Earth Abides

by George Rippey Stewart

  Then they sit around the fire at the cave-mouth, and say, “What shall we do? Now that he is no longer here to lead us!” Or, while the great bell tolls, they gather in the courtyard, and say, “It should not have happened so. Who is there now to give us counsel?” Or they meet at the streetcorner, and say sadly, “Why did it have to be this way? Now there is no one to take his place.”

  Through all of history it runs as a plaint. “If the young king had not fallen ill…. If the prince had lived…. If the general had not so recklessly exposed himself…. If the president had not overworked….”

  Between the plan and the fulfillment stands always the frail barrier of a human life.

  Once more the fogs thinned out, and then came the first hot days. “I have seen it again,” Ish thought to himself. “The great pageant of the year! Now is the time of dryness and death. Now the god lies dying. Soon the rains will come, and then the hills will be green. At last one morning I shall look out westward, here from the porch, and I shall see the sun setting far to the south. Then we shall all go together, and I shall carve the number into the rock. What shall we call this Year, I wonder!”

  By now also it was time to be expecting Dick and Bob to return from their expedition in the jeep. Ish still worried and felt guilty sometimes at having allowed the boys to go, but now they had been gone so long that he was somewhat accustomed to the idea and did not feel the strain so much as he had earlier. And at the same time he had another worry and sense of guilt that tended to counteract this one.

  The children! Their superstition and their ideas about religion! He had said to himself that all this would be easy to counteract; he had said that he would do something that next day. Yet all summer he had been flinching.

  Was it actually that he did not want to do anything? Did he really want the children to think of Joey as the possessor of some special power? Deep within himself, did he want the children to think of him, Ish, as a god? Not every day or every year could a man have reason to play with the intoxicating idea that he was becoming a god. Oh, well—say, at least a demi-god, a being of some degree of special power!

  Ever since the incident of the hammer, he had been studying curiously the children’s attitude toward him. It was changeable and uncertain. Sometimes, he sensed that feeling of awe which he had seen on that day of the incident with the hammer. He, like Joey, but even more so, had mana within him. He could perform strange feats. He knew the meanings of the puzzling words. He knew the curious ways of numbers. He knew, by some strange power, what the world was like, away beyond the horizon, out through the Golden Gate, that there were islands far in the ocean beyond the little rock-tips of the Farallones, that they sometimes saw standing up above the horizon on clear days.

  The children, he came to realize, were not only children, but they were also unsophisticated and inexperienced as children in the Old Times had rarely been. None of them had ever seen more than a few dozen people. Though their lives, he believed, had been happy, they had been happy with the simplicity of a few satisfying experiences, repeated again and again. They had not suffered the continual shock of change which had so affected children in the old days, both for good and for bad, making them nervous on the one hand, and yet alert on the other.

  Children so unsophisticated might easily come to feel a certain dread of him, to regard him as a being with powers different from their own, not altogether earthly. At times he sensed this feeling and even saw definite evidences of it.

  Yet at other times, indeed generally, he was merely their own father or grandfather, or Uncle Ish, a person they had known all their lives, with whom they had romped on the floor when they were little. They had no more respect for such a person than children ever had. In fact the bigger ones already showed the adolescent feeling that the older man was blundering and quite obtuse. Perhaps they stood in some awe, but still they played tricks on him.

  Once, not a week after the incident of the hammer, they had set a tack for him in his chair, though that was one of the oldest of all tricks to play on a teacher. And again, after they had left the room with much suppressed giggling, Ish discovered that someone had worked that other old trick of pinning a strip of cloth to his rear, so that it hung down like a white tail behind.

  Ish accepted such tricks in good spirit, and did not attempt to find out which one of the children had done them or to inflict any punishment. In some ways the tricks pleased him, for they showed him that children considered him one of themselves. But the tricks also chagrined him a little. His ego was not above being pleased with the belief that he was a folk-hero or demi-god. Was this a way to treat a demi-god, by putting tacks on his chair or pinning a tail on him, behind? Yet, as he thought farther, he realized that the two attitudes were not incompatible or altogether unprecedented.

