The World Ends In Hickory Hollow

by Mayhar, Ardath

  Horace and Josh bore Bill into the flagged kitchen. He was beginning to come around, though he was still a frightening shade of ashen gray. As soon as his eyes opened they glanced wildly about for his family, and Annie laid her hand on his shoulder.

  "All here, honey, she said. "None dead.."

  Then he lay back and let Lantana and Carrie work loose a makeshift bandage in order to clean his wound. They carefully kept him turned so he couldn't see Phyllis, who had been placed on the dining table.

  Sim and I bent over her and I cut away her coveralls and shirt. There was no need to loosen dried blood–it hadn't dried and was still oozing slowly from the ugly spot in her shoulder.

  "Had much 'sperience with gunshot wounds?" the old man asked, as I straightened my back and laid the scissors aside.

  "Not much," I answered. "This is way beyond me, Sim. We need a doctor, I'm afraid."

  "I been tendin' to hunters that shot each other accidental for over thirty years," he told me. He lifted an Xacto knife and a large pair of tweezers from the pan in which we had boiled them and leaned over the child again. "They made pure D messes out of each other, sho 'nuff. I've seen worse 'uns than this, by a long shot."

  But I could tell from the set of his jaw that digging slugs out of a seasoned hunter was a far different thing from the task now before him. Phyllis's golden-tawny skin had a bluish undertone, and her breath came in shallow gasps.

  "Ain't a artery," Sim muttered. "Wouldn't be here now if it was. Just a really nasty mess down there. Pieces of bone all in it. Kin you see to pick out some of it on your side, while I try for the slug?"

  I plied my tweezers and held my hand steady and my mind detached. One day I might well have to do the same for one of my own children, and I intended to know the right way to go about it. We were working so closely that I could follow the motions of his knife and his pincers without neglecting my own task.

  The bone shards gleamed in the light of the lamps that Carrie had set in their hoops in the chandelier overhead. The blood was redder than natural, the instruments brighter. Still, I picked out fragments and watched the misshapen chunk of lead emerge from the tender flesh and clink into the pan that Zack held. Then floods of alcohol–made by the directions we had left with Horace–cleaned the hole, and what seemed to be yards of damp cotton went into it.

  "Soaked them bandages in comfrey tea," said Lantana behind me. "Mighty good for healing."

  She pushed me aside, then Sim, and took over the final bandaging, wrapping wide strips of what I knew must be an irreplaceable sheet about chest and shoulder and neck, until Phyllis couldn't possibly move about enough to rip anything open. Then we laid the child back and watched, breathless, for a long time. No blood came through, then or later.

  Annie, with iron control, had stood back and let us take her child into our less-than-expert hands and work for her life. Now she folded quietly into a rocking chair, her face as ashy as her husband's had been. Carrie and Lantana zipped into action, and soon we each held a cup of mint tea well laced with "drinking alcohol."

  By now Bill had come around, though he was–and would be – pretty wobbly. There was no way to hide from him the serious condition in which Phyllis now existed, but he took it well. There's no denying that our fortifying tea helped in that respect, and not only Bill.

  We were all shaken and sick. The menace of the Unger community, that we had buried away from our thoughts with work, now stared us directly in the eyes. Something must be done. Once we had the Fanchers settled wherever they decided to go; once we had reinforced the Jessups as much as could be done; once we barricaded our own complex of homes so that no other sneak attack could catch us unaware, then we must go on the offensive ourselves.

  It was now midafternoon. The weather, which had been almost hot, as April is in East Texas, now held the muggy feel that precedes a thunderstorm. We knew that some of us, at least, must return home to reassure those left behind, as well as to reinforce them in case the Ungers tried another foray.

  Lantana elected to stay for a while and help care for the wounded, a choice much appreciated by Carrie Jessup. Suzi wanted nothing except to go home to her brood of children. Josh and Horace felt that his added rifle would make enough to hold the Jessups' house if new trouble should arise. So four of us mounted the horses and moved off into the now-cloudy afternoon, though my own thoughts kept wandering back to the eight-year-old who still lay within the grasp of death.

