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."

 

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

                                *Chapter 3*

 

When he awoke that next morning, Em was gone from the bed. He lay still,

relaxed, calmly happy. Then his mind seemed to turn over suddenly and take

hold--and there it was, starting to make plans, thinking.

 

After a minute, a slight sense of irritation came over him. "You think too

much!" he said to himself.

 

Why did not *his* mind, like other people's minds, allow him to rest and be

happy without any planning ahead into the future, whether of the next

twenty-four hours or of the next sixty seconds? No, something took over

with a rush and a whir, and even though his body lay still, his mind turned

over and started, and there it was running on, like an idling engine.

*Engine?* Well, naturally, today he would think of engines!

 

But the quiet happiness between sleep and waking had definitely left him,

and pure contentment was gone. With a resentful push of his arm he threw

back the blankets.

 

This morning was bright and sunny. Though the air was cool, he went out to

the little balcony, and stood there, looking off toward the west. During

all these years the trees had everywhere grown taller, but he could still

see, the mountaintop and much of the Bay with its two great bridges.

 

The bridges! Yes, the bridges! To him they still were the most poignant

reminders of the great past. The children, indeed, as he had often

observed, scarcely thought of bridges as anything different from hills or

trees; they were just something that was there. But to him, Ish, the

bridges stood testifying daily to the power and the glory that had been

civilization. So, he thought, some tribesman--Burgund or Saxon--might once

have looked at a strong-built, not yet decayed, Roman gateway or triumphal

arch. But, no, that analogy did not hold. The tribesman was sure and

content in his own ancient folkways; he was first of the new, confident

master of his own world. He, Ish, was more like the last of the old, a

surviving Roman--senator or philosopher--spared by barbarian swords and left

to brood over an empty and ruinous city, anxious and uncertain, knowing

that never again would he meet his friends at the baths or know the deep

security that came to a man when he saw a cohort of the Twelfth march down

the street. But no, he was not just like the Roman either.

 

"History repeats itself," he thought, "but always with variations."

 

Yes--he had had a chance to think a great deal about history! Its

repetitions were not those of a stolid child going over and over the

multiplication table. History was an artist, maintaining the idea but

changing the details, like a composer keeping the same theme but dulling it

to a minor or lifting by an octave, now crooning it with violins, now

blaring it on trumpets.

 

As he, stood on the little balcony in his pajamas, he felt a light breeze

cool on his face. He sniffed it in more deeply, and again it brought to him

the realization that even the smell of things had changed. In the Old Times

you were not conscious of any characteristic smell to a city, and yet there

must have been a complex mingling of smoke and gasoline-ftimes and cooking

and garbage and even of people. But now there was only a fresh tang to the

air, such as he had once associated with country fields and mountain

meadows.

 

But the bridges! His glance came back to them, as if to a light in the

darkness. The Golden Gate Bridge he had not visited in many years. Such a

journey would mean a very long walk, or even a long pull for a dog-team; it

would mean camping out overnight. But he still knew well what the Bay

Bridge was like, and even from where he stood he could see it clearly.

 

He remembered what it had once been--six crowded lanes of swiftly moving

cars, the trucks and buses and electric Mains rumbling on the lower level.

There was, he knew, only one car on the Bridge now--that little empty coupé

parked neatly at the curb near this end of the West Bay span. The yellowed

certificate of registration had been, when he had last noticed, still

fastened to the steering-column--John S. Robertson (or, he could not surely

remember, it might have been James T.) of some number on one of the

numbered streets in Oakland. Now the fires were flat, and the once-bright

green paint had weatherdd to moss-gray.

 

*On the surface, to the eye, they had changed. The towers that hid their

tops in the summer clouds, the mile-long dipping cables, the interlocked

massive beams of steel-no longer they cast back the morning sun with a

bright sheen of silvergray. Over them now rested softly the neutral pall of

rust, red-brown color of desolation. Only, at the tops of the towers, and

along the cables at good spots for perching, the quiet monotone was capped

and spotted with the dead-white smears of the droppings of birds.*

 

*Yes, through the years the sea-birds had perched therethe gulls and

pelicans and cormorants. And on the piers the rats scurried, andfought, and

bred and nested, and lived as only rats can--squeaking and fighting, and

breeding and nesting, and at low tide feeding on mussels and crabs.*

 

*The broad roadway, unused, showed few signs of change--only roughness and a

few cracks here and there. Where blown dust had settled into cracks and

corners, a little grass was growing, and a few hardy weeds, not many.*

 

*Within its deeper structure also, the bridge was still intact and

unchanged. The superficial rust had done no more than wipe out a small

fraction of the safety-factor. At the eastern approach, where salt water

during time of storms splashed against the long-unpainted steel supports,

corrosion had been eaten somewhat deeper. An engineer, if there had been

one, would have shaken his head, and ordered the replacement of some

members before allowing traffic to resume.*

 

*But that was all. In the enduring structure of the bridge, long-dead

civilization still defied the attacks of all the powers of air and sea. *

 

Ish roused himself from his trance-like contemplation, and went in to

shave. The clean touch of the steel was at once soothing and stimulating.

Cheerfully now, happy with the expectation of purposive action, he found

himself thinking of the things to be done that day. He would have to see

that they started in again with work on the outhouses and the well. He

would make more plans about the -expedition into the far interior.

(President Jefferson giving instructions to Lewis and Clark!) He would have

to see what could be done about making a car work once more. Perhaps, he

thought happily, this would be the day on which they would take the road

again, not only in a car literally, but also figuratively--the road toward

the rebirth of civilization.

 

He finished shaving, but the moment seemed golden. So he lathered again,

and started over his face once more.... This community now, these

thirty-some people who held the seed of the future--they were fair enough

individuals, not brilliant by a long way, but sound. The original adults

had been better in spite of their shortcomings than you would have expected

to get if you had merely reached down into the great bin of humanity in the

old United States and taken the first that came by chance. He ran over them

again rapidly in his mind, and ended upon himself. How did he stack up

among the others?

 

Yes, he could remember years ago, in this same house, he had even sat down

and listed his qualifications for the new life. Such things, for instance,

as having had his appendix out. Well, having no appendix was still an

advantage, although actually, no one had been bothered with that kind of

trouble. But he had listed other things which now, he realized, had ceased

to be advantageous. He had listed, for instance, his quality of being able

to get along without other people. That was no longer a virtue. Perhaps, it

was even a vice. But he himself had changed also in those years. If he

listed his qualities now, they would not be exactly the same ones. He had

read widely, and learned much. Even of more importance, he had lived with

Em, and had become the father of a family. He had matured, as a man should.

