by Ward Moore
“It’s fantastic,” exclaimed Molly. “I can almost believe Jir’s right and you’ve lost your mind.”
Mr. Jimmon smiled. This was the first time Molly had ever openly shown disloyalty before the children or sided with them in their presence. She was revealing herself. Under pressure. Not the pressure of events; her incredible attitude at Santa Barbara had demonstrated her incapability to feel that. Just pressure against the bladder.
“No doubt those left behind can console their last moments with pride in their sanity.” The sentence came out perfectly formed, with none of the annoying pauses or interpolated “ers” or “mmphs” which could, as he knew from unhappy experience, flaw the most crushing rejoinders.
“Oh, the end can always justify the means for those who want it that way.”
“Don’t they retrain people—”
“That’s enough, Jir!”
Trust Molly to return quickly to fundamental hypocrisy; the automatic response—his mind felicitously grasped the phrase, conditioned reflex—to the customary stimulus. She had taken an explicit stand against his common sense, but her rigid code—honor thy father; iron rayon the wrong side; register and vote; avoid scenes; only white wine with fish; never rehire a discharged servant—quickly substituted pattern for impulse. Seventeen years.
The road turned away from the ocean, squirmed inland and uphill for still slower miles; abruptly widened into a divided, four-lane highway. Without hesitation Mr. Jimmon took the southbound side; for the first time since they had left Rambla Catalina his foot went down to the floorboards and with a sigh of relief the station wagon jumped into smooth, ecstatic speed.
Improvisation and strategy again. And, he acknowledged generously, the defiant example this morning of those who’d done the same thing in Malibu. Now, out of re-established habit the other cars kept to the northbound side even though there was nothing coming south. Timidity, routine, inertia. Pretty soon they would realize sheepishly that there was neither traffic nor traffic cops to keep them off, but it would be miles before they had another chance to cross over. By that time he would have reached the comparatively uncongested stretch.
“It’s dangerous, David.”
Obey the law. No smoking. Keep off the grass. Please adjust your clothes before leaving. Trespassers will be. Picking California wildflowers or shrubs is forbidden. Parking 45 minutes. Do not.
She hadn’t put the protest in the more usual form of a question. Would that technique have been more irritating? Isn’t it dangerous, Day-vid? His calm conclusion: it didn’t matter.
“No time for niceties,” chirped Jir.
Mr. Jimmon tried to remember Jir as a baby. All the bad novels he had read in the days when he read anything except Time and The New Yorker, all the movies he’d seen before they had a television set, always prescribed such retrospection as a specific for softening the present. If he could recall David Alonzo Jimmon, junior, at six months, helpless and lovable, it should make Jir more acceptable by discovering some faint traces of the one in the other.
But though he could recreate in detail the interminable, disgusting, trembling months of the initial pregnancy (had he really been afraid she would die?) he was completely unable to reconstruct the appearance of his firstborn before the age of.… It must have been six that Jir had taken his baby sister out for a walk and lost her. (Had Molly permitted it? He still didn’t know for sure.) Erika hadn’t been found for four hours.
The tidal screeching of sirens invaded and destroyed his thoughts. What the devil.… His foot lifted from the gas pedal as he slowed obediently to the right, ingrained reverence surfacing at the sound.
“I told you it wasn’t safe! Are you really trying to kill us all?”
Whipping over the rise ahead, a pair of motorcycles crackled. Behind them snapped a long line of assorted vehicles, fire trucks and ambulances mostly, interspersed here and there with olive-drab army equipment. The cavalcade flicked down the central white line, one wheel in each lane. Mr. Jimmon edged the station wagon as far over as he could; it still occupied too much room to permit the free passage of the onrush without compromise.
The knees and elbows of the motorcycle policemen stuck out widely, reminding Mr. Jimmon of grasshoppers. The one on the near side was headed straight for the station wagon’s left front fender; for a moment Mr. Jimmon closed his eyes as he plotted the unswerving course, knifing through the crust-like steel, bouncing lightly on the tires, and continuing unperturbed. He opened them to see the other officer shoot past, mouth angrily open in his direction while the one straight ahead came to a skidding stop.
“Going to get it now,” gloated Wendell.
An old-fashioned parent, one of the horrible examples held up to shuddering moderns like himself, would have reached back and relieved his tension by clouting Wendell across the mouth. Mr. Jimmon merely turned off the motor.
The cop was not indulging in the customary deliberate and ominous performance of slowly dismounting and striding toward his victim with ever more menacing steps. Instead he got off quickly and covered the few feet to Mr. Jimmon’s window with unimpressive speed.
Heavy goggles concealed his eyes; dust and stubble covered his face. “Operator’s license!”
Mr. Jimmon knew what he was saying, but the sirens and the continuous rustle of the convoy prevented the sound from coming through. Again the cop deviated from the established routine; he did not take the proffered license and examine it incredulously before drawing out his pad and pencil, but wrote the citation, glancing up and down from the card to Mr. Jimmon’s hand.
Even so, the last of the vehicles—San Jose F.D.—passed before he handed the summons through the window to be signed. “Turn around and proceed in the proper direction,” he ordered curtly, pocketing the pad and buttoning his jacket briskly.
Mr. Jimmon nodded. The officer hesitated, as though waiting for some limp excuse. Mr. Jimmon said nothing.
“No tricks,” said the policeman over his shoulder. “Turn around and proceed in the proper direction.”
He almost ran to his motorcycle, and roared off, twisting his head for a final stern frown as he passed, siren wailing. Mr. Jimmon watched him dwindle in the rearview mirror and then started the motor. “Gonna lose a lot more than you gained,” commented Jir.
Mr. Jimmon gave a glance in the mirror and moved ahead, shifting into second. “David!” exclaimed Molly horrified, “you’re not turning around!”
“Observant,” muttered Mr. Jimmon, between his teeth.
“Dad, you can’t get away with it,” Jir decided judicially.
Mr. Jimmon’s answer was to press the accelerator down savagely. The empty highway stretched invitingly ahead; a few hundred yards to their right they could see the northbound lanes ant-clustered. The sudden motion stirred the traffic citation on his lap, floating it down to the floor. