There was a lot of other food around. Within a quarter- mile I would say there was fifty coconut palms, and nothing is busier than a coconut palm is at making coconuts. Holly worked out a smart thing with coconuts. She would shred up three or four of them, and pour that and the coconut milk in her double boiler and cook it. Then she scooped out the shreds and put them in a cloth and squeezed out all the juice so it went back in the double boiler, and put the double boiler by to cool. When it cooled she spooned off what had come to the top and it was coconut butter. That let us fry things besides steaming or boiling them.
Another thing she done was with cabbage palms. You never seen nothing that looks more no-good and shiftless than a cabbage palm, what with giving no shade to speak of and looking like it needs a haircut and lolling around not caring a hang about making fruit or nuts or firewood or nothing. But Holly showed me how to pick out a young one and cut it down and trim out the white center, which is what folks call heart of palm. It went right good cut up into chunks with some fresh orange juice over it. About the oranges, Holly and me scouted around the island beyond our bridge and found what was left of an orange grove somebody had years ago. Most of the trees was all twisted and dying but some had nice little oranges even if they was on the tart side. Holly pointed out some other trees she said was mango trees and avocados, with fruit that would be ripe in a couple months.
Like I said before, it warn't that Holly was so smart or anything but just that she had read a lot, and I reckon if a person isn't too bright it is real helpful to them to be able to count on books. The time I found us some food didn't come from books but from doing some good hard thinking. The more I looked at the shell they had used for the fill, the more I figured there had to be clams and oysters around. So I scouted up and down the shore. I didn't find no oysters, and anyway they wouldn't have been in the shallows where I was looking, but I did find me a nice bed of clams up the shore a ways.
As time went on, even Pop got interested in things. I come back from clamming one day and there he was putting up a little one-rail fence around our lean-tos. He was using long thin poles with a bark something like birch that Holly said was called cajeput, and it made a right pretty fence. Pop claimed he didn't really take no interest in it and was just killing time, but the next day he was planting a couple of little coconut palms in the front yard and watering them and giving the twins what- for if they so much as brushed against them palms. I couldn't recollect Pop doing nothing like that to fix up our place at home.
The twins was doing good, too. Back home they hadn't been much use around the place, because as Pop said, when kids are bringing in Aid to Dependent Children it don't seem right to load them up with chores. But down here Holly kept them at chores only the twins didn't look at it like it was work. So they was happier and not scrapping as much and I was learning them to swim and Holly was learning them schoolwork.
One morning, maybe the fifth we was there, Pop lay back after breakfast and put words to something I reckon all of us had been thinking about. "What if," he said slowly, "there ain't never no cars along this road?"
"We can get along," Holly said. She got it out so fast you might think she had been ready with that answer all along, waiting for somebody to ask the question.
"I say we could, too," I told Pop. "Holly and me figure we can clean out that old grove on the island, and prune up the trees some and get her going enough for what we need. There's an old tumbledown shack over there too and it looks like folks had a vegetable garden next to it once, and while things are all overgrown and gone to seed, maybe if we scratch around we can come up with seeds we could use for a vegetable garden."
"Well, all right then," Pop said. "I just want to make sure I got everything planned right, so I don't have to worry if there ain't going to be no more cars. But I surely would like to know what happened."
"Could it be like this?" I said. "This is a new road and folks have never used it so they wouldn't have it in mind. The fellers who built the road have went away and they don't have it in mind. Now maybe just one feller in the government does have it in mind, and he is going to put it on a map so folks can use it. But maybe he gets tired and quits before he does put it on a map. Then another feller in the government comes along and says, 'Where's that road I heard we was building?' And another feller says, 'What road?' And the first feller says, 'Why don't you look on the map before you say what road to me?' And the second feller says, 'Look for yourself and you can see we don't have no new road on the map.' And the first feller says, 'I reckon you are right because there sure isn't no new road on this map.' So after that, there isn't nobody who has the road in mind, and it never gets opened up for folks to use."
"You may have the right of it," Pop said. "But there could be another answer. They could have dropped some of them big bombs and wiped out everybody but us."
"Pop," I said, "that is a mighty sobering thought. Because if that has happened, you and Holly and the twins and me are all that is left, and it would be up to us to get the human race back on its feet again."
"I think it would be a mistake to get the human race back on its feet again," Pop said. "It's a nicer life setting down, and you don't get into so much trouble."
Holly said dreamily, "I wonder what kind of world we would try to make? Would we want to change it much?"
Well, that got all of us thinking. It warn't easy to decide what changes you would want to make. Would you want to get rid of them cellophane packages you can't hardly open? Would you want to get rid of sixty-mile-an-hour traffic and switchblade knives and juke boxes turned on full blast? Would you want a big government that looked after you, or a little government that you had to look after? When I give it some thought, I reckoned I warn't smart enough to decide what other folks ought to have, so I wouldn't change things just on my own say-so.
After we talked about it a while, Holly said, "Well, anyway, it's just a dream because if bombs had been dropping all over the world we would have heard something. And there hasn't been a sound."