  As we turned down the Sweetbriers' drive, Lucas cleared his throat, a sure sign that he was preparing to impart an idea. "You know, it's dangerous business going into those woods down by the river, with the Ungers licking their wounds. 'Round by the road is ridiculous. But if we cut straight through the fields and pastures behind all these places, we'd make it a lot straighter way, with no woods for anybody to set up an ambush in. Have to cut a lot of fences, but that's just good for the cattle, except just Fanchers' and Londowns' spreads. We can put in gaps there, that we can close behind us.

  It was so obvious–and so bright–that it had escaped us all until now, So we painfully cut barbed wire with pliers, as we had no wire cutters handy, making a straight shoot toward our own farm. At Bill's first fence we carefully parted the wire, tied onto the loose ends a stout hickory sapling, made two loops of wire that we had saved when coming through nonstrategic fences, and closed it by setting either end of the pole into a loop, which was no easy task, and left the fence nicely tight.

  "Have to bring some staples to reinforce the wire on both posts," Zack decided. "But we can do that when we come back after Lantana."

  The new route, even with the delays involved, got us home before sundown. Not a sign of anything hostile could be seen the whole way, and we found things quiet, though alert, at home.

  Amazingly, Nellie, the children, and Mom Allie had finished the canning, short-handed though they were. This was a blessing, for we knew that the next day must be spent in fortifying our enclave. There was no longer any way we could avoid facing the necessity. It must be done, and now, lest we find ourselves in such a fix as the Fanchers had faced..

  We rose before sunrise, all three households. Suzi, though in pain, would not be left out, so we set her to weaving leather lattices to hang inside the windows. Not only would they catch shattered glass, but we also hoped that they would make it harder to see anyone moving in the house. With summer upon us, it would be impossible to stay in the houses with the shutters closed.

  The rest of us set our minds to those selfsame shutters. Our cabin was fitted with stout ones, into which we now bored loop-holes. The other house was also supplied with shutters with loopholes. We blessed our tin roofs, for it was upon the Fanchers' shingled one that the Ungers' flung torch had started the fire that destroyed their home. In order to give even more protection from fire, we banked dirt up the walls of both houses, almost to the overhang of the roof. Maud found herself harnessed to the slip, dragging big scoops of soil up from the near field for us to shovel against the logs.

  So desperately did we work that in two days both freeststanding houses were clad in earthworks. We also set heavy stakes into the tunnels that led to the windows of the ex-mobile home that now housed the children, slanting them outward so that their sharpened ends loomed dangerously in the dimness. We found ourselves nodding with satisfaction. Fire or bullet could not, we felt, find a way to the little ones..

  Now we dug into our scrounged arsenal and cleaned and loaded shotguns and rifles to keep in handy spots in all three places. With so many young children about, this was nervous work. In order to give them a true idea of the danger of the weapons, we took everyone over three out into the creek meadow and gave them shooting lessons. The blast of noise, plus the vicious kick, made them all cautious and respectful of the guns that lived in their homes with them. The very youngest were held in arms near enough so that they got the full effect of the shots. We could only hope that they would remember.

  When we felt that we were reasonably sec
ure, we knew it was time to check on the refugees at the Jessups'. We were not easy in our minds about having our only neighbors so distant from us. In case of another attack, only chance could warn those who were not directly involved.

  On the third morning after the one whose work had been so violently interrupted, we set out again. Mom Allie elected to join Zack and me, leaving Elmond to oversee a new attack on the overflowing gardens. We seemed, as I looked along the line of horses (we had two pack animals with us, just in case they might be needed), like nothing so much as a gang of bandits from a Western movie. Our clothing had suffered; our skin was rough and browned from our long hours in the fields. All in all, we looked as mean and lowdown as the Ungers.

  We went across fields, following our line of cut fences. As we came up behind that first farm that we had found untenanted on our initial foray downriver, we moved near, dismounted, and checked on the condition of the house.

