Z for Zachariah

by Роберт C. О Брайен

I sat there all the rest of the night, watching. I was sure he did not know where I was, or where the cave was, or even that there was a cave. I did not think he could climb this hillside. But I watched anyway.

  In the early morning the scene below slowly took shape and colour. The leaves turned light grey and then green. The house turned white, the road black and the hilltop behind me grew bright. I got my binoculars from inside the cave. It seemed important to me to observe what, if anything, he was going to do. I had a feeling he would be really anxious to know where I was.

  The first movement was Faro, coming hesitantly around the corner of the house, sniffing as he came. He circled the house, went on to the tent, circled that, and then set off down the road, his nose still to the ground. He was following me.

  Within ten seconds of this Mr. Loomis appeared. He must have been watching out of the front window. He walked to the edge of the road, limping a little—but without the cane—and stared after the dog as it disappeared down the road. He stood there a minute, then walked back to the house. I could guess a couple of things from that: he had not seen or heard which way I ran last night—but he knew that Faro would follow me. That was why he had been watching.

  I saw then that I had been lucky, in my confusion, to run down the road and not straight up to the cave. I knew what Faro would do. He would track me to the store, from the store back to the pond, and from the pond to where I sat, but Mr Loomis could not see that from the house. I could almost time Faro’s movements. Sure enough, in about ten minutes he came up through the woods, wagging his tail.

  I patted him and was glad to see him, but that was all I did—I was still intent on watching the scene below. He stayed with me for about ten minutes and then, after sniffing around inside the cave, he trotted off down the hill, back to the house. I had been used to feeding him in the morning; it was time for his breakfast and his food-dish was in the garden near the front porch. I suppose he thought I would follow him.

  I made a mistake. I should have fed him here at the cave, because I did have a few tins of meat—three to be exact—and also some tinned hash that he would have eaten at a pinch. But it did not occur to me until after he left, and even then only as a small worry, not a big one. Not until later did I begin to realize that Faro could—quite innocently—lead Mr Loomis to me and that if I had fed him and kept him with me, I might have prevented that. And then it was too late.

  Because what happened was that a few minutes after Faro reappeared in the front garden Mr Loomis came out of the front door, carrying his dish, and it was full of food. He put it down, and as Faro began to eat it I could see that Mr Loomis had something else in his hand. Through the binoculars it looked like a belt, and that is what it was—one of David’s or Joseph’s, I suppose, from their clothes cupboard. He had cut it off short, and as Faro ate he slipped it around the dog’s neck and fastened the buckle.

  Faro did not seem to mind much; he gave a shake or two and then went back to his eating. Mr Loomis meanwhile went to the porch and got something else. At first I thought it was piece of rope but then, from its bright green colour, I knew it was not. It was a long electric cord, the one from my mother’s vacuum cleaner. He slipped it through the belt around Faro’s neck and knotted it. He tied the other end to the porch rail.

  Poor Faro! He had never in his life been tied up before. When he finished eating he shook himself again, trying to get the collar off, and then trotted away. When he came to the end of the tether his head snapped back and he fell down. He stood up, shook himself, and tried again. Next he turned around and backed off, trying to pull the collar over his head. Mr Loomis watched: at last, having seen that the dog could not get away, he turned and went back into the house.

  Faro, following the instinct of all dogs, sat down and chewed on the cord. But it was made of heavy wire with a tough plastic coating, and though he kept gnawing for half an hour it was too much for his teeth.

  After that he cried, a thin mournful yipping sound he had not made since he was a puppy. I wanted to run down and untie the knot, but of course I couldn’t.

  So I sat where I was and watched. Also, I began to think about what I should do, what was going to happen. I thought about all the routine things I should be doing—milking the cow, feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs, weeding the garden. Could I just live up here, keeping my distance, and continue to do them? Perhaps the outdoor things I could. Cooking the meals I could not do, since that would mean going into the house. Mr Loomis would have to cook his own. Should I continue to bring him supplies from the store? I did not think he could walk far enough to get his own, not yet. I could not let him starve, no matter what he had done.

  I decided that somehow or other we would have to work out a compromise, a way that we could both live in the valley even though not as friends. There was enough room, and he was welcome to have the house. Perhaps I could live in the store or church. I was willing to do the work as necessary. And we could stay apart, and leave each other entirely alone.

  The trouble was, I knew I would be willing to do that, but I was not sure he would be.

  Still the effort had to be made. I decided I would go and talk to him. I could do it from a distance. I was thinking of how and what to say, when I fell asleep.

  I woke up in late afternoon, my neck was sore and stiff, and I was hungry. I had only a smattering of food supplies still in the cave, but I opened a tin of hash and ate it cold.

  Today I am going to figure out where I can build a fire, by day so he will not see the smoke, or by night so that he will not see the flames. I expect the second way will be easier.

  Chapter Twenty

  July 1st

  After supper, in the cave.

  Mr Loomis does plan to use Faro to catch me. Yesterday, late in the afternoon, he came outside carrying Faro’s plate of food. The dog had stopped crying and gone to sleep, curled up in the grass beside the porch. Mr Loomis did not give him the food immediately, but put the plate down on the porch. He untied the leash, the electric cord, from the porch, looped up most of it in his hand like a lasso (it was 25 feet long), and led Faro out to the road still tied to the other end.

