Her expression was almost frightening, and I could imagine the cold ferocity it must have held when she tackled the Unger child. In her present state, she was more of a liability than an asset, and I knew that her people knew that. We said nothing, nor did they, but I caught every one of us watching her covertly as we talked.
The Unger child was something else entirely. When Carrie led me into the back bedroom in which she was confined, we found her gnawing like a terrier at the ropes that held her hands secured to the bedpost. Our entry brought her head up, eyes wild as those of a trapped weasel. She smelled us. I swear it. Her nostrils widened, she gave a slight nod, and I felt a cold certainty that she would be able to identify me unerringly, even in the dark, by my personal odor. She was, literally, a wild animal.
"She's our problem. Long as she's here, they're liable to come after her. We can't seem to get through to her, and I'm scared Laura... " Her voice trailed off, but I followed her meaning.
"We've got four children at the house," I said. "Our two are older. And there are two young ones. Might be, if we took her, it would get her folks off your necks. The other kids just might be able to communicate with her, too. You can't nurse two invalids and take care of her, too."
Carrie nodded. "It would be a big help," she said. "I've a feeling they are keeping watch on us, since we've had her. They'll see you go with her in the car, and there's no way they can know where you're going. I hope."
"They're not all that bright," I reassured her.
The child was watching with bright, uncomprehending eyes, and I felt that words, other than the most basic and functional, were foreign to her. Carefully, slowly, I moved toward her, smiling as best I could. She flinched backward to the extent of her bound arms, and I could see the flesh whiten where the ropes cut off circulation. I reached as though to touch her, but a flash of small teeth warned me, and I snatched my hand away just in time. With a movement quick as a cat, she snapped at me, her teeth clicking together with the force of her intended bite.
We backed away cautiously, as if she could have sprung free and attacked us from the rear, had we turned our backs. As the door closed, Canie looked up at me and said, "You're sure you want to tackle ... that?"
"I don't want to, that's for sure, but I can't for the life of me see using any of the alternatives. She's human. She seems to be healthy ... even bright, if you take her lack of teaching into account. We don't know anything at all about the rest of the country ... how many are alive or what condition they're in. She's part of the future of the race, if we can tame her."
"My word," Carrie breathed. "You have thought it out the long way, haven't you? We've just been trying to see our way through this winter. The future has had to take care of itself."
"I have a son," I said, simply.
She laughed loud and long, as we went into the kitchen. Zack, though he looked at me warily, agreed to try taming the little Unger. "We don't have enough to do. " He grinned. "We need a juvenile delinquent to liven things up around the place."
Then he turned to the Jessups, saying, "Can you manage two invalids? We could take Sim with us, if you want."
"I think it'd be too painful," Horace boomed. "He can hardly bear to be touched or to move at all. Jouncing that far in a car would be more than he could take. No, we'll manage. He's not a bit of trouble, really. If we can only get Grace to come around."
Bill broke in with, "I don't think it's shock. Not after all this time. She lost some blood, but not that much, and as far as I can tell the wound is fine. I've been counting it up, and it's just been too long for shock to last. I think she's withdrawn from the whole situation. Getting shot gave her the chance she needed. I've seen the same thing happen, when I was in 'Nam. Keep her warm, feed her when you can get her to eat, and when her mind figures it can cope again, she'll wake up."
Zack looked at Bill with new respect. "No wonder you're so good at setting up an armed camp. I learned things over there that I hope I'11 never have to use."
"We all did," Fancher grunted, "so I guess, when you come down to the last line, it had some use, after all. It's kept the Ungers from doing more than annoy us."
It was now past noon, as I could see from the wide window that faced west toward the driveway. Though we knew that we need go no farther down the road, I had a hankering to go to its end and to see the remains of Sim Jackman's lair. I had a hunch that he had squirreled away a lot of things that the Ungers wouldn't recognize as valuable, and I wanted to check it out. Zack agreed, for the Jessups said it was only about another three miles.
"We'll stop by for a minute on our way back," he told Carrie as we left. Bill decided to wait there, helping Horace with splitting some heavy backlogs while we were gone, so Zack and I got into the stout old Plymouth and took off down toward the road's end.
When we came to the Greens' ornate gateway, we could see past it to the end of the oiltop surfacing ahead. The recent rains had softened the mud road beyond it, but no traffic had churned it up, so we put the car in low and crawled forward with caution. Aside from sliding majestically halfway round, now and again, we had no trouble. We were both born and brought up on clay-mud roads, learned to drive on them, and had never found anything we couldn't drive through since.
The woods had been cut over many times. Straggly pin oak and sweetgum stood up through the careless mess that loggers usually leave behind. Still, as we crept farther, we could see big woods ahead. We found the reason when we came to a sign that said, "Jackman's Place. Loggers will be shot. " And somewhere the old devil had found a skull (it looked real) and fastened it against the big whiteoak that loomed over the sign.
The track that the road had degenerated into curled through these woods lovingly, avoiding big trees that must have been young when the Indians roamed the river. Twilight lived here, even though most of the afternoon was still before us. The way ended on a knoll crowned with the biggest native magnolia I've ever seen. Seventy feet tall, if it was an inch, it spread its stiff, green-lacquered leaves above a hut that looked as if it might have grown where it stood, like a toadstool.
The door was completely off its hinges. The front wall was stove in, showing raw splinters where the wood had shattered. Tin cans and rags and nameless debris were scattered all over the little clearing, together with bits of old furniture. Nothing that would break was in one piece, and nothing that would tear was whole. Still, I entered the place hopefully. I couldn't see those lazy bitches going to extra effort with really tough things.
I was right. The iron cookstove stood against the wall, unhurt in the catastrophe. A Dutch oven leaned crazily against the wall, its lid lying under a dent that would just have fitted the knob handle on its top. I started, then and there, to make a pile of things to take back to Carrie, who was making do with her cookery over the open fireplace with only light camp stuff to use.
The contents of the hut looked as if they'd been stirred with a spoon. With all the debris outside, I had thought to find it all but empty, but Sim must have accumulated "things" all his life. Under a bunch of stove-in baskets I found a real cast-iron popover pan. Before the blowup, it would have been worth a bunch to antique collectors. Now it was worth more to us.
There was a cobbler's last, with the funny-shaped hammer. These had been flung into the fireplace. All in all, Sim had a treasure trove, and I had a Plymouth-load almost before Zack had finished taking down the stovepipe and getting the cook-stove ready so that the Jessups could move it right out.
When we got back to the stone house, it was getting late.. We hurriedly unloaded a pile of iron utensils, which Canie received with groans of pleasure. When we added the news of the cook-stove, she turned to Horace.
"The old pickup–it'll still run, if we use the battery off the Ford. Tomorrow we've got to go down and get that thing, if we break both our backs. I've had a blistered face for almost two months now, and I'm ready for a change."
Bill Fancher grinned. "Long about eight o'clock, I'll come over and
go with you to help you load and unload. We've got plenty of cooking stuff, but there's likely some old axe heads and such that I could fix up to use. I'd like to take a look around there, myself."
So it was arranged, and we dropped Bill off at his house just as the sun began to sink behind the trees. It was strange, driving home along empty roads, with never a light along the way to mark someone's home. Only once, as we came over the last hill that gave an overview of the whole river valley, did we see, far away to our right, a tiny point of reddish light.
Our passenger rode in dead silence. She had entered the car with terror, her eyes rolled back like those of a spooked horse, and once we had her secured to the seat, she had sat, tense and wary, making no sound. I turned, now and again, to speak to her, but she seemed not to be used to having words addressed to her. I had a sneaky idea that what instruction she had had taken the form of slaps and harder blows.
