And, as she went away about some other matter, Ish thought that again she

had been right.

 

"No," he thought, "we have plenty of galumphing young huskies. Still I wish

he were stronger. Yet, even if he is something of a weakling, and even a

freak and a pedant, we must have one person like that, to carry on

intellectually."

 

And so, of all his children, his heart went out to Joey. He saw in Joey the

hope of the future, and he talked often with him, and taught him many

things.

 

Thus the school dragged along through those weeks while they waited for

Dick and Bob to return. Even Ish could hardly use a more optimistic word

than "dragged." Altogether there were eleven children whom he taught, or

tried to teach, that summer.

 

He held school in the living-room, and the eleven children came there from

all the houses. The session lasted only from nine to twelve, with a long

recess. Ish realized that he must ride them with a light rein.

 

He taught them arithmetic, now that he had failed in his attempt to

sugar-coat the pill of geometry. He tried to make practical applications of

arithmetic, and found it surprisingly difficult. "If A builds 30 feet of

fence..." the old book read. But nobody built any fences now, and he found

himself having to start by explaining why people once had built them--a much

more complicated matter to explain than you would think, until you tried

it. He thought of emulating the progressive school again by setting up a

shop where the pupils could buy and sell and keep accounts. But this was

not practical, for there were no more store-keepers now. He would have had

to start with a whole exposition of ancient economics.

 

Then he tried valiantly to present to them some of the wonders of pure

number. For himself, indeed, he was successful, and the more he tried to

tell it to the children the more he himself felt the basic quality of

mathematics to all that had been civilization. At the same time, he felt

more and more, even though he could not express it, all the wonder that lay

in the relations of one number to another. "Why is it," he would think,

"that two and two eternally make four--and not, sometimes, five? *That* has

not changed! Even though wild bulls bellow and fight in Union Square!" Thus

too, he played games with triangular numbers, showing the way they built up

one on top of the other. But except for Joey the children showed no sense

of wonder, and Ish saw their sidelong looks toward the windows when he

tried to impress them with it all.

 

He attempted geography also. This, his own subject, he should at least be

well qualified to teach. The boys enjoyed drawing maps of the near-by

country. But neither boys nor girls were interested in the geography of the

world as a whole. Who could blame them? Perhaps when Dick and Bob came back

in the jeep, there might be more interest. But just now the children's

horizon was limited to the few miles round about. What to them was the

shape of Europe with all of its peninsulas? What to them, the islands of

the sea?

 

He made a somewhat better case for history, although what he taught was

more anthropology than history. He told them of all the growth of man, that

struggling creature, who had gradually learned this, learned that, learned

to develop himself here, and restrain himself there, and through infinite

error and trouble and foolishness and cruelty, at last had achieved so

spectacularly before the end came upon him. They were mildly interested.

 

Yet most of his time he spent at teaching them to read and write, because

reading he felt was the key to everything else and writing was its

counterpart. But only Joey took naturally to reading, and romped ahead. He

knew the meanings of words, and grasped even the meaning of books.

 

*Civ-vil-eye-za-shun! That is what Uncle Ish talked about. There are lots

of quail by the stream today. Two-and-six? I know that! Why should I say it

to him? Two-and-nine? That is hard. It is more than my fingers. It is the

same as "a lot." Uncle George is more fun than Uncle Ish. He can show you

how to carve. My daddy is more fun still. He says funny things. But Uncle

Ish keeps the hammer. It is there now on the mantel. Joey makes up stories

about the hammer, I think. You can't be sure. I would like to pinch Betty

now, but Uncle Ish would not like it. Uncle Ish knows most of anybody.

Sometimes I am afraid. If I could tell him what seven and nine is, maybe we

would have civ-vil-eye-za-shun, and I could see the pictures that act like

people. Daddy used to see them. It would be fun. Eight-and-eight. Joey

knows right off. Joey is no good atfinding quail nests. Soon we can go now.

*

 

In spite of recurrent discouragement, Ish still kept trying, and he always

fastened quickly on any opportunity that the children themselves seemed to

offer him.

 

One afternoon the older boys had gone on a longer expedition than usual,

and the next morning they brought with them to school some native walnuts.

They had not seen such nuts before, and were curious. Ish quickly decided

to crack some of the nuts, and thus perhaps give a little lesson in

biology. It would be taking advantage of the children's own curiosity, and

would be following up something that they themselves had initiated.

 

He sent Walt outside for two stones to use in cracking the hard shells.

Walt returned with two half bricks-bricks and stones not being

distinguished in his vocabulary.

 

Ish ignored that detail, but he found that trying to break the hard shells

with a brick was more likely to result in a smashed finger than a smashed

nut. He cast around for something better to use, and his eyes fell upon his

hammer. It was standing, as usual, on the mantelpiece.

 

"Go get the hammer for me, Chris!" he said, pointing, to the little boy who

was nearest it.

 

Usually Chris was only too glad to spring up from his seat, and do

something active. But now a strange thing occurred. Chris glanced this way

and that, at Walt and at Weston, who were next to him. He looked

embarrassed, or alarmed.

 

"Go get the hammer, Chris!" Ish repeated, thinking that possibly Chris had

been day-dreaming, and had merely heard his name without noting the words

that went before.

 

"I--I don't want to!" said Chris, hesitantly. Chris was eight years old, and

not given to being a cry-baby, and yet Ish could see that Chris was, for

some reason, close to tears. He dropped the matter with Chris. "Bring me

the hammer, one of you others," he said. Weston looked at Walt, and Barbara

and Betty, the sisters, looked at each other too. Those four were the

oldest. All four of them looked back and forth, and did not make a move to

rise. Naturally, the little ones did nothing. But Ish could see all the

children glancing furtively at each other.

 

Although Ish was wholly puzzled, he saw no reason to make an issue of the

matter, and he was just about to get the hammer himself when something else

strange began to happen.

 

Joey rose. He walked over toward the mantelpiece. All the children's eyes

followed him. The room, Ish realized, was deathly quiet. Joey stood at the

mantelpiece. He reached out his hand, and took the hammer. There was a

strange little cry from one of the smaller girls. In the hush that

followed, Joey walked back from the mantelpiece, and gave the hammer to

Ish. Joey went back to where he had been sitting.

 

The room was still, and the children were looking at Joey. Joey sat down,

and Ish broke the silence by pounding on a nut with the hammer. At that

noise the tension, whatever it was, seemed to break.

 

Only after it had come to noon and he had dismissed school did Ish have

time to think the matter over and come, with a start, to the conclusion

that it had been a case of pure superstition. The hammer--all the children

associated it vaguely with something strange and mystical in the far past!

It was used on state occasions; it stood on the mantelpiece by itself.

Generally speaking, no one touched it except Ish. Even Bob, Ish now

remembered, had handled it with reluctance on that occasion when they had

started out with the dog-teams. The children had come to think it an

implement of power, dangerous for any of them to touch. He could see how

such an idea might have begun half seriously as a game and in a few years

have come to be taken seriously. And as for Joey, again he realized that

Joey was the one who stood out from the crowd. Perhaps Joey had not

rationally figured out that Ish's harnmer was only like any other hammer.

Perhaps, he had merely let his superstition work at a higher level, and

assumed that he had something in common with his father, such as was shown

by his reading, so that he, as the High Priest's child, the Son of the

Blessing, might touch the relics which would blast the others. Possibly

even, he might be capable of it, Joey had helped build up the superstition

in the others in order to build up his own importance. It could not be much

work, Ish decided, to overcome this superstition.

 

Yet that same afternoon he began to have doubts. On the sidewalk in front

of the house some children were playing. As they played, they were jumping

from one block of the sidewalk to another and crying out that old rhyme:

 

     Step on a crack,

     Break your mother's back!

 

Ish had heard children singing it often in the Old Times. It meant nothing

then, just a little childish rhyme. Children, as they got older, had always

learned that such things were merely childish. But now, he thought, what

would there be to teach the children that such things were mere

superstition? Here was a society with almost no stored-up tradition, and

apparently a society that was not going to develop its traditions greatly

by reading.

 

He sat in his easy-chair in the living-room, and heard the children,

outside, playing and shouting their rhyme. As the smoke of his cigarette

curled up, he remembered more and more disturbing evidences of

superstition. Ezra carried his pocket-piece, the old Victorian penny, and

doubtless the children looked on that much as they looked on the hammer.

Molly was a confirmed rapper on wood; Ish was disturbed when, now that he

considered, he remembered the children also rapping on wood. Would they

ever learn that that was just the thing that someone did to make himself

feel more comfortable, although it had no real meaning?

 

Yes, he reluctantly concluded, this matter of the children's beliefs was

extremely serious. In the Old Times the beliefs held by the children of any

family or small group of families might be momentous enough, but still

those children on growing up would come into contact with other beliefs and

make adjustments. Besides, there had been a great, even overwhelming, mass

of tradition--the tradition of Christianity, or of Western civilization, or

of Indo-European folkways, or of Anglo-American culture. Call it what you

wished, it was still so tremendous that you might say it was omnipotent,

for good or bad absorbing the individual.

 

But now their little community had lost much of the tradition. Part of it

had been lost because no seven survivors (Evie did not count) could

preserve and transmit all of it. Part had been lost because for so long a

time there had been no big children to pass on the tradition to the small

ones. The oldest of the younger generation had been taught games by their

parents, not by older comrades. The community should therefore be plastic

to an unprecedented degree. This was an opportunity, but also a

responsibility--and a danger.

