Z for Zachariah

by Роберт C. О Брайен

  I kept thinking about the stove. So while he slept I went down to the barn, got from my father’s workshop a wrench, pliers, a screwdriver and a hammer, and went to work. To my surprise it came apart fairly easily—the oil I had put on the bolts last winter had done the trick. Even so I broke a couple of fingernails; but by sunset I had it lying in pieces on the barn floor. I found I could lift all of the pieces but one—the big cast-iron firebox; even with the grates and door removed that was too heavy. However, I could turn it end over end, and by doing that I got it on to a sheet of masonite I found in my father’s workshop. Since the masonite is slick on one side, I discovered I could drag it, using the masonite as a sled. It was slow and hard, but I thought if I backed our cart right up to the barn door I could get it aboard. If not, I would just have to wait until Mr Loomis was well, and could help. I did not actually try it, because by the time I had it ready it was time to milk the cow, then wash, and start the dinner.

  In spite of everything, it was festive, with the bass, the fresh-cooked greens and the salad. It is incredible how good fresh green things can taste when you have not had any for months—or, in Mr Loomis’s case, more than a year. I set the table with the “good” china that my mother saved for Sundays, Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthdays. I did forget one thing—candles. I had some in the house but took them to the cave. There are more at the store, but I did not think of it until too late. However, the oil lamps gave a pleasant light. They just did not look as romantic. We ate all of the bass and all of the greens and salad, though there was enough for four.

  After dinner, it being still cool, I built up the fire again. I had found Mr Loomis some books that interested him. They were a set of books called The Farm Mechanic, my father’s. I had discovered them on a shelf in his workshop in the barn. The book is an annual publication, like the World Almanac, and is full of diagrams of motors, wiring systems, pumps, silos, balers, and so on. He studied them (there were eight volumes) for a long time. I could tell he was working out how to build the generator, and maybe making other plans as well.

  Chapter Nine

  June 3rd (continued)

  The next morning, amazingly enough, I got the tractor running. That was a direct result of The Farm Mechanic.

  When I had finished cooking breakfast I found Mr Loomis on his bed, up on his elbow, reading one of the volumes, and he showed it to me. It was a set of diagram-drawings of the inside mechanism of a petrol pump—approximately identical to the ones at Mr Klein’s store. When I thought about it, that was not surprising; a great many farms, especially big ones, have their own petrol pumps; I remembered that three or four of the Amish farms did, for example. So it was natural that farmers would need to know how to repair them.

  “Look at this,” Mr Loomis said, pointing to one of the drawings. It showed a small electric motor connected by a belt to a larger wheel. “That wheel runs the actual pump,” he said, “and look at this.” In the diagram an arrow pointed to a small circular hole near the rim of the larger wheel. At the non-pointed end of the arrow was the number “7” with a circle around it.

  “Now look at number seven in the table.” Below the drawing there were printed instructions, and instruction number seven said: “Attach handle ’H’ here for manual operation in case of power failure or in areas where electricity is unavailable. Remove V belt.”

  “What’s ’handle H’?” I said.

  He showed me another drawing across the page. “Handle H” turned out to be a knob, rather like a doorknob, with a pin on the end to fit into “Hole 7” in the wheel. It seemed simple enough. That would convert the wheel into a sort of crank.

  I said: “And if I turn it, petrol will come out?”

  “Say a prayer first. Petrol should come out. Be sure to take off the belt.”

  “How?”

  “Pry it off with a screwdriver.”

  “I could just cut it.”

  “No.” He sounded most emphatic. “V belts are useful, and we have nowhere to buy any more.”

  I went to the store and examined (for the first time!) the petrol pumps that stood in front of it, ordinary red-and-white things I had walked past a thousand times, one Super, one Regular. The front, I now saw, was made like a door, with hinges on one side but screwed shut. I got a screwdriver from the store and took out the screw; I pried a bit and the door came open rather squeakily. Inside all was as the diagram showed—the motor, the belt, the wheel, some pipes leading down. And there, clipped to the door in a spring-clamp, was “Handle H”.

  I tried to pry the belt loose from the wheels, but it was made of heavy, stiff rubber, very tight. Finally I had to take out some screws and remove the wheel from the motor. I took off the belt, replaced the wheel and hung the belt on it. It would be there when we needed it.

  Quite excited, I took Handle H from its clamp and inserted it into the slot on the big wheel (about fourteen inches in diameter). I unhooked the hose from the petrol pump, and holding the nozzle in one hand and the knob in the other, I was ready to turn it. Which way? An arrow on the wheel pointed counter-clockwise. I turned and in ten seconds liquid was splashing on the gravel at my feet. The smell could not be mistaken—it was petrol.

  I stopped pumping and got a five gallon container from the store and filled it. With the can bumping my leg every step, I carried it to the barn and rilled the tractor’s petrol tank. I checked the oil—it was all right. There was a self starter but the battery was dead, of course. That had happened many times before, however, and I knew how to start it with the crank. First I primed the carburettor as my father had showed me (we all used to drive the tractor, starting at about age eight); then, saying the prayer I had forgotten to say at the petrol pump, I cranked hard. The motor started immediately, with a loud sputtering roar, and I felt like patting it on the hood. In fact, I did. The noise seemed incredibly loud. You forget how noisy machines are after a year.