When we turned into the yard of home, I looked back and said, "This will be your home, now. There are other children here. Nobody is going to hurt you if you behave yourself. Don't bite. Don't try to kill anybody. If you do, we'll have to keep you tied up."
Uncomprehending silence answered me.
The Savonius, with its banks of batteries salvaged from the phone-company warehouse, had become so familiar to us that we never thought of the effect of electric lights on a child who had probably never seen them, even before the blowup. The brightly lighted kitchen window drew her gaze, and she stared with hypnotic intensity while we bundled out the wares that I had kept from Sim's store. When she realized that we were going to take her into the house that was lighted with that eery illumination, she shrieked like a calliope.
That brought out the troops, sure enough. Jim, peering into the back seat of the car, where his father and I were struggling with the wild young creature, touched me on the shoulder. "Mom," he whispered, "why don't you try letting Sukie do it?"
Zack and I looked at one another in the dim light, then we nodded. Sukie crawled into the other side as we wriggled out on the driver's. She sat there for a short time, simply looking at the other child. For the first time, I realized that the past weeks had matured my children incredibly. Sukie was sizing up the situation, gauging the exact depth of the little Unger's terror and rage, and deciding her own strategy in dealing with it. Though she was more than a year younger than the other, she seemed almost adult by comparison.
Then she reached over and loosed the knots that we had tied, out of our captive's reach, in order to hold her in her seat. When the ropes were off, Sukie took the grubby hand she had freed and helped the child from the car, never saying a word. Something that she was projecting toward the wild little creature was calming her.
Though her eyes were still glazed with fear, the girl came into the brightly lighted kitchen compelled only by the touch of Sukie's fingers on her arm. The smell of roasting meat and baking cornbread brought her to full awareness. Then it was only a matter of feeding her until she could hold no more, wiping the tears and food stains from her face and hands, and putting her to bed. She was so soundly asleep by that time that she had no idea of what was happening. We put her on a cot in the pantry, securing the door from outside as a precaution. Food and rest might well send her into new efforts at murder and sudden death.
Sukie sat at the supper fable, wordless and thoughtful. I leaned over the table and patted her shoulder..
"I'm proud of you," I said. "But what did you do? And how did you make her understand, without talking to her?"
Sukie looked at me patiently. "She's just like the young coon we caught. Don't you remember? Its eyes looked just the same. It didn't know anything about words, either. I got it to stop trying to throw itself through the walls of the pen, and I did it just the same way. I ... felt at it. All sort of sleepy and soft and relaxed. It worked."
Behind me, Zack sighed. Then he sat down, his cup of comfrey tea steaming, and cut a hot wedge of cornbread. "Makes me feel old," he said to us all, stirring honey into his cup. "When my own baby has more gumption than I do, it just purely makes me feel old ... but good. " He took a scalding sip and grinned at Sukie, and she grinned back at him.
Mom Allie chuckled. "Now you're beginning to understand how I feel," she said wryly. "But it's going to take more than feeling at that young'un to civilize her. Don't anybody have any ideas about that?"
We all sat and pondered. Then Jim's eyes lit up like Christmas trees. Exactly like Christmas trees.
"It's not long until Christmas," he said, "Maybe if we ... one last time ... put lights on the tree and all our old pretty things ... I'll bet she's never seen anything pretty, let alone gorgeous like Mom can make a tree look. This last time that there'll be enough bulbs to light it up, let's do it up right. We've got the tree cut already ... it's soaking out by the porch right now ... let's see if it won't ... do something..."
Though he was only marginally coherent, we all saw the possibilities at once. Christmas was a time for miracles, anyway. Perhaps we might wring one last miracle from it, with the aid of our scrounged-up power system.
For a little while each night, we decided, a wisp of the old, lost world would intrude into this harsh new existence.
