World Made by Hand: A Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

  "That's true. It can taste very good if there is a good cook around."

  "My favorite food is pudding. What's yours?"

  "Right now, this is my favorite food."

  "Did the motorcars run out of food?"

  "The cars needed a very special kind of food to run in their engines. It was called gasoline. It was made of oil, which came out of the ground. We had a lot of oil in the old days, but then we used so much that we had a problem getting it. We had to get more and more of the stuff from faraway places across the ocean. And that led to a lot of trouble."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "People in other countries like China and Japan and Germany needed oil too, and there wasn't enough to go around, so they fought over what was left. And soon, the fighting caused more problems with money and getting all the other things we needed to live, like steel and rubber. And there were such big problems with money that a lot of people couldn't buy cars, and even if they could, the gasoline was very expensive, or else sometimes you couldn't get it at all, even if you had enough money-"

  "How come?"

  "Because we couldn't get the oil to make the gasoline from those faraway lands anymore. So people had to stop using the cars."

  "What happened to all the cars?"

  "They were made from steel and people needed the steel for other things, so over the years they took the cars away and melted them down."

  Sarah started rubbing her eyes.

  "It's time for you to go to sleep," Britney said.

  "But what about Rat, and Mole, and Mr. Toad?"

  "They'll be here tomorrow," Britney said.

  "What if people come and take all the books away and melt them like they did to the motorcars."

  "Books don't melt," Britney said.

  I was reading in bed by candlelight later that night when I heard a light rapping on the door.

  "Yes ..."

  Britney came in. She was barefoot and wearing an old green chenille bathrobe that had belonged to Sandy. She sat in a chair to my left that was the place I customarily tossed my clothes if they weren't too dirty to put on again the next day.

  "What are you reading?"

  "Albert Speer's memoirs."

  "Who was he?"

  "Hitler's pet architect."

  "Hitler had an architect as a pet?"

  I explained the Hitler-Speer thing to her as concisely as possible. The truth was my pulse had quickened just having her in my room, and though it was another warm evening, I began to shiver slightly.

  "You're good at history," she said.

  "I'm fascinated by it."

  "How so?"

  "Where we are now in relation to where we once were. It's quite

  a strange story."

  "Oh. I don't miss the old days so much anymore."

  "In the old days I used to fly across the country three, four times a month. Imagine that. Clear across North America and back. Boston to San Francisco, Boston to Las Vegas. Over and over."

  "What was it like, being in an airplane?"

  "Didn't you ever fly?"

  "No."

  "Really? Well, I was a nervous flyer at first. Being packed into an aluminum tube with a hundred other people. And the climb was so steep. It took ten minutes or so to get up to cruising altitude where the air is thinner and there was less drag on the body of the aircraft. Finally, they'd level off around forty thousand feet, about eight miles high."

  "It makes me queasy just to hear you say that."

  "I got to enjoy it. My company paid for business class seats. They gave you free drinks and nice things to eat and they played movies that were still showing in the cinemas. You forgot you were sitting in a metal tube eight miles up in the sky."

  "I don't think I'll ever fly in an airplane."

  "I think you're probably right about that."

  "When I was a little girl, I rode the train a couple of times from Albany to New York City," she said. "You'd think they could get trains running again, at least. You don't need oil to run a train. Even I know that."

  "Yeah, you'd think," I said. "Except I'm not sure there's any `they' left out there to get them running. And I wonder where you'd go if `they' did."

  I told Britney about my side trip to the state capitol when we were in Albany, the lieutenant governor pretending to be still part of something that had obviously dissolved all around him.

  "I wonder what New York City's like now," she said.

  "I'm beginning to think we're lucky to be where we are."

  "It's not wrong, me being here with you, is it?"

  "I wouldn't want you to think so."

  "I won't then," she said. "I'll think something else. I'll think its fortunate."

  "That may be a good way to think about it. For both of us."

  Britney sat quietly for a while, gazing into the braided rug between the chair and the bed. I could see a pulse beating in the pale skin at her right temple, next to where little wisps of lightcolored hair curled above her ear.

  "Oh, there's something else we were wondering about," she said eventually.

  "What?"

  "Sarah wonders if you can teach her how to play the fiddle."

  "I can try."

  "I would be very grateful if you would."

  She continued to sit there in the chair. I didn't know what to say. I felt increasingly paralyzed by her presence. A little breeze blew through the open window and made the candle flame shudder. It also carried traces of her scent my way. Then Britney stood up, letting the bathrobe fall off her shoulders onto the floor as she did. Her nakedness was shocking. Though small, she was a perfectly formed woman.

  "Can I lie beside you?" she said.

  "Yes," I said, surrendering consciously.

  She came around the bed and slipped in under the top sheet, which was all I used during the hot nights of the summer. She pressed against my side. I put Albert Speer down on the night table and extended an arm so she could nestle more closely under it. Her fragrance and the silkiness of her skin next to mine shredded what remained of my thoughts. What followed seemed driven by mindless instinct. Soon she was on top of me, all wetness, and youth, her breasts swaying in the candle light. She assisted me inside her, and I felt as though I was crossing a frontier into a dangerous wilderness where the animals would never learn to speak and might not be so friendly. When we finally subsided, she came back under my arm, and we lay there silently with the flickering candlelight playing on the ceiling. At some point, I blew it out. We fell asleepat least I did-and woke up some time later-I have no idea how much later-and repeated our exertions slowly and deliberately the second time.

  Before I fell back asleep, I thought I heard her say, "You have a family now. What do you think of that?"

  "It could be I'm extremely fortunate."

  Loren and I went over to the high school in the morning. We just walked in the front door. Nobody asked what we were doing. I hadn't been inside the place since my boy Daniel was a student there. We had to shut it down after that. That was the year of the flu, which took so many young lives, and also there was no way to run the furnaces anymore. New Faith had done an impressive job of cleaning it up, though it was still recognizably institutional. The hallways were still lined with dreary sea-foamcolored ceramic tiles, but the lockers had been removed. The place was strikingly busy at that hour, men and women bustling around the corridors, here and there a few children scurrying along. They ignored us as if we were invisible, and it was only when Brother Elam happened by, and I hailed him, that anyone would pay attention to us.

  Elam directed us to Brother Jobe's headquarters which, if I remembered correctly, had been the principal's office, a suite of several rooms, actually. He was working at a small round table in the outer office where the secretaries used to sit, scribbling furiously with a steel pen and an inkwell, blotting his lines with a rag as he scratched away on the paper. He sat in a pink upholstered chair under a slightly water-stained framed portrait of George Washi
ngton that must have been part of the original decor. But otherwise, he had transformed the rooms into something that resembled an Edwardian hotel suite. I could see that the inner office had been converted to a bedroom and that a woman was in there making the bed. When she went around to the far side of the bed, I saw that it was the same girl who had been sitting next to Brother Jobe the night we first met.

  "What a surprise," he said without looking up. "Mornin,' Mr. Mayor, Parson Holder. Do you know what it means to be full of the Holy Ghost?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued. "How important is it for God's ministers to be continually at prayer? To know the power and the nature of God you got to partake of his inbreathed word. Morning and night, at every meal, at work, at bathing, whatever chance you got. The Psalmist said that he hid God's word in his heart, that he might not sin against him. And you will find that the more of God's word you hide in your heart, the easier it is to live a righteous life."

  Brother Jobe looked up at us with an impressively toothy smile.

  "Have you prepared your Sunday sermon yet, Parson?" he said to Loren.

  "Not yet."

  "You going to get around to it or speak extempore."

  "I usually make some notes beforehand."