  Faro, not used to being led, had a hard time at first—he kept trying to run and being brought up short. He learned quickly, however, and in a few minutes was walking along docilely enough, his nose to the road and wagging his tail. He was following my trail again, but this time leading Mr Loomis behind him.

  They went in this manner only a few yards up the road, perhaps fifty. Then they turned and came back to the house, Mr Loomis once again limping slightly, Faro trotting beside him, pulling a little to get to his dinner. But in that few yards I began to realize the mistake I had made, and also why Mr Loomis had tied Faro up. If he could teach him to track on a leash, he could find me whenever he wanted to. Not yet, perhaps, but when he could walk farther.

  Suddenly I had a feeling he knew I was watching. Or worse, that he hoped I was. Along with it came another feeling which made me feel slightly sick again: that I was in a game of move-counter-move, like a chess game, a game I did not want to be in at all. Only Mr Loomis wanted to be in it, and only he could win it.

  After he had tied the dog up and fed him, Mr Loomis walked back to the road and stood looking, first in the direction they had walked, towards the store: having seen nothing there, he turned slowly in a full circle, inspecting all of the valley that he could see. At one point he stared straight at me, and I had a fearful impulse to put down the binoculars and duck into the cave. But he could not see me, I knew; in a moment his gaze went on past, he completed his circle, and went into the house.

  I took stock of what I had in the cave: a few pounds of cornmeal in a paper bag, some salt, three tins of meat, three of beans, one of peas, two of corn. That was all the food—not very much. I had the two guns and a box of shells for each. A sleeping bag, a pillow and two blankets—but no change of clothes except for the extra shirt I had brought from the store: the rest I had
taken back to the house. A pot, a frying pan, a plate, a cup, a knife, fork and spoon. Two candles, a lamp and a gallon of kerosene. One book: Famous Short Stories of England and America, which we had used as a text book in high school English. And three bottles of water—former cider jugs, holding one gallon each. However, the water had been in the cave for weeks, and might be stale. After dark I would pour it out and refill the bottles at the brook.

  The sun was going down, and I decided before it was fully dark I would see about making the fire. What I had in mind was to build, if I could, a wall of some kind near the cave, not very big, but enough to hide the glow of a small fire from the direction of the house.

  It turned out to be quite easy. I found a more or less flat place, a shelf, on the hillside a few yards up. I dug into it with a stick, raking the loosened earth with my hands into a low pile on the downhill side. The resulting hole was about six inches deep, about the size of a wash basin, big enough for a cooking fire. The pile of earth was too low to hide it, so until dark I collected rocks, about brick-sized, to pile on top of it. When I had enough, or nearly, I could no longer see to fit them properly; I left it to finish the next day, by daylight, and ate cold beans for supper. I remember thinking, tomorrow night I can cook some cornmeal. I hoped also to have some milk.

  After I had eaten I carried two of my bottles to the brook and refilled them with fresh water. I also rinsed my spoon and washed my hands and face. I felt very tired; I was yawning continuously and realized there would be no staying awake that night. That alarmed me somewhat because sound asleep at night I was vulnerable, as I had learned. I decided as a precaution at least not to sleep in the cave—with only one entrance, and a small one, it would be like a trap.

  I took my sleeping bag and a blanket up to the small shelf where I had been building the fire-wall. There was just room there on the other side of the hole to spread it out. The ground was lumpy but it made no difference. I fell asleep instantly and did not wake up until the sunlight reached my eyes this morning.

  I got up, washed, ate (the rest of last night’s beans), took my bedding back to the cave, and set out for the house. I went the long way round, of course, by the pond and the store so that I could approach along the road as I had left. I did not want him to have any idea as to which direction I was really coming from.

  Approaching the house I saw no sign of life or motion. The tent stood in the garden, and the wagon beside it sealed in its green cover. Where was Faro? I thought he would be tied outside but he was not. When I came up to the front garden I stopped, staying in the road, and waited. I planned to go no closer than that.

  I did not have long to wait. In only a minute the door opened and Mr Loomis stepped out on to the porch. He had seen me from inside. He came down the steps, limping, holding the rail, and stopped at the bottom.

  “I thought you would come back,” he said. Then he added, “I hoped you would.”

  For a moment I was stunned, and could not think what to say. He was sorry and wanted to be friends again. Yet I could not forget the horror of that night, and I knew that I would never trust him again.

  “No,” I said, “I am not coming back. Not any more. But I thought we should talk.”

  “Not come back?” he said. “But why not? Where will you stay?”

  It was as before, the time he had held my hand and I had struck him. He acted as if nothing had happened, or as if he had forgotten it. For a moment I thought, maybe, somehow, he does forget the things he has done. But I knew it was not true; he had not forgotten. He was, rather, pretending, like a child who has done something terrible, that it had not happened. Yet there was nothing childlike about him.

  I said; “I will find somewhere to stay.”

  “But where? This is your house.”