  The back door had locked itself when we closed it before. A bit of work with one of Mom Allie's huge wire hairpins had it open in a moment. The stink of mildew was horrible, and we set doors and windows wide to the April sun. If the Fanchers decided to settle here, we would have an all-hands-to cleaning bee, I decided. Aside from the smell, the house was nice. Big rooms, six of them, plus a sun porch across the back where pots of blackened stubble told of the deaths of many pot plants.

  There was a fireplace in the den. Its chimney backed against the interior wall, and it was even pierced for a flue, though the opening was covered with one of those metal "pie plates" with a country scene pasted onto it ... ideal for setting in a wood cookstove. The high ceilings showed no leak spots. With a bit of earth-moving work, the place could be made pretty defensible, Zack felt certain.

  Outdoors, we could see that someone had taken great pains with the place. There were several fruit trees, a grape arbor, and the traces of a big garden, where volunteer okra and cherry tomatoes and mustard were already growing in haphazard clumps. Evidently the soil was well conditioned and fertile. We left the house open, wondering why the Ungers hadn't bothered to raid it. Locking it would have invited a broken door, if they returned. Perhaps it had been just too much trouble for their unstable minds to bother with.

  We moved on across the fields, and as we approached the Londowns' land we saw Curt and the boy looking at our makeshift gap in the fence. We hailed them before they saw us, for both carried rifles.

  "We brought some staples to make that tighter," Zack called, as we rode up. "It's too dangerous to ride the river anymore. Did you know the Ungers attacked and burned out the Fanchers, down your road?"

  Curt shook his head. His mouth was tight, and his eyes didn't look at all friendly.

  "We're going to check on the family right now," I said. "We helped them fight off those women, then we took them to Jessups'. Bill and his little girl were badly wounded. We left some of our people there to help stand guard. If we all work together maybe we can get those Unger women under some kind of control–or kill them."

  He spoke for the first time. "The Fanchers–niggers, aren't they?"

  I looked at him in shock. Even before the blowup, that sort of talk had been dying away among all except a few diehards. Now that there were so few of us, color didn't enter into our calculations.

  Zack's voice was hard as he said, "They're good, stout, clever people. Good at fighting off Ungers. Good at surviving. Good with their hands and their heads. If they'll come, we're going to move them into the house nearest us. That way we can be of some help to each other without having to fight through Ungers to get back and forth."

  Londown grunted, his gray eyes as expressionless as such eyes can be. Then he said, "Don't fancy gettin' cozy with no niggers. Might not mind you all, but not them. We've done all right, just keepin' to ourselves, anyway."

  Zack was a bit flushed, but his voice was calm. "If that's the way you want it, okay, but some morning if you wake up with your roof on fire from one of those she-devils' torches, just let off some shots. We'll probably come and bail you out. Black ones and all."

  He touched his heels into Coalie's hanks, and as I turned Friz to follow him, I was watching Londown's face. It had the turtle-ish expression of one who knows his kind is extinct but absolutely refuses to admit it to himself. Times had changed out of all recognition. Unless Curt Londown managed to change a bit to suit, I suspected that he might well go down, taking his family with him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  With so many hands at work, it didn't really take long to get the Fanchers settled into their new home. Though the Jessups had offered to move them all into their capacious stone fortress, Bill and Annie had decided that so many children injected into an all-adult household might make problems for everyone. I felt certain that Carrie had breathed a silent sigh of relief, though her invitation had been hearfelt She was not young, and I could tell, in my short visits with her, that noise tore up her nerves.

  She and Horace supplied many items that were needed. They had spent their lives wandering, but when they finally sent down roots they collected things at an amazing rate. The blowup had found them equipped with a little bit of almost everything.

  The storage shed at Fanchers' had survived the fire, and there Bill had stashed the "finds" he had made at Sim Jackman's. A bowlegged wood cookstove was the most valuable of these, but blacksmithing tools, chisels, punches, bits, leather-working tools, and many more items came out of that storeroom, and we rejoiced to see them.