He had a stronger will, he realized, than George or Ezra. If the test came,

they would yield to him. He, alone, could think into the future.

 

He disassembled the razor, and threw the blade into the medicine closet,

where there were already a lot of blades lying around. He never bothered to

use a blade more than once, because there were so many thousands of them

available that there seemed no need of economy. And yet this problem of

what to do with the old razor-blades was still curiously present. He

remembered jokes about that, from long ago. Funny how a little thing

remained the same after so many big things had changed irrevocably!

 

After breakfast Ish went over to talk with Ezra. They sat on the steps of

the porch. Before long, more people came along, and a little group formed,

as always happened when anybody seemed to be having an interesting

conversation. there was talk back and forth, and a good deal of easygoing

fun-making, with a little horse-play among the younger people. Everybody

seemed to agree, in general, that they ought to get to work again, but

nobody was in a special huffy to begin. Ile delay chafed Ish, especially

when George in his slow way began again to bring up the old question of the

gas-refrigerator.

 

At last, however, Ezra and the three younger men with an accompanying

rag-tag of little boys and girls moved off to begin work. As soon as they

had really started, a kind of enthusiasm fell upon them. Everyone, even

Ezra, suddenly began to run, trying to see who would be the first one there

to start digging. Ish could see Evie running with the rest-although she

could not know what was happening-her blond hair streaming wildly behind

her. Who got there first, he could not tell, but in a moment dirt started

to fly in all directions. He did not know whether to be amused or

perturbed. Everyone seemed to be turning serious work into a kind of play,

as if unable to distinguish between work and play. That might sound fine,

but you could not accomplish much, he thought, without settling down to

labor. As it was, the playful enthusiasm would wear out in half an hour,

and the dirt would move more slowly; then, children first, older ones soon

afterward, everyone would probably drift off to something else.

 

*When once they stalked the deer, or crouched shivering in the mud for the

flight of ducks to alight, or risked their lives on the crags after goats,

or closed in with shouts upon a wild boar at bay--that was not work, though

often the breath came hard and the limbs were heavy. When the women bore

and nursed children, or wandered in the woods for berries and mushrooms, or

tended the fire at the entrance to the rock-shelter--that was not work

either.*

 

*So also, when they sang and danced and made love, that was not play. By

the singing and dancing the spirits offorest and water might be placated--a

serious matter, though still one might enjoy the song and the dance. And as

for the making of love, by that-and by the favor of the gods--the tribe was

maintained.*

 

*So in the first years work and play mingled always, and there were not

even the wordsfor one against the other.*

 

*But centuries flowed by and then more of them, and many things changed.

Man invented civilization, and was inordinately proud of it. But in no way

did civilization change life more than by sharpening the line between work

and play, and at last that division came to be more important than the old

one between sleeping and waking. Skep came to be thought a kind of

relaxation, and "sleeping on the job" a heinous sin. The turning out of the

light and the ringing of the alarm-clock were not so much the symbols of

man's dual life as were the punching of the time-clock and the blowing of

the whistle. Men marched on picket-lines and threw bricks and exploded

dynamite to shift an hourfrom one classification to the other, and other

men fought equally hard to prevent them. And always work became more

laborious and odious, and play grew more artificial and febrile. *

 

Only Ish and George were left standing there by Ezra's porch-steps. Ish

knew that George was getting ready to say something. Funny, Ish thought,

you wouldn't think anyone could pause *until* he had said something; George

paused *before* he said anything.

 

"Well," said George, and then he paused again. "Well.... I guess I better

go get some planks ... so I can wall in the sides ... after she gets

deeper."

 

"Fine!" said Ish. George at least, Ish knew, would get the work done. He

had carried the habit of work over so strongly from the Old Times that he

perhaps could never really play.

 

George went off after his planks, and Ish went to find Dick and Bob, who

had been collecting and harnessing the dogteams.

 

He found the two boys in front of his own house. Three dog-teams were

ready. A rifle-barrel was sticking out from one wagon.

 

Ish considered for a moment. Was there anything else he should take along?

He felt a lack.

 

"Oh, say, Bob," he said, "run in, please, and get my hammer.11 "Aah, why do

you want thatT'

 

"Oh, well, nothing in particular, I guess. It might come in handy for

breaking a lock."

 

"You can always use a brick," said Bob, but he went.

 

Ish used the momentary delay to pick up the rifle and check that the

magazine was full. This was pure routine, but Ish himself was the one who

insisted on it. There was only a very small chance of meeting a

rambunctious bull or a she-bear with cubs, but you took the rifle along for

insurance. Ish, at times when he woke up in the night, still -remembered

very vividly the occasion when the dogs had trailed him.

 

Bob came back, and at once handed the hammer to his father. As Ish gripped

the handle, he felt a strange little sense of security. The familiar weight

of the dangling four-pound head brought him comfort. It was the same old

hammer that he had picked up long ago, just before the rattlesnake bit him.

The handle had been weathered and cracked then, and it still was. He had

often thought of choosing a new handle in some hardware store and fitting

it to the head. As a matter of fact he could just as well have picked out a

whole new tool. Actually, however, he had very little use for the harnmer.

By tradition he took it along every New Years Day when he cut the numerals

into the rock, but that was about its only practical value, and even for

that purpose a lighter one might have been better.

 

So now he stuck the hammer into the wagon by his feet, and felt

comfortable. "All ready?" he called to Dick and Bob, and just then,

something caught his eye.

 

A small boy was standing, half-hidden in the bushes, looking out at the

wagons. Ish recognized the slight figure. "Oh, Joey!" he called on impulse.

"Want to go along?"

 

Joey stepped out from the bushes, but hung back.

 

"I have to help digging the well," he said.

 

"Oh, never mind, they'll get the well dug without you or" [he added to

himself] "they more likely won't get it either with or without you."

 

Joey took no more urging. Obviously this was what he really been hoping. He

ran to Ish's wagon, and climbed snugly at his father's feet where he could

just find room. He held the hammer in his lap.

 

Then the dogs were off with a furious rush and an outburst of barking, as

they always liked to start out. The two other teams followed, with the

excited boys yelling and their dogs barking too. The dogs around the houses

barked back. It made a fair imitation of a riot. As always, hunched in the

little wagon behind six dogs, Ish felt ridiculous, as if he were acting in

some silly pageant.

