The World Ends In Hickory Hollow

by Mayhar, Ardath

  We had washed up, one scorching July evening, and were waiting for Nellie, Suzi, and Lisa to finish getting supper on the table when a familiar yet alien sound reached us. Zack stood up in one motion and reached for his rifle. I followed suit, as did the rest of our crew. Skinny and Josh melted into the shrubbery, and the children scooted for their burrow. Mom Allie and Lantana made for the cabin and took up their posts.

  So it was that when a four-wheel-drive pickup jounced into view, only Zack and I stood waiting for it to come to a stop. We didn't exactly hold our rifles on it as the driver got out, but it wouldn't have taken a second to have him in our sights.

  He was a surprise. In his neat highway patrol uniform, he might have stepped, entire, out of the lost past. However, he had his handgun out, and his expression was not really reassuring. He waved the thing at us, motioning us back.

  Obligingly, we stepped one pace backward.

  "Harley Schmidt," he grunted.

  "Gesundheit, "I replied, gravely, and Zack snorted with laughter.

  "This is no game, ma'am," he said sternly, waving the pistol again. "I'm the only government this whole area has left, from Dallas to the Coast. It's my job to see everybody knows the rules and lives by 'em. I've got the Texas Criminal Code in the truck, plenty of copies for everybody. Anybody doesn't take 'em serious, I'Il have to take 'em in.

  "To where?" came Lantana's voice from the cabin. "You goin' to jail everybody who spits on a sidewalk? Go along, man. There's no more government, far as we are concerned. Just little dabs of folks like us who are too busy surviving to worry about a lot of foolishness."

  Schmidt's face grew pink. "Respect for the law ... " he began, but Zack finished the sentence ... "is as dead as the dodo. Like civics. Like bookkeeping. Like income taxes and dope peddling and graft and meddling government agencies.. Like state highway patrolmen. You must give yourself tickets. There's nobody else on the roads we've seen."

  "People need somebody to take care of'em," Schmidt yelled.

  "Go tell that to the Ungers. We've been doing fine taking care of ourselves. They've been doing their best to take care of themselves, robbing and killing what few people they can find. If you really want to do something useful, warn anybody whose road ends at the lake or the river that those critters are loose and armed. Better yet, get some of'em together and bring 'em here and we'll all go down together to the lake and finish off the whole mess."

  "Or you can take them off to jail," I added sweetly to Zaclr's statement.

  Schmidt's face grew even pinker. "Folks like you're the very ones got this country in the fix it's in," he grunted. "Takin' the Law for somethin' to laugh at. Coddlin' pinkos and pansies and niggers. I'm not lettin' you get away with it. I've got me an organization started, and we're goin' to clean up this end of the state. Maybe the rest of the country's gone, but we're goin' to have law and order right here."

  "You poor goop," said Zack patiently, "can't you see that even if you had a thousand nuts like yourself you couldn't get things back like they were? People just don't have time to play games any more. We're busy, every day of every week of every month, just making sure that we and our family can survive for the next day and week and month. You try to take up our time with permits and such, and we'll not stand for it."

  "Besides," I added, "I can't see even you running around the roads trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again and letting your people go hungry. So I gather that you're a bachelor with no family. But anybody who has people who depend on him isn't going to bother with you, whether he agrees with you or not."

  From the frown that crossed his face, I decided that I was at least partly right. That didn't prevent him from making another reckless gesture with his handgun.

  Evidently Mom Allie had had enough. A slug thunked into the ground beside his polished boots, and she said, "Drop that thing, sonny, before you hurt somebody."

  He dropped it. I would have, too, for she used the voice a good mother uses just before she unlimbers the peach tree switch.

  Zack bent over and picked it up, jacked the cartridges out. Then he tossed the gun back to Schmidt. "Put that away. Maybe you can talk sense without having it in your hand."

  A bit of the stuffing seemed to disappear with the weapon, for he didn't know what to do with his hands as he listened to my husband put our position into the simplest English he could manage.