 

It would be a danger--and he shuddered at the thought--if any evil force,

such as a demagogue, should begin to work.

 

To be sure, he recollected wryly, he had not found the children

particularly plastic as regards learning to read! Yet that might be only

that a stronger force---the whole environment--was already working against

his efforts.

 

But take now again this matter of superstition. Perhaps this all had grown

up because, as it happened, there was no one in The Tribe who was

creatively religious. Perhaps there was some kind of vacuum in the childish

mind, and it had to be filled up with supernatural beliefs. Perhaps all

this represented some kind of subconscious straining toward an explanation

of the basis of life itself.

 

Years ago they had organized those church services, and then discontinued

them as meaningless. That discontinuance might have been a mistake.

 

Now, more certainly even than before, he knew that he had the opportunity

to be the founder of a religion for a whole people. What he told the

children in school, they would probably believe. He could insure their

memory of it by mere insistence and iteration. He could tell them that the

Lord God created the world in six days, and found it good. They would

believe. He could tell them a local Indian legend that the world was the

work of Old Man Coyote. They would believe.

 

Yet what could he really tell them in honesty? He might tell them any one

of half a dozen theories of cosmogony which he remembered from his old

studies. Probably they would believe these too, although their

complications did not make for quite as good a story as one of those

others.

 

Actually, no matter what he said, it might easily be twisted and made into

some kind of religion. Again, as years before, he revolted from the idea,

for he treasured the honesty of his own skepticism.

 

"It's better," he thought in words, remembering some bit of reading, "to

have no opinion of God at all than to have one that is unworthy of Him."

 

He lighted another cigarette, and settled back into the chair again... Yet

this matter of the vacuum! It worried him. Unless it could be positively

filled, his own descendants at the third or fourth generation might be

practicing primitive rites of incantation, trembling in terror of

witchcraft, and experimenting with ritualistic cannibalism. They might

believe in voodoo, in shamanism, in taboo...!

 

He started, almost guiltily. Yes, already there were beliefs in The Tribe

which approached the intensity of taboo, and he himself was inadvertently

their chief author.

 

There was the matter of Evie, for instance. He and Em and Ezra had talked

it over long ago. They wanted no half-witted children of Evie's--to be a

care and drag. So they had made her, at least for the boys, a kind of

untouchable. Evie, with her blond hair and startled blue eyes, was perhaps

the best-looking girl of them all. But Ish was sure that none of the boys

had even seriously considered her. Probably they had no specific idea that

anything would happen to them if they did, but such action was merely

outside their scope of imagination. The prohibition was stronger than law.

Such a one you could only call taboo.

 

Again, there was all the allied matter of fidelity. Always fearing the

disruption of quarrels arising from jealousy, the older men had not so much

taught marital fidelity as assumed it. Young people had been married at the

earliest possible moment. Ezra's bigamy, having always been present, was

not questioned. Although Ish did not doubt the utility of this practice for

their particular situation, still its acceptance as a matter of faith

rather than of reason seemed to come close to taboo. The first

violation--and there would surely be one--might bring a tremendous shock.

 

A third possible example of taboo, though a minor matter perhaps, was the

turning of the University Library into a sacrosanct building. Once, when

the oldest boys were youngsters, Ish had gone with them on a long walk

which had taken them to the campus. While he was napping, two of them had

worked loose a board which, long before, he had nailed across the broken

window; they had gone into the stacks, and started throwing books onto the

floor. Horror-stricken with a sense of the violation of that great treasure

house, Ish had followed them. He had been ashamed of himself later, but at

the moment he had been outraged beyond reason and had beaten the boys. The

very unreasoning quality of his rage and horror must have impressed them

much more than the beating. They had certainly passed this impression on to

the younger children. The Library had been safe, and Ish had been pleased.

But this might also be called an example of taboo, and now he wondered.

 

There was a fourth one too, of course--but this brought him back to where he

had started. He got out of the chair and went to the mantelpiece.

 

The hammer was there, as he himself had replaced it. He had not asked any

child to take it back, not even Joey. He had preferred not to raise the

issue again.

 

There it stood, balanced on its four-pound head of dull, rust-pitted steel.

The hammer had been with him a long time. He had found it just before the

rattlesnake had struck him, and so it might be called his oldest friend. It

had been with him longer than Em or Ezra.

 

He looked at it curiously, considering it carefully and selfconsciously.

The handle was actually in bad shape. It had weathered from lying so long

in the open, and even before the hammer had been left to lie, the handle

had apparently been banged accidentally against a rock and cracked a

little. What was the wood? He really did not know. Ash or hickory, he

supposed. Hickory, most likely.

 

The simplest thing, he concluded impetuously, would be to get rid of the

hammer. He could throw it into the Bay. No, he reconsidered, that would be

merely treating the ssymptom, not the disease. With the hammer removed, the

children's tendency to superstition would still remain, and would merely

fix upon something else, and perhaps take some more sinister form.

 

He thought of destroying the hammer, as a symbolical leson to the children

that it had no strength in itself. But he remembered that he did not

actually have the power to destroy it. The handle he could burn easily, but

the steel head was next to indestructible by any means at his disposal.

Even if he found a carboy of acid and dissolved the steel in it, to go to

so much trouble would make the children think that the hammer must really

have possessed some deep-seated power.

 

So he looked at the hammer with new interest, as something which was coming

to have a life and power of its own. Yes, it had the qualities which went

toward the making of a good symbol--permanence, entity, strength. Its

phallic suggestion was obvious. Curiously, as he thought now, he had never

named it, though men were likely to give names to weapons, which also were

symbols of power--Madelon and Brown Bess and Killdeer and Excalibur. Hammers

had been signs of godhead before this; Thor had carried a hammer, probably

other gods too. Among kings there had been that old Frankish one who drove

back the Saracens--Martel, they had called him, Charles of the Hammer! *Ish

of the Hammer!*

 

Thus, for one reason or another, when the children reassembled in school

the next morning, Ish said nothing about superstition. It would be better,

he told himself, to bide his time a little, to observe more closely for a

day or two, or a week. Most of all, he wished to learn more about Joey.

 

As the result of this observation, over a period of some weeks, Ish came to

the conclusion, somewhat reluctantly, that Joey had many of the qualities

of a first-class brat. He had passed his tenth birthday during the summer.

His precocity was sometimes painful; he was, in the old phrase, "too big

for his britches." In age, he was half way between Walt and Weston, who

were twelve, and Chris, who was eight. But Joey's precocity put him

naturally into the company of the two older boys, and he and the younger

one had nothing in common. This must be hard on Joey, Ish concluded,

because he was always overreaching to attain the physical power of boys two

years older and naturally stronger as well. Josey, his own twin, he

neglected also, for he was at a stage when boys had no interest in girls,

and Josey, besides, was not nearly so bright as he.

 

There was thus, Ish saw, always a kind of strain about what Joey was doing

or trying to do. Again and again Ish thought of that little incident in

which the other children had been afraid to pick up the hammer, but had

acquiesced in Joey's doing something that they themselves did not dare to

do. Obviously, in their minds, there was some kind of power inherent in

Joey. Ish thought far back to the times of his studies, and he remembered

the wide-spread belief that certain members of a tribe had a special power

within them. *Mana,* the anthropologists had called it. Perhaps the

children believed that Joey had *mana;* possibly Joey himself believed it.

 

Yet, though Ish recognized Joey's limitations and disabilities and bad

qualities, still he kept his thought centered more on Joey than on any of

the others. Joey held the hope for the future. Only by the power of

intelligence, Ish believed firmly, had mankind ever risen to civilization,

and only by further exercise of that same power, would mankind ever rise

again. And Joey possessed intelligence. Possibly also he possessed that

other power. *Mana* might be a fallacy of simple minds, but even the most

civilized peoples had realized that certain individuals carried within them

some strange power that went for leadership. Had anyone ever explained why

certain men became leaders, and others, though they seemed better

qualified, did not?

 

How much of all this did Joey realize? Many times Ish asked himself the

question, but he could not as yet answer it. Yet more and more, as the

summer progressed, he felt that in Joey lay the hope of the future.

 

All mysticism aside! All idea of *mana* discounted! Still, only Joey could

keep the light burning through this dark time.

 

Only he could store up and transmit the great tradition of mankind!

 

But mere acquisition of knowledge was not all in which Joey excelled. Even

though he was only ten, he was beginning to branch out for himself, to

experiment, to discover things on his own. Indeed, that was the way he had

really taught himself to read in the beginning. To be sure, all this

development was still at a childish level.

 

There was that matter of the jig-saw puzzles, for instance. The children

had developed a sudden craze for the puzzles, and had set about rifling

some of the stores. Ish had watched them at their play, and at first Joey

had not been as good as the others. He seemed to lack some basic spatial

sense. Sometimes he tried to join pieces which obviously did not fit, and

the others indignantly told him so. Joey had been irked at his inferiority,

and for a while had withdrawn from the game.

 

Then Joey had suddenly got a new idea of how to go about it. He collected

himself a number of pieces bearing the same shade of yellow, and thus was

able to put them together more rapidly and make better progress than the

other children.

 

When he proudly displayed what he had done, the others were impressed. But

even after he had explained his system, they did not want to adopt it.