CHAPTER NINE
We had moved in such a fury of concentrated effort in the time since early November that we had taken little thought of the approaching season. Mom Allie had knitted new mittens for the children–all four of them. Zack had whittled some knickknacks from seasoned hickory. We had spent most of our time thinking of surviving, however, and the Christmas magic hadn't really percolated through us with all its old fervor. Even when the children had brought in a stout little pine tree and set it to soak in a tub, we had noticed with only part of our minds.
Now the season took on an extra dimension. In addition to its closeness of feeling, we hoped from it something very strange. For, in truth, if this didn't wedge open a chink in the heart of the child we had fallen heir to, we had no idea what, if anything, ever could.
Not that we had time or inclination to give our all to the celebration. A spell of good weather sent us into the fields, breaking the stubble of last year into the soil and turning it to catch the winter rains. The horses were used for plowing, along with Maud (to all their intense disgusts), for we had scrounged enough plow tools to keep three teams busy. Jim was tall enough to do his first plowing, under the tutelage of Maud; Sukie, measuring herself against the plow handles, swore that by next fall she'd be tall enough to do it too.
The child was a problem. We named her Lisa for no good reason other than the fact that we had to call her something. She was quiet as death, most of the time. It's true that she began to realize that "Lisa" was directed only toward her, and she would duck her head when she heard the name. But she still flinched when anything at all came at her fast, particularly at head height. She seemed puzzled that we didn't beat her, too, though we watched her too closely to let her get into mischief.
Still, we couldn't really trust her to stay in the house alone, even though she had shown no inclination toward running back to her erstwhile "family. " Then Sukie solved the problem of what to do with Lisa while we were in the fields. We put her on the back of one of the horses. Her weight was negligible, she was delighted–as far as we could tell from her enigmatic face –and we could keep an eye on her without looking away from our work.
For three days we worked to get some of the fields in order. Then, four days before Christmas, a howling norther blew in, bringing freezing rain, sleet, hail, volleys of snow, and an end to outside work for a time. The children took their well-soaked tree from its tub, set it in our old tree stand, and bore it into the front room.
Lisa watched uncomprehendingly as they decided just where to put it, arranged it to their exact specifications, then bustled the Christmas boxes down from the closet in the loft. She edged nearer as they opened the boxes (themselves antiques, some of them) and began taking out the hanks of tinsel, the fragile glass balls, the hand
made "cookie" ornaments.
Zack strung the lights out (his inevitable method) and began putting bulbs in the sockets, noting sadly that we had very few extras. As the first light winked green, then one flashed red, one blue, the child's eyes grew wide with astonishment. She inched forward until she almost touched the string, watching each new bulb inserted with rapt attention. Zack casually handed her a red one. She looked at it, watched as he put one more in its socket, then set the bulb in its place and began screwing it carefully.
Her concentration was such that she didn't notice when the lot of us stopped work to observe the operation. When the red light leaped into being, she sat back, the veneer of her face cracked wide open and pure joy beaming forth. "Ooohh!" she crowed, and it was the first sound other than a scream or a growl that I had ever heard her make.
She looked around at all of us. Nine smiles as large as her own met her gaze (Miss Vera was visiting for the occasion). She blushed almost as red as her light and scuttled back into her corner, where I had put two fat cushions for her exclusive use. There she stayed, as the other four children decorated the tree, to constant advice from the adults on the sidelines.
Zack disconnected the lights while they put them on the tree. Then we waited while the glittering ornaments were attached (with much disagreement as to whether they were properly balanced). When the last plastic icicle (they glowed in the dark) was hung, the star firmly affixed to the top, Zack plugged in the lights..
I didn't watch the tree. I kept my eyes on Lisa.. And I wasn't disappointed. The tree didn't light up one bit more than she did.
We moved about it, exclaiming that it was, in purest truth, the prettiest ever. That it was probably the last of its exact kind was a thought that nobody uttered. Future trees might have lights, but they would grow fewer and fewer until all the bulbs were burned out.
When we had agreed that nothing at all needed changing, we unplugged it. There was a wail from Lisa's corner.
The World Ends In Hickory Hollow Page 7
