The World Ends In Hickory Hollow

by Mayhar, Ardath

  "They're gone. I didn't think they had the intelligence to fake anything, but it's just as well to be sure."

  Lucas hurried around the bend to wave the Plymouth on in, while the rest of us moved carefully toward the dreadfully still form on the ground where the wild violets always grew thickest in spring. She was older than the two I had seen when I shot the Unger. Maybe fifty, which would have made her one of the old woman's oldest daughters, I guessed. Like her mother, she was heavy and dirty, and under her grubby mackinaw she wore a red sweater. I had the uncanny feeling that it was the same sweater the Unger had worn when I shot her. She was as dead as they come.

  By now there was a babble of talk as the children came from the house, the three women followed Lucas from the car, and Skinny and Josh hobbled out to see what was going on. One was missing, though. I rapidly tallied grownups and children, and suddenly I realized that Lisa was missing. With a word to Zack, I slipped away from the rest and went into the house.

  She was crouched in a corner of the pantry that had been her bedroom until she was secure enough to join the rest of the young ones in the loft. Her hands were over her ears, and she was shaking so hard that her narrow bones seemed ready to clack together. When I lifted her. she shrieked, and her face screwed up into a mask of fear.

  "Shhh, shh," I whispered, carrying her into the living room to the rocker. "It's all right, now. The shooting's stopped and nobody ... " Then I thought. Somebody was killed. It might have been her mother or her grandmother who lay out there surrounded by enemies. "None of us are hurt," I finished after only a short pause.

  She gave a shuddering sigh, and I felt her begin to relax against me. We sat there, slowly rocking, saying nothing, until the rest of the family came back. It was quite a long time, and I felt sure that Zack and Mom Allie, between them, had realized that the dead woman must be buried quickly and secretly, so that Lisa would never know. When Zack caught my eye and nodded, I knew that it had been done.

  Now I missed another. "Where is Miss Vera?" I asked. She didn't answer our calls. She wasn't in the kitchen or the living room. But she was in the bigger bedroom, sitting in the small rocker there, a surprised expression on her face. Her heart, we surmised, had simply not been up to the stress of the day.

  When Lisa saw her and realized that she was dead, she did a very surprising thing. She walked quietly to the rocker, kissed Miss Vera on the cheek, and closed her eyes with one motion of her thin hand. It was a tender thing, lovingly done, and I wondered then and wonder still where she got the idea–or if, for once in her terrible childhood, she had seen someone among her own people do such a thing.

  So. We had exchanged one for one, but these were not pawns but living women. The reality of our situation came home to us with new clarity as we prepared Miss Vera for burial. We put her in my family's little plot beyond my old homeplace.

  Sam was inconsolable. First the loss of his parents into the uncertain limbo of the blowup, then his grandmother's death seemed to shake the world beneath his small, square feet. Yet again, Lisa filled the gap. She took Sam into her lap in the big rocker, though he was hugely heavy for her, and she rocked him to sleep, though not one of us who were older had been able to manage it.

  When all slept, at last, I lay awake beside Zack listening to the night. Tomorrow, I well knew, would find us grappling with problems that we had hoped never to have to tackle.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  There was only one bright spot in the next few days. Our four young newcomers to the family were well on their way to health again. Though they grieved loudly for their lost nurse, they continued to fill out and to thrive. So it was that when the first planting of corn was in the ground, we all pitched in to set the new "house" in place. The cabin seemed to be growing smaller by the moment.

  It was a good time for digging. The wet winter had left the embankment soft enough for working, and we pitched into it and soon had a grave-like trough dug back into it. The trench was evened out to come just to the bottoms of the windows, and a slot was cut to give access to the door, once we had backed the thing into its permanent location. Then we proceeded to cover it over with the dirt we had removed, forming shored-up holes to the windows and adding a long vent pipe into the outside air for added ventilation. Onto one of these we attached a heat-grabber that slanted southward and that, with one of the pot-bellied stoves we had scrounged from town, was more than enough to keep it toasty on even the coldest days.