 

"What's the use anyway!" Weston had argued. "We might be able to do it

faster your way, but it wouldn't be any more fun, and nobody cares how soon

we get this finished."

 

Betty had agreed. "Yes, it's no fun just going through all the work,

picking up the yellow pieces and the blue pieces and the red pieces, and

putting them in different places!"

 

Joey, Ish noticed, could not put up a good argument for his method, and yet

Ish could understand his motives. In the first place, granted there was no

need to finish the puzzle in a hurry, still to work efficiently was just as

natural and as pleasant for Joey as not to crawl when he could walk.

Besides, he had the competitive spirit, the old-time drive, so

characteristic of Americans, for getting to the front. Lacking a native

gift for distinguishing shapes, really as much a physical endowment as

having strong muscles, he had seen the way to take the lead by intellectual

means. He had "used his head," as they once had liked to say.

 

Though the "discovery" was at all remarkable only because made by so young

a child, still Ish was pleased to note that it was the discovery of one

phase of classification, that basic tool of man's progress. Logic rested

upon classification; language, too--by its nouns and verbs grouping things

and actions into neat workable compartments. Only by his discovery of

classification had man been able to impose some workable degree of order

upon the infinite apparent disorder of the natural world.

 

Ish saw Joey's experimental mind also at work with language. To him

language was not merely a practical matter, an unconscious implement used

to express wants and feelings. Language to him was also a wonderful

plaything. He had, for instance, a sense of puns and of rhymes, although

none of the other children showed much interest in such things. He liked

riddles.

 

One day Ish heard him asking a riddle of the other children. "I made this

one up myself," Joey was saying proudly. "Why are a man, a bull, a fish,

and a snake all alike?"

 

The other children were not much interested.

 

"Because they all eat things," Betty suggested languidly.

 

"That's too simple," said Joey. "Everything eats things. Birds eat things

too."

 

They made one or two other suggestions, and then there came up a suggestion

to run off and do something else. Joey saw that he was in immediate danger

of losing his audience; to prevent complete anticlimax, he had to come out

with his own answer. "Why, they're all alike because not one of them can

fly!"

 

At the moment Ish was not impressed with the riddle, but as he thought

about it afterwards. he felt that it was a highly developed and curious

kind of ten-year-old mind which could evolve the idea of negative likeness.

And into Ish's mind popped suddenly an old definition: "Genius is the

capacity for seeing what is not there." Of course, like every other

definition of genius, that one could be shot to pieces also, because it

obviously included the madman, as well as the genius. Yet there might be

something in it, too; the great thinkers of the world must necessarily have

made their reputations by sensing what was not there and looking for it and

discovering it, but the first requisite for making the discovery, unless it

depended upon mere luck, was the realization that something unseen was

there to be discovered, something lacking in the picture.

 

This was Joey's summer for experiment apparently, and one day he came home

reeling strangely and with a strong smell of liquor on his breath. The

story came out that he, along with Walt and Weston, had visited one of the

liquorstores in the nearest business district. This was a problem that Ish

had often considered. He had once even gone into one of the stores and

started opening and emptying the bottles. After an hour's work, however, he

had found that he had made too little progress; the project was obviously

impossible, and the children must take their chances with an unlimited

liquor supply. And yet, when he thought about it, the situation for his

children was not so different from that which he himself had experienced.

In those days his father had always had a shelf holding a bottle or two of

whiskey and brandy and sherry, and there would have been nothing to stop

Ish from carrying on a clandestine experiment of his own. He had not, and

so also his own children and grandchildren apparently were not greatly

attracted by the unlimited stores available to them. In fact, drunkenness

had never been a problem in the community at all. Perhaps the simpler life

they were leading took away the need for such stimulation, or perhaps the

mere fact that alcohol, like air, was free to everyone, removed the lure of

difficulty which had previously surrounded it.

 

As for Joey, Ish was pleased to see that the little fellow had still been

sufficiently clever to drink only a small amount--not enough to make him

really sick or even to make him pass out. He had obviously again been

showing off before the older boys, and had again succeeded in impressing

them; they had come home in worse shape than he.

 

Nevertheless Joey was definitely tipsy, and made no objection to being put

immediately to bed. ish took the opportunity to sit at the bedside, and to

deliver a lecture on the dangers of too much and too reckless

experimentation, particularly if it was designed chiefly to show off before

others. He looked down at the small face in the bed, with its big eyes.

There was intelligence in the eyes, and he knew that in spite of being

tipsy, Joey was comprehending. There was also sympathy in the eyes, as if

they were again saying to Ish, "We understand together. We both know

things. We are not like these others."

 

In a sudden flood of affection for his youngest son, Ish reached down and

took one of the little hands in his own. He saw an answering look of

affection come into the big eyes, and suddenly Ish knew that behind all the

boyish bumptiousness, Joey was really a timid. sensitive child, just as he

himself had once been. In fact, Joey's brashness was only the expression of

timidity gone too far the other way.

 

"Joey, boy," he said impulsively, "why do you keep straining so hard?

Weston and Walt-they're two years older than you are. Why don't you go

easier? In ten years-twenty years-you'll be away ahead of anything they can

do."

 

He saw the boy smile slightly, happily. But Ish knew that the happiness was

merely that a new-found sympathy with his father, not at an impression that

the words might have made. Any child, even a precocious one like Joey,

lived in the present; to talk of ten years away was merely, for a child, to

talk of centuries.

 

Ish looked at the little face again, and he saw the eyes roll slightly

outward with drunkenness and sleepiness, and there was incongruity in the

two. Yet Ish felt this love for his son welling up more strongly than ever

within him. "This one, this one," he thought, "is the Child of the

Blessing! This one will carry on!"

 

He saw the eyes lose focus. and the eyelids drop shut, and so he spoke no

more, but he sat there by the bed, holding the hand in his own. Then,

perhaps because sleep is so like death, a horrible fear swept in upon him.

"Hostages to fortune!" he thought. When a man loved greatly, he laid

himself open. He himself had had good luck. He had loved greatly with Em,

and now, again perhaps, with Joey. With Em he had had the luck--but then one

could never even think of Em in terms of death. She was the stronger. With

Joey it was different. Holding the hand, he could feel the faint throb of

the pulse in the wrist, and it seemed very close to the surface. A mere

scratch would be enough. What were the chances for a little boy, not strong

of body, driven on always by too powerful a mind?

 

Yet, this might be the one who could shape the whole future. He had only to

grow in stature and in mind, to gain wisdom with the years, and to live.

 

*Between the plan and the fulfillment lies always the hazard. Heart-beat

flutters, knife flashes, horse stumbles, cancer grows, more subtle foes

invade....*

 

*Then they sit around the fire at the cave-mouth, and say, "What shall we

do? Now that he is no longer here to lead us!" Or, while the great bell

tolls, they gather in the courtyard, and say, "It should not have happened

so. Who is there now to give us counsel?" Or they meet at the

street-corner, and say sadly, "Why did it have to be this way? Now there is

no one to take his place. "*

 

*Through all of history it runs as a plaint. "If the young king had not

fallen ill.... If the prince had lived.... If the general had not so

recklessly exposed himself.... If the president had not overworked...."*

 

*Between the plan and the fulfillment stands always the frail barrier of a

human life. *

 

Once more the fogs thinned out, and then came the first hot days. "I have

seen it again," Ish thought to himself. "The great pageant of the year! Now

is the time of dryness and death. Now the god lies dying. Soon the rains

will come, and then the hills will be green. At last one morning I shall

look out westward, here from the porch, and I shall see the sun setting far

to the south. Then we shall all go together, and I shall carve the number

into the rock. What shall we call this Year, I wonder!"

 

By now also it was time to be expecting Dick and Bob to return from their

expedition in the jeep. Ish still worried and felt guilty sometimes at

having allowed the boys to go, but now they had been gone so long that he

was somewhat accustomed to the idea and did not feel the strain so much as

he had earlier. And at the same time he had another worry and sense of

guilt that tended to counteract this one.

 

The children! Their superstition and their ideas about religion! He had

said to himself that all this would be easy to counteract; he had said that

he would do something that next day. Yet all summer he had been flinching.

 

Was it actually that he did not want to do anything? Did he really want the

children to think of Joey as the possessor of some special power? Deep

within himself, did he want the children to think of him, Ish, as a god?

Not every day or every year could a man have reason to play with the

intoxicating idea that he was becoming a god. Oh, well--say, at least a

demi-god, a being of some degree of special power!

 

Ever since the incident of the hammer, he had been studying curiously the

children's attitude toward him. It was changeable and uncertain. Sometimes,

he sensed that feeling of awe which he had seen on that day of the incident

with the hammer. He, like Joey, but even more so, had *mana* within him. He

could perform strange feats. He knew the meanings of the puzzling words. He

knew the curious ways of numbers. He knew, by some strange power, what the

world was like, away beyond the horizon, out through the Golden Gate, that

there were islands far in the ocean beyond the little rock-tips of the

Farallones, that they sometimes saw standing up above the horizon on clear

days.

 

The children, he came to realize, were not only children, but they were

also unsophisticated and inexperienced as children in the Old Times had

rarely been. None of them had ever seen more than a few dozen people.

Though their lives, he believed, had been happy, they had been happy with

the simplicity of a few satisfying experiences, repeated again and again.

They had not suffered the continual shock of change which had so affected

children in the old days, both for good and for bad, making them nervous on

the one hand, and yet alert on the other.

