Z for Zachariah

by Роберт C. О Брайен

  “Thank you,” he said. “That was beautiful.” He paused, and then added, “This is the best evening I have ever spent.”

  I said: “Ever? You mean since the war.”

  “You heard me,” he said. “I said ’ever’.” He sounded angry. Of course, he has a fever and doesn’t feel well.

  He went to bed then; I told him to leave the bedroom door open, and I put some more wood on the fire, thick logs that would last all night. Then I went upstairs to my bedroom. It had turned surprisingly cold, not like winter, but sharp just the same. I had a couple of blankets and I lay there on the bed thinking and trying to warm up.

  For some reason, playing the hymns had made me feel sad, as if I were homesick even though I was at home. They made me think of Sunday School. When we went to school, regular school, we went on the bus with other children, but when we went to Sunday School we drove to Ogdentown in the car with my mother and father, dressed in our good clothes, and it was always festive. I remembered so many things about it, with David and Joseph. That is not surprising, since I started when I was five; in fact it was my kindergarten; I learned the alphabet there, from a picture book called “The Bible Letter Book”.

  The first page said “A is for Adam”, and there was a picture of Adam standing near an apple tree, dressed in a long white robe—which disagrees with the Bible, but of course it was for small children. Next came “B is for Benjamin”. “C is for Christian”, and so on. The last page of all was “Z is for Zachariah”, and since I knew that Adam was the first man, for a long time I assumed that Zachariah must be the last man. I learned all the letters from that book, so that by the time I got to school I could already read a little.

  Thinking about Sunday School and about Mr Loomis getting angry, I wished I were back in the cave again. It seemed cosier somehow. Finally I decided to go and sleep there (I had left some blankets and stuff up there) and come back early enough so that Mr Loomis would not know I had been away. I got up and started walking down the stairs towards the hallway and the door. As I passed the bedroom door where he was sleeping I heard a shout, and then another. He was talking loudly, but I could not hear what he was saying. He sounded troubled and I thought he might need help.

  So I went back closer to the door. He was dreaming, a bad dream I could tell, a nightmare. He was talking in outbursts, sometimes quite angrily. Then he would stop, as if listening for an answer: I realized I was hearing half of a conversation. It was not all clear, but he was talking to Edward.

  He said: “In charge. In charge of what?”

  There was a pause.

  Then he said: “Not any more, Edward. It doesn’t mean anything now.”

  Another pause.

  “What good can it do? We know they’re dead. There isn’t a chance. Can’t you grasp that? Mary is dead. Billy is dead. You can’t help them.”

  This went on, his voice gradually growing quieter, finally dropping to a mumble that I could not hear.

  Then he shouted again, a very urgent shout: “Get away. I warn you. Get away from—" The last word I could not understand. And after that he gave a terrible groan, so painful I thought he must be hurt.

  And then silence.

  I crept to the door of the bedroom and listened. He was breathing regularly and quietly. Whatever the nightmare had been, it was over. Still I worried. Was it just a nightmare, or was he delirious again? I was afraid the sickness might be coming back.

  I decided I had better not go to the cave after all. Suppose he should call for help?

  I went back upstairs and rolled up in the blankets. A little later there was a whining outside my door. I opened it and let Faro in. He lay down next to me on the bed, and after a while I went to sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  June 3rd (continued)

  I woke up before dawn with an inspiration: an idea how to make a salad. What brought it to me was a dream I was having of my mother carrying a wicker basket, walking across a field and into the woods. When I woke I realized what she was doing. She was getting cress, and poke greens, as she always did early in June. On the edge of the far field, beyond the pond, they grow wild; field cress looks something like water cress and mixed with dandelion leaves, it makes good green salad. The poke greens you have to cook, but when they are young they are rather like spinach (when they get too old, however, they are bitter and can be poisonous). My mother used to gather them every spring, carrying a basket to put them in, and David, Joseph and I used to go with her—and Faro, of course. I had forgotten all about that until now, which shows that dreams can be helpful, as if they come with a purpose.

  I got excited about the idea, and jumped out of bed. I knew exactly where the basket was, on a shelf in the kitchen cupboard, and where the greens grew. Not only was I hungry for greens, but I thought Mr Loomis must be even hungrier, since he could not possibly have eaten anything like that for more than a year, while I at least had had last summer’s garden. I started to go to get the basket, and then I remembered his nightmare of last night, and my worry that he might be sick this morning. So I came downstairs very quietly, and listened outside his bedroom door, which was still open. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and his breathing was quiet and even, so I decided it was safe to go.

  I would not be gone so very long anyway. I got the basket from the shelf, got a glass of milk from the cellar (where I keep it, with the eggs and butter, because it is always cold), drank it and went out. I would cook breakfast later.