  That is a strange thing—to be a god! They bring the fat ox with the gilded horns, and at your altar they strike him down with the pole-ax. You are proud of the sacrifice. But then they take head and horns and tail and hide, and in the hide they wrap the entrails. All this noisomeness they burn before your altar, and then go to feast themselves on the fat haunches! You see the deceit, and you are angry with a god’s anger. You gather the thunderbolts, and your black clouds assemble. But, no, you think then, “They are my people!” This year they are fat and proud and insolent—but who would wish his people to be mean and meeching? Next year, if there is pestilence, they will really burn the ox—nay, many oxen! So you pass it off, with only a little thunder, scarcely noticed in the pleasant confusion of the feasting. “I am not stupid,” you say to The Son, “but there are times when a god should seem stupid!” Then you wonder if you should have shared with him any secret of godship, but rather have looked for a convenient mountain to pile upon him. He is altogether too handy with a sickle these days….

  Even you terrible ones who call for human sacrifice, you too must wink! Ah, it is magnificently horrible! The shrieks of his wife and the moans of the victim and the flailing axes of the killers! There he lies, covered with blood, his tongue hanging out, a picture of loathsome death! Yet soon, in the confusion of the dance, he rises suddenly and dances with the others and the red mulberry juice mingles with his sweat and disappears. Then you, the terrible one, must be a wise god and remember only the horror of the seeming death, though every child in the village knows you are tricked….

  “No, there is no need to grovel and rub the face in the dirt. Merely bow the head, as you enter, ever so slightly.”

  Yet in the end, though he half feared the test, Ish could not resist an experiment. Perhaps the incident of the hammer had really meant nothing. He was curious.

  He picked the time carefully—late one morning, when it was only a few minutes before dismissal. He was preparing himself a retreat, if things got too embarrassing. There was no difficulty, since he was the teacher, in bringing a discussion around to the point where he could put the question casually enough.

  “How was it… do you think, that all these things…” he gestured widely with his hands, “how was it that the world happened to be made?”

  The answer came quickly. Weston was the spokesman, although apparently any of the children could have answered: “Why, the Americans made everything.”

  Ish caught his breath. Yet, immediately, he saw how the idea had arisen. After all, if a child asked who made the houses or the streets or the canned food, any of the older ones would have said naturally that the Americans did. He followed up with another question.

  “And the Americans—what about them?”

  “Oh, the Americans were the old people.”

  This time Ish found it a little harder to adjust quickly. In “the old people” he sensed not merely a reference to time, but also something close to superstition. “The old people”—that had once meant fairies, people of the Other-world. That might be its meaning now again. Here was something he should work to counteract.

  “I was…” He began simply. Then he paused and corrected himself,
seeing no reason to use the past tense.

  “I am an American.”

  When he spoke, though they were the simplest of words, he had a curious feeling of pride come over him, as if flags were flying and bands playing. It had been a great thing, in those Old Times, to be an American. You had been deeply conscious of being one of a great nation. It was no mere matter of pride, but also there went with it a profound sense of confidence and security in life, and a comradeship of millions. Yet now he had hesitated to speak in the present tense.

  In the silence of his pause he saw the children looking at him, and then suddenly he sensed that his explanation had missed fire. He had merely been trying to explain that there was nothing supernatural in those old people who had been the Americans. He had tried merely to say, “Look at me, I’m Ish, father of some of you, granddad of one. I’ve rolled on the floor with you. You’ve mussed my hair. Yes, I’m only Ish. And now when I say, ‘I’m an American,’ I mean that there is nothing supernatural about Americans. They were only people too.”

  This was what he had thought they would understand, but it had gone the other way round. When he had said, “I am an American,” they had nodded inwardly, interpreting, “Yes, naturally, you are an American. You have many strange knowledges which we simple ones do not have. You teach us reading and writing. You tell tales about the world being round. You talk about numbers. You carry the hammer. Yes, it is plain that people like you made all the world, and you are merely one who lingers over from the Old Times. You are one of the Old People. Yes, naturally you are an American!”