 

Children so unsophisticated might easily come to feel a certain dread of

him, to regard him as a being with powers different from their own, not

altogether earthly. At times he sensed this feeling and even saw definite

evidences of it.

 

Yet at other times, indeed generally, he was merely their own father or

grandfather, or Uncle Ish, a person they had known all their lives, with

whom they had romped on the floor when they were little. They had no more

respect for such a person than children ever had. In fact the bigger ones

already showed the adolescent feeling that the older man was blundering and

quite obtuse. Perhaps they stood in some awe, but still they played tricks

on him.

 

Once, not a week after the incident of the hammer, they had set a tack for

him in his chair, though that was one of the oldest of all tricks to play

on a teacher. And again, after they had left the room with much suppressed

giggling, Ish discovered that someone had worked that other old trick of

pinning a strip of cloth to his rear, so that it hung down like a white

tail behind.

 

Ish accepted such tricks in good spirit, and did not attempt to find out

which one of the children had done them or to inflict any punishment. In

some ways the tricks pleased him, for they showed him that children

considered him one of themselves. But the tricks also chagrined him a

little. His ego was not above being pleased with the belief that he was a

folk-hero or demi-god. Was this a way to treat a demi-god, by putting tacks

on his chair or pinning a tail on him, behind? Yet, as he thought farther,

he realized that the two attitudes were not incompatible or altogether

unprecedented.

 

*That is a strange thing--to be a god! They bring the fat ox with the gilded

horns, and at your altar they strike him down With the pole-ax. You are

proud of the sacrifice. But then they take head and horns and tail and

hide, and in the hide they wrap the entrails. All this noisomeness they

burn before your altar, and then go to feast themselves on the fat

haunches! You see the deceit, and you are angry with a god's anger. You

gather the thunderbolts, and your black clouds assemble. But, no, you think

then, "They are my people!" This year they are fat and proud and

insolent--but who would wish his people to be mean and meeching? Next year,

if there is pestilence, they will really burn the ox--nay, many oxen! So you

pass it off, with only a little thunder, scarcely noticed in the pleasant

confusion of the feasting. "I am not stupid," you say to The Son, "but

there are times when a god should seem stupid!" Then you wonder if you

should have shared with him any secret of godship, but rather have looked

for a convenient mountain to pile upon him. He is altogether too handy with

a sickle these days.... *

 

*Even you terrible ones who call for human sacrifice, you too must wink!

Ah, it is magnificently horrible! The shrieks of his wife and the moans of

the victim and the flailing axes of the killers! There he lies, covered

with blood, his tongue hanging out, a picture of loathsome death! Yet soon,

in the confusion of the dance, he rises suddenly and dances with the others

and the red mulberry juice mingles with his sweat and disappears. Then you,

the terrible one, must be a wise god and remember only the horror of the

seeming death, though every child in the village knows you are tricked....*

 

*"No, there is no need to grovel and rub the face in the dirt. Merely bow

the head, as you enter, ever so slightly." *

 

Yet in the end, though he half feared the test, Ish could not resist an

experiment. Perhaps the incident of the hammer had really meant nothing. He

was curious.

 

He picked the time carefully--late one morning, when it was only a few

minutes before dismissal. He was preparing himself a retreat, if things got

too embarrassing. There was no difficulty, since he was the teacher, in

bringing a discussion around to the point where he could put the question

casually enough.

 

"How was it. do you think, that all these things..." he gestured widely

with his hands, "how was it that the world happened to be made?"

 

The answer came quickly. Weston was the spokesman, although apparently any

of the children could have answered: "Why, the *Americans* made

everything."

 

Ish caught his breath. Yet, immediately, he saw how the idea had arisen.

After all, if a child asked who made the houses or the streets or the

canned food, any of the older ones would have said naturally that the

Americans did. He followed up with another question.

 

"And the Americans--what about them?"

 

"Oh, the Americans were the old people."

 

This time Ish found it a little harder to adjust quickly. In "the old

people" he sensed not merely a reference to time, but also something close

to superstition. "The old people"--that had once meant fairies, people of

the Other-world. That might be its meaning now again. Here was something he

should work to counteract.

 

"I was..." He began simply. Then he paused and corrected himself, seeing no

reason to use the past tense.

 

*"I am an American."*

 

When he spoke, though they were the simplest of words, he had a curious

feeling of pride come over him, as if flags were flying and bands playing.

It had been a great thing, in those Old Times, to be an American. You had

been deeply conscious of being one of a great nation. It was no mere matter

of pride, but also there went with it a profound sense of confidence and

security in life, and a comradeship of millions. Yet now he had hesitated

to speak in the present tense.

 

In the silence of his pause he saw the children looking at him, and then

suddenly he sensed that his explanation had missed fire. He had merely been

trying to explain that there was nothing supernatural in those old people

who had been the Americans. He had tried merely to say, "Look at me, I'm

Ish, father of some of you, granddad of one. I've rolled on the floor with

you. You've mussed my hair. Yes, I'm only Ish. And now when I say, 'I'm an

American,' I mean that there is nothing supernatural about Americans. They

were only people too."

 

This was what he had thought they would understand, but it had gone the

other way round. When he had said, "I am an American," they had nodded

inwardly, interpreting, "Yes, naturally, you are an American. You have many

strange knowledges which we simple ones do not have. You teach us reading

and writing. You tell tales about the world being round. You talk about

numbers. You carry the hammer. Yes, it is plain that people like you made

all the world, and you are merely one who lingers over from the Old Times.

You *are* one of the Old People. Yes, naturally *you* are an American!"

 

As he looked about, almost wildly at this new thought, the silence was

deep, and he saw Joey smiling at him. It was a knowing smile, as if Joey

was saying, "We two have something in common. I am like one of the Old

People who has been left over. I can read; I understand those things.

Without being hurt, I carry the hammer."

 

Ish was glad that he had had the foresight to ask his question just before

noon. There was nothing he could muster now, either for question or reply.

"School dismissed," he said. *"School dismissed!"*

 

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

 

                                *Chapter 6*

 

One late afternoon Ish was talking with Joey, or actually they were

continuing Joey's education by means of playschool. Ish had collected some

money, and was teaching Joey a little about history and the old economics.

Joey liked the bright jingly nickels with the figure of the strange humped

animal. As a young child would have done even in the Old Times, he

preferred the nickels to the uninteresting bills with their picture of a

bearded man who looked something like Uncle George. Ish was trying to find

ways to explain.

 

Just as he thought he had put the point across, he heard a strange and yet

old and familiar sound. He lifted his head and waited tensely, mouth open

to listen. It came again, much closer--the *toot-a-toot-toot* of a horn!

 

"Hey, Em!" he yelled. "They're back!" He jumped up, letting the bills

scatter from his hand to the floor.

 

He and Em and the children all came rushing out, and there was a universal

running and yapping of dogs, just as the jeep came down the road. It was

dirty and travel-worn and banged-about, but it had got through. Ish had

still a moment of tension. Then the boys jumped out, yelling loudly,

obviously alive and well. A sudden sense of profound relief let him know

how much he had really been worrying about them.

 

The boys stood there, surrounded by a little mob of yelling children. Ish

held back, almost diffident. Then his eyes caught another movement. There

must be someone else in the jeep. Yes, now the person was starting to get

out. Ish had a sharp sensation of alarm, of resentment, at the intruder.

 

First, as the head was thrust out from the low door, Ish saw a bald crown

and a brown beard, which would have been handsome if it had not been

stained with tobacco and dirty-looking, and scraggly around the edges where

it had been haggled with scissors. The man stepped out, and slowly

straightened up.

 

Ish, almost in panic, appraised him. A big fellow--tall and large-framed and

heavy! He was powerful, and yet there had been little vigor in his movement

as he straightened up. Yes, powerful, but with some inner trouble, and too

heavy! The pudgy fat of the thick-featured face had squeezed in upon the

eyes, narrowing them.

 

"Pig-eyes!" thought Ish, still in resentment.

 

The children were milling around, and the man stood in their midst, just as

he had stepped down from the car. He looked up, and saw Ish, and their

glances met. The man's little fat-encroached eyes were bright blue. He

smiled at Ish.

 

Ish smiled back, though he raised the corners of his mouth only by

conscious effort. "Should have smiled first," he was thinking. "He put me

at my ease. I should have done it with him. He's powerful, even though his

fat looks soft and unhealthy. "

 

Ish broke up the situation by striding forward to grasp Bob's hand. But

even as he did so, the newcomer was still in his mind--"About my age," he

was thinking. Now Bob was making the introduction.

 

"This is our friend Charlie!" he said simply, and he slapped Charlie on the

back.

 

"Glad to see you!" Ish managed to say, but even the old meaningless words

did not slide out naturally. He looked straight at the narrow blue eyes,

and in the tenseness of his look there was perhaps a conscious defiance.

No, those others were not pig-eyes. Boar's eyes! Strength and ferocity

behind the baby-blue. As they shook hands, Ish felt his own grasp the

weaker. The other could have squeezed and hurt him if he had wished.

 

Now Bob had taken Charlie away, to introduce him to the others. Ish felt

his resentment growing, not decreasing. "Careful!" he thought.

 

But he had imagined the return as a reunion with no discordant elements.

And here was Charlie!