  It was cool, but still and pleasant, not yet very light though it was almost seven o’clock. The sun would not come over the ridge until about, eight. I walked along the road past the pond, and then turned left across the field. Faro came with me, sniffing everything. The grass was wet and my sneakers quickly got soaked through; so did the bottoms of my blue jeans, and they were clammy, so I rolled them up to my knees. Still I felt happy. Behind me in the pond I heard a big fish, a bass, jump and fall back into the water with a thump. I thought: after I get the cress and the other greens I will cook breakfast and then go fishing. With luck I will catch a bass or two, and have them for dinner with the salad. I would make a dressing of oil and vinegar, and cook some fresh biscuits.

  I was getting near the far side of the field when all of a sudden Faro came to a point—tail straight, paw lifted, nose forward. I was amazed. Could it be possible that there were quail still in the valley? I could not believe it; I had heard none, and they have a call that cannot be mistaken. I inched forward behind the dog, and a rabbit went bounding away in the high grass. David used to scold Faro for pointing rabbits, but I did not. After all, there was nothing else to point, and rabbits are good to eat. So I patted him instead, and said, “Good Faro.” I knew he was disappointed that I had no gun.

  I found the field cress and dandelions, and beyond, where the woods began, the poke, just out of the ground, young and edible. In half an hour I had picked enough to fill the basket; I could have filled two. Then I had an illusion. The basket of green leaves suddenly seemed to be giving off a beautiful, sweet perfume. But that was impossible, so I looked to see where the smell was coming from. There, twenty feet ahead of me on the edge of the woods, was a crabapple tree in full bloom.

  I had known the tree was there; we used to eat the apples sometimes, and my mother used them for jelly. They had a nice flavour, though they were small, hard and quite sour. (There are better eating-apple trees behind the barn.)

  But I had never known the tree to look so beautiful or smell so nice. I supposed that was because the air was still, and the fragrance just hung there, concentrated instead of blowing away on the wind. And because the light was still dim, a morning twilight, the branches and all the white blossoms looked misty and delicate, an almost magic look. I walked a few steps closer and then sat down, right in the wet grass, to stare. I thought, if I ever got married, apple blossoms were what I would like to have in the church. Which meant that I would have to get married in May or early June.

  I got to
thinking about it. Next June I would be seventeen, and in my entire life I had only had one real date, and that was when I was thirteen, in junior high school. A boy named Howard Peterson asked me to go with him to a dance at the school. My mother took me—it was in Ogdentown—and stayed for the whole dance, sitting on the side with some other mothers. The only way you could tell it was a “date” was that Howard paid for both the tickets, fifty cents each. I have had other boyfriends, but I only saw them at school, or after school. The truth is, in high school most of the boys lived in Ogdentown, and those of us who came on the bus were regarded as outsiders—hillbillies, in fact, and not fashionable.

  So to me the idea of getting married seemed like quite an enormous step. Still, I thought, when Mr Loomis recovered from his sickness, there was no reason why we could not plan to be married in a year; that is, next June, perhaps on my seventeenth birthday. I knew there could not be any minister, but the marriage ceremony was all written out in the Book of Prayer, of which there were several copies in the house. There should be a ceremony; I felt strongly about that, and it should be in the church, on a definite date, with flowers. The whole idea was thrilling. I thought I might even wear my mother’s wedding dress. I knew where it was, folded up in a box in her cupboard.

  Then it occurred to me: Mr Loomis had not indicated the slightest interest in any such idea. But of course it was much too soon, and he was very sick. We would talk about it when he had finally recovered.

  And I thought: what would it be like, ten years from now, to be up here gathering greens some morning with children of my own. But that thought made me feel homesick for my mother, a feeling I have tried hard to avoid. So I stood up to change the subject. I got out my pocket knife and cut a bunch of apple blossoms. Mr Loomis could have a bouquet for his sickroom.

  I started back to the house. On the way back the sun appeared over the ridge, but some clouds followed it almost immediately, and the chill stayed in the air. That was good, because I still had the rest of the garden to plant, and since it was late in the season, the cooler the weather stayed the better it would do.

  At the house everything was quiet. I put the flowers in a vase and the greens in the cold cellar; they would be for dinner, in the nature of a surprise. Then I cooked breakfast—eggs, tinned ham, and some pan biscuits. I really wished then that I had that wood stove moved in from the barn so that I could have a real oven, and do some proper baking. I decided that tomorrow I might try those bolts and see if I could dismantle it.

  I put the breakfast and the vase of flowers on a tray and knocked on his door, which was partly open. There was no answer so I pushed it wider, looked in, and learned why the house was so quiet—he was not there.

  Immediately I was worried, very worried. I realized that it was stupid of me to have left him alone, knowing that he had had the nightmare, knowing that it might have been the beginning of the high fever. He might be, right now, wandering somewhere in a delirium. In the house? I called, but there was no answer. I put the tray down, setting the breakfast near the fire where it would stay warm, and ran to the front door.

  It was all right. I saw him immediately, across the road not far from Burden Creek, sitting on a large round stone. He had the Geiger counter with him, the one with the earphone; he was staring at the creek, looking upstream.

  I walked over to him, and he looked up when he saw me coming. He said: “I thought you had run away.”

  “Are you all right?” I was still worried.