  "We are surviving. We are taking in anyone who is willing to work with us. We have hurt only those people who have tried kill us. We will not take any guff off a tin-pot clunk that nobody needs anymore. You come back, alone or in company, with the idea of arresting us or making us toe your imaginary mark, I will send you back with lead in your pants. I hereby declare this the United Area of Hickory Hollow, free and independent of any body or governmental entity that went before. We have one code–work for the common good or get out, alive or dead, as you prefer."

  I put my arm around him and gave him a hug.

  Schmidt glared at us for a moment, got in his truck, and backed out around the curve of the drive. We could hear him gunning his engine all the way up the road and out of earshot.

  "If we're lucky, he'll run out of gas before he can get back around to us," Zack sighed. "But isn't it strange how some people just can't accept the fact that things have changed?

  Mom Allie came out of the cabin wiping her hands on her apron. "We'll have to keep an eye out for him, now, just as we do the Ungers. That's the kind that can't take the idea that he has lost his clout. I've met a thousand of him, along the way. They're worse than the seven-year itch. Can't seem to get rid of 'em."

  Lantana, following her, nodded. "Might be," she said worriedly, "we ought to warn 'em downriver, just in case he works the other road. Way he talked, the Fanchers might have trouble with him."

  We looked at one another. We had worked without letup in the fields and the gardens. It was too early for planting the fall gardens, the hay was coming on, the corn gathered and its stalks also chopped and fermenting in our alcohol vats. We needed ... really needed ... a holiday.

  The whole crew was at supper at the long table under the sweetgum tree in the back yard of the cabin. We had found that cooking two meals was a waste of manpower, so we combined forces during peak working seasons. When we broached the subject of a combined day off and picnic down the river, they were fired with enthusiasm.

  "But can we risk leavin' the places empty?" Lucas asked at last. "Seems pretty dangerous."

  "I think I can solve that," Zack answered. "My job in 'Nam was booby traps. And if you can undo them, you can, by golly, do them. Though I hate the thought of it."

  So it was that the next morning was spent in sandwich-making (we had figured a way to make sour-dough bread using a mix of cornmeal and ground oats that would hang together pretty well) and in booby-trapping buildings. Zack, with his usual long-range vision, took all the children with him to "help. " They would always know where the traps were and what they looked like, as a consequence. And after he "blew" one for their edification, they were unwilling to get too near any of the locations. Children, contrary to the views of our late culture, are not fools.

  By ten o'clock we were ready. Most of us elected to walk. Some rode horses. The older folk preferred to ride in the wagon. We looked like the Westward Migration when we started off through the cut-fence road.

  Our first stop at the Fanchers' was welcomed enthusiastically. We found the family gathered about a sick cow. Mom Allie and Lucas diagnosed her problem as bloat and Lucas inserted the small blade of his pocket knife into the barrel of her belly just before the hip. A rush of foul gas sent us all retreating into shade of the yard.

  The Fanchers were as ready for a holiday as we were. In a fast scramble, they got food together, set their standing traps and trip ropes against intruders, and were ready to join us. So we set out again across the pastures.

  At the Londowns' fence we paused to send Zack to the house. We crossed the "hostile territory" and waited
for him beyond the fence that bounded his land on its other side. It wasn't long before Zack came pelting back, and I could tell the way he sat his horse that he was mad clean through.

  Though he said nothing to the others, he hitched his horse to the tail of the wagon and walked beside me for a while. When we were far enough behind the others, he said very softly, "That bastard Curt is enough to make you sick. He never thanked me for warning him about Schmidt... said he sounded like the sort of man who ought to take things in hand now. 'We need a strong hand,' he told me. Strong hand! What those two want is a penny-ante dictatorship set up in the place of the state that's gone. With themselves in the driver's seat, of course. Wouldn't surprise me if that fool went galloping off to join Schmidt and left his family to take care of themselves."