 

Handsome, no doubt--in a way! A good companion--so the actions of the boys

seemed to testify! But--yes--Charlie was dirty. That thought gave a

background of rationality to the unreasoning dislike. Charlie was dirty,

and from inner reaction Ish felt himself going on to think that Charlie

must be in some way dirty inside, through and through, as well as outside.

 

Dirt--the ever-present dirt of the earth--that was something which bothered

Ish no more than it bothered anyone else these days. But the impression of

dirt that Ish gained from Charlie was something different. Perhaps, he

analyzed quickly, it was the clothes. Charlie was wearing what had in late

years become a rarity, a business suit. He was even wearing the vest,

because the afternoon was cold with low-drifting clouds. But the suit

seemed greasy, and you would have said that it was egg-spotted, if there

had been possibility of a man's having had eggs to eat recently.

 

They all went trooping up to the house suddenly, Ish with them, not

leading. The living-room was jammed. The two boys, and Charlie, held the

center. The children looked marveling at the boys, as explorers returned

from a far expedition, and they eyed Charlie with as much wonder, because

they were unused to seeing any stranger. It was one of the biggest

occasions that anyone could well imagine. Ish thought to himself it was a

time to open champagne, if he had any ice. Then he wondered why the idea

seemed ironic.

 

"Did you make it?" everyone was asking at once. "How far did you get? What

about that big city--what's its name?"

 

Yet in the midst of all the excitement, Ish felt himself sliding sidelong

looks at the greasy beard and spotted vest, and gradually resenting Charlie

more than ever.

 

"Watch your step," he thought to himself. "You're just being the

provincial, resenting the intrusion of anyone else who may have different

manners and ideas. You keep saying that the community needs the stimulation

of new thoughts, and yet when someone else comes in, you start resenting

him, and rationalizing to yourself, because you say, 'He's dirty on the

outside, and so must have something dirty about him on the inside.'

Relax--this is a great day!" Nevertheless, all thought of its being a great

day went sour inside him.

 

"No," Bob was saying, "we never got to New York. We got to that other big

city--Chicago. But past there the roads kept getting worse and worse--trees

grown up, trees fallen around everywhere, lots of washouts, bridges gone.

So we had to shift one way or the other, looking for..."

 

Someone cut in with another question before Bob could even finish his

answer. There were half a dozen questions, each one canceling out the one

before. In the hubbub, Ish caught Ezra's eye. In that glance he seemed

momentariiy to sense danger, and he knew that Ezra too was watching

Charlie.

 

Ish felt himself both reassured and justified. Ezra knew people, Ezra liked

people. If Ezra was so quickly perturbed at Charlie, there must be

something about which to be wary. Ish trusted Ezra in such a case much

better than he trusted himself.

 

"Come on," he thought again. "You don't really know at all what Ezra's

thinking. Maybe he's disturbed because he senses what you're thinking. And

what's that? Maybe I'm only thrown off because I'm like any small

tribesman, and fear the horrible stranger with his new ideas and his new

gods to fight against mine."

 

He brought himself back to what was being said. "... wear funny clothes,"

he heard Dick's voice saying. "Long white gowns, sort of, I don't know what

you call them, and they have long white sleeves in them. The men and the

women both wear them. They threw stones at us. They yelled, 'Unclean,

unclean!' They kept crying, 'We are the people of God!' They made us keep

away."

 

Then Em spoke. The rich roll of her voice, deep but feminine, seemed to cut

in beneath the high-pitched almost yelping noises of the excited little

crowd. Any of the others would have had to pound on the table and shout for

attention. For her, the room grew quickly quiet, even though she did not

raise her voice and the words were common-place:

 

"It's late," she was saying. "Time for dinner. The boys are hungry...."

 

Half-witted Evie gave one last little senseless giggle, and then she too

was quiet.

 

Em was saying that everyone should go home now, and come back later. Ish

watched Charlie, and saw that Ezra was still watching him too. Charlie's

eyes looked at Em, perhaps a moment too long. His glance shifted to Evie's

blond hair, and took on, it might have been, an appraising look. Then

everyone was getting up, starting to go. Dick took Charlie off to dinner at

Ezra's.

 

After dinner had been got on the table and they were seated, there were a

great many questions to ask. Ish let Em do most of the talking with Bob.

She had all the mother's worries to settle. Had they been sick? Found

plenty to eat? Slept warm? Discussion of the trip itself was being reserved

until the others returned after dinner, and Ish felt also that he should

not pump Bob about Charlie. Yet he could not resist the temptation

entirely, and Bob showed no reticence.

 

"Oh," he said. "Charlie? Sure, we just picked him up about ten days ago,

down near Los Angeles. There are quite a few people, I guess, living around

Los Angeles. There are some all together, like us, and a few just

scattered. Charlie was by himself."

 

"Did you ask him to come along, or did he just come with you?"

 

Ish watched, carefully. He saw that Bob was surprised by the question, but

apparently not disturbed.

 

"Oh, I don't just remember. I don't know that I asked him. Maybe Dick did."

 

Ish dived into his thoughts again. Perhaps Charlie had reasons for wanting

to get from Los Angeles to some other place. No, that was merely slandering

a man out of prejudice without trial, and then he heard Bob going on.

 

"He tells lots of funny stories, Charlie does. He's a very good guy." Funny

stories, yes, and one could imagine what kind. They were frank enough in

all their language, these days; the concept of obscenity, you might say,

had disappeared, largely because there was only one word for things in

their vocabulary, at least among the younger ones. Obscenity seemed to have

died a natural death, possibly as a counterpart to the death of romantic

love. But Charlie--he might still be able to tell a dirty story. Although

Ish had never been a prude about stories, still he felt his original

resentment shifting to a kind of righteous indignation, in spite of his

continually telling himself that he really knew nothing about Charlie,

except the boys' opinions that he was a very fine person. Ish felt himself

wishing that the water had never gone off, and shocked them into doing

something about the future, and thus bringing an outsider in among them.

 

After dinner, they all built up a big bonfire on the hillside, and gathered

about it. There was much singing and skylarking of the youngsters. It was a

time of celebration.

 

There was much excitement, but the boys gradually got their story told....

They had encountered only a few minor washouts and landslides on the

highway to Los Angeles, nothing that the jeep could not negotiate in

four-wheel drive. The group of religious fanatics, wearing white nightgowns

and calling themselves the People of God, lived in Los Angeles. They had

focused upon religion, Ish assumed, under the influence of some strong

leader who had happened to survive, just as in The Tribe for lack of such a

leader, they had developed almost no interest in such things.

 

Out of Los Angeles, the boys had taken 66 eastward, just as Ish remembered

so vividly he had done in the days following the Great Disaster, when he

had not been much older than the boys were now. The highway across the

desert was easy and open, except for an occasional stretch where sand had

blown across. They had gone along with no more trouble than blowouts here

and there. The Colorado River bridge they had found shaky, but still

passable.

 

The next community was apparently at one of the old Indian pueblos near

Albuquerque. From what he could make out from the boys' description, Ish

concluded that most of the few dozen people at this little community were

not very dark in complexion, but that the dominant spirit must be Indian,

because their pattern of life was based on growing com and beans as the

Pueblo Indians had done for many hundreds of years. Only some of the older

people talked English. This community also had drawn inward upon itself,

and looked with suspicion upon the strangers. The people there had horses.

They did not drive automobiles, and they rarely went into any town.

 

From there, the boys had swung north to Denver, and then out eastward

across the plains.

 

"We followed a road," said Bob. "It's like 66, only just part of it." He

paused, hesitant. Ish thought for a minute, and then realized that the boy

was trying to describe Highway 6. Some of the markers would still be

standing along it, and Bob had sensed that they were the same shape as the

numerals on 66, although there was only one of them. Ish was embarrassed

that his own son was not sure of the numerals.

 

Highway 6 had led them on through the comer of Colorado, and across the

plains of Nebraska.

 

"Lots of cattle everywhere!" Here Dick was taking up the story. "Cattle

everywhere, you always see cattle."

 

"Did you ever see the big brown ones with humps on their shoulders?" asked

Ish.

 

"Yes, once we saw a few of them," said Dick.

 

"How about the grass? Does any of it grow straight and stiff looking, with

a head on the end, and little grains forming. When you went through they

should have been still soft and milky, perhaps. When you came back, you

might have seen it somewhere standing all golden. with the grain hard. We

called it'wheat.'"

 

"No. We saw nothing like that."

 

"And how about com? You know what that is. They were growing it there by

the Rio Grande."

 

"No, there is no corn growing wild anywhere."

 

Onward still they had gone, finding the roads now blocked more often, since

they had come to the wetter country with ranker and faster growth and

heavier rains, combined with hard frosts in winter. The highways were

splitting up into great chunks and blocks as the frost worked under them,

wherever the surface was cracked, grass and weeds, and even bushes and

young trees were springing up to block the way. Yet they had crossed what

was once Iowa.

 

"We came to the big river," said Bob. "it is the biggest of all, but the

bridge was good."

 

They had come to Chicago, but it was a mere desert of empty streets. It

would be an inhospitable place, thought Ish, when the winter winds swept in

from Lake Michigan. He was not surprised that people, with the whole

continent to choose from, had drifted away from the once great city by the

lake, leaving it ghost-like behind.

 

Leaving Chicago, the boys had lost themselves in the maze of roads in the

outskirts, and had ended up (the day was cloudy, and they lost direction)

by going south instead of east.