 

Once the dogs had started, they stopped wasting breath barking, and settled

to a slower pace. Ish collected thoughts, and went over his plans.

 

He made his first stop at what had once been a station. The door was open.

Inside the little office, though it was walled in glass, the sunlight

filtered through in subdued yellow. Twenty-one years of fly-specks and

blown dust had coated the windows thickly.

 

He saw the old telephone directory hanging from its book beside the

long-dead telephone. As he took the book and opened it, bits of brittle

yellowed paper broke off from the pages and went fluttering to the floor.

He found the address of what had once been the local agency for jeeps. Yes,

with the roads in the condition they were, a jeep would be the thing.

 

Half an hour later, when they came to the proper streetcomer, Ish looked

through the dirty display-window, and his heart jumped with boyish

excitement at seeing a jeep actually standing there.

 

The boys tied up the teams, and the dogs, well-trained, lay down in orderly

fashion without snarling the tram. Dick tried the door; it was locked.

 

"Here," said Ish, "take the hammer, and smash the lock."

 

"Oh, here's a brick!" said Dick, and then went running off down the street

toward the remains of a chimney that had fallen in the earthquake. Bob went

with him.

 

Ish had a feeling of irritation. What was wrong with those boys? At best a

brick was not as good as the hammer for smashing a door in. He ought to

know; he had smashed a lot of them.

 

He stepped three strides across the sidewalk, and swinging with the hammer

on the rhythm of his last stride, he sent the door crashing inwards. That

would show them! After a, there had been sense in bringing the hammer!

 

The jeep that was standing there in the display-room had four flat tires,

and showed a thick layer of dust, but under the dust the red paint was

shiny. The speedometer showed a total of nine miles. Ish shook his head.

 

"No," he said, "this one's too new. I mean, she *was* too new! One that was

better broken in will be easier for us."

 

In the garage behind the display-room, there were several others. All their

tires were flat, extremely flat. One had its hood up and various of its

parts were scattered around. It must have been in for a repair-job. Ish

passed that one by.

 

There seemed little to choose between the others. The speedometer of one of

them stood at six thousand, and Ish decided to try that one.

 

The boys looked at him expectantly, and Ish felt that he was putting

himself to the test.

 

"Now remember," he said defensively, "I don't know whether I can get this

thing going or not. I don't know whether anyone could--after twenty years

and more! I'm not even a mechanic, you know! I was just one of those

ordinary fellows who had driven a car quite a lot and could change a fire,

or tighten a fan-belt, maybe. Don't expect too much.... Well, first, we

might try to see if we can move her."

 

Ish made sure that the brake was off and the gears in neutral.

 

"All right," he said. "The tires are flat, and the grease is stiff in the

wheel-bearings, and for all I know maybe the bearings themselves have gone

flat from standing twenty years the same way. But come on and get behind

her, and we'll shove. This floor is level anyway.... All right, now. All

together--shove!" The car lurched suddenly forward!

 

The boys were yelping with pleasure and excitement, and their noise set the

dogs to barking. You would have thought it was all over, whereas all that

had been proved was that the wheels still would turn.

 

Next Ish put the gear into high, and they shoved again. This was a

different story. The car did not budge.

 

The question was now whether the engine and gears were merely stiff from

disuse or whether they were actually rusted tight somewhere.

 

Looking under the hood, Ish saw that the engine was well smeared with

grease, as engines usually were. There was little sign of external rust,

but that might show nothing about what had happened inside.

 

The boys looked at him expectantly, and he thought of expedients. He could

try the other car. He could have the boys bring the dog-teams in and hitch

them to the car. Then he had another idea.

 

The jeep which had been in the process of being repaired was only some ten

feet behind the one they had chosen to try. If they could shove that one

forward out of gear, they might send it against the rear of the other with

enough momentum to make something give. Also they might smash something,

but that was no matter!

 

They brought this jeep within two feet of the other, and rested. Then,

altogether, they shoved again.

 

There was a satisfactory bang of metal on metal. Going to look, they found

that the first jeep had moved three inches. After that, they could move it

with hard pushing, even when it was in gear. Ish began to feel triumphant.

 

"You see," he said, "once you get something moving it's easier to keep

moving!" (Then he wondered whether that principle applied to groups of

people, as well as to engines.)

 

The battery of course was dead, but Ish had faced that problem before.

First, however, he gave the boys instructions to drain all oil out of the

car and replace it with oil from sealed cans, using the lightest oil

available.

 

Leaving them at work, he went off with a dog-team. In half an hour he was

back with a battery. He connected it, and turned the key in the ignition

switch, watching the needle on the ammeter. Nothing happened. Perhaps the

wiring was gone somewhere.

 

But he tapped the ammeter, and the long unused needle suddenly disengaged

and went jiggling over to *Discharge.* There was life! He felt around for

the starter-button.

 

"Well, boys," he said, "here's a real test.... Yes, I guess this is the

acid test, seeing that that's what we have in the battery!" But the boys

grinned blankly, never having heard the expression, and Ish found himself a

little disturbed that he had been able to make a pun at such a climax. He

pressed t ' he starter-button. There was a long grunt.

 

Then slowly the engine turned!

 

After the first turn it moved more easily, and then more q,asily still. So

far, so good!

 

The gasoline-tank was empty, like most of them. these days. Probably their

caps were not air-tight, or else the gasoline seeped through the

carburetor-Ish did not know.

 

They found gasoline in a drum, and poured five gallons into the tank. Ish

put in fresh spark-plugs. He primed the carburetor, feeling a little proud

that he knew enough to do so. He got into the seat, set the choke, snapped

the ignition on again, and tramped on the starter-button.

 

The engine grunted, turned over, turned faster, and then suddenly roared

into life.

 

The boys were shouting. Ish sat triumphantly, nursing the throttle with his

foot. He felt a sense of pride in the old achievements of civilization-in

all the honest design and honest work of engineers and machinists which had

gone into fashioning this engine, fit to work after twenty-some years of

idleness.

 

The engine, however, died suddenly when the gas in the carburetor was

exhausted. They primed and ran it again, and still again, and finally the

ancient pump brought up gas from the tank, and the engine ran continuously.

The problem now--and perhaps the worst of all--was tires.

 

In the same display-room there was one of the usual tireracks well raised

above the floor. But the tires had been standing upright for so long that

they had sagged a little under their own weight, and the rubber, where it

had rested against the rack, was badly indented. Such tires, even though

they might last for a few miles, held obviously little possibility for a

long run. By searching carefully, they finally found some fires which had

been resting on their sides, and these seemed to be in'better condition,

although the rubber was hard and full of little cracks, and gave an

impression of being dead.

