Earth Abides

by George Rippey Stewart

  Ish got out of the jeep, and stretched. His long legs were cramped from its close quarters, and his bad loin ached from even this small amount of bumping.

  “Well,” he said with a little pride in his voice, “what do you think of it, Mary?” Mary was his own daughter, but she was not much like either of her parents, and her stolidity often bothered him.

  “Good!” she said with a Choctaw-like imperturbability.

  Ish felt that there was not much to follow up along that line. “Where’s the bulldodging?” he asked.

  “Down by the big oak tree.”

  Just then they heard the loud sound of yelling, and Ish knew that someone had made a good maneuver at dodging.

  “Well, I guess I might as well go down and see the national sport,” he said, though he knew the irony would be wasted.

  “Yes,” said Mary, and began to stroll back with her baby toward her own house.

  Ish went off on the path down the hill, across lots, through what had once been someone’s backyard. “National sport!” he was still thinking to himself bitterly, although he realized that the bitterness might be partly because his own triumphant entry had been spoiled. He heard another shout from ahead which indicated that again someone put himself within a few inches of the bull’s horns.

  Bulldodging was dangerous, too, although actually no one had ever been killed or even badly hurt. Ish rather disapproved of the whole business, but he did not feel that he was in a position to set himself firmly against it. The boys needed some way to get rid of their energy, and perhaps they even needed something dangerous. By and large, life was perhaps too quiet and too safe these days. Possibly—the image of Mary came to his mind again—too safe and unadventurous life tended to produce stolid people. These days children never had to be warned against crossing the street because of automobiles, and there were dozens of other daily hazards of the old civilization such as the common cold, not to mention atomic bombs, which nobody ever needed to consider. You had the ordinary run of sprains, cuts, and bruises, what you expected among people living largely in the open, and handling tools like hatchets and knives. Once, too, Molly had burned her hands badly, and there had been a near-drowning when a three-year-old had slipped from the pier at fishing.

  Now he came into the edge of the little open space on the side of the hill, fairly level, close to the flat rock where the numerals of the years were incised. It had once been a park. The bull was being played in the center of the grassy spot. It was not a lawn such as you expected in a park. The grass was a foot tall at this time of year, and would have been taller if it had not been eaten down by cattle and elk.

  Harry, Molly’s fifteen-year-old, was playing the bull, and Ish’s own Walt was backing him up—what they called “playing halfback”—a bit of jargon surviving from the Old Times. Although Ish did not consider himself an expert, his first glance was enough to let him know that this particular bull was not very dangerous. He must have been of almost pure Hereford blood, and still had the red coat with the white face and front markings. Nevertheless he showed the cumulative effects of ancestors who for twenty-one years had lived as, range cattle, knowing no man-supplied shelter or food and surviving as best they could. The legs were longer; the barrel of the body, slimmer; the horns, bigger. At the moment, there was a pause in the game as the already tiring bull stood uncertain, and Harry was taunting him to charge.

  At the edge of the glade among the trees on the uphill side, the spectators were sitting—almost everybody from the community in fact, including Jeanie with her baby. Among the trees they would have no trouble getting out of the road of the bull, if by any chance he should suddenly decide to leave the open ground. There were several dogs to be loosed in an emergency, and Jack sat with a rifle across his knees.

  The bull suddenly came to life, and charged ponderously uphill with enough power to have wiped out twenty boys. But Harry dodged neady, and the bull came to a halting stop, uncertain and confused.

  A little girl (she was Jean’s Betty) sprang suddenly from the group, and cried out that she wanted to take over. She was a wild, dashing little figure, her skirts tucked up high around her thighs, her long sun-tanned legs flashing back and forth in the sunshine. Harry yielded place to his half-sister. The bull was tired now, and fit for a girl to take over. Betty, aided by Walt, managed to provoke a few charges which were of no difficulty to dodge. And then, suddenly, a little boy cried out loudly, “I’m going in!”

  It was Joey. Ish frowned, but he knew that he would not have to exert himself to forbid it. Joey was only nine, and it was strictly against the rules for anyone so young to try bulldodging, even as halfback. The older boys enforced this discipline quickly enough. They were kindly, but firm.

  “Aah, Joey,” said Bob from his age of sixteen, “you’re not big enough yet. You’ve got to wait a couple of years, anyway.”

  “Yeah?” said Joey. “I’m as good as Walt is, anyway.”

  The way he said it, suggested to Ish that Joey might have been doing a little practice on his own, sneaking off to find some easy-looking bull and playing it for a while, perhaps with the aid of Josey, his devoted twin sister. Ish felt a quick coldness pass through him at the thought of any danger to Joey—to Joey, particularly.

  After a few more half-hearted protests, however, Joey had to subside.

  By this time the bull, fat from the good grazing, was thoroughly tired and winded. He stood, only pawing the grass a little, while the wildly cavorting Betty swarmed around him, and even turned a handspring. But the sport was obviously, over, and the spectators began to drift off. The older boys called to Betty and Walter. Suddenly the bull, much to his relief, doubtless, was merely left standing alone in the center of the grassy spot.