  “I would rather not discuss it.”

  He shrugged, very unconcerned. “All right. Then why did you come?”

  “Because although I can’t stay here any more, I need to stay alive, and so do you.”

  “True,” he said. “I intend to stay alive.” He was looking at me curiously, thinking as he talked and not necessarily saying what he was thinking.

  “If we are to stay alive,” I said, “there is work that has to be done. There are the crops and the seeds, the garden, the animals.”

  He said: “Of course, that’s why I thought you would come back.”

  “I’m willing to do those things if I am left alone. I will also bring food and water as you need them. You will have to cook for yourself. There is a cookbook on the kitchen shelf.”

  “And you will go away at night. Where?”

  “To another part of the valley.”

  He was thinking all the time. He glanced down the road in the direction I had come from. Finally he said:

  “I have no choice. I can only hope you will change your mind.” He paused. “And act more like an adult and less like a schoolgirl.”

  “I will not change my mind.”

  He said no more, but turned and went back into the house, closing the door behind him. I went to the barn, trying as I went to guess what he was thinking. He would be making plans, and from our conversation he had learned some things he had not known and needed to know. That I was not going to move back to the house. That I was going to do the work. That I was going to bring him food and water. So he would plan on that basis. But plan what? It is possible that he will just accept what I have offered, stay in the house and leave me alone. Eventually go ahead and build the generator.

  But I do not believe that. He was very curious about where I was staying. He asked that repeatedly, though unobtrusively. And he has tied up Faro.

  Where had Faro been when we talked? There had been no sight nor sound of him. He must have had him tied up inside the house. Did he think, then, that I might try to untie him—to steal him? (As Edward had stolen the suit.) I remember I did, in fact, think of doing that. Then I had a really sickening thought.

  It was that whatever Mr Loomis was planning, at the end of the plan was a picture, and it was of me, tied up like Faro in the house.

  I put it out of my mind and milked the cow. She was going dry; there was no doubting that. The calf was almost fully weaned, and I had missed several milkings in a row, which had helped to speed the process up. Though I was careful to get the last drop she gave only about half a gallon. There were assorted milk pails hanging on the barn wall; I poured the milk into two of these, dividing it evenly, and put one of them on the back porch for Mr Loomis. I fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, and divided them, too, four apiece. From the garden I got peas, lettuce, and spinach, and took half and set the rest on the porch. Finally I had to get a burlap feed sack from the barn to put my stuff in, though it barely filled one corner.

  In short, I did my morning outdoor work about as usual, and he left me alone, not even coming out on to the back porch. I did have a feeling he was watching me through the kitchen window, though I caught no glimpse of his face.

  About noon I went to the store and got him a load of groceries. I ate there, from a tin on the shelf, opening it with one of the tin-openers Mr Klein sold for forty-nine cents. When I carried the groceries back and left them on the porch, there was smoke coming out from the chimney and the milk, and the eggs and vegetables were gone. He was cooking lunch. I made a mental note of two things: if I was going to continue to bring groceries he would have to let me know what he needed; if I was going to bring water he would have to set one of the water cans out when it got empty.

  At four o’clock, having run the cultivator between the rows of corn and beans, I stopped work and walked back to the store, on my way to the cave, thinking as I went that for one day, at least, the system had worked. It was unnatural and uneasy, but if it worked again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, perhaps I would become less afraid, the tension would ease, and we could work out a way of sharing the valley, if not amicably, at least bearably. So my hopes were lifted a little. I also thought that if I could
get the wall finished I could build a fire after dark and cook a hot meal. I was quite happy.

  I stopped at the store to replenish my food supply. Since I had my burlap feed sack already with me I used it as a container, removing the four eggs first. I gathered a dozen tins of assorted meat, vegetables and soup and a bag of flour. I put the eggs in a brown paper bag and added them on top. With the garden stuff I already had that was about all I could carry, since I had to keep one hand free for the milk can. I decided to take a few more items each day, gradually building up my supply.

  I deposited these at the cave and hurried on, while it was still light, to finish my fire-wall. The more I looked at the site I had chosen, the better I liked it. For one thing there was plenty of bushes and quite a few trees between it and the house; in fact, I could not see the house at all from there, so I was quite sure that with a little care I could keep the fire quite invisible. I added more rocks, chinking them with dirt and moss. In about half an hour I had a respectable looking small fireplace, its back on the downhill side, about eighteen inches high. Adding the depth of the hole I had dug, that meant that if the flames were smaller than two feet they would not show. I gathered some dry sticks for firewood.

  While I waited for darkness I looked down on the house. Mr Loomis had come out again with Faro on the leash and was walking with him, this time not down the road as before but out behind the house. At first I did not understand just what his object was but as I watched it slowly became clear.

  When they had walked before on the road, Faro obviously tracking, Mr Loomis had guessed he was following me. Now he was making sure.

  I got out the binoculars to see better. As soon as they got behind the house, Faro put his nose to the ground and led the way to the garden—where I had been. Then to the barn—where I had also been. Faro, in other words, has caught on to the game, and Mr Loomis, having watched from the window all day, knows that he has.