 

They found a jack, and raised the first wheel from the ground. Even to get

the wheel off was a struggle, for the nuts had begun to rust to the

threads.

 

Bob and Dick were unaccustomed to the use of tools, and little Joey kept

getting in the way with his eagerness, and was more hindrance than help.

Even in the Old Times Ish had never dismounted a fire except once or twice

in an emergency, and he had forgotten the tricks, if he had ever known

them.

 

They spent a long time sweating the first tire off the rim. Bob barked a

knuckle, and Dick tore a finger-nail half off. Getting the "new" tire onto

the rim was even more of a struggle, both because of their clumsiness and

because of the tire's own aged stiffness. At last, tired and thoroughly

irritated with one another and with the whole job, they finished getting

this one tire onto the rim.

 

Just as they were pausing, triumphant but fired, Ish heard Joey calling to

him from across the garage.

 

"What is it, Joey?' he answered, a little petulantly.

 

"Come here, Daddy."

 

"Oh, Joey, I'm tired," he said, but he went, and the two other boys trailed

with him. Joey was pointing at the spare wheel of one of the jeeps.

 

"Look, Daddy," he said, "why couldn't you use that one?"

 

"All Ish could do was to burst out laughing.

 

"Well, boys," he said to Dick and Bob, "that's the time we made fools of

ourselves!"

 

The tire on the spare wheel had been suspended in the air all these years,

and it was already on a wheel. They had not needed to shift any tires. All

they had needed to do was to take this and the other spares, pump them up,

and put them on their own jeep. They had done a lot of work for no purpose

because they had just barged along and not used their heads.

 

Then Ish, suddenly recognizing his own stupidity, strangely gained a new

pleasure. Joey was the one who had seen! But by now it was time for lunch.

 

They had brought along only their spoons and always essential can-openers.

Now they went off to the nearest grocery store.

 

Like all the others it was a scene of devastation and litter and ruin. A

mess! It was depressing to Ish, even horrible, in spite of the many times

he had seen its like. The boys, however, thought nothing of it, never

having seen a grocery store in any other state. Rats and mice had chewed

into all the cartons, and the floor was deep with the remnants of cardboard

and paper, mixed with rodent droppings. Even the toilet paper had been

chewed, probably for nesting.

 

But the rodents could do nothing with glass or tin, and so the bottles and

cans were undisturbed. They even looked startlingly neat, at first glance,

in contrast with the mess elsewhere. When you looked closer, they were not

really neat. Droppings were scattered even on these shelves, and many

labels had been chewed, probably because of the paste beneath the paper.

Also the colors had faded, so that the once bright red tomatoes on the

labels were a sickly yellow, and the rosy-cheeked peaches had almost

disappeared.

 

The labels, however, were still readable. At least, Ish and Joey could read

them, and the others, though they got stuck on many hard words like

*apricots* and *asparagus,* could at least tell what was inside by looking

at the pictures. They selected what they wanted.

 

The boys were quite ready to sit down in the liner and eat. Ish, however,

wanted to get outside. So they went and sat on the curb in the sun.

 

They did not bother with a fire, but ate a cold lunch out of the cans, each

to his choice, from a selection of baked beans, sardines, salmon, liver

loaf, comed beef, olives, peanuts, and asparagus. Such a meal, Ish knew,

ran high in proteins and fats and low in carbohydrates, but there were few

carbohydrates that had been canned or bottled, and the few that you could

find, like hominy and macaroni, called for heating. For drink, they had

tomato juice. They ate a desert of canned nectarines and pineapple.

 

When they had finished, they wiped off the spoons and can-openers and put

them back into their pockets. The halfempty cans they merely left lying.

There was so much litter in the street already that something more did not

matter.

 

The boys, Ish was glad to notice, were in a hurry to get back to work at

the car. They had apparently begun to feel a little of the intoxication

that was likely to come from a mastery over power. He himself was a little

tired, and a new idea was shaping in his mind.

 

"Say, boys," he said, "Bob and Dick, I mean. Do you think you can go back

and shift those wheels by yourselves?"

 

"Sure," said Dick, but he looked puzzled.

 

"What I mean is--well, Joey is too little to be much use, and I'm tired.

It's only four blocks to the City Library from here. Joey can go with me.

Want to, Joey?"

 

Joey was already on his feet with the excitement of the idea. The other

boys were happy to get back to the tires.

 

As they walked toward the Library, Joey ran ahead in his eagerness. It was

ridiculous, thought Ish, that he had never taken Joey there before. But all

this matter of Joey's reading and intellectual interests had developed very

rapidly.

 

Because of his policy of saving the great University Library as a reserve,

Ish had been using this library for his own purposes for many years, and

had long since forced the lock on the main entrance. Now he pushed the

heavy door open, and entered proudly with his youngest son.

 

They stood in the main reading-room, and then wandered, through the stacks.

Joey said nothing, but Ish could see his eyes drink the titles in as he

passed. They came out from the stacks again, and stood in the main lobby by

the entrance looking back. Then Ish had to break the silence.

 

"Well, what do you think of it?"

 

"Is it all the books in the world?"

 

"Oh, no! Just a few of them."

 

"Can I read them?"

 

"Yes, you can read any you want to. Always bring them back, and put them in

place again, so they won't get lost and scattered."

 

"What's in the books?"

 

"Oh, something of pretty near everything. If you read them all, you would

know a lot."

 

"I'll read them all!"

 

Ish felt a sudden warning shadow fall on the happiness of his mind.

 

"Oh, no, Joey! You couldn't possibly read them all, and you wouldn't want

to. There are dull ones and stupid ones and silly ones, and even bad ones.

But I'll help you pick out the good ones. Now, though, we'd better go."

 

He was actually glad to get Joey away. The stimulation of seeing so many

books so suddenly seemed almost more than was good for the frail little

boy. Ish was glad that he had not taken him to the University Library. In

due time now he could take him there.

 

As they walked toward the garage, Joey did not run ahead. This time he kept

close to his father; he was thinking. Finally he spoke:

 

"Daddy, what is the name of those things that are on the ceilings of our

rooms--like shiny white balls? You said once they used to make light."

 

"Oh, those are called 'electric lights.'"

 

"If I read the books, could I make them make light again?"

 

Ish felt a sudden intoxication of pleasure, and immediately after it a

sense of fear. This must not go too fast!