"Hasn't there?" Pop said. "What is that roaring noise I hear right now?"
We listened, and dog me if there warn't a roaring sound. But in a couple seconds I knowed what it was. "Pop," I said, "that is no bomb going off. That is a big old six-by-six truck coming down the road."
After five days of not seeing another thing on the road it was kind of scary and upsetting to hear that truck coming along. You might think all of us would have been out by the side of the road yelling and waving. Instead we just set there, like this warn't just a truck but a big change coming into our lives and none of us ready for it. We listened to that truck come across our island and downshift for the wooden bridge and rumble across the planks and not a one of us moved. The truck come off the bridge and started by, and then somebody in the cab yelled at the driver and the brakes jammed on and it come to a stop a little ways past us. There was some lettering on the cab that said: "Department of Public Improvements, State of Columbiana."
A feller riding beside the driver jumped out and walked back to us. He was a young feller in suntans that didn't come off no rack but had been stitched up just for him. He had a tanned face and a crew cut, and at Fort Dix this would have been a feller you jumped up for and saluted.
He stopped and put his hands on his hips and barked at us, "What's going on here?"
Pop said, "I reckon you are from the government, and I will say it's about time." Pop was mild about it, even though he had been pretty much let down by the government.
"I'm District Director of Public Improvements," the feller said. "And I want to know what you're doing here."
"We run out of gas," Pop said, "and—"
"Don't give me that stuff. You've been camping here, and on our right of way, too."
I was proud of the way Pop kept his temper, because he warn't used to the government treating him like this. Pop said, "We near about had to camp, on account of it was five days ago we rim out of gas, and there ain't been a car a
long this road since. We got along pretty good without a mite of help from the government. Now—"
The feller said, "How did you get on this road, anyway? We've had a barrier across the road where it comes off the Gulf Coast Highway. We just finished the drawbridge at the other end. This road hasn't been open to the public. It's not open yet, and here you are camping on the right of way as if you own it. Where are you people from?"
"We're the Kwimpers of Cranberry County, New Jersey," Pop said, trying not to take on big about it. "Maybe there is other Kwimpers in the country but they ain't related to us so that is why I say the Kwimpers of Cranberry County, New Jersey."
Well, this was an ignorant feller because the name Kwimper didn't mean nothing to him. "My name is King, H. Arthur King," he said. "You don't have to remember that, but you'd better remember I'm District Director of
Public Improvements. I'm telling you to load all your junk in that jaloppy and get going. Here the Department builds a new road through completely unspoiled country, and you come along and mess up the best view. You folks don't appreciate what the government does for you."
Pop was getting riled. "I know what the government done for me," he said, "but I reckon you don't know what I done for the government. I am one of the strongest supporters the government has, and—"
"You're a taxpayer and you've got rights, huh?" Mr. King said. "Well, Mac, everybody's a taxpayer."
"Don't you go calling me a taxpayer!" Pop said. "There ain't a word of truth in it! I helped the government out on everything it wanted to do, relief and Compensation and Aid to Dependent Children and Total Disability—"
"Somebody's nuts around here and it isn't me," Mr. King said. "You claim you're out of gas, do you?"
Pop said, "I am out of gas and mighty near out of patience, and—"
This feller had a trick of cutting you off before you done talking. He swung around and called back to the truck, "Hey, Joe! Bring that spare can of gas and slop enough in their tank to get them to Gulf City." He turned back to Pop and said, "I don't know why I should try to explain anything to you, but this road the Department has been building is part of the biggest planned betterment project this state has ever seen. The state owns all the land through here and it's all programmed right down to the last acre. The island the other side of the bridge will be a bird sanctuary. Back on the mainland we'll have a wildlife preserve. We—"
"Don't you have no place for people?" Pop said.
"People? Certainly we have. There's going to be a supervised camping area on another island. On a third island we're going to put in a model farm to show people how to grow things, and on another there'll be a model housing facility to show them how to live."
Pop said, "I guess you're going to let 'em figure out how to die on their very own, though, ain't you?"
"We'll get around to whatever is needed. We—say, you think that's a smart crack, don't you? I knew it was no use trying to give you the big picture." He dug in his pocket and brung out a pad and pencil, and scribbled a note and tore it off and handed it to Pop. "This will get you across the drawbridge into Gulf City," he said. "It's about twelve miles ahead of you. And don't let me catch you camping along this road again. Why, Governor George K. Shaw himself is going to drive along this road three days from now and dedicate it, and this view isn't going to be messed up by any campers. Joe, did you slop in enough gas?"
The truck driver screwed the cap back on our gas tank, and said, "Yes sir, Mr. King. She's all set."
"O.K.," Mr. King said. Then he told Pop, "Don't waste any time clearing out." He marched back to the truck and clumb in, and the truck growled its gears at us and moved off down the road toward the Gulf Coast Highway.
Pop said, "Well, I got to admit I am mad clear through. I was ready to meet the government halfway and not make too big a point about how they left us here without no help, but the way things is now I am near about ready to be agin the government."
