I took her plump arm, and through it I could feel the deep quiver that shook her short frame. Putting my arm about her shoulders, I said, "Look at it this way, Miss Vera. They don't have to worry about anything. They're safe, now."
We climbed into the pickup and slammed the balky doors. Then she looked at me and a quavery smile crooked her mouth. She picked up her list of names and drew a firm line through Satterwhite. A vigorous check mark had tallied the Bolts. I hoped that we would find no more to line through before the day ended.
It was noon. Lantana had urged a lunch bag upon us, but after our last stop we found no appetite for it. That turned out to be a good thing. As we moved cautiously down the cluttered road, Vera suddenly cried, "Stop!"
Obediently, I stopped, and she motioned for me to back up. I halted again before an unpainted shack–what they used to call a shotgun house, because all the rooms were in one line, like the load of a shotgun shell. Now I could see a small face at the window, and I hurried after Miss Vera up the path worn through dead grass burrs.
When we called, there was a fumbling at the door, but whoever did it was either too young or too weak to open it. I heaved, and the flimsy thing gave way.. We faced a little black girl who must have been less than five, though she was so thin it was hard to tell. On a pallet in the corner were three other children, one little more than an infant. They were alive, but only just, and one of them was breathing so raggedly through chest congestion that it sounded as though it was shaking the floor.
"Is anybody else here?" I asked the girl, and she shook her head.
"Pa, he lef us here, say he gone for he'p. Never come back. We so hungry!"
I tore out for the truck and came back with the bag of lunch. In consideration of Miss Vera's uncomfortable dentures, Lantana had packed several biscuits that had been buttered while hot and soaked in honey. Those went into the listless mouths of the younger ones, while the girl, La-Tonsha, chunked into the roast pork and cornbread that had been put in for me. The infant was a problem. Finally, I soaked one of the biscuit bits in water until it was a watery mush. Then Miss Vera spooned it into the baby while I held him.
When everything edible was gone, we cleaned them up as well as we could with rags and water, wrapped them in the pieced quilt off the bed in the second room, and packed them into the truck between us. There was no question of going on. These children must be gotten to the house as fast as possible, and I retraced our way so that we'd lose no time in cutting away more fallen trees and debris from a new set of roads.
We were home before midafternoon. Zack was still working in the far field with Lucas and Elmond. Only Suzi and Mom Allie were in the house, for the children had gone to scrounge the last few hickory nuts and acorns along the creek.
When we started unloading little black children, Mom Allie came bustling out of the house with Suzi just behind her. "Lord have mercy!" she whispered. "These pore little things. Look starved to death. Let's boil a chicken, Suzi. Go catch one and kill it. I'll dress it while you help Luce get all these kids settled down."
Miss Vera, for all her seeming vigor, had had a killing day. We put her to bed in Suzi's place, and we noted that she made no protest.
Then we ran the tub full of good warm water and put all four of the chilled youngsters into it. The baby we held carefully, but we let him soak until the chill left his feet and hands, and his color returned to its natural burnt-caramel color from the ash-blue that it had been. By the time we finished, the chicken was on to boil and a pot of comfrey tea was steeped.
We loaded cups of the hot beverage with honey and gave it to the now-revived older children. The baby's had a bit of milk added to it, and Mom Allie had found and boiled out the bottle we had bought for feeding an orphaned pup. That was just the ticket. The little fellow showed the first sign of real life when the nipple went between his lips, the warm brew gurgled down his throat, and his shriveled belly began to fill. We didn't let any of them have much, for they had been empty for too long. Still, you could see life pouring back into them.
As we put them to sleep on a long pallet in the loft room, we were smiling, but when we stepped back and saw the wall-to-wall sleeping place that the never-spacious loft had become, we realized that some accommodation must be made. We seemed destined to bring home waifs, and they couldn't be stood up in corners. Either we must build onto the cabin or we must provide another entire house. With the new four, there would now be eleven people crammed into our log home. As I pondered the problem, Suzi began to crack her knuckles, a sure sign that she was having ideas.