  I could feel him seething beside me as we walked, so I said, "Why don't we have Bill keep a very distant eye on their place and warn us if Curt leaves for any length of time? The Ungers would be on them fast, if they knew he was gone. Cheri and the two older children just haven't enough numbers to hold them off. " He grunted agreement. And we walked in silence for a time in the blaze of the July morning. A hawk circled high, and two buzzards moved even higher as barely discernible specks. A coachwhip snake went shooting through the grass beside us, and crackles of grasshoppers fanned up in front as we wandered across the deep-grown grass.

  From the wagon, Nellie called, "Could we go by the house? I'd like .... I'd like to put some greenery on Jess's grave. " We turned toward the distant roof, but the track we had followed in the winter was now lost in the rampant growth of grass and hushes. The yard, too, was lost in weeds and grass. But in the orchard small sweet peaches hung on the trees.

  "We'll get a load of these when we come back," Nellie said. "I know how to dry them ... Mother used to do that."

  There was deep shade about Jess Sweetbrier's resting place, and we sat there while Nellie found ferns and planted them about the now-sunken grave. Then we moved into the orchard again to eat our lunch, finishing it off with peaches in disgraceful amounts.

  After a short rest, we moved away again, and I saw that Nellie didn't look back even once. I nodded to myself, and Zack, always on top of everything, took my hand.

  "We're all of us through with looking back," he said. "Forward is going to be all anybody can handle for quite a while."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Our short day of outing was over too soon, but it renewed the ties we felt with those down the way. The Jessups were faring well, though Sim had never fully regained his strength. All of them came with us a bit of the way, when the lowering sun told us it was time to start homeward.

  Zack and I, walking at the rear of the big group of people, felt like the founders of some new tribe. Carrie and Horace, walking with us, voiced our feelings well when Horace said, "You know, it seems odd to us older ones, but this is the way it's going to be, from now on. Groups like this, every kind of people from all kinds of backgrounds, working together."

  "Like a family, Carrie chimed in. "Fighting like crazy, sometimes. Having all sorts of fits and fallings-out. But still standing up for one another when things get tight.

  "You know, we intend to go over, when we've the time, and pull things together at the Sweetbrier place. We feel as if, with all these young ones, in a few years there'll be new families to need houses. It'd be a shame to let good houses fall down from lack of care, when they'll be needed."

  "Now who's looking ahead?" I teased her. "I hadn't thought that far, myself, but you're right. We could make this whole five miles of river land one community. Except for the Londowns, of course."

  She frowned, but Horace boomed, "Sounds as if Londown and Schmidt would make a good team. Hang on to old prejudices and worn-out rules and useless things like that until you manage to put the rest of us under, that's the motto of that kind. I suppose they just can't let themselves realize that the old world is gone as thoroughly as ancient Greece."

  Zack sighed. "Some people–a lot of them, really hadn't any inside security. Just artificial things like authority or feeling superior because of their color or politics or suchlike gave them their self-esteem. And now we have to cope with surviving, with Ungers and their kind, and with witless wonders like those, too. What a pain!'

  Nevertheless, the reminder of Harley Schmidt cast a pall over our good-byes. It wasn't leavened much by Horace's parting gift. He had carried a long, oddly shaped parcel all the way, and as we reached the first fence line he thrust it into Zack's hands. "Here. Try it out. When you get home, let 'er rip for a few blasts. If we can hear you, then we'll know you can hear us, if anything comes unglued."

  It was a battered trumpet. Zack raised it to his lips and emitted a wild squawk, but Horace stood there in the hot summer afternoon and gave him a short lesson in getting the most sound possible from the thing. And when Zack raised a respectable blast, Horace grinned. "Got one like it," he said. "Just say if either end of the line hears a hoot, it's a sign of trouble. If, that is, it can be heard. I'll answer you, if I hear you, and we'll all be listening, in about an hour or so."