  Once we had the house earth-banked and the roof sheathed with tin we scrounged from several old hay sheds, they insisted that we return to our own burgeoning crops and let them cope. This we did, after helping them drive their cattle down the road and into the new pastures. We rather regretted cutting the fences so thoroughly before we were through mending them.

  By now we were well into May, and we turned the children out with buckets, baskets, boxes, and hats to pick dewberries by the bushel. With our plentiful supply of honey (which also helped in making our alcohol) we jellied and preserved and "jammed" until all four households bulged with sweet stuff. And no sooner had the berries slacked off than the plums, both wild and tame, came on.

  By June we had exhausted the bulk of the garden stuff, drying much of it, though we had rigged Savoniuses for the other families and scrounged freezers for them, too. Still we felt that it was better to start in the way we must go. Freezers, we knew, once worn out could not be replaced.

  The first really hot days found us with a brief breathing spell while we waited for the hay to reach its full growth. For the first time in months we took thought to the children's education.

  Annie, we found, was far ahead of us.

  "The way I see it," she said in her carefully precise English, "is this. The things schools taught before are mostly useless now. Who needs to know bookkeeping – or will for generations? Nobody has use for civics, for instance. Civics is as dead as the dodo. What our young ones need is to read, to write a clean hand, to be able to use math, geometry, and logic. Most of the rest they'll get by reading. In your books you have something on everything I ever heard of, and they can get their history and geography and philosophy from reading them.

  "Among us we can find somebody who knows quite a bit about a lot of things. The children will learn from us while they help us do what we know how to. But for learning to read, write, and do simple math, they can teach each other much better than we can. Mine have been doing that since the blowup. Those who can read teach those who can't. As the five-year-old learns, she teaches the three-year-old. My two-year-old can read simple things like Hop on Pop, right now."

  "But will they?" Mom Allie asked, interestedly. "How do you make 'em accept the responsibility?"

  "By not letting them know it's a responsibility," Annie replied. "They do it for fun. Getting down the books is the biggest thrill they can think of, and if they're bad they don't get to study. Kids like to learn. It's only schools and sorry teachers that have made them think
it's miserable hard work."

  I nodded with agreement. "Remember last winter, Mom Allie? Jim and Sukie started out hating the thought of having to do schoolwork. But with no TV, no school itself, no outside people or ideas, before Christmas they were diving into it every evening, without being told. I hadn't really thought about it, what with everything, but it's been working right here. Do you know that Candy can say her ABCs? And count? And recognize both letters and numbers? I'Il bet you anything that the other under-fives are learning, too."

  And they were. When we checked (very cautiously), we found that Suzi was taking home armloads of books from the cabin every day or two. Jim, when asked very offhandedly, said, "We have a ball Mom. The little ones want to know everything and why it's so, and it keeps Sukie and me busy reading up, every night, so we can answer their questions."

  "Do you think they might like to learn something new–say Spanish?" I asked innocently. "I found my old records from the course I took, and we could rig a phonograph over there, if you wanted."

  "That'd be neat!' he breathed. "We could play with it every night."

  So our educational processes went on with even more verve than our agricultural ones, though many evenings all the young ones were too tuckered to do anything but lie in the fragrant summer grass and play word games or practice their Spanish. Even Lisa, whose life had not included even the concept of schooling, took to the books and the new ideas with relish. By midsummer, we were astounded at the amount we all had learned, for we soon found that an hour spent batting words and facts and strange philosophies around the bunch of us not only rested our bodies but kept our minds from going stale.

  The first of the hay was cut and stacked, according to Lucas's remembered formula. The stacks stood along the edges of the hayfields like African huts, and each forkfull had been laid neatly arranged around the central poles so that the rains of the winter wouldn't run into the stack. New hay was beginning to get deep in the fields when we began picking the corn that had dried on the stalks. We filled every bin and crib and shed that could be made weatherproof and (we hoped) rodent-tight. This would be the basis for our alcohol for the next year, and the protein-rich residue would feed all our cattle.