"All right, Su, what's going on in the old skull?" I asked her. "I know you're cooking up something in there."
She giggled, then said, "You know, I was thinking about how much time it would take to do any building, with time for putting in crops so very nearly"–she caught herself–"near. So why not go into one of the towns and take one or two mobile homes that are just sitting there on their wheels?"
I backed cautiously out of the narrow slot in which I stood and began retreating down the ladder. The lower I went, the better the idea looked.
When we were down in the kitchen getting supper on the table, Suzi said, "You know the steep bank to the east–the one that slants down so fast to let the roadway pass?"
I nodded.
"Why couldn't we dig out a hole in it and push the trailer back into the bank–to keep out the cold, you know, and to keep wind from"-she thought a minute–"oversetting it?"
As that had been my only quibble with the plan, I smiled broadly.. "You are hereby nominated our planner-in-chief," I told her. "We'll bounce it off Zack when he comes in, and Miss Vera can take it up with her household in the morning when she goes home."
Any man who returns from a hard day's plowing to find that his family has grown by four is in an iffy mood. We waited until he was suppered and bathed and relaxed under his reading lamp, an old issue of Mother Earth News on his lap. Then we proposed Suzi's plan.
We needn't have worried. Any plan that would have increased the floor space without taking valuable time for building would have made him happy. And in his sleep, instead of muttering "Gee!" and "Giddap!" and whacking me with his still-active elbows, he mumbled about trailers and earth-sheltered homes and sheets of vinyl to keep out the damp.
The Hardeman Home for Stranded Survivors was under way.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Our foray into Nicholson to search out a suitable trailer was delayed for several days. Our four new members were not well, not at all. The three-year-old, Lillian, was the one with the terrible cough, and we were antsy about pneumonia. She was not only all but shaken apart by her coughing fits, but she was so frightened of being left, once again, by herself with no adult that she wasn't satisfied unless she was in somebody's lap.
La-Tonsha held her more than anyone, but the fragile five-year-old tired quickly. Lillian was almost as big as she was, and her fever made her restless. Mom Allie, Suzi, and I were called in all directions at odd moments, so that we made highly unreliable laps.
Miss Vera solved the problem when she came over to see how our charges were doing. She hadn't really recovered her vigor since our outing, and she seemed happy to sit in the old Lincoln rocker, rocking quietly and crooning old songs to the child in her high, cracked voice. There was something hypnotic in the combination. La-Tonsha and the other girl. two-year-old Jashie, would sit as near as they could get without getting pinched by the rockers ... and Lisa would draw nearer and nearer until she was among the group too.
Joseph, the baby, was amazing. He was less than a year old– maybe ten or eleven months. Though he had been starved almost to the point of no return, once we had him warm and clean and eating again, he simply relaxed and took turns eating, sleeping, and trying to walk all over the house. We made play-pens of turned-over chair backs. He blithely bumped them out of the way and moved on like a small bulldozer. We rigged barriers across the doors. He tugged and tugged until they gave way. He recognized no
thing as impossible. As I said, an amazing child.
We kept pouring comfrey tea down the four children, with milk from Nellie Sweetbrier's goat, Tillie, who had freshened and provided us with almost two quarts of milk a day. Her twins were a couple of imps that we named Punch and Judy. Their antics, seen from the kitchen windows, were almost as good for the children as her milk was.
We began to relax when Lillian's chest stopped sounding like bagpipes. By that time, the others had recovered a bit of their spirits, and good food and plenty of cuddling when the nightmares woke them seemed to be handling things well. We arranged for Skinny Trotter and Josh Nolan, who had both been "down" with rheumatism so that they had trouble moving about, to come and stay with Nellie and the smaller child while Mom Allie, Suzi, Lantana, and I went to find supplemental housing.