  As he looked about, almost wildly at this new thought, the silence was deep, and he saw Joey smiling at him. It was a knowing smile, as if Joey was saying, “We two have something in common. I am like one of the Old People who has been left over. I can read; I understand those things. Without being hurt, I carry the hammer.”

  Ish was glad that he had the foresight to ask his question just before noon. There was nothing he could muster now, either for question or reply. “School dismissed,” he said. “School dismissed!”

  Chapter 6

  One late afternoon Ish was talking with Joey, or actually they were continuing Joey’s education by means of playschool. Ish had collected some money, and was teaching Joey a little about history and the old economics. Joey liked the bright jingly nickels with the figure of the strange humped animal. As a young child would have done even in the Old Times, he preferred the nickels to the uninteresting bills with their picture of a bearded man who looked something like Uncle George. Ish was trying to find ways to explain.

  Just as he thought he had put the point across, he heard a strange and yet old and familiar sound. He lifted his head and waited tensely, mouth open to listen. It came again, much closer—the toot-a-toot-toot of a horn!

  “Hey, Em!” he yelled. “They’re back!” He jumped up, letting the bills scatter from his hand to the floor.

  He and Em and the children all came rushing out, and there was a universal running and yapping of dogs, just as the jeep came down the road. It was dirty and travel-worn and banged-about, but it had got through. Ish had still a moment of tension. Then the boys jumped out, yelling loudly, obviously alive and well. A sudden sense of profound relief let him know how much he had really been worrying about them.

  The boys stood there, surrounded by a little mob of yelling children. Ish held back, almost diffident. Then his eyes caught another movement. There must be someone else in the jeep. Yes, now the person was starting to get out. Ish had a sharp sensation of alarm, of resentment, at the intruder.

  First, as the head was thrust out from the low door, Ish saw a bald crown and a brown beard, which would have been handsome if it had not been stained with tobacco and dirty-looking, and scraggly around the edges where it had been haggled with scissors. The man stepped out, and slowly straightened up.

  Ish, almost in panic, appraised him. A big fellow—tall and large-framed and heavy! He was powerful, and yet there had been little vigor in his movement as he straightened up. Yes, powerful, but with some inner trouble, and too heavy! The pudgy fat of the thick-featured face had squeezed in upon the eyes, narrowing them.

  “Pig-eyes!” thought Ish, still in resentment.

  The children were milling around, and the man stood in their midst, just as he had stepped down from the car. He looked up, and saw Ish, and their glances met. The man’s little fat-encroached eyes were bright blue. He smiled at Ish.

  Ish smiled back, though he raised the corners of his mouth only by conscious effort. “Should have smiled first,” he was thinking. “He put me at my ease. I should have done it with him. He’s powerful, even though his fat looks soft and unhealthy.”

  Ish broke up the situation by striding forward to grasp Bob’s hand. But even as he did so, the newcomer was still in his mind—“About my age,” he was thinking. Now Bob was making the introduction.

  “This is our friend Charlie!” he said simply, and he slapped Charlie on the back.

  “Glad to see you!” Ish managed to say, but even the old meaningless words did not slide out naturally. He looked straight at the narrow blue eyes, and in the tenseness of his look there was perhaps a conscious defiance. No, those others were not pig-eyes. Boar’s eyes! Strength and ferocity behind the baby-blue. As they shook hands, Ish felt his own grasp the weaker. The other could have squeezed and hurt him if he had wished.

  Now Bob had taken Charlie away, to introduce him to the others. Ish felt his resentment growing, not decreasing. “Careful!” he thought.

  But he had imagined the return as a reunion with no discordant elements.

  And here was Charlie!