 

"After that," said Bob, "we got one of these things out of a store. It

points direction--" And he looked at Ish for the word.

 

"Yes, a compass," said Ish.

 

"We hadn't needed one before, but now we used it and got going east again,

until we came to the river we couldn't cross."

 

Ish figured out quickly that it might have been the Wabash. Floods of

twenty-two years, or--more likely--just one great flood, had swept away the

bridges. After exploring southward and finding no passage, the boys had had

to go northward to Highway 6 again, which more or less followed a height of

land.

 

The progress eastward had become more and more laborious. Floods,

windstorms, and frost had transformed the once open and smooth highways

into rough lines of concrete chunks strewn with gravel from washouts,

overgrown with vegetation, and crisscrossed with fallen tree-trunks.

Sometimes the jeep could push through the bushes or detour the tree-trunks.

But often the boys had had to make a passageway with ax or shovel, and the

constant work wore them down. Also the loneliness began to oppress them.

 

"There was a cold day with a north wind," Dick confessed, "and we were

afraid. We remembered what you used to tell us about snow, and we thought

we might never get home."

 

Somewhere, probably near Toledo, they had turned back. At turning back, a

kind of panic came upon them. At the same time heavy rains began to fall,

and the roads were often flooded. They had the fear that some of the

bridges over the larger rivers might be carried away, leaving them cut off

from their own people. They had not tried to go south, as Ish had wished,

but had back-tracked along their own trail, gradually being reassured by

their ability to get back to places that they had seen already. On their

return home, therefore, they had learned little that they had not learned

on the way east.

 

Ish did not blame them at all. In fact, he thought that they had acted with

great determination and intelligence. He blamed himself, if anyone--for

sending the boys toward Chicago and New York, the great cities of the Old

Times. He might have done better to have chosen some southern route toward

Houston and New Orleans, instead of a route into the inhospitable country

of northern winters. And yet, east of Houston at least, floods would have

been more severe and growth of vegetation much more rapid than farther

north. Because of the climate, Arkansas and Louisiana would have reverted

to impassable wilderness much sooner than Iowa and Illinois.

 

The children were dancing and shouting around the bonfire. Was there a kind

of wild primitiveness in the scene, or was that merely his imagining?

Perhaps any children would have done the same. Evie, who of course was

mentally a child, was dancing with them. Her blond hair streamed

spectacularly behind her.

 

Ish sat, looking on, and thinking. Well, the chief result of the expedition

was not the discovery that the country was returning to the wilderness.

Anybody would have known that! The important thing was the making of

contact with two other communities. That is, if you could call it contact,

when the other communities were fighting off all advances from strangers.

Was that from mere blind prejudice, or was it from some deep instinct of

self-preservation?

 

Yet, at least, to know that there were people in Los Angeles and near

Albuquerque--growing communities--took away a little of that basic feeling of

loneliness.

 

Two little groups of people, discovered on a single trip, going and coming

by the same road! At that rate, there should be several dozen in the area

of the whole United States. He remembered the Negroes whom he had seen in

Arkansas, long ago. In that rich country of easy winters, there was no

reason in the world why those three should not have survived and become a

nucleus to which others, either black or white, could attach themselves.

Yet that community in its ways of life and thought would be vastly

different from the one in New Mexico and from either of the two in

California. This divergence opened vast questions for the distant future.

 

But this was no time to be carrying philosophical speculation far into the

future. The dancing and shouting of the children around the fire had become

even more bacchanalian. In the excitement the older boys, even some of the

married ones, were joining the revel. They were playing crack-the-whip, an

the more exciting because the one who was thrown off the end of the whip

had to dodge the fire. Suddenly Ish felt himself stiffen. Charlie was

playing! In the line, linked between Dick and Evie, he was swinging the

whip. The children were obviously delighted to have a grown-up, especially

this stranger, playing with them.

 

Ish tried to argue down his resentment. Why not? Why shouldn't one of the

older ones play that way? Me--I'm just as bad as those people in Los Angeles

and Albuquerque, not wanting to accept the stranger! Yet I don't think I'd

have minded, if Charlie had been a different kind of person.

 

But, try as he could, Ish felt himself unable to stifle some deep-seated

sense of dislike. He began to revise his estimate of the importance of the

boys' trip. However important the discovery of the other communities could

be for the distant future, the immediate problem was Charlie.

 

By now it was getting late. and mothers were gathering their children. But

after the celebration was over, most of the older ones went home with Ish

and Em, to hear still more from the two boys and from Charlie.

 

"Sit here," said Ezra to Charlie, pointing to the big chair in front of the

fireplace. It was a place of honor, and comfort too, and Ish thought how

characteristic that was of Ezra, to sense the human relationship so

quickly. He himself, though he was host, had not thought of it, and so had

not been able to make Charlie feel really welcome. And then he wondered, in

quick reaction, whether he really wanted to make Charlie feel at home.

 

It was a chilly evening, and Ezra called for a fire. The boys brought some

wood, and before long the sticks were blazing cheerily. The room grew

comfortably warm.

 

They talked, Ezra leading the conversation, as usual. Charlie asked if he

might have a drink. Jack brought him a bottle of brandy and a glass. He

drank steadily, but with the habitual drinker's slow absorption. He gave no

sign of either excitement or drunkenness.

 

"I'm still chilly," said Ezra.

 

"You're not getting sick, are you?" said Em.

 

Ish himself felt a little chill of uneasiness. Sickness was so uncommon

with them that any occurrence of it was a matter of note.

 

"Don't know," said Ezra. "If this was the Old Times, I'd think I was

getting a cold. Of course, it can't be that now."

 

They piled more wood on the fire, and the room grew so uncomfortable to Ish

that he took off his sweater and sat in his shirt sleeves. Then Charlie

took off his coat also, and unbuttoned his vest, but did not take it off.

 

George comfortably settled down into his end of the davenport, and went to

sleep. His absence did not make much difference in the conversation.

Charlie continued his work on the bottle of brandy, but still it made no

difference to him except that from the heat of the fire and from the

brandy, his forehead was greasy with perspiration.

 

Ish could tell now that Ezra was swinging the conversation around, this way

and that, to get more information about Charlie's background. But finesse

seemed not to be required, for Charlie talked frankly enough whenever the

subject came close to him.

 

"So after she croaked--" he said. "That was after we'd lived together for

quite a few years, ten or twelve, I guess. Well, after my woman died, I

didn't want to stay there no more, not around that place. So, when your

boys came along, and I liked them, I picked up and came."

 

As Charlie talked, Ish began to feel himself swinging in the other

direction again. The boys liked Charlie immensely, and they had been with

him for some time already. There was strength in Charlie, and charm also.

Perhaps he would be a good man to add to the community. He noticed now that

whole beads of sweat were standing out on Charlie's forehead.

 

"Charlie," he said, "you'd better take that vest off and be comfortable."

Charlie started, but did not say anything.

 

"I'm sorry," Ezra said. "I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe I'd

better go home, get to bed." But he made no move to go.

 

"Surely you can't be getting a cold, Ez," said Em. "There's never been a

cold!"

 

They persuaded Charlie to move, himself and his brandy bottle, to a place

farther from the fire, but he kept his vest on.

 

Charlie sat there, and the two house-dogs came nuzzling around him.

Obviously, even the dogs were interested in the stranger; he must mean a

lot of new smells. But they sensed that the stranger had been received.

Although at first they were merely neutral, soon they relaxed comfortably

under Charlie's pulling of their ears and scratching of their backs. Their

tails wagged.

 

Ish, always realizing that people were likely to baffle him, felt himself

swing back and forth. Now he sensed both power and charm in Charlie, and

felt almost warm toward him. And then the very sense of power and charm

caused him to react, perhaps with fear for his own position as a dominant

force in the community, and he felt Charlie only as a thing of evil.

 

At last George woke from his nap, stretched his big body and rose, saying

that it was time for him to get home to bed. The others made ready to go

with him. Ish knew that Ezra would want to say a word to him personally

before going, and so he drew Ezra aside into the kitchen.

 

"You feeling bad?"

 

"Me? No," said Ezra. "Never felt better in my life."

 

Ezra smiled, and Ish began to see light. "You weren't chilly?" he asked.

 

"Never felt less chilly in my life," said Ezra. "Just wanted to see if we

could make Charlie take his vest off. I didn't think we could. He don't

like to be away from it. Makes me pretty sure about what I think I see

anyway. He's got a vest-pocket he's deepened himself, enlarged it. He's got

in it one of those little things they used to make for ladies to carry

around in their purses--just a small piece of hardware!"

 

Ish had a sudden sense of relief. Anything as simple and concrete as a

pistol--that could be handled! His relief faded as Ezra went on:

 

"I wish I was sure about him. Sometimes I think there's something ugly and

dirty and mean--clear to the middle of him. Sometimes I think he'll be my

best friend. Always, though, I know he's one that knows what he wants and

generally gets it."

 

When they went back to the living-room, George was just leaving.

 

"This is the best thing that's happened to us for a long time," he was

saying to Charlie. "We've needed another strong man. We hope you stay with

us."

 

There was a general confirmation chorus from the others, as all of them,

Charlie and Ezra included, went out the door.

 

Ish was left standing with his thoughts. He had tried to join in the choru,

but his tongue had been suddenly stiff and his mouth dry. All he could

think now was: "Something dirty and ugly and mean--clear to the middle of

him."