  “Yes,” he said. “In fact I woke up feeling so much better that I began to wonder about this water—whether maybe you had read the meter wrong, or whether the counter was off. So I walked over to check it with this one.”

  Oh, I hoped I had read it wrong! I never hoped anything so much.

  But I had not. He went on: “It was no use. Your reading was right. There’s just no way I could have got less than three hundred r’s.” He must have felt disappointed, but he said it calmly, as before; he did not sound frightened.

  I said: “I wish I had been wrong.”

  “It’s no worse than before,” he said. “It was just a hope. Anyway, since you weren’t here, I sat down and started thinking about that stream.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “It’s radioactive, there’s no doubt about that. But that’s no reason it shouldn’t be useful. Up there”—he pointed to a place a hundred feet upstream, a rocky place where a big boulder blocked the creek and made a little waterfall—“there’s a sort of a natural dam. It looks as if somebody, sometime, even tried to add to it.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “My father said that my greatgrandfather had a small mill there, a flour mill. We thought the stone you’re sitting on was part of it, it’s worn so smooth.”

  “What I was thinking about was not a mill, but electricity. If I could build that dam up a few feet higher—there’s a good flow of water. It could run a small generator.”

  “But we don’t have a generator. Anyway, if we tried to build a dam we’d get the water on ourselves. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Not if I was wearing the safe-suit, and if I was careful. And the generator is easy. You can make one out of any electric motor—with a little tinkering.”

  “But where would we get an electric motor?” Then I remembered. There were two or three of them in the barn, in my father’s workshop. One, I know, was hooked up to a grindstone, another to a circular saw. I told Mr Loomis, and he smiled.

  “There are always motors around a farm. The hard part will be the water wheel. But I think I can make one. I’ll need some lumber and some kind of an axle. It won’t be fancy, but it will work.”

  “Would it light the lights?”

  “Yes. They might be a bit flickery, but they’d light. Mainly, it would run your refrigerator, your freezer, things like that. They don’t use much current.”

  It would be nice to have a refrigerator again. And a freezer! I could freeze vegetables and fruit for the winter.

  And that reminded me. His breakfast was drying up by the fire. And I had had nothing to eat yet myself, except some milk and a couple of sprigs of field cress.

  After breakfast I milked the cow and planted some more of the garden: melons, beets, and several rows of beans. I had some seed potatoes left; they looked pretty dried up but I felt so optimistic and energetic I planted them anyway. They might revive.

  Then I went to the house to get my fishing rod and to tell Mr Loomis (lying down) I was going to the pond.

  He sat up on the side of the bed.

  He said: “Do you think—" I waited. “Well, I’d like to go with you.”

  “To fish?” I was torn. It would be fun to have him go but the pond is more than a quarter of a mile away. “How is your fever?”

  “About the same. About a hundred, not so bad.”

  “It’s chilly out.”

  “I could take a blanket.”

  “I’ll get you a coat.” In the hall cupboard I found an old cloth raincoat of my father’s. I thought it would not do him any harm, and it was something for him to do.

  “Do you really want to fish?” I asked him.

  He looked embarrassed. “I never have. I don’t know how.”

  “I can show you. It’s very easy, at least the way I do it. I just put a worm on the hook and throw it in. Sometimes I use a float, sometimes not.”

  “A float?” He really did not know how to fish.

  “A little ball made of cork.” I pulled one out of my pocket and showed him. “It keeps the hook off the bottom.”

  “Have you got an extra one?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I can get David’s rod.” It was in his cupboard.

  We started out for the pond, with him wearing my father’s coat and carrying David’s fishing pole. But we did not make it. After about a hundred yards he began walking very slowly; he stumbled and dropped the rod.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t go on.” He had turned extremely pale, a bluish
colour. He looked terrible.

  “Lean on me,” I said. “Leave the rod. We’ll go back.”

  “It’s the anaemia,” he said. “I should have known. It’s the dependable part of the disease. Five to seven days after exposure. This is the sixth day.”

  We started back, very slowly. He could hardly stand up.

  I said: “You’d better lie down.”

  “Yes.” He sank to the grass at the side of the road, lay on his back and closed his eyes. But his colour slowly got better.

  “It came so suddenly,” I said.

  “No. It was the walking. I knew I had it a little.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Nothing. Help me back to the house. Then go fishing.”

  So I did that. When we got back to the house I sat beside his bed for a while, and then went on to the pond. But it was a nervous and disappointed kind of fishing. He had explained that the anaemia would not get any worse, but it meant that he would not be able to do much now until he had gone through the whole illness and recovered. Then it should gradually go away. Still I felt as if it was the beginning of the end—no, not the end, but of a bad time, and all my plans of this morning seemed thoughtless and foolish.

  I fished just long enough to catch three bass, about half an hour. Fortunately they were biting. Then I went back.

  He did seem better again, and even got up and sat at the table for lunch, though I noticed that he moved slowly and rather cautiously, and after he had eaten he lay down again immediately. When I looked into the bedroom a little later he was asleep. I put a fresh glass of water by his bed.