  Handsome, no doubt—in a way! A good companion—so the actions of the boys seemed to testify! But—yes—Charlie was dirty. That thought gave a background of rationality to the unreasoning dislike. Charlie was dirty, and from inner reaction Ish felt himself going on to think that Charlie must be in some way dirty inside, through and through, as well as outside.

  Dirt—the ever-present dirt of the earth—that was something which bothered Ish no more than it bothered anyone else these days. But the impression of dirt that Ish gained from Charlie was something different. Perhaps, he analyzed quickly, it was the clothes. Charlie was wearing what had in late years become a rarity, a business suit. He was even wearing the vest, because the afternoon was cold with low-drifting clouds. But the suit seemed greasy, and you would have said that it was egg-spotted, if there had been possibility of a man’s having had eggs to eat recently.

  They all went trooping up to the house suddenly, Ish with them, not leading. The living-room was jammed. The two boys, and Charlie, held the center. The children looked marveling at the boys, as explorers returned from a far expedition, and they eyed Charlie with as much wonder, because they were unused to seeing any stranger. It was one of the biggest occasions that anyone could well imagine. Ish thought to himself it was a time to open champagne, if he had any ice. Then he wondered why the idea seemed ironic.

  “Did you make it?” everyone was asking at once. “How far did you get? What about that big city—what’s its name?”

  Yet in the midst of all the excitement, Ish felt himself sliding sidelong looks at the greasy beard and spotted vest, and gradually resenting Charlie more than ever.

  “Watch your step,” he thought to himself. “You’re just being the provincial, resenting the intrusion of anyone else who may have different manners and ideas. You keep saying that the community needs the stimulation of new thoughts, and yet when someone else comes in, you start resenting him, and rationalizing to yourself, because you say, ‘He’s dirty on the outside, and so must have something dirty about him on the inside.’ Relax—this is a great day!” Nevertheless, all thought of its being a great day went sour inside him.

  “No,” Bob was saying, “we never got to New York. We got to that other big city—Chicago. But past there the roads kept getting worse and worse—trees grown up, trees fallen around everywh
ere, lots of washouts, bridges gone. So we had to shift one way or the other, looking for…”

  Someone cut in with another question before Bob could even finish his answer. There were half a dozen questions, each one canceling out the one before. In the hubbub, Ish caught Ezra’s eye. In that glance he seemed momentarily to sense danger, and he knew that Ezra too was watching Charlie.

  Ish felt himself both reassured and justified. Ezra knew people, Ezra liked people. If Ezra was so quickly perturbed at Charlie, there must be something about which to be wary. Ish trusted Ezra in such a case much better than he trusted himself.

  “Come on,” he thought again. “You don’t really know at all what Ezra’s thinking. Maybe he’s disturbed because he senses what you’re thinking. And what’s that? Maybe I’m only thrown off because I’m like any small tribesman, and fear the horrible stranger with his new ideas and his new gods to fight against mine.”

  He brought himself back to what was being said. “…wear funny clothes,” he heard Dick’s voice saying. “Long white gowns, sort of, I don’t know what you call them, and they have long white sleeves in them. The men and the women both wear them. They threw stones at us. They yelled, ’Unclean, unclean!’ They kept crying, ’We are the people of God!’ They made us keep away.”

  Then Em spoke. The rich roll of her voice, deep but feminine, seemed to cut in beneath the high-pitched almost yelping noises of the excited little crowd. Any of the others would have had to pound on the table and shout for attention. For her, the room grew quickly quiet, even though she did not raise her voice and the words were common-place:

  “It’s late,” she was saying. “Time for dinner. The boys are hungry….”

  Half-witted Evie gave one last little senseless giggle, and then she too was quiet.

  Em was saying that everyone should go home now, and come back later. Ish watched Charlie, and saw that Ezra was still watching him too. Charlie’s eyes looked at Em, perhaps a moment too long. His glance shifted to Evie’s blond hair, and took on, it might have been, an appraising look. Then everyone was getting up, starting to go. Dick took Charlie off to dinner at Ezra’s.