 

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

 

                                *Chapter 7*

 

After they had gone, Ish thought of something that he had not done during

all those years. In fact, after he had decided to do it, he was not sure

whether he still could. Yet, when he went into the kitchen, he found that

there was a bolt on the back door. He could remember his mother having had

it put there because she never trusted ordinary locks. He shot that bolt.

Then he went to the front door, and found that there was still a workable

night-latch.

 

In all these years, there had been no need to secure a door. No one in the

community was to be feared; no stranger, if there had been one, would have

had a chance of getting through the cordon of dogs. But now there was

someone, perhaps not to be trusted, and he had made friends with the dogs.

Had that patting of the dogs had calculation behind it?

 

When Ish had gone to bed and shared his apprehensions with Em, he found her

not very responsive. Sometimes, he realized, she was too all-accepting for

him.

 

"What's so remarkable about him carrying a gun?" she said. "You carry one

yourself, lots of the time, don't you?"

 

"Not concealed! And I'm not afraid to take my vest off, and be away from my

weapon."

 

"Yes, but maybe you should give him a break for being nervous and

uncomfortable, too. You don't like his looks; maybe he don't like yours.

He's among strangers--surrounded!"

 

Ish felt a surge of resentment, almost anger, against Charlie, the

intruder.

 

"Yes," he said, "but we are on the ground here; this is our place; he comes

breaking in; he must adapt himself to us; not we to him."

 

"You're right, darling, I guess. But anyway, let's don't talk about it any

more now. I'm going to sleep."

 

If there was any one thing that Ish had always envied in Em, it was her

capacity to go to sleep merely by saying so. As for him, the harder he

thought about going to sleep, the longer he was likely to take, and he

could never slow down his mind as he wanted to. Now again he felt it settle

to work. For suddenly he had had a new idea, and a disturbing one. The

trouble was, he decided, that he had to think of himself as pitted against

Charlie in a personal struggle. If The Tribe had been really drawn together

already into some firm organization, if there were some symbolic unity by

which they presented an unbroken front, then the mere advent of any

stranger, strong though he might be as an individual, would be of little

moment. Now it might be too late. The stranger had come already, and he

must be met as man to man.

 

And Charlie would be no mean opponent. Already he had won the loyalty and

friendship of Dick and Bob, and doubtless of others of the younger ones.

George was obviously impressed. Ezra seemed doubtful. What was this strange

charm, backed by strength?

 

Ish could not sense why anyone felt a liking for Charlie, but the fact was

that they did. And the fact might be also that he himself was too narrowly

prejudiced against the man, out of a spirit of rivalry, to feel Charlie's

real strength. But of one thing he began to feel certain. There would be

some contest between the two of them. Just what form this contest would

take, he could not yet know. But since they lacked the solidarity of

anything that could be called a state, the contest would be an individual

one.

 

Or at worst, it would be a struggle of factions with two opposing leaders.

On whom could be, Ish, depend? He was not really a leader. He had been a

leader so far, doubtless, by default-because George had been too stupid and

Ezra too easygoing to offer any competition. Oh, intellectual leadership,

yes! But in any basic struggle for power, the intellectual man went under.

He thought of the deceptively pretty eyes of baby-blue; yet they had a

coldness such as dark eyes could never show.

 

"Who will follow my banner?" he questioned dramatically. Even Em seemed to

be failing him. She had made light of things, almost defended Charlie. All

at once Ish felt himself the scared little boy of the Old Times. Of all

these people Joey alone was the one who could thoroughly understand, the

only one on whom he could always count. And Joey was a little boy,

physically frail even for his years. What help could he be against the rush

of Charlie's power? No, not pig-eyes, he thought again. They are a boar's

eyes!

 

Finally, however, he said to himself, "This is the mere madness of

midnight; these are only the wild fantasies that come to a man in the

darkness when he cannot sleep." And he managed, at last, to dismiss the

thoughts from his mind, and to sleep.

 

In the morning things indeed looked better--not altogether rosy, perhaps,

but at least not too dark. He ate breakfast in a good enough mood. He was

happy to see Bob at the breakfast table again, and by questioning got from

him some more details of the trip.

 

Then, just as he was beginning to feel comfortable, the whole thing broke

loose on him when Bob spoke.

 

"I guess," he said, "I'll go over and see Charlie now."

 

Ish felt a sudden desire to snap out a bit of fatherly advice, "I wouldn't

see so much of that fellow, if I were you." But he saw Em's eyes saying no,

and he himself knew that such advice would only make Charlie seem forbidden

and more attractive. He still kept wondering what fascination Charlie

exercised upon the two boys.

 

Bob went, and after the morning chores were finished, the other children

drifted off too. "What is the fascination?" said Ish to Em.

 

"Oh, don't worry," she said. "It's just the attraction of a stranger,

something new. Isn't that natural?"

 

"There is trouble ahead!"

 

"Perhaps," said Em, and Ish suddenly realized that that was the first time

she had admitted the possibility, and then she changed the direction of his

thoughts with a second remark, "But be careful that you're not the one who

starts the trouble. "

 

"What do you mean?" he snapped, angrily, although he did not often get

angry at Em. "You mean that this is just a fight for domination?"

 

"I think that you'd better go over and see what's happening now," she said,

disregarding his last question.

 

The advice seemed good in any case, for perhaps he too was curious. He

started to follow it, and just as he was opening the front door, he had a

feeling of uncertainty. He closed the door behind him, and stood on the

front porch wondering. His hands felt strangely empty; he needed something.

He felt defenseless, and he considered going back into the house to strap a

pistol on. In the vicinity of the houses they never needed to carry

firearms any more, because the dogs gave plentiful warning; but he could

make an excuse that he was going somewhere farther off. Still, he

hesitated, realizing that to carry a pistol would look like

aggression--besides, it would be a confession of his own weakness and

insecurity. Yet he could not deny his feeling of uncertainty.

 

He went back into the house, and immediately saw the hammer on the

mantelpiece. "So that's it!" he thought irritably. "You're as bad as the

children. You're letting the children's ideas work into you!" Nevertheless

he picked up the hammer and took it along. Its weight and solidity gave him

comfort. The handle's firm hardness filled up the emptiness of his right

hand.

 

Over from where the bonfire had been, he heard a sound of people laughing,

and he walked that way. He was alone, and then suddenly he felt again the

Great Loneliness.

 

It came upon him with paralyzing force. Once more he was the ant lost from

the hill, the bee from the destroyed hive, the motherless child! He paused

and stood still, feeling the cold sweat start. No, the United States of

America was only a name far in the past! He must act by himself, or with

what support he himself could rally. There was no policeman or sheriff, or

district attorney or judge, anywhere, to whom he could look.

 

He was gripping the hammer-handle so hard that his knuckles hurt. "I can't

go back!" he thought. Then he mustered all his courage, and slid one foot

forward in front of the other.

 

Once he was moving again, once action had succeeded thought, he felt

better. He saw them now, ahead, as he had expected, at the ashes of the

bonfire. Almost all the younger ones were there, and Ezra with them. They

stood and sat and lounged around Charlie, and he was telling them things,

laughing and joking as he went along. All this was just about what Ish had

expected, and only when he had looked more closely did a sudden feeling of

coldness seem to begin at his stomach and then flow out until it came clear

to the ends of his fingers and toes. His right hand had gripped harder,

vise-like, on the hammer-handle.

 

Close to the center of the group, right beside Charlie, Evie was sitting,

the half-witted one, and there was a look on her face that Ish had never

seen there before.

 

Ish was about ten paces from Charlie when he noticed. He halted. Some of

the children had seen him, but they were interested in the story, and no

one had paid him any attention. He stood there, as if not yet officially

present.

 

He paused. It seemed a long time. But he could feel his heart throbbing,

and it did not pound more than a few times.

 

He felt the coldness ooze away. Now he was ready for action. He was almost

happy. The problem had suddenly taken form, and even the worst problem in

definite form was better than a fog lurking in corners. You could not

combat a mere suggestion of evil.

 

Still, through the long period of a few more heart-beats, he stood there.

The problem had revealed itself and taken shape suddenly. That too was part

of their present way of life. In the Old Days a crisis simmered and stewed,

and you read the newspapers for weeks and months before the strike broke or

the bombs fell. When you were dealing with only a few people, a crisis came

quickly.

 

He looked. Evie was at the center of the group, and usually you could count

upon her being somewhere on the outskirts. Usually she paid only furtive

attention to what was happening; now she kept her face directed at

Charlie's, seeming to drink his words in, although she certainly did not

understand much of what he was saying. There was something more there than

the desire to understand his words. They were sitting close together.

 

Was it for this, Ish thought with bitterness, that they had cared for Evie?

Ezra had found her--dirty, groveling, and unkempt, living in filth with

merely enough intelligence to open cans to feed herself on whatever they

contained, without cooking or preparation. It would have been better, he

had often thought, if they had merely put a can of sweet ant-poison within

her reach somewhere. As it was, they had cared for her through so many

years, and she had certainly been no pleasure to them and probably no

pleasure to herself. Their caring for her had been, he thought sometimes,

merely a curious lingering of an old standard of humanitarianism.

 

Now he looked again at the group before him, and in Evie he noticed

something that had never been so apparent to him before. That was the

trouble of too long familiarity; just as a picture on the wall became

something you did not notice at all, so a person whom you knew for many

years tended to lose individual characteristics. Evie, he realized now, was

a fully developed woman, startlingly blond, in a special way, beautiful.