  Suzi insisted on taking the job of "dorm mother. " She had taken her turn, uncomplainingly, at everything we attempted, and we were glad to give her something to do that would absorb her time and attention to the exclusion of anything else. So one overcast day in late February, we had a housewarming for the new household in our growing commune. Lisa and Sam, La-Tonsha, Lillian, Jashie, Jim, Sukie, and Joseph crowded into the Burrow, as we had named the new house. Candy rode on Zack's shoulders, her head almost brushing the ceiling, and crowed with delight at everything.

  The rest of us fitted in as best we could, admiring the three bedrooms, the two baths that were now connected into our water system and their own septic system, the built-in cabinets, closets, bookcases, and racks that made the most of the really large space that the place contained. One reason Amos had advised that we take this mobile was the fact that two of the bedrooms had three-tier bunk beds in them, the other containing a really vast king-sized bed. A very large family had evidently lived in it.

  Our four "babies" were awe-stricken at the carpeting, the paneling, the prettiness of the new place, and it required no urging to get them to move into it with Candy and her mother. Even Joseph seemed to be quite content to remain there. To my astonishment, Jim and Sukie opted to join the new colony.

  As I stood there, open-mouthed, Jim said, "Well, Mama, there are so many little ones. Suzi would be up and down all night long, taking them to the bathroom and giving them drinks of water. We're used to it now. You've no idea how many times we go up and down the ladder every night. We can each take charge of a room, and it'll work out fine."

  I looked down at Lisa, who was by now scrooched up almost under my elbow. "Where do you want to live, Lisa?" 1 asked her.

  She said nothing, but her big pale eyes pleaded. "You can stay in the cabin with us, if you'd like to," I answered her unspoken question.. I could feel her relax.

  Sam didn't wait to be asked. He dug in his heels, literally, hunched his square shoulders, drew in his chin that was already showing signs of its ultimate squareness, and said, "Want to stay at home."

  We all nodded. Too many changes had already overtaken Sam. He and Lisa could share the loft, and Lisa could continue her healing role in his young life.

  The first evening we all ate together in the cabin, all three households together. The shape of our future lives was coming together into a pattern, and for one evening we held onto the older way. Then we saw our eight pioneers to their quarters, going quietly and talking as we went. Before we reached the sunken doorway, Jim stopped.

  "Listen!" he said.

  We stood, ears cocked. Then we heard. Spring peepers were singing along the creek. The winter was all but behind us now. Zack put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. I reached out to touch Jim and Sukie, growing now beyond my arm's reach. Far away a screech owl quavered, and another answered.

  We saw the lights go on in the Burrow, and our two kissed us and went in. Lucas and his household said a soft good night and turned to go to their own rest. Only Nellie Sweetbrier stayed behind.

  "Now that Vera's ... gone, and the cabin isn't so crowded, could I stay with you?" she asked, her voice as timid as a child's.

  Zack took her hand in his free one and said, "We'll be rattling around like dried-up acorns if you don't, Miss Nellie."

  So now we picked up a different rhythm. Spring came with a rush, and we worked early and late in the fields and orchards and gardens. Mom Allie and Lantana set themselves the task of combing the burgeoning woods, finding and carefull
y transplanting the useful wild things that would stand being moved and marking and staking patches of what we called the "immovables."

  Suzi and I took on ourselves the chore of walking the fence lines, carrying shoulder packs filled with staples, claw hammers, wire cutters, and cans and buckets, together with trowels, for digging up anything that struck our fancies. In a way, that was the most pleasant job I ever found. For the most part the fences had survived the winter well. Only where they crossed washes and small creeks was there much repair work to do. Even with the heavy winds, not too many trees were down, and very few of those had struck fences in falling.

  There was practical value in getting our fences into shape. Our herd, though small, was growing, and we intended rounding up strays to add to it. The woods, inside and outside our lines, were big and thick and full of bobcats, Southern red wolves, and occasionally cougars. Only if we kept our stock within our own range could we make certain none had wandered off or been killed.