Miss Vera declined to go. She had moved into our house now, to be with Sam, and she sat in the rocker with one or another the children on her lap. Even Lisa had been enticed into that plump spot, and now she took her turn, along with the small children. But Miss Vera's eyes were no longer bright and young in her wrinkled face. Now she looked farther and deeper than the surfaces she saw, and I felt a chill premonition that she would not be with us for too long now.
However, we drove off, one morning in late January, in the Plymouth, to which Zack had attached a tow bar that we had scrounged back in November. The car ran well on our home made alcohol, and we found the roads into Nicholson to be in better shape than the lesser ones we had been traveling. To our astonishment, though, the power lines were all to pieces. Evidently there had been windstorms during the bad weather that we hadn't realized were so strong. Or it might have been that only the constant maintenance of the TP & L crews had kept the intricate network of lines intact. However it was, the poles still stood, but the lines sagged, where they weren't all the way down.
We passed slowly through Penrose, looking in every direction for a telltale wisp of smoke, but there was nothing. All the way to Manville we wondered aloud what set of circumstances had made almost everyone leave a safe spot that was well equipped for survival to take off for parts unknown. We've never solved the riddle to our satisfaction.
Nicholson was a surprise. At the "City Limits" sign we paused to read. The "Population: 29,300" had been altered to read "950. " Below that "Amos Ledbetter, Mayor" had been added in a straggly hand.
Remembering that doughty man from our first post-blowup trip to town, I entered at a very moderate rate of speed and meticulously observed every stop sign I came to. The fact that we were the only vehicle on the street would not, I felt, moderate his wrath if we didn't mind all the outdated rules that were so dear to him. It was as well I did.
We turned off the main drag to go by Mom Allie's house. There were still a few things that she wanted to pick up, and we had room in the trunk of the car. Just as I began to pick up speed again after the turn I heard the screech of a whistle blown by mighty lungs.
"Amos?" I asked Mom Allie.
"Amos," she answered, as I pulled to a halt.
"Get out of there with yo' hands up!" he shouted, as he puffed up to the car. "Damn looters're not goin' to strip my town!"
We sat still, until Mom Allie put her window down and said sharply, "Amos, I declare, you're a worse fool every day you live. I'm goin' by my old place to get some things I left there. There aren't any looters, and if you haven't had any by now you're not goin' to. Now shut up and get on with your mayorin'.
His face fell. "Miss Alice, you really think there won't be no looters?"
"Amos," she said, less sharply, "if you got things organized here in town, all those old folks and young'uns the powers that be left to live or die in the armory out into housing, with something to eat, then you've done a pure D miracle. Don't get carried away with the idea of fightin' off gangs of bad guys Stick to the job you took on. They'll likely rename the town either Amosville or Ledbetter before you're through."
"Well," he said, his red face turning even brighter, "I have got things in better shape. I took over the Pioneer Village and put most of'em in there and in them housekeeping apartments right next to 'em. We scrounged up enough wood cookstoves to do us–we cook for everybody all in the same place, then take the meals to them that can't get around. The kids've jumped right in and are handy as all get-out. There's a few families that still live in their own homes, too. They had fireplaces, and we've all pitched in, them that are able, to keep firewood cut and hauled in."
"How are you fixed for fuel for the trucks?" I asked him.
"It's gettin' mighty low, he admitted. "We're goin' to have to go to haulin' stuff on our backs pretty soon."
"No way, I said, getting out of the car with Zack's brainchild in my hand. "We've rigged up stills, out our way, to use anything you can think of to ferment into alcohol. There are plans in this packet for ethanol stills, using grain and fruit and berries of all kinds, and for making methane in an airtight drum and distilling the gas into methanol. You take this and get whoever is best at tinkering. I'11 bet you all are making your own fuel in less than two months. There are directions for altering carburetors to run on pure alcohol, too."
We drove off, leaving the mayor of Nicholson babbling his thanks. Mom Allie's face, however, was a study in mixed emotions.
"If I'd known what was to happen," she said, "and somebody had offered me a million to guess who it would be that would pull this town together and keep it goin', I'd never, ever, have picked Amos Ledbetter. That'll teach me to judge folks by the outside. Always been a failin' of mine. Amos Ledbetter! Well! And she fell silent as we turned into the drive and circumnavigated the house to her rear quarters.
It took only a short time to gather up the last of her possessions. Then we headed out toward the Loop and the acres of finished mobile homes that had been parked there by the factory that adjoined the main highway into Nicholson. They sat there looking, already, a bit battered and weathered. When we looked through a few, we shook our heads. The craftsmanship was nonexistent. They were shoddy through and through.
"Let's find Amos," Mom Allie said at last. "We need a good older one that folks have lived in and kept up, but don't need any more."
It wasn't hard to find Amos. We just went back to the spot where we had left him and leaned on the car horn. He was there in five minutes.
Once he understood what we needed (and why), he knew exactly where to go. South of town there had been a huge tract of mobile homes, put there for the workers in several industries nearby. Not one family was left, though every sort and style and size of mobile home stood there.
He picked out a twelve-by-sixty, and I looked at it in dismay. "We'll never pull a really big one with this car, Amos!'
"No sweat, Miss Luce. Now we know how to make somethin' to burn, we can use one of the big trucks. Better still, if you can drive one, you just take it on with you. Likely you'll need one, sometime."
To one who began driving a Farmall tractor when she was three, too short to reach the brake so that my father set a bucket on the footrest plate for me to sit on, and I steered by reaching up above my head, this seemed like nothing much. With no traffic to contend with, I couldn't see too much that could go wrong, once I felt out the gears. I took it around the block two or three times, shifting up and down the range to get the feel. Then I backed up to the trailer again, missing it only twice. The third time I was right on the button.
Amos buckled up the hitch. Then we jacked up the supports, checked the tires for air, looked inside for personal things that should be left in town, on the remote chance that the owners might return and look for them. There wasn't a stitch of clothing, a spare toothbrush left. Only household items, sheets, cook ware, and such, were left.
Suzi took the wheel of the Plymouth, and I set out for home, going extremely slowly until I was able to judge the length and breadth of my load accurately. But once we hit the highway I was able to let her out a bit. By midafternoon we were turning off the oiltop onto the long str
etch of dirt road that wound past the Harkriders' and Mrs. Yunt's places.
We got home to find chaos compounded. As I swung cautiously into the curve that ended in our driveway, a slug glanced off my windshield, leaving a starred crack in its wake. I stuck my hand out the window and frantically signaled Suzi to stay where she was. I kept going, feeling like a juggernaut with my big tractor and huge load. Hunkering down until I could just see over the dash, I nosed the thing into the stretch of lawn that sloped downhill from the house to the creek.
A spatter of shot peppered the cab, but I kept on, seeing now a number of crouching shapes in the shrubbery on the downhill side of the house.
Zack's voice rang out, "Keep to the uphill side of the truck, Luce! The Ungers're down toward the creek!"
As I interposed the bulk of my vehicle between the house and its attackers, Zack, Lucas, and Elmond loped down to meet me. From their new vantage point the they made it so hot for the attacking women that they hit for the river again, leaving one huddled shape among our japonicas. We waited for a while, to make certain that it wasn't a feint.
"What happened?" I asked Zack, as we peered from between the multiple wheels of the trailer.
"They hit the house. Thought, I suppose, that with the car gone and most of us in the fields they could wade in and loot the house without much opposition. Jim sent Sukie out the loft window into the chinaberry tree, and she scooted and got us. We've been keeping the heavy rifles in the field with us, just in case, and it was a good thing. Jim and Skinny held them off with the ten-and twelve-gauges, and Josh kept them from circling with the .22. He's a dead shot with that little popgun. When we got here they'd gone into a huddle down there in the bushes. We've been having spells of quiet and quick fire fights since about two o'clock. " He craned his neck, then stood and nodded.
The World Ends In Hickory Hollow Page 9