  Back at the houses, Ish went to look at the well, to see how much work had been done during the day. He found that it had been sunk only a foot or so. Shovels and picks were left scattered about. All too obviously, the easygoing nature of the community and the special attraction of bulldodging had prevented much labor being performed. Ish looked at the shallow hole a little grimly.

  Yet during the day enough water had been carted in from a spring to provide plenty for all practical purposes. At dinner the veal roast was extremely good, and the only thing lacking to make a really excellent meal for Ish was that his Napa Gamay had soured a little in the bottle, after standing for better than a quarter-century, if the vintage-date on the label could be trusted.

  Chapter 4

  He planned that the boys should leave on the fourth day. That was another difference between the Old Times and these now. Then it was all so complicated that anything important had to be worked out a long time ahead; now you just decided on something, and did it. Besides, the season of the year was favorable, and he feared that delay would only permit the enthusiasm for the expedition to seep away.

  Throughout the intervening days he kept the boys busy. He practiced them at driving. He took them to the garage again, and picked up some spare parts, such as a fuel-pump and a coil. To the best of his ability he showed them how to change parts, and they practiced a little.

  “Or,” he said, “you might find it easier, if you have trouble, to stop in at some garage and get another one running, just as we did here. That might be easier than to try patching this one.”

  But most of all Ish enjoyed the planning of the route. In the service stations he found road-maps, yellow and faded. He studied them eagerly, bringing into play his old knowledge of the land, trying to imagine how flood and windstorm and treegrowth would have affected the roads at different points.

  “Head south first, for Los Angeles,” he concluded finally. “That was a big center of population in the Old Times. There are probably some people left, maybe a community.”

  On the map he let his glance run southward toward Los Angeles, following the old familiar red lines of the routes.

  “Try 99 first,” he said. “You can probably get through. If it’s blocked in the mountains t
urn back toward Bakersfield and work across to 466, and try it over Tehachapi Pass….”

  He paused, and in the pause he suddenly felt his throat tight, and his eyes brimming. Nostalgia filled him. The names, it must have been, that did it! Burbank, Hollywood, Pasadena—once they had been living towns. He had known them. Now coyotes hunted jack-rabbits through their drought-stricken parks and back-lots. Yet all the names still stood out black and plain on the maps.

  He swallowed and winked, for he saw the two boys looking at him.

  “O.K.,” he said briskly. “From Los Angeles, or from Barstow, if you can’t make Los Angeles, take 66 east. That was the way I went. Across the desert, things should be easy. But watch your water. If the Colorado River bridge is there, well and good. If not, swing north and try the road across Boulder Dam. The dam will be there still, certainly.”

  On the maps he showed them how to figure out alternate routes, if they found themselves blocked anywhere. But with the jeep he thought that they could usually get through with no more than the occasional cutting back of a fallen tree, or an hour’s work with pick and shovel to make a track across a landslide. After all, even in twenty-one years, the great highways would not be entirely blocked.

  “You may have some trouble in Arizona,” he went on. “After you get to the mountains, but then….”

  “What’s Arry—? What is it?—Arry-zone-a?”

  Bob was asking, and it was a fair enough question. But Ish found himself stumped to answer it. What Arizona once had been—even that was a hard one. Had it been a certain amount of territory, or had it been essentially a corporate entity, an abstraction. Even so, how could he explain in a few words what a “state” had been? Much less, how could he explain what Arizona now was?

  “Oh,” he said finally, “Arizona—that was just a name for that part over there beyond the river.” Then he had an inspiration, “See, on the map it’s this part inside the yellow line.”

  “Yes,” said Bob, “I suppose they had a fence around it?”

  “Well, I doubt whether they had.”

  “That’s right. They wouldn’t have needed a fence where the river was.”

  (Let it pass, thought Ish. He thinks Arizona is like an old fenced-in backyard, only bigger.)

  After that, however, he stopped referring to states, and mentioned cities. The boys knew what a city was, that is, it was a lot of littered streets and weather-beaten buildings. Of course, since they themselves lived in a city, they could easily imagine another city and another community like their own.

  He routed them through Denver, Omaha, and Chicago, wanting to see what would have happened in the great cities. By that time it would be spring. Beyond that, he told them to try for Washington and New York, by the route that seemed the most passable.

  “The Pennsylvania Turnpike may still be the best way to get across the mountains. It will be hard to block a four-lane highway like that, and even the tunnels should still be open.”

  For the return route he left them to their own choice; by that time they would know more about conditions than he did. He suggested, however, that they swing far to the south, since on account of the cold winters there would probably have been a drift of population toward the Gulf Coast.

  They drove the jeep every day, and thus, by the process of elimination through blowouts, they got tires which seemed likely to stand up under some wear.

  On the fourth day they left, the back of the jeep jammed with an extra battery, tires, and other equipment; the boys themselves, half-wild with the excitement of the prospect; their mothers, close to tears at the thought of so long a separation; Ish himself, nervous with the desire to go along.