 

"Well, Joey, I don't know," he said, trying to speak with unconcern. "Maybe

you could, maybe not. Things like that take time, and a lot of people

working together. You've got to go slow."

 

Then they walked without speaking. Ish was proud and triumphant that Joey

had absorbed so much of his own feeling, and yet he was fearful. Joey was

moving even *too* fast. The intellect should not run ahead of the rest of

the personality. Joey needed physical strength and emotional solidity.

Still, he was going far!

 

Ish came out of his thoughts to the sound of retching, and saw that Joey

was vomiting upon a pile of rubble.

 

"That lunch!" thought Ish guiltily. "I let him eat too much mixture. He's

done this before." Then he realized that the excitement had probably been

more a factor than the lunch.

 

When Joey felt better, and they finally got back to the garage, they found

that the boys had finished the work of shifting tires and pumping them up.

Ish felt his old curiosity about the car and the expedition rising up

again.

 

He got into the car, and once more started the engine. He nursed it

lovingly, and then raced it a little to let it grow warm. Well, the engine

was running and the tires were hold-, ing, at least temporarily. But there

were a lot of, questions about clutch and transmission and steering-gear

and brakes, besides all those mysterious but vital things which lurked

somewhere in the make-up of automobiles and of which he scarcely even knew

the names. They had filled the radiator, but the water-circulation might

well be clogged somewhere, and even that was enough to render a car of no

value. But here we are again worrying about the future!

 

"All right!" he said. "Let's go!"

 

The engine was muttering contentedly. He threw the clutch out, and worked

the stiff transmission into low gear. He let the clutch in, and the car

lurched forward heavily, as if its bearings were almost too stiff to be

started again, as if their fine steel balls like the rubber tires, had

flattened from long stand.!, ing in one position. Yet the car moved, and he

felt it respond to the stiff steering gear. He pressed upon the brake, and

the car came to a stop, having moved only six feet. Yet it had moved, and

(of equal importance) it had stopped.

 

He had a sudden feeling of more than pleasure, reaching to, the height of

exaltation. It was not all a dream! If, in one day' work a man and three

boys could get a jeep to running again., what could not a whole community

accomplish in the course of a few years?

 

The boys unloosed the dogs from one of the wagons to home by themselves.

They hitched the wagon behind one the others. Then Dick drove one team, and

Bob the ther. Ish, with Joey beside him, started out bravely.

 

Fallen buildings had left heaps of debris in the street. blowing winds had

drifted leaves and dust upon the bricks and the winter rains had washed the

whole into semblances natural banks and hillocks. Grass was growing

thickly; on o little mound there was even a fair stand of bushes. Ish

stiffly hither and thither, finding a way along the clogged streets. He was

nearing home when he sharply over a brick and heard a bang as the left rear

tire out. He ended the day driving home on one flat tire, badly, but taking

it slowly and making the last grade successfully, a little ahead of the

dog-teams. In spite of this final mishap, he felt that he had done well.

 

He let the jeep roll to a stop in front of the house, leaned back in

triumphant relief. At least he had got it home.

 

Then he pressed the horn-button, and after these years of silence it

responded wonderfully--TOOT-A-TOOT-TOOT!

 

He expected children, and older people too, to come hurrying from all

directions at the unaccustomed sound, but there was no one. Only a sudden

barking of dogs sprang up from everywhere. Then the team-dogs joined in the

chorus, as they now came up the hill, and the boys joined him. Ish felt a

sudden emptiness of fear inside him. Once before, long ago, he had come

into a strangely empty town, and blown the horn of his car, and now it was

easy enough to think that something might have happened when your whole

universe consisted of only some thirty more or less defenseless people. But

that was only for a moment.

 

Then he saw Mary, her baby on her arm, come unconcernedly out of the house

down the street, and wave to him. "They've all gone bull-dodging!" she

called.

 

The boys were suddenly excited to join the sport. They loosed the dogs from

the carts, and were off, not even asking permission of Ish. Even Joey, now

wholly recovered from his illness, rushed off with the others. Ish felt

suddenly left alone and neglected, his triumph at restoring transportation

gone suddenly sour in his mouth. Only Mary came to look at the jeep. She

stared with big enough eyes, but was as untalkative as the baby, who also

stared.

 

Ish got out of the jeep, and stretched. His long legs were cramped from its

close quarters, and his bad loin ached from even this small amount of

bumping.

 

"Well," he said with a little pride in his voice, "what do you think of it,

Mary?" Mary was his own daughter, but she was not much like either of her

parents, and her stolidity often bothered him.

 

"Good!" she said with a Choctaw-like imperturbability.

 

Ish felt that there was not much to follow up along that line. "Where's the

bull-dodging?" he asked.

 

"Down by the big oak tree."

 

Just then they heard the loud sound of yelling, and Ish knew that someone

had made a good maneuver at dodging.

 

"Well, I guess I might as well go down and see the national sport," he

said, though he knew the irony would be wasted.

 

"Yes," said Mary, and began to stroll back with her baby toward her own

house. 200

 

Ish went off on the path down the hill, across lots, through what had once

been someone's backyard. "National sport!" he was still thinking to himself

bitterly, although he realized that the bitterness might be partly because

his own triumphant entry had been spoiled. He heard another shout from

ahead which indicated that again someone put himself within a few inches of

the bull's homs.

 

Bull-dodging was dangerous, too, although actually no one had ever been

killed or even badly hurt. Ish rather disapproved of the whole business,

but he did not feel that he was in a position to set himself firmly against

it. The boys needed some way to get rid of their energy, and perhaps they

even needed something dangerous. By and large, life was perhaps too quiet

and too safe these days. Possibly--the image of Mary came to his mind

again--too safe and unadventurous life tended to produce stolid people.

These days children never had to be warned against crossing the street

because of automobiles, and there were dozens of other daily hazards of the

old civilization such as the common cold, not to mention atomic bombs,

which nobody ever needed to consider. You had the ordinary run of sprains,

cuts, and bruises, what you expected among people living largely in the

open, and handling tools like hatchets and knives. Once, too, Molly had

burned her hands badly, and there had been a near-drowning when a

three-year-old had slipped from the pier at fishing.

 

Now he came into the edge of the little open space on the side of the hill,

fairly level, close to the flat rock where the numerals of the years were

incised. It had once been a park. The bull was being played in the center

of the grassy spot. It was not a lawn such as you expected in a park. The

grass was a foot tall at this time of year, and would have been taller if

it had not been eaten down, by cattle and elk.