  "Do you? Well, listen up to this here." He cleared his throat. "You people who are seeking the baptism are entering a realm of illumination by the power of the Holy Ghost. He reveals the preciousness and the power of the blood of Christ. I find by the revelation of the spirit that there is not one thing in me that the blood does not cleanse. I find that God sanctifies me by the blood and reveals his power in the work of the spirit. Oh, this life in the Holy Ghost! This life of grace growing and knowledge increasing in the power of the spirit, the life and the mind of Christ being renewed in you, and of constant revelations of the might of his power. It is the only kind of thing that lets folks stand."

  He glanced up again.

  "Ain't that some sermonizing?"

  "It's very musical," Loren said.

  "Well, if you don't mind talking shop a moment here, Parson, don't you find that to be effective-you got to connect with a different part of the congregation's brain? You're right, it is a kind of music. But is it an accident that the spirit finds our people most often in the act of singing?"

  "No," Loren said.

  "And wouldn't you say the singing region of the brain is different from the digging-a-ditch part?"

  "Probably."

  "One of these days I'll have to come by and listen to you hold forth," Brother Jobe said. "Would you mind?"

  "Not in the least."

  "And you can bring your whole dadblamed congregation to our Sunday service any old time-we got the whole goldurned auditorium and it must seat seven hundred."

  "Thank you."

  "Now what-all you boys come to see me about?"

  "Actually, I'm here to place you under arrest," Loren said.

  Brother Jobe's face registered shock at first, but slowly dissolved into a grin of even vaster amusement and satisfaction than the one he had shown at reading his own sermon.

  "Ain't this one for the books," he said. 'What's the charge going to be?"

  "Either disturbing the peace or criminal mischief or battery, third degree," Loren said. "I haven't quite decided. Maybe we'll mix and match."

  "Hey, that's good. Sounds like you been boning up. But what for exactly?"

  "Cutting people's beards off against their will."

  "I see. Okay, why don't you boys pull up a seat, let's powwow on this. First off: you got a jail?"

  We did have a jail. It was on the second floor of the old town hall, and Loren and I had checked it out earlier that morning. I don't think it had been used in thirty, forty years. It was cluttered with old file cabinets and other junk. We would have to spend a couple of hours mucking it out and mopping it up, and we had no idea where the keys to the locks of the two cells might be found.

  "Yes, we have a jail," I said. "Look, Brother Jobe, I'm not against you or your organization, and I appreciate what you've done for the town since you arrived. But you can't snatch people off the street and have your way with them-"

  "Have my way with 'em! Hooo-weee.""

  "You know what I mean."

  "Looks to me like you all can't take a joke," he said, but he kept grinning as though his amusement knew no bounds.

  "The people in town are pretty ticked off," Loren said.

  "Maybe so," Brother Jobe said, "but at least now they look good being that way."

  "If we don't make a public show of bringing you in," I said, "I'm afraid things could get ugly around here."

  "Bottom line: you want me to work with you?"

  "Yes. That's pretty much it."

  "Heck, I'll work with you."

  "Okay," I said. "What do you say we come get you around seven o'clock this evening? You meet us at the front door. We walk you through town so everybody can see, and lock you up."

  "Fair enough. Then what happens."

  "Somehow we get Wayne Karp down there with you."

  "In the jail?"

  "Yes."

  "That trailer trash? I hope you've got two separate cells."

  "We do," Loren said.

  "Well then, I'll look forward to making his acquaintance. How do you propose to bring him in?"

  "I don't know," Loren said.

  "You can probably use these here," Brother Jobe said. He stepped across the room, fetched a wad of papers on top a bookshelf, and handed them to me. "Writs and such," he said. "Signed by Mr. Bullock, all properlike. I sent young Brother Minor over to fetch them. He helped remind Mr. Bullock of the service we rendered him. They come in late last night."