  The boundaries, like the fences, drew lines that were hard and uncompromising. They too were man-made, abstractions dominating reality. Where you crossed by the highway, on a line, the road-surface changed. It was smooth in Delaware, but when you went into Maryland, you felt a change in vibration, and all at once the tires hummed differently. “State line,” the sign read. “Entering Nebraska. Speed limit 60 M. P. H.” So even right and wrong altered with the sharp snap of a discontinuity, and you stepped harder on the throttle.

  At the national boundary the flags showed different colors, though the same breeze blew them. You stopped for customs and immigration, and were suddenly a stranger, unfamiliar. “Look,” you said, “that policeman has a different uniform!” You got new money, and even for picture post-cards the stamps had to have another face on them. “Better drive extra carefully,” you said. “Wouldn’t be good to get arrested over here.” That was a funny business! You stepped across a line you couldn’t see, and then you were one of those queer people—a foreigner!

  But boundaries fade even faster than fences. Imaginary lines need no rust to efface them. Then there will be no quick shifts, and adjustments, and perhaps it will be easier on the mind. They will say as in the beginning: “About where oaks start to get thin, and the pines take over.” They will say: “Over across there—can’t tell exactly—in the foothills where it gets drier and you start seeing sagebrush”.

  After the boys had left, there seemed to be a settling down into another one of those calm and happy periods which had led them to name one certain time the Good Year. Day after day things drifted, week after week. The rains held on late—hard showers, quickly clearing afterwards, with fine blue weather, so that the far-off towers of the Golden Gate Bridge stood out clean-etched and still majestic against the the western sky.

  In the mornings, Ish usually managed to herd enough of them together to get some work done on the well. Their first shaft hit bed rock before water, for on the slope of the hill the soil was thin. But they managed to take the second shaft down, until they struck a good flow. They walled the well in with planking, and covered it, and rigged a hand-pump. By this time, they had all become accustomed to using the outhouses, and the thought of the labor involved to make the toilets work again by means of pipes and tanks and hand-pumping seemed more than was worthwhile. And so they put it off.

  The fishing was good now. Everyone wanted to go fishing, and other matters seemed to take second place.

  In the evenings, they often gathered together, and sang songs to the accompaniment of Ish’s accordion. He sometimes suggested that they should try singing parts. When they did, old George carried a good resonant bass, and the others caught on to the idea, but no one seemed very much interested in this sophistication.

  No, Ish decided again as he had decided long before, they were not a very musical group. Years before, he had tried bringing home records of symphonies and playing them on the wind-up phonograph. Such rendition of course was not very good; even so, you could follow the themes. But he never got the children interested. At some melodic passage they might leave off their own playing or wood-carving and look up, listening with pleasure for a moment. As soon, however, as the development became a little complicated, the children went back to their own play. Well, what could you expect of merely a few average people and their descendants? (No, a little better than average, he insisted—but possibly not in musical appreciation.) In the Old Times one American in a hundred might have had a deep or real appreciation of Beethoven, and those few were probably just among those more sophisticated and intense people who, like the more highly bred dogs, had apparently been less able to survive the shock of the Great Disaster.

  As an experiment, he also tried jazz records. At the loud blare of the saxophones, the children again left off their own enterprises, but again the interest had been momentary. Le jazz hot! It too, with all its involuted rhythms, had been a sophistication; it appealed, not to a simple and primitive mind, but to one that was highly developed and specialized, at least along that particular line. You might as well expect the children to appreciate Picasso or Joyce.

  In fact—and this was something that encouraged him—the younger generation showed little interest in listening to the phonograph at all; they preferred to do their own singing. He took this as a good si
gn: that they would rather participate than listen, rather be actors than audiences.

  They failed, however, to take the next step and compose tunes and words of their own. Ish himself occasionally tried making up a verse with topical references, but either he had no knack for it or else his efforts met with unconscious resistance as being a violation of tradition.

  So they sang in unison against the background of the standardized chords and bumping bass of the accordion. The simpler tunes, he observed, they liked the best. The words seemed to make little difference. They sang “Carry me back to old Virginny” although they had no idea what “Virginny” was or who was asking to be carried back. They sang “Hallelujah, I’m a bum!” without caring what a bum was. They sang plaintively of Barbara Allen although none of them had even known of unrequited love.

  Often, in those weeks, Ish thought of the two boys in the jeep. Perhaps the children would call for “Home on the Range,” and as his left hand shifted to the G-buttons, he would have a sudden thought, and a pang with it. Just now Bob and Dick might be somewhere far out in the old range country.

  Playing mechanically, he would wonder. Were the deer and the antelope playing there now? Or was it cattle? Or had the buffalo come back?

  More often, however, thoughts of the boys came to him in the dark hours of the night when some dream, caused by his very anxiety, brought him out of sleep in sudden terror to lie nervously considering possibilities.

  How could he ever have let them try it? He thought of all the dangers of flood and storm. And the car! You could never trust young fellows with a car, and even though there was no danger from traffic, they might run off the road. There would be many bad places. The boys would take chances.