O.K.?”

“…. Why, sure…. I guess so… Yeah… I guess I could connect up some pipes.”

“Trouble would be, though, when everybody wants water at once.”

“Have to build a dam—earth-dam would be all right—so’s to have a little bitty head behind your water.”

“Guess we could do that?”

“…. Sure… Be some work, though.”

As the conversation wandered on almost complacently, Ish found himself gradually becoming more disturbed. To him it seemed as if this day had seen a retrograde and perhaps irretrievable step. Suddenly he found himself on his feet, and he was really making a speech to the ten people who were there before him.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “We shouldn’t have let this creep up on us. Any time in the last six months we should have been able to see that the water in the reservoir was failing, but we never even went to look at it. And here we are, caught suddenly, and shoved back so that we’ll perhaps never be able to catch up with things again. We’ve made too many mistakes. We ought to be teaching the children to read and write. (No one has ever supported me strongly enough in that.) We ought to send an expedition to find out what’s happening other places. It’s not safe not to know what may be happening just over the hill. We should have more domestic animals—some hens, anyway. We ought to be growing food…”

Then, when he was really in full career, someone started clapping, and he stopped for applause, feeling pleased. But everyone was laughing good-naturedly, and again he realized that the applause was ironic.

Through the noise of the hand-clapping he heard one of the boys saying:

“Good old dad! He’s said it again!”

And another replied:

“Time for George and the refrigerator!”

Ish joined in the laughter. He was not angry this time, but he was crestfallen at having unconsciously repeated himself and even more at having again failed to make his point. Then Ezra was speaking—good old Ezra who was always quick to cover up anyone’s embarrassment!

“Yes, that’s the old speech, but maybe there’s a new point there. How about that business of sending out an expedition?”

To Ish’s surprise a vigorous discussion arose, and in its course he was struck again by the unpredictable quality of people, particularly in a group. He had thrown out the new idea without any special forethought; it had sprung spontaneously from the events of the day—the surprise which had come upon them because they had not taken the pains to explore around the reservoir. He would have considered it the least important of his suggestions, but this was the one that caught the group-imagination. Suddenly everyone was in favor of it, and Ish joined the crowd in vigorous support. It was better, he felt, to do something-anything to break the lethargy.

Soon he felt himself becoming more enthusiastic. His original idea of an “expedition” had merely been that they should explore the country for a hundred miles or so roundabout, but he found that the others had understood him to envisage something much more. Soon, his imagination kindling, he went along with them. In a few minutes everyone was talking of a transcontinental expedition. “Lewis-and-Clark in reverse!” thought Ish to himself, but he said nothing, knowing that few of those present would know anything about Lewis and Clark.

The talk ran on vigorously:

“Too long for walking!”

“Or dog-teams either!”

“Horses would do better, if we had some!”

“There’re sure to be some over in the big valley.”

“Take a long time to catch and break them.”

As he listened, still another thought crossed Ish’s mind. His old dream, the one which had come again that afternoon! How did they really know that the Government of the United States had actually failed? Even if it had, it might have been reconstituted. It would be small and weak, of course, and might not yet have been able to re-establish touch with the West Coast. By their own effort they might make the contact.

Another curious feature was that nearly everyone wanted to go! It was the best evidence you could want as to the way in which people generally—males, at least—were born with itchy feet, always ready to go somewhere else and see new things. The question became one of elimination. Ish was ruled out, scarcely being able to put up a good protest, because of his disability where the mountain-lion had clawed him, far back in the Year of the Lions. George was too old. Ezra, in spite of his vigorous arguments, was disqualified as being the worst shot of them all and generally the least fitted to take care of himself in the open. As for the “boys,” everyone except themselves agreed that they should not leave their wives and young families. In the end the decision was for Robert and Richard, youngsters, but well able to take care of themselves. Their mothers, Em and Molly, looked doubtful, but the enthusiasm of the meeting oven-ode their objections. Robert and Richard were delighted.

The more ticklish questions were really as to the route and the means of transportation. In the last few years no one had used an automobile, and several once-fine cars stood forlorn and ruinous along San Lupo Drive on hopelessly flat tires; the children used them for playhouses. The trouble of keeping automobiles going was more work than pleasure, and the roads in all directions had become so clogged with fallen trees and the bricks of chimneys brought down by the earthquake that there would have been little practical advantage to trying to travel about the city by car, even if you had a workable one. On top of all that, the younger men had never known the fun of driving a car under good conditions, and so had no interest. Finally, where would you go if you had a car? You had no friends to visit in the other part of town, and no movies to go to. To bring cans and bottles home from the grocery stores, the dog-teams did well enough, and they also served for fishing-expeditions to the bay-shore.