  That was partly because it was still in the barn. I climbed up to the seat, put it in reverse, and backed it out. It was a bit less deafening; now the noise filled the whole valley. Though I was sure Mr Loomis had heard it, I wanted him to see it, too, so I drove the tractor to the house and parked it outside his window. I almost laughed, remembering how I had hated to drive it several years ago; the girls who lived in Ogdentown didn’t drive tractors. Now I could rejoice over the time and labour it would save us, and I hurried into the house to share the triumph.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed and was surprisingly matter-of-fact.

  “You found Handle H,” he said.

  “And the petrol came out on the first turn,” I said. “I think that tank must be full.”

  “If it is, we have three thousand gallons. At least that’s what The Farm Mechanic says—for a standard underground tank.”

  And in my excitement I had not even tried the other pump. There might be six thousand!

  I took the tractor back down to the barn and hitched on the plough. I had already decided what I was going to do. As you head back from the house to the barn, the pasture, the far field, the pond and the brook all lie on your right. To the left there are a few fruit trees and then, further left, another small field of about an acre and a half. This was a field my father used for a few years to grow melons, pumpkins, squash, things like that—to sell in Ogdentown. However, he gave that up, as he said, because it did not make enough money to be worth the time it took. That was about five years ago; since then he had merely kept the field mowed but not planted it.

  I had decided, if I got the tractor running, to plough that field and plant it with sweetcorn, with maybe a few rows of soy beans and pea beans. These were all staples which would take up too much room for the small vegetable garden near the house. Sweetcorn could be eaten by us, by the chickens, and, if there was any left over, by the cows—husks and all.

  The truth was, now that the tractor was running I could face a fact that I had previously tried to keep out of my mind, it being too depressing to dwell on: T
he store was an illusion.

  It seemed, especially at first, like an endless supply of almost everything I needed. But in fact I knew it was not. In it there were sacks of flour, meal, corn, sugar, salt, and cases of tinned food. But most of these things, except perhaps the salt and sugar, would not keep forever, even though I did not use them up. They were already a year old; in five years or so, I estimated, most would be spoiled (though some of the tinned stuff might keep longer; I’m not sure).

  There were also in the store seeds of all kinds: corn, wheat, oats, barley and most kinds of vegetables and fruit—almost everything that will grow here. Also flowers, which I had not even had time to think about. But again, although most of the seeds would germinate after one year, after two years the percentage would decline, and after three or four they would not do well at all.

  So before Mr Loomis came I had already been wrestling with the idea that I would just have to tackle that acre and a half with the shovel. It would have been extremely hard, since it is all covered with a five-year turf. So it is not surprising I was really excited about the tractor, and eager to get started ploughing.

  I had decided to plant sweetcorn as my grain rather than wheat, oats or barley. I would have liked to grow wheat for the flour to bake with, but I had no way of processing those grains—no thresher, no mill. But there was, in the barn, an old hand-cranked machine called a sheller for making corn meal and hominy. And, of course, we could eat corn “as is”; the same was true of the beans.

  The sun came out—finally—as I started ploughing, and was pleasant and warm on my back. Faro had followed me to the field, looking astonishingly healthy; even his hair was growing back. He raced in circles around the tractor, a habit he had picked up years ago when my father would plough or mow and sometimes flush quail or partridge hidden in the field. There were none of those now, but Faro seemed happy anyway, and so was I. I felt like singing, but that is hopeless in a tractor; you can’t hear yourself. So instead, as I sometimes do, I began remembering a poem. I am very fond of poetry, and this one, one of my favourites, was a sonnet. It began:

  Oh earth, unhappy planet born to die,

  Might I your scribe or your confessor be…

  I had thought of that poem many times since the war, and of myself, by default, as “scribe and confessor”. But now I was neither of those. I was the one, or one of the two, who might keep it from dying, for a while at least. When I thought of that, and how my idea of my own future had been changed in the past week, I could not stop smiling.

  Then, as I ploughed, I thought I heard, over the noise of the tractor, a high squawking sound overhead. I stopped, turned the engine down to idle, and looked up. There were crows, sharp and black against the sky, wheeling in a circle over the field. I counted eleven of them, and I realized they had remembered the sound of ploughing; they knew there would be seeds to follow. My father used to call them pests, but I was glad to see them. They were probably the only wild birds left anywhere.

  I had half the field ploughed by lunchtime. I finished it in the afternoon, and planned to harrow it in the morning, and then seed it. But as it turned out, I had to change my plans.

  That night Mr Loomis’s fever went up to one hundred and four degrees.

  Chapter Ten

  June 3rd (continued)

  That is why, after three days of being too busy, I now have time to write down all that has happened.

  I do not dare to leave the house for more than a few minutes at a time. This morning I did. I ran down to the barn to milk the cow, and though I hurried as fast as I could, I was gone about fifteen minutes. When I came back he was sitting up in bed, his bedclothes on the floor; he was shivering and blue with cold. He was calling me, and had become frightened when I did not answer. The fever makes him afraid to be alone. I got him to lie down again, re-made the bed and put some extra blankets on it. I had some hot water in the kettle; I filled the hot water bottle and put it under the blankets. I am afraid he will get pneumonia.