  The guns were a nuisance, but not one of us, no matter how young, went into the woods without one. We had made special trips to town after them, raiding private collections whose owners we had known. But as the weather warmed, the weight of all our gear, plus the shotguns, made us sweat. More than once, however, we glimpsed movement as we neared the fence lines that ran down toward the river, and we were more than glad to lug the extra weight.

  As we neared the completion of our work, I became certain that we were under almost constant surveillance. We knew that we were watched, and we became adept at finding out our watchers, though they were too far away, always, for us to identify them by form or feature. By the time the work was done, I felt, uneasily, that we should question Lisa about the habits of her kin. That was a task I frankly declined, for she seemed to anchor her hold on a sane existence to Sukie and me, and I didn't want to send her back into the wordless state in which we had found her.

  Nellie solved the problem for me. She was a wonder, Nellie Sweetbrier. At her age, which was almost sixty-five, and after the terrible injuries she had sustained, she would have been justified in taking only "easy duty. " Instead, she reached out for everything she was physically able to do, and she must have peeled a mountain of potatoes, scrubbed acres of floors, washed numberless tubs of laundry that winter. Only in her sleep did the terrors of the recent past catch up to her, and more than once I woke to hear a stifled shriek, or a pitiful wail of "Jesse!" from Mom Allie's room, where she slept.

  She had a sixth sense about what needed doing, so I shouldn't have been surprised, one March evening, when she looked across the supper table at Lisa and said, "Child, tell us about your family. You're bright as anything, and you've a good heart. Tell us what they did to make you like you were when we found you."

  Two months ago it would have sent the child into a silent, white fit. A month ago it would have brought on a race to the pantry. Now she sat on the bench, watching the first early fire-flies kindle their sparks across the patch of lawn and garden, and answered quite simply and calmly.

  "They live down ... down at the big water?" "Lake," I interjected, and she nodded and went on, "Men used to come to fish and drink and ... do things with the big girls. They paid a lot of money, and Big Ma kept it in her own house. When we needed anything, she'd get Crazy Eddy to take the boat up to the other side of the ... lake ... and I guess he'd get a ride to town and bring back groceries and cloth and shiny things for the girls.

  "Then one night there was a lot of rain and wind, and all the little dots of light we could see around the other edges of the water went out. They didn't come back on the next night, and the mail didn't come, either. The welfare checks were late, Big Ma said, and they never did come. We never went up the road farther than the first bend, before then. Big Ma didn't like cars. Even the men had to stop theirs down the road and walk up to the houses."

  "You had several families there, then?" asked Zack with interest.

  "No, not real families ... not like this, just when one of the girls got so many kids that they made it too noisy for whatever house she lived in, Big Ma would make Crazy Eddy hire men to help him build another one. Just full of kids and girls. I guess there were"–she surreptitiously counted on her fingers–"four or five of them. Oh! One burned in the fall–somebody knocked a lamp over and the coal oil set the whole thing on fire. Got rid of a few of the noisy brats, Big Ma said."

  We sat for a moment digesting this maternal reaction. Then Nellie said, "But someone must have taken care of you when you were little. Who was your mother? Did she take care of you?"

  The pale Unger eyes were scornful. "Stinky Sarah used to say I belonged to her, when she needed to have something nasty done. It was Crazy Eddy I remember the most, though. He used to sneak me in something to eat when they locked me in the smokehouse and forgot about me. He'd sit there on the ground behind there and talk to me. Nobody else ever talked to me until I got here. I didn't know what he was saying, most of the time. Never knew words were anything but noise."

  Now Nellie studied her carefully before asking her the next question. "When did they decide that something had really changed, outside7 What made them come up the river from the lake?"