  The wad included a warrant to search Karptown for stolen goods, a warrant for the arrest of Wayne Karp, a summons for Bunny Willman and Wayne Karp to appear before a grand jury two weeks hence, two blank arrest warrants to be used as we saw fit to bring in whoever had been with Wayne burgling houses the night of the levee.

  "That's pretty comprehensive," I said. "How'd you get Mr. Bullock off square one, finally."

  "We had a ... a meeting of the minds, so to speak."

  I handed the papers to Loren.

  "We'll go up to Karptown later today," he said.

  "You're a couple of brave boys."

  "The object is to inform them that the law is back in business here," Loren said. "They got a lot to answer for."

  "You know, I've offered my men to the mayor here."

  "I'm aware of that," Loren said. "Thanks. If necessary, we'll take you up on that."

  "Some of'em have been to places and dealt with folks that even Mr. Wayne Karp wouldn't want to know about. You don't have to explain none of this to Mr. Karp, but we got your back. The welfare of this town is our business too. Maybe he'll understand that he can come in now walking upright or come in later by some other means of locomotion."

  "We've got modest expectations," Loren said.

  "Reach for the stars, I always say."

  "We've got to start reaching for the lower branches before we get to the stars," I said.

  "Some day I'm going to teach you to think big, old son," Brother Jobe said. "Tell you what, though: you bring the sumbitch in tonight, I'll have him converted into a Jesus-loving lamb of God quicker'n you can say Deuteronomy 32:35."

  Loren left directly to prepare the jail. Brother Jobe said he was welcome to "borrow" Brother Judah from down at the barbershop if he needed any help with the task. He asked me to "stick around." There was something he wanted to show me, he said. He put his sermon aside and I followed him in his brisk, waddling walk deeper into the interior of the old school. The classrooms had been converted into workshops, several with walls knocked down between them to make larger spaces. There was a woodworking shop where a half-dozen brothers were using hand tools to fabricate what looked like window and door sashes. There was an equally large sewing shop where five sisters cut patterns on big tables and worked at ancient footpowered sewing m
achines. There was a harness shop and a metal shop attached to a new forge built out from the exterior wall as an addition, but with a dirt floor. Two brothers were smithing horseshoes while a boy about fourteen worked a six-foot bellows by the hearth. The heat was unbearable.

  At the end of the long hall was the old gymnasium. I was not quite prepared for what he was about to show me. Brother Jobe held the door open. Within, they had begun a colossal construction operation, framing the hundred-foot by seventy-five-foot room, with its fifty-foot-high ceiling, into a matrix of tiny rooms, deployed in three decks, with stairways zigzagging at diagonal corners.

  "What do you think?" Brother Jobe said.

  "What is this? A giant three-D tic-tac-toe stadium?"

  "Naw. Heart of the hive, so to speak."

  "Heart of the hive?"

  I counted seven brothers working in there. The interior rang with their hammer blows and the chuffing of handsaws as they completed what was in effect a gigantic balloon frame. They were hanging joists way up on the top deck that day. Hundreds of board feet of scavenged lumber stood neatly stacked in piles on the old hardwood gym floor: two-by-fours, two-by-sixes, one-by in various widths.

  "She look safe to you?" Brother Jobe said.

  "I suppose."

  "We don't have no master builder type among us."

  "It looks like they've got it pinned into the walls and ceiling trusses pretty well."

  "Is that your seal of approval?"

  "I don't know as it would pass code," I said, "but the good news is there isn't anymore code enforcement."

  That seemed to please him.

  "Come here," he said. "Lookit: what I want to show you."

  We went up one of the corner stairways. It felt solid enough. At the absolute center of the whole structure, on the middle deck, was a framed cube of a room that would have corridors on two sides but apparently no windows opening to light. Nothing was up yet but stud wall and a floor.

  "This here's the royal chamber," Brother Jobe said.

  "Is this where the queen bee lives?"

  "She passes a great deal of time here, yes. In what will be her winter quarters."

  "Then you have a queen bee?"