 

Harry, Molly's fifteen-year-old, was playing the bull, and Ish's own Walt

was backing him up-what they called "playing halfback"--a bit of jargon

surviving from the Old Times. Although Ish did not consider himself an

expert, his first glance was enough to let him know that this particular

bull was not very dangerous. He must have been of almost pure Hereford

blood, and still had the red coat with the white face and front markings.

Nevertheless he showed the cumulative effects of ancestors who for

twenty-one years had lived as, range cattle, knowing no man-supplied

shelter or food and surviving as best they could. The legs were longer; the

barrel of the body, slimmer; the horns, bigger. At the moment, there was a

pause in the game as the already tiring bull stood uncertain, and Harry was

taunting him to charge.

 

At the edge of the glade among the trees on the uphill side, the spectators

were sitting--almost everybody from the community in fact, including Jeanie

with her baby. Among the trees they would have no trouble getting out of

the road of the bull, if by any chance he should suddenly decide to leave

the open ground. There were several dogs to be loosed in an emergency, and

Jack sat with a rifle across his knees.

 

The bull suddenly came to life, and charged ponderously uphill with enough

power to have wiped out twenty boys. But Harry dodged neady, and the bull

came to a halting stop, uncertain and confused.

 

A little girl (she was Jean's Betty) sprang suddenly from the group, and

cried out that she wanted to take over. She was a wild, dashing little

figure, her skirts tucked up high around her thighs, her long sun-tanned

legs flashing back and forth in the sunshine. Harry yielded place to his

half-sister. The bull was tired now, and fit for a girl to take over.

Betty, aided by Walt, managed to provoke a few charges which were of no

difficulty to dodge. And then, suddenly, a little boy cried out loudly,

"I'm going in!"

 

It was Joey. Ish frowned, but he knew that he would not have to exert

himself to forbid it. Joey was only nine, and it was strictly against the

rules for anyone so young to try bulldodging, even as halfback. The older

boys enforced this discipline quickly enough. They were kindly, but firm.

 

"Aah, Joey," said Bob from his age of sixteen, "you're not big enough yet.

You've got to wait a couple of years, anyway."

 

"Yeah?" said Joey. "I'm as good as Walt is, anyway."

 

The way he said it, suggested to Ish that Joey might have been doing a

little practice on his own, sneaking off to find some easy-looking bull and

playing it for a while, perhaps with the aid of Josey, his devoted twin

sister. Ish felt a quick coldness pass through him at the thought of any

danger to Joey--to Joey, particularly.

 

After a few more half-hearted protests, however, Joey had to subside.

 

By this time the bull, fat from the good grazing, was thoroughly tired and

winded. He stood, only pawing the grass a little, while the wildly

cavorting Betty swarmed around him, and even turned a handspring. But the

sport was obviously, over, and the spectators began to drift off. The older

boys called to Betty and Walter. Suddenly the bull, much to his relief,

doubtless, was merely left standing alone in the center of the grassy spot.

 

Back at the houses, Ish went to look at the well, to see how much work had

been done during the day. He found that it had been sunk only a foot or so.

Shovels and picks were left scattered about. All too obviously, the

easygoing nature of the community and the special attraction of

bull-dodging had prevented much labor being performed. Ish looked at the

shallow hole a little grimly.

 

Yet during the day enough water had been carted in from a spring to provide

plenty for all practical purposes. At dinner the veal roast was extremely

good, and the only thing lacking to make a really excellent meal for Ish

was that his Napa Gamay had soured a little in the bottle, after standing

for better than a quarter-century, if the vintage-date on the label could

be trusted.

 

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

                                *Chapter 4*

 

He planned that the boys should leave on the fourth day. That was another

difference between the Old Times and these now. Then it was all so

complicated that anything important had to be worked out a long time ahead;

now you just decided on something, and did it. Besides, the season of the

year was favorable, and he feared that delay would only permit the

enthusiasm for the expedition to seep away.

 

Throughout the intervening days he kept the boys busy. He practiced them at

driving. He took them to the garage again, and picked up some spare parts,

such as a fuel-pump and a coil. To the best of his ability he showed them

how to change parts, and they practiced a little.

 

"Or," he said, "you might find it easier, if you have trouble, to stop in

at some garage and get another one running, just as we did here. That might

be easier than to try patching this one."

 

But most of all Ish enjoyed the planning of the route. In the service

stations he found road-maps, yellow and faded. He studied them eagerly,

bringing into play his old knowledge of the land, trying to imagine how

flood and windstorm and treegrowth would have affected the roads at

different points.

 

"Head south first, for Los Angeles," he concluded finally. "That was a big

center of population in the Old Times. There are probably some people left,

maybe a community."

 

On the map he let his glance run southward toward Los Angeles, following

the old familiar red lines of the routes.

 

"Try 99 first," he said. "You can probably get through. If it's blocked in

the mountains turn back toward Bakersfield and work across to 466, and try

it over Tehachapi Pass...."

 

He paused, and in the pause he suddenly felt his throat tight, and his eyes

brimming. Nostalgia filled him. The names, it *must* have been, that did

it! Burbank, Hollywood, Pasadena--once they had been living towns. He had

known them. Now coyotes hunted jack-rabbits through their drought-stricken

parks and back-lots. Yet all the names still stood out black and plain on

the maps.

 

He swallowed and winked, for he saw the two boys looking at him.

 

"O.K.," he said briskly. "From Los Angeles, or from Barstow, if you can't

make Los Angeles, take 66 east. That was the way I went. Across the desert,

things should be easy. But watch your water. If the Colorado River bridge

is there, well and good. If not, swing north and try the road across

Boulder Dam. The dam will be there still, certainly."

 

On the maps he showed them how to figure out alternate routes, if they

found themselves blocked anywhere. But with the jeep he thought that they

could usually get through with no more than the occasional cutting back of

a fallen tree, or an hour's work with pick and shovel to make a track

across a landslide. After all, even in twenty-one years, the great highways

would not be entirely blocked.

 

"You may have some trouble in Arizona," he went on. "After you get to the

mountains, but then.... "

 

"What's Arry--? What is it?--Arry-*zone*-a?"

 

Bob was asking, and it was a fair enough question. But Ish found himself

stumped to answer it. What Arizona once had been--even that was a hard one.

Had it been a certain amount of territory, or had it been essentially a

corporate entity, an abstraction. Even so, how could he explain in a few

words what a "state" had been? Much less, how could he explain what Arizona

now was?