  Lisa thought a moment, her head down, hands still on the table. Then she said, "I guess it was the men–they stopped coming. No checks, and no mailman, and no suckers meant something was screwed UP, Big Ma said. We ran out of canned stuff and light bread, and when Eddy went over to get some more he came right back. Nobody there, he said. Then Big Ma got the girls all together and picked out some of them to go scout out up the river. When they came back they said there were folks up there with good houses and plenty to eat, but they'd need me to weasel a way in. They didn't have guns, then. Just the pistol they gave me."

  Zack nodded. "They probably got guns at Sim Jackman's. Harold said old Sim had a collection of every kind you can think of. They probably figured that the Jessups were armed, and it would be safer to trick them into opening up than to try to attack them. " He turned to Nellie. "Were there any guns at your place? We didn't see any."

  She nodded. "My little .22 and Jesse's twelve-gauge. They likely took them. They were in plain sight on the rack in the kitchen."

  I reached over and took Lisa's hand. "They will come here again," I said, and I felt her muscles tense. "We'll have to fight them ... maybe kill some of them. Unless you think it would do some good to try to talk to them?"

  We watched with something like dread as she translated the words into whatever language she used interiorly, then looked up at me. "They kill people," she said, almost in a whisper. "When they took me away, Eddy tried to make them leave me. They killed him with sticks." She shivered and looked away, and we shivered with her.

  Then she looked, not at me or Nellie, not at Mom Allie or Sam, but straight into Zack's eyes and said, "They're bad. Kill them all!'

  Disturbed, he nodded as if in agreement, and we all began to talk of other things, to stack the dishes for washing, to make cheerful and human sounds that would wash away from our inner eyes the terrible pictures the child's words had drawn for us. But I would guess that all did as I did and watched the dim line of woods by the creek from the corners of their eyes, seeing in the twilit depths movement that wasn't really there.

  Still, we had learned something about the enemy. They were not only vicious and self-serving, they were not really quite human. In some way, the fact made the memory of those two still, red-sweatered bodies a bit easier to my conscience. In a world that seemed to be so suddenly depopulated, it seemed folly and worse for the few survivors to be slaughtering one another instead of putting our efforts together for our mutual survival.

  When I said as much to Zack, he shook his head. "There've always been rogues, Luce. Remember in Houston... you never went out by yourself at night, because it simply wasn't safe. The streets were full of wild animals that walked on two legs but didn't have the faintest notion of how to be human. These are more of the same. I just wish to hell that L
isa had been old enough and understood enough to give us a good, sound notion of the way their minds work."

  "Oh, I think I've a pretty good idea," I answered, swabbing out the sink and scalding the dishrag. "Anybody who could watch her grandchildren – or whatever they were–burn to death and just be glad to be rid of them doesn't have anything that you and I would recognize as a mind. We're going to have to have the same sort of caution the first settlers felt they had to acquire with the Indians. These savages are alien to us and our ways of doing things just as the Comanche were alien to the Spaniards. Total caution, taking no chances, shooting first, to kill. That's got to be the name of the game from now on. And we don't take it for granted that they won't hurt the babies."

  Zack muttered, and I realized with astonishment that he was cursing, something he never does even under the most trying conditions. He was pale, and his eyes shone with unshed tears. He turned his back and leaned his head against the cabinet door. I put my arms about him from behind and realized with pain that he was shaking with sobs.

  Laying my cheek against his back, I held on for dear life, feeling the despair that racked him. I, too, had killed, now. I thought I knew what was troubling him.

  When he finally spoke, he said, "Luce, when I left 'Nam I swore that no matter what I'd never ever kill anybody again. No matter. The things we did over there ... the things the 'Cong did ... I cut them out of my memory and swore never to put anything in their places.

  "Now, here in my own place, with you and the kids and all these people we're responsible for, I've got to dig up those old corpses out of the past. I've got to remember how to scout for an ambush, how to watch for booby traps, how to kill women and children.

  "Oh, God, Luce! With all the filthy things blown to bits and a good crew pulling together down here in the woods–with food ready to jump out of the ground with the least encouragement ... now we've got to pull out the blueprints and set up Hell again!"