  The young ones could hardly wait to get home and try out the new system, so we made good time across the grown-over fields and pastures. As we crossed Londowns', we could see the whole family lined up before their garden fence, watching us. There was no wave, no hail, nothing. It seemed such a pity, with so few of us left, that his children should be so isolated, but I suppose he thought our dark-complexioned children had already contaminated our lighter ones and would also spread some sort of plague to his own.

  The shadows were long before we reached our own lane. Lucas and Elmond slipped ahead of the bunch to reconnoiter, and we followed slowly, quietly, waiting for their signal. The birds were celebrating the first coolness of evening with many-voiced enthusiasm. Along the creek beside us the frogs had tuned up, trebles first, then mid-tones, and lastly the true bassos. It was a moment so lovely, so fragile, that I held my breath, fearing that our scouts might find something terribly amiss to spoil it. But Lucas's clear old voice called, "All's fine and dandy," and we came up the lane under a crimson-streaked sky.

  At the gate Zack lifted the horn and blew, once, twice, three times, shocking the birds to silence. Then we waited. After a little, we could hear, faintly but clearly, the trumpeted reply. A communal sigh told me that all of us had held our breaths, waiting.

  Lantana turned her lined face up to the sky. "Good thing we went now," she mused. "Weather comin'. Tomorrow, next day, weather comin' for sure."

  Which meant that we rose the next morning and hastily saw to the security of our haystacks, our corn bins, and our stills. Suzi and I turned under the dried bean vines in the garden and planted fresh greens, beans, and squash, while the others scattered to their own tasks. When the lunch call was beaten out on the old plowshare that hung from the chinaberry tree, clouds were already beginning to darken the northwest horizon. We hurriedly covered our last row of seeds, then headed for the cabin, where Nellie and Mom Allie presided over the cooking.

  By the time we were all washed and seated, a riffle of cool breeze was interrupting the sultry heat of the morning. We ate with one eye turned skyward, expecting to be forced inside at any moment, but as it happened the storm didn't arrive until later. Yet all the time those blue-black clouds approached from the northwest, Lantana was uneasy as a fox in a box. She kept prowling onto the back porch and gazing first to the northwest, then to the southwest, then returning to her tasks in the cabin.

  Skinny finally suggested that all those who lived at the house had better make tracks, while they could make it. Lantana shook her head, and to my surprise Mom Allie and Lucas agreed with her.

  "Don't like the color of that sky," Lucas explained. "I think we'd better stick close to the Burrow, all of us. I feel a tornado, off there someplace."

  "But it's not the season!" I stared at him in surprise. "We always have our tornadoes in the late fall and winter around here. Not in the dead of summer."r />
  "Mostly," he agreed. "But not always, not even before the bombs fell and did whatever they've done to the jet stream and the lay of the land, and maybe even the ocean currents.. There's so much that we don't know now about how things are over the horizon. Anyway, my bones have lived with East Texas weather for a lot of years, and you can hardly fool 'em."

  By now all of us were beginning to feel the electric prickle of the coming turbulence. A spatter of big, fat raindrops was followed by a gust of wind that laid the whole forest that we could see into a deep bow. It hit the cabin like a blow from a plank, and we all looked at one another, gathered up the children, handwork, and current books and retired to the cramped confines of the Burrow.

  You haven't lived until you have crammed ten adults and nine children into a mobile home, however large and comfortable it might seem to be. Aside from lack of room, the young ones were wild with the excitement that accompanies an electrical storm. We finally had to let them out into the warm rain that now came down in opaque sheets. A little of that calmed them down, and we had them dried and drowsy when Lantana cocked her head, her old-fashioned cornrow braids standing out stiffly.

  "Here she comes," she whispered.

  It sounded like a train or a flight of jets. The rumble wasn't placeable, as to direction, but we knew it must be coming up the track from southwest to northeast, for that was the almost invariable road the twisters took.

  "God, let it bounce high off the last line of hills," murmured Mom Allie, and I added my silent amen to that. The painfully scrounged array of equipment and foodstuffs, books and clothing and tools we had labored to assemble could go, leaving no trace of anything that might be suspected of being a habitation. I'd seen it many times.