You had to forget, of course, the strangeness of her eyes, and a vacancy in

her face. And that was something which he, Ish, could never really do. But

to a man like Charlie, such matters were not important. Yes, as Ezra had

said, Charlie knew what he wanted, and what he wanted he wanted quickly.

Indeed, was there any reason why he should delay?

 

Ish gripped hard on the hammer-handle. He took comfort from it, but he had

become very conscious that it was not a pistol.

 

A sudden burst of laughter came at something which Charlie was saying.

Looking at Evie again, Ish saw that she too was laughing in a high,

uncontrolled giggle; as she laughed, Charlie reached across and pinched her

in the ribs. She screamed girlishly, high and shrill. Then as Ish drew

near, his presence all at once seemed to become official, and everyone

turned to look at him. Instantly, Ish realized that they had been waiting

for him, that the new situation had disturbed them all, and that they were

looking for some suggestion of what to do. He walked forward steadily

toward Charlie, still gripping hard with his right hand, but taking care

not to clench his left fist, in spite of his rising anger.

 

As Ish drew near, Charlie--nonchalantly almost--reached out with his right

arm, and put it around Evie and drew her close to him. She seemed

surprised, but yielded comfortably. Charlie looked at Ish, and Ish knew

that this was the crisis of open defiance.

 

Ish mutely accepted the challenge; he felt calmer now. This was no time to

let anger disturb one's thoughts. Now that there was action, he could think

more clearly.

 

"All of you go somewhere for a while!" he said loudly. There was no need

for finesse or excuses; they all knew something was going to happen.

 

"I want to talk to Charlie here alone for a few minutes. Ezra, you take

Evie over to Molly's. She needs her hair combed."

 

There was no argument; everybody left so readily that they must really have

been a little frightened. By having Ezra go, Ish was losing his best ally,

but to have had him stay would have been a confession of weakness before

all of the others, including Charlie.

 

Then the two of them were left there alone--Ish standing, as he had been

when he spoke; Charlie, still sitting. Charlie made no gesture of rising;

so Ish too sat down. He would not stand when the other sat so lazily.

Charlie was still wearing his vest, although he had no coat on and had

unbuttoned the vest so that it hung loosely from him. There were six feet

between them as they sat on the ground and looked at each other. Ish saw no

reason to beat about the bush.

 

"All I want to say is that you must quit this with Evie."

 

Charlie was equally direct.

 

"Who says so?"

 

Ish considered for words. He might say "we" but that was vague. If he could

have said "We, the people" that would have been better, but he knew that

Charlie would think it ridiculous. He did not want to pause longer, and so

he spoke. "I say so."

 

Charlie said nothing in return; he sat there. He picked up a few little

pebbles from the ground and idly twitched them with his left hand, throwing

them here and there. He could not have stated, any more clearly, his

disrespect.

 

At last Charlie spoke. "There's lots of old wise-cracks you can say when

any guy says to you 'I say so.' You know what they are; so let's skip them.

I'm reasonable, though. Why don't you tell me just why you want me to lay

off Evie? She your girl, maybe?"

 

Ish spoke quickly.

 

"This is it," he said. "It's simple enough. We're a pretty good bunch of

people here, not mental giants, any of us I guess, but still nobody too

downright stupid. We don't want a lot of little half-witted brats running

in on us, the sort of children Evie would have."

 

Only when he had stopped speaking, did he realize that by speaking at all

in reply to Charlie's question, he had made a mistake. Like any

intellectual, he had been happy to stop commanding and begin arguing, and

so he had admitted that his command was non-effective. Now, in spite of

himself, he felt in second place, with Charlie the leader.

 

"Hell!" said Charlie. "What makes you think she's been around here all this

time and not had plenty of chances to have kids with all those boys around,

if she was going to have any?"

 

"The boys never touched Evie," said Ish. "She was something they grew up

with; she was taboo. And besides, all the boys were married off as early as

they could be."

 

He was still arguing, and was perhaps at the bad end of the argument.

 

"So *you* say again!" Charlie's words had the confident ring of the voice

of a man feeling himself in control. "What you really ought to be glad for

is that I picked on that one around here, the only one old enough who ain't

married already. What if I'd liked one of the others, and she, me? Then you

might have a pretty mess on your hands. You better be glad I was so

agreeable."

 

Ish thought wildly for something to say. What more could be said? You could

not threaten with the police or say that the district attorney might be

interested. He had flung the challenge and been met head on.

 

No, there was nothing more to say. Ish got up, turned on his heel, and

walked off. He had a sudden quick memory in his mind of once long before,

when he had met a man just after the Great Disaster, and had turned, and

walked away with the feeling that he might be shot in the back. Yet, after

that first memory, he was not afraid, and it was the more humiliating that

he was not. He realized that Charlie would think there was no need of

shooting. He, Ish, had come off second-best.

 

He was in the depths of bitterness as he walked back toward his own house,

He had forgotten how deep humiliation would be. The hammer was mere weight

now, not a symbol of power. For years things had gone easily, and he had

been a leader. But after all he was not so different from the strange youth

that he now could hardly remember. The youth who had existed in the old

days before the Great Disaster; the one who was afraid to go to dances, the

one who was never quite at ease with other people, and had never been a

leader. He had changed much, he had outgrown much, but he could not outgrow

it all.

 

Then as he came, deep in bitterness, through the door of the old house, Em

was there waiting for him. He laid down the hammer. He took her into his

arms, or perhaps she took him into hers, he was not sure. But after that he

felt suddenly a new confidence. Sometimes she did not agree with him. They

had argued just the night before about Charlie, but in the end he knew that

he would renew his confidence from her.

 

They sat on the davenport, and he poured out the story. He did not wait to

hear what she thought, but he felt her sympathy flow out and enfold him. He

felt the raw edge of his humiliation healing over. She spoke at last:

 

"You shouldn't have done it! You should have had the boys to back you. He

might have shot you right there. You're strong at thinking and knowing

things, not in meeting a man like that."

 

Then it was she was began to take the next action.

 

"Go get Ezra and George and the boys," she said. "No, I'll send one of the

children. No one can move in on us like this, and say what he and we are

going to do!"

 

Yes, Ish realized, he had been wrong. There had been no need to feel again

the Great Loneliness. Small and weak though it might be, there was still

the strength of The Tribe to rally warmly about him.

 

George was the first to come, and after him, Ezra. Ish caught the movement

as Ezra's quick eyes shifted from George to Em and back again. "He has

something," Ish thought, "he wants to say to me alone." But Ezra made no

attempt to gain the opportunity. Instead he ended by looking at Em in a

half-embarrassed manner.

 

"Molly's had to lock Evie up in one of the upstairs rooms," he said. Ish

could tell what a hard matter it was for Ezra, a highly polite and

civilized person, to have to speak in public thus about the burst of

passion that had suddenly come upon a half-witted girl at a man's caresses.

 

"What's to keep her from jumping out the window anyway?" said Ish.

 

"Nothing, I guess," said Ezra.

 

"I could fix up some bars," said George, eagerly. "We could put something

across the window, all right."

 

They all laughed a little in spite of the seriousness. George was always so

happy to do a little more carpentry somewhere on the houses. But it was

obviously impossible to keep Evie locked up for the rest of her life.

 

Just then Jack and Roger, Ish's own sons, came in; after them, Ralph, who

was the last of that trio.

 

At the boys' coming, there was a little relaxing, and people began to sit

down and make themselves comfortable. In a moment, Ish knew they would all

expect him to begin to say something and he felt again that this was all

happening too rapidly. What he was actually facing was almost like the

organization of a new state. And yet, they could not sit down quietly and

start out by writing a constitution with a good old-fashioned preamble. No,

a particular and troublesome situation faced them, and they must act in the

face of it.

 

He put the question sharply: "What are we going to do about Evie and this

Charlie?"

 

There was a babble of talk, and almost immediately Ish had the chilly

feeling that of all the men, only Ezra was solidly with him. The boys, even

George, seemed to think that Charlie might bring a new force from the

outside to enliven and enrich the life of The Tribe. If he liked Evie, so

much the better. They had enough loyalty to Ish to insist that Charlie must

apologize for what had happened this morning. But it was evident also, Ish

felt, that they all considered him to have acted precipitously--he should

have talked with the rest of them before confronting Charlie.

 

Ish brought up the argument that they could not afford to let Evie start a

line of half-witted children. But his words made less impression than he

had thought they would. Evie had always been a part of the boys' life, and

the thought that there would be others around of the same kind made little

impression upon them. They could not think far enough ahead to conceive

that the descendants of Evie would necessarily mingle with the rest of the

group and bring the whole level down.

 

Then curiously enough, George's slow mind brought forth an even sounder

argument. "How do we know," he said, "that she really is half-witted

anyway? Maybe it was just all that trouble she had when she was a little

girl when everybody died and left her all alone to take care of herself.

That would put anybody crazy. Maybe she's just as bright as any of us

really, and so her children will be all right."

 

Though Ish could not imagine Evie's ever having normal children, still

there might be something to the argument, and he saw that it impressed the

others, except Ezra. In fact, there was almost a feeling that Charlie was a

benefactor to the community, and was going to bring Evie into it again as a

normal Part. And just then Ish noticed that Ezra was really wanting to say

something.