 

"Oh," he said finally, "Arizona--that was just a name for that part over

there beyond the river." Then he had an inspiration, "See, on the map it's

this part inside the yellow line."

 

"Yes," said Bob, "I suppose they had a fence around it?"

 

"Well, I doubt whether they had."

 

"That's right. They wouldn't have needed a fence where the river was."

 

(Let it pass, thought Ish. He thinks Arizona is like an old fenced-in

backyard, only bigger.)

 

After that, however, he stopped referring to states, and mentioned cities.

The boys knew what a city was, that is, it was a lot of littered streets

and weather-beaten buildings. Of course, since they themselves lived in a

city, they could easilyimagine another city and another community like

their own.

 

He routed them through Denver, Omaha, and Chicago, wanting to see what

would have happened in the great cities. By that time it would be spring.

Beyond that, he told them to try for Washington and New York, by the route

that seemed the most passable.

 

"The Pennsylvania Turnpike may still be the best way to get across the

mountains. It will be hard to block a four-lane highway like that, and even

the tunnels should still be open."

 

For the return route he left them to their own choice; by that time they

would know more about conditions than he did. He suggested, however, that

they swing far to the south, since on account of the cold winters there

would probably have been a drift of population toward the Gulf Coast.

 

They drove the jeep every day, and thus, by the process of elimination

through blow-outs, they got tires which seemed likely to stand up under

some wear.

 

On the fourth day they left, the back of the jeep jammed with an extra

battery, tires, and other equipment; the boys themselves, half-wild with

the excitement of the prospect; their mothers, close to tears at the

thought of so long a separation; Ish himself, nervous with the desire to go

along.

 

*The boundaries, like the fences, drew lines that were hard and

uncompromising. They too were man-made, abstractions dominating reality.

Where you crossed by the highway, on a line, the road-surface changed. It

was smooth in Delaware, but when you went into Maryland, you felt a change

in vibration, and all at once the tires hummed differently. "State line,"

the sign read. "Entering Nebraska. Speed limit 60 M. P. H. " So even right

and wrong altered with the sharp snap of a discontinuity, andyou stepped

harder on the throttle.*

 

*At the national boundary the flags showed different colors, though the

same breeze blew them. You stopped for customs and immigration, and were

suddenly a stranger, unfamiliar. "Look," you said, "that policeman has a

different uniform!" You got new money, and even for picture post-cards the

stamps had to have another face on them. "Better drive extra carefully,"

you said. "Wouldn't be good to get arrested over here." That was a funny

business! You stepped across a line you couldn't see, and then you were one

of those queer people--a foreigner!*

 

*But boundaries fade even faster than fences. Imaginary lines need no rust

to efface them. Then there will be no quick shifts, and adjustments, and

perhaps it will be easier on the mind. They will say as in the beginning:

"About where oaks start to get thin, and the pines take over. " They will

say: "Over across there--can't tell exactly--in the foothills where it gets

drier and you start seeing sage-brush.*

 

After the boys had left, there seemed to be a settling down into another

one of those calm and happy periods which had led them to name one certain

time the Good Year. Day after day things drifted, week after week. The

rains held on late--hard showers, quickly clearing afterwards, with fine

blue weather, so that the far-off towers of the Golden Gate Bridge stood

out clean-etched and still majestic against the the western sky.

 

In the mornings, Ish usually managed to herd enough of them together to get

some work done on the well. Their first shaft hit bed rock before water,

for on the slope of the hill the soil was thin. But they managed to take

the second shaft down, until they struck a good flow. They walled the well

in with planking, and covered it, and rigged a hand-pump. By this time,

they had all become accustomed to using the outhouses, and the thought of

the labor involved to make the toilets work again by means of pipes and

tanks and hand-pumping seemed more than was worthwhile. And so they put it

off.

 

The fishing was good now. Everyone wanted to go fishing, and other matters

seemed to take second place.

 

In the evenings, they often gathered together, and sang songs to the

accompaniment of Ish's accordion. He sometimes suggested that they should

try singing parts. When they did, old George carried a good resonant bass,

and the others caught on to the idea, but no one seemed very much

interested in this sophistication.

 

No, Ish decided again as he had decided long before, they were not a very

musical group. Years before, he had tried bringing home records of

symphonies and playing them on the wind-up phonograph. Such rendition of

course was not very good; even so, you could follow the themes. But he

never got the children interested. At some melodic passage they might leave

off their own playing or wood-carving and look up, listening with pleasure

for a moment. As soon, however, as the development became a little

complicated, the children went back to their own play. Well, what could you

expect of merely a few average people and their descendants? (No, a little

better than average, he insisted--but possibly not in musical appreciation.)

In the Old Times one American in a hundred might have had a deep or real

appreciation of Beethoven, and those few were probably just among those

more sophisticated and intense people who, like the more highly bred dogs,

had apparently been less able to survive the shock of the Great Disaster.

 

As an experiment, he also tried jazz records. At the loud blare of the

saxophones, the children again left off their own enterprises, but again

the interest had been momentary. *Le jazz hot!* It too, with all its

involuted rhythms, had been a sophistication; it appealed, not to a simple

and primitive mind, but to one that was highly developed and specialized,

at least along that particular line. You might as well expect the children

to appreciate Picasso or Joyce.

 

In fact--and this was something that encouraged him--the younger generation

showed little interest in listening to the phonograph at all; they

preferred to do their own singing. He took this as a good sign: that they

would rather participate than listen, rather be actors than audiences.

 

They failed, however, to take the next step and compose tunes and words of

their own. Ish himself occasionally tried making up a verse with topical

references, but either he had no knack for it or else his efforts met with

unconscious resistance as being a violation of tradition.

 

So they sang in unison against the background of the standardized chords

and bumping bass of the accordion. The simpler tunes, he observed, they

liked the best. The words seemed to make little difference. They sang

"Carry me back to old Virginny" although they had no idea what "Virginny"

was or who was asking to be carried back. They sang "Halleluiah, I'm a

bum!" without caring what a bum was. They sang plaintively of Barbara Allen

although none of them had even known of unrequited love.

 

Often, in those weeks, Ish thought of the two boys in the Jeep. Perhaps the

children would call for "Home on the Range," and as his left hand shifted

to the G-buttons, he would have a sudden thought, and a pang with it. Just

now Bob and Dick might be somewhere far out in the old range country.

 

Playing mechanically, he would wonder. Were the deer and the antelope

playing there now? Or was it cattle? Or had the buffalo come back?