Still, the older ones agreed, it might be possible to get an automobile running again, and to drive it for a considerable distance, even on rotten tires, if you kept the speed down below, say, twenty-five miles an hour. And that was really traveling, compared with a dog-team! Fast enough too to take you to New York in a month easily—provided the roads were passable!

That was the other difficult point—the route! Ish was suddenly at home, bringing into play his old knowledge of geography. Everything to the east, across the Sierra Nevada, would be completely blocked by fallen trees and landslides, and the roads to the north would probably be the same. The best chance would certainly be through the more open country toward the south, actually the route by winch Ish had gone to New York once long before. The desert roads might still be almost as good as ever. The Colorado River bridges might still be standing or might have fallen. ne only way to find out would be to go and see.

His excitement rising, the old road-maps standing out more clearly in his mind, Ish planned the route eastward. Beyond the Colorado the mountains should not be too difficult, and there were no big rivers for a long way-until you came to the Rio Grande at Albuquerque. Beyond there, if you could just get through the Sandia Mountains, you had open plateau country, and farther east there would be more and more choice of roads. (You could still find gasoline in drums; that would be no great problem.) Once on the plains, you should be able to get to the Missouri or the Mississippi, and even across those largest rivers; the high steel bridges should still be in. good condition, to judge by the Bay Bridge.

“What an adventure!” he burst out. “I’d give anything to be able to go! You must look everywhere for people-not just one or two, but communities. You must see how other groups are going at solving their’problenis and getting started again.”

Beyond the Mississippi (he resumed planning the route) it would be hard to say. That was natural forest country, and the roads might be badly blocked. On the other hand, fires might have kept the growth down, at least across the old prairie country in Illinois. All they could do would be to go and find out, if they even got that far, and to make decisions then.

By now the candles were getting well burned down. The clock. pointed to ten o’clock, although that was only an approximation. (Ish checked time once in a while by watching the shadow at noon, and the big clock in his living-room was considered standard for the community.) But it certainly was a late hour for people who had no electric lights, and so had gradually got arourid to making more and more use of sunlight.

Suddenly the others were all on their feet and taking leave. When they had gone, Ish and Em sent Robert to bed, and then started to straighten, up the living-room.

Ish felt a nostalgic touch. Things had changed so much and yet sometimes seemed to have changed not at all! This might have been away back in the Old Times, and he instead of Robert might have been the youngster just sent upstairs. He instead of Robert might be the one peeping down through the stairway (as Robert probably was), seeing his father and mother moving about, emptying cigarette trays, shoving cushions back into place, and generally putting the room to rights so that it would not look too devastating when they came down in the morning. It furnished a kind of comfortable little, domestic interim which rounded off the evening and let your nerves settle down from the buzz of conversation.

When they had finished, they sat on the davenport for a last cigarette. Ish’s mind could not help snapping back to the everung’s discussion. Even though things had not turned out as he had at first planned, still he felt that he had carried a main point.

“Communications,” he said. “Communications—maybe that’s the big thing! Take it anywhere in history. When a nation or a community got isolated all by itself, it went conservative and then retrograded. It got to acting just the way George and Maurine are over there, gathering in all the things out of the past, and freezing just at that point. That sort of thing, maybe, happened to Egypt and China. But then when there’s contact with some other civilization, everything loosens up again, and gets going. That’s the way it will be with us.”

She did not say anything, but he knew from the very fact of her silence, that she did not altogether agree.

“What is it, darling?” he asked.

“Well, you see, I was thinking maybe it wasn’t so good for the Indians when they got into communication with the white people, was it? Or how about all my people on the coast of Africa when they got into contact with the slavers?”

“Yes, but maybe that’s just my point. How would we like it if some slavers came over the hill some fine morning, and we had never known they were anywhere around before? Wouldn’t it have been better if the Indians could have sent some scouts over to Europe, and been ready for white men who came with horses and guns?”

He was pleased that he had countered so cleverly. After all, her argument had merely been for letting things slide and for living in ignorance. That kind of philosophy could never win in the long run. But all she said was: “Yes, perhaps, perhaps.”

“Do you remember?” he went on. “I was saying this a long time ago. We’ve got to live more creatively, not just as scavengers. Why, I was saying this way back even at the time our first baby was going to be bom!”

“Yes, I remember. You’ve said it a great many times! And still some way or other, it seems to be easier just to go on opening cans.”

“But the end will come some time, and it shouldn’t come suddenly the way this stopping of the water has today.”