I said, "Why didn't you rattle off some regulations at him, Pop?" The way Pop handles anybody from relief or Compensation or Aid to Dependent Children who gives him trouble is to rattle off regulations at them, and if he don't know of none he makes them up as he goes along. Pop says the government has so many regulations that nobody knows all of them, and if you throw in a few extra the government don't know the difference.
Pop said, "You got to get the feel of things before you can fire regulations at the government. Like that time I was on relief and the government come bothering me about why did I have this here car. Well, I had the feel of relief, so I told the government I reckon you forgot that regulation that says it ain't right to go around upsetting folks on relief by poking into their private life. Well, I had the feel of relief so good it turned out they did have that regulation. But it would have worked just as good if they didn't, because it sounded right. I didn't have no feel of this today so I couldn't make nothing up."
"It warn't fair," I said. "He took you off balance."
"I reckon you can say that, Toby. And let it be a lesson to you. Don't never let the government get you off balance. You got to keep it off balance. Well, looks like we pack and clear out, don't it?"
When we come right down to it, we didn't have the heart to do much packing. We dumped the fish and crabs out of their live boxes, and Pop rounded up his hub caps and throwed them in the trunk of the car, and that was that. He didn't even feel like taking the fender I had used for a scoop and that Holly had used for the bottom of the double boiler. We drove away leaving the lean-tos and everything else in place. The twins was blubbering in the back seat and Holly was crying and Pop was clearing his throat so it sounded like the car was stripping gears. I had lumps in my throat like I had tried to swallow some of that shell fill. So it was a pretty miserable drive and we didn't get no good out of the views the betterment project had fixed up for us on the way to Gulf City.
We gave Mr. King's note to the guard at the drawbridge into Gulf City, and he opened the gate and we drove through and stopped at the first gas station. We got gas and Pop paid for it, and the feller looked at our car and asked if somebody had tried to strip it when we warn't around, on account of it was missing so many things.
"No," Pop said, "they kind of come off while we was on that new cut-off road from the south."
"You don't say?" the feller said. "It's that bumpy, is it? Well, I knew it wasn't going to be much of a road the first time I read about it in the papers. Anybody that builds a road these days on a measly little fifty-foot right of way is not building much of a road is what I say. Two lanes to drive in, and a space to pull off the road each side, and there's your fifty feet. It ain't like they couldn't get enough land, either. They own it all from hell to breakfast. But all they got marked down for a legal right of way is fifty feet. What I hear is they don't want a lot of cars using that road and stopping at bridges to fish and things like that. I didn't know that road was open to the public yet."
Pop said, "It won't never be what you would call really open to the public, the way things are going. Well, thank you kindly, and is there a grocery around here?"
The feller told him where to find a grocery, and we drove there and Pop began stocking up on food. I reckon it had scared Pop to run out of gas when we didn't have no food, because he bought enough to carry us for a week. We stowed it in the car and pulled away from the curb and all of a sudden Pop made a U-turn.
"North is the other way, Pop," I said.
"You mean I'm heading south, Toby?"
"That's right, Pop."
"That certainly is good," Pop said, "because south is where I'm planning to head."
"All you will find down this way is the drawbridge to the new road," I said, hoping he would take the hint.
"I hope you are right, Toby, because it certainly would upset me to find they had taken away the drawbridge in the last hour."
"Pop," I said, "I don't want you to think I am agin you, but you can be the most stubborn man in the state of Jersey and they don't
come stubborner than Jerseymen unless somewhere there are folks that would kick it out with the rear end of mules. What have you got your mind set on?"
Pop said calmly, "I got my mind set on going back to our camp. There ain't no use letting the government get away with what it done to us, Toby, because it will get the government in bad habits."
The twins caught what he said, and started yelling, "We're going back! We're going back! Hooray! We—"
"Oh hush, you two!" Holly cried. "Are we really going back? I would just love it, but won't they arrest us?"
"Not now they won't," Pop said. "Because now I have got the feel of this, and when the government comes around I am going to rattle off so many regulations it will take the government a year to look them all up. Toby, how wide was the blacktop part of the road, where we was camped?"
"I don't know what that has got to do with it," I said. "But if it will keep you happy, my guess is the blacktop was about twenty-five feet wide."
"And the fill on each side, where we was camping?"
"Well, across the road there might have been thirty feet of fill, Pop. And on our side maybe thirty-five feet. What I figure is, they dredged out a channel where the bridge was to go, and had to put the spoil somewheres and just dropped her right there. Because back a hundred yards toward the mainland there isn't more than ten-fifteen feet of fill each side of the blacktop."
Pop said, "Maybe you call to mind the feller at the gas station saying the right of way was only fifty feet? That's twenty-five feet for the blacktop, and twelve and a half feet of shoulder each side. Toby, we warn't camped on state land at all. We warn't camped on nobody's land. They put in extra fill at that bridge and it goes beyond their right of way, and it's just as much ours as anybody's. So we're going back and teach the government a lesson."
Pioneer, Go Home! Page 4