 

More often, however, thoughts of the boys came to him in the dark hours of

the night when some dream, caused by his very anxiety, brought him out of

sleep in sudden terror to lie nervously considering possibilities.

 

How could he ever have let them try it? He thought of all the dangers of

flood and storm. And the car! You could never trust young fellows with a

car, and even though there was no danger from traffic, they might run off

the road. There would be many bad places. The boys would take chances.

 

There would be mountain-lions and bears and bad-tempered bulls. Bulls were

worst of all, because they never seemed to have lost a certain contempt for

men, sprung perhaps from age-old familiarity.

 

No--more likely, the car would break down. Then they would be marooned,

hundreds or even thousands of miles away!

 

But what raised the worst shivers in Ish at such moments in the night was

the thought of *men*! What people might the boys encounter? What strange

communities--warped and perverted by curious circumstances, unrestrained by

any flywheel of tradition! There might be communities with universal and

death-dealing hostility to the stranger. Outlandish religious rites might

have developed--human sacrifice, cannibalism! Perhaps, like Odysseus

himself, the two youngsters would encounter lotus-eaters and sirens and

unspeakable Laestrygonians.

 

This community of their own; here on the hillside, might be stodgy and dull

and uncreative, but it had at least preserved the human decencies. That was

no guarantee that other comunities had done the same.

 

But in the morning light, all these bug-a-boos of the darkness lost their

reality. Then he thought of the two boys as enjoying themselves, stimulated

by new scenes, perhaps by new people. Even if the car should break down and

they were unable to start another one, still they could walk back over the

same road they had driven. There would be no lack of food. Twenty miles a

day, at least a hundred a week--even if they had to walk a thousand miles,

they should be home before fall. Actually, if they kept a car running, they

should be home a great deal sooner. When he thought of it, he could

scarcely contain himself for excitement at the thought of all the news they

would bring.

 

So the weeks passed, and the rains were over. The grass on the hills lost

its fresh greenness, and then seeded and turned brown. In the mornings the

low summer clouds hung so close that the towers of the bridges sometimes

reached up into them.

 

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

                                *Chapter 5*

 

As time passed, Ish stopped thinking, and dreaming, so much about the two

boys. Their being gone so long seemed to show that they had traveled far.

It was barely time to expect their return from a transcontinental journey,

and certainly not time to begin worrying over their failure to return.

Other thoughts, and worries, occupied his mind.

 

He had reorganized the school, and was back at what he felt to be his

essential work of teaching the young ones to read and write and work a

little arithmetic, and thus to maintain for The Tribe some hold on the

basic skills of civilization. But the young ones, ungratefully, fidgeted on

their chairs, and looked restlessly toward the windows, and he knew that

they wanted to be outside, running on the hillside, and playing at

bulldodging, fishing. He tried various lures, attempting the techniques

which in the old days he remembered had been called "progressive

education."

 

Wood-carving! Curiously to Ish, wood-carving had become the chief means of

artistic expression. Obviously this was a heritage from old George.

Perhaps, stupid as he was, George had unconsciously managed to pass along

to the children his love of wood-working. Ish himself had no interest in

it, and no knack.

 

No matter what it had come from! Could he, Ish, as a teacher, make use of

this hobby to stimulate an intellectual interest?

 

So he began to teach them geometry, and to show them how with compass and

ruler they could lay out designs on the surface of the wood.

 

The bait took, and soon with great enthusiasm everyone talked of circles

and triangles and hexagons, and had laid out a geometrical design, and was

eagerly carving. Ish himself became interested. He felt the fascination of

the work as the mellow sugar-pine block--aged for almost a quarter

century--began to peel off from his knife-edge.

 

But even before the first geometrical designs were executed, the children

were losing interest. To draw your knife along the edge of a steel square

and thus get a straight linethat was easy and uninteresting. To follow the

outline of a circle-that was difficult enough, but was mechanical and dull.

And the designs when finished, even Ish had to admit, looked like bad

imitations of old-time machine-work.

 

The children reverted to free-running handwork, often improvising as they

went. It was more fun to do, and in the end it looked be tter also.

 

Best of them all at carving was Walt, although he could never read, except

in a halting stammer. But when it came to doing a frieze of cattle on the

smooth surface of a plank, Walt carved with sure touch. He did not have to

measure things out ahead, or to use the tricks of geometry. If his row of

three cows did not quite fill up the space, he merely carved a calf at the

end of the line to take up what was left. And yet, when he finished, it all

looked as if he had planned it from the beginning. He could work in low

relief, or in three-quarters, or even sometimes in the full round. The

children admired his work, and him, tremendously.

 

So, Ish realized, he had failed in what had seemed his shrewdly planned

attempt at using a hobby to stimulate an intellectual interest, and again

he was left with little Joey. Joey had no talent at wood-carving, but of

them all, only he had kindled at those eternal truths of line and angle

which had survived even the Great Disaster. Once Ish found him cutting

different-shaped triangles from pieces of paper and then recutting the ends

from each triangle and placing them together to form a straight line.

 

"Does it always work?" Ish asked.

 

"Yes, always. You said it always would."

 

"Why do you do it then?"

 

Joey could not explain why he did it, but Ish shared enough of the workings

of his son's mind to be sure that Joey must be really paying a kind of

homage to universal and unchangeable truth. He was as much as saying to the

powers of chance and change: "Here, make this one come out different, if

you can!" And when those dark powers could not prevail, it was again a

triumph for intellect.

 

So Ish was left with little Joey--spiritually, and sometimes also

physically. For, when the other children ran out of school whooping loudly,

Joey often made a point of not going, but of sitting with some

biggish-looking book, and even seeming a little superior in his attitude.

 

Physically, the other boys were stalwart young giants, and Joey lagged at

all sports and outdoor adventures. His head seemed big for his body, though

that might be, Ish realized, because you thought of it as containing an

undue amount of knowledge. His eyes also were big for his head, and

exceptionally quick and alert. Alone among the children, he suffered from

sick spells, with an upset stomach. Ish wondered whether these attacks were

truly physical or sprang from some emotional disturbance, but since there

was no chance of sending Joey to either a doctor or a psychiatrist, the

actuality would never be known. In any case, Joey remained underweight, and

often came home exhausted after playing with the other boys. "It's not

good!" said Ish to Em.

 

"No," said Em, "but still, you like him interested in books and geometry.

That's merely the other side of his not being as strong as the others."

 

"Yes, I suppose so. He has to find his satisfaction somewhere. But still I

wish he would get to be stronger."

 

"You wouldn't really have him different, would you?"