  It began last night at dinner time. He discovered it himself; I did not know at first what was happening. We sat at the table, and he ate about two bites. Then he said, in a strange voice:

  “I don’t want to eat. I’m not hungry.”

  I thought perhaps he did not like what I had cooked. It was boiled chiken, gravy, biscuits and peas.

  So I said: “Could I get you something else? Some soup?”

  But in the same voice he just said, “No,” and pushed his chair back from the table. I noticed then that his eyes looked strange and confused. He went and sat in the chair by the fire.

  “The fire is almost out,” he said.

  “It has turned warm again,” I said. “I was letting it die down.”

  He said: “I’m cold.”

  He got up and went to the bedroom. I sat at the table continuing to eat (I was hungry after the ploughing and other things). Of course it should have occurred to me immediately what was wrong, but it did not, and a few minutes later he called from the bedroom.

  “Ann Burden.”

  That was the first time he had ever called me by name, and he used both names. I went to the bedroom. He was sitting and looking at the thermometer. He handed it to me and I read it.

  “It’s started,” he said.

  Poor Mr Loomis; his shoulders were slumped and he looked very tired and frail. I realized that in spite of his calmness he was now really afraid. I suppose he had been hoping for a miracle.

  “It will be all right,” I said. “One hundred and four is not so terrible. But you will have to stay in bed now, and covered. No wonder you felt cold.”

  A strange thing occurred. Though we had both known the fever was coming, and I had dreaded it more than he had (or more than he had seemed to), now that it was here, and he was visibly distressed, my own fear seemed to vanish, and I felt calm—almost as if I were the older one. As if when he got weaker, I got stronger. I suppose that is why doctors and nurses can last through terrible epidemics.

  Doctors and nurses! At least they know what they are doing. My own training is a one-term course in high school, “Health and Hygiene”. I wish they had taught us more. But I tried to think calmly and get organized. He had said the fever would last at least a week, and maybe two. I did not know, during that time, how weak he was likely to get. But at the moment he was still able to move around, and I thought I should take advantage of that.

  The first thing was to keep him warm. I stirred the fire and added some wood. Then I went upstairs to my parents’ bedroom, and from my father’s chest of drawers got a pair of flannel pyjamas. They were soft and thick; my father used them only on cold winter nights. There were two more pairs in the drawer, and, I was reasonably sure, more still at Mr Klein’s store. The pair I took were red and white plaid.

  I carried them to his room and put them on his bed.

  “You should put these on,” I said. “They’re warm. And I’ve built the fire up again. I’m boiling some milk, and when it cools a little, I think you should drink it.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a nurse.” He smiled. He seemed less afraid, or he was hiding it better.

  “I wish I were,” I said. “I don’t know enough.”

  “Poor Ann Burden,” he said. “You’re going to wish I had never come.”

  I could not bring myself to tell him what I really wished. How could I tell him about the apple tree, about what I had thought that morning while I picked the flowers and the poke greens? How I felt when I ploughed the field? It all seemed remote now, and out of place; it made me sad to think about it. So I mentioned something else, something that had been worrying me.

  “What I wish—"

  “Yes?”

  “I wish I had warned you when you… went swimming in that creek.”

  “Could you have? Where were you?”

  “Up on the hillside.” I still, for some reason, did not mention the cave. “I don’t know if I could have or not. I could have tried.”

&nbs
p; “But you didn’t know the water was radioactive.”

  “No. But I knew something was wrong with it.”

  “I should have known, too. Don’t you see? I had two Geiger counters. But I didn’t even look. It was my own fault.”

  But I worried about it anyway, and I still do.

  That was last night. He put on the pyjamas, and after the milk had boiled and cooled he drank a cup of it, warm; I had boiled the cup, too. I will boil everything pertaining to food from now on, or bake it.

  He even consented to take two aspirin tablets. Then he fell asleep. I put the lamp away from the bedside, and turned it down low. I thought I should leave it burning, but I did not want him knocking it over. I sat there, in a chair by the window, for about an hour, not doing anything except thinking.

  Finally I went to my room and fell asleep. But I got up every hour or so to see how he was, and to check the fire. He slept quietly all night; I wish I could say the same for Faro, who kept dreaming and whining in his sleep. He knows something is wrong.

  This morning, as I have said, I went out to the barn to milk the cow, and when I came back I heard him calling before I reached the house. I think he had been having a bad dream just before he woke up, but he did not say anything about it. His eyes looked odd and unfocused, and at first I thought he did not know who I was, he stared at me so hard.

  After I got him back in the bed and covered up he stopped shivering and said: “You went away.”

  I said: “I was milking the cow.”

  “While you were gone,” he said, “I thought—"

  “You thought what?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s the fever. It makes me imagine things.” But he would not say what he had imagined. I took his temperature, and it had gone up—it was a hundred and five. It looked strange to see the mercury stretched all the way to the wrong end of the thermometer, as if I were holding it backwards. It only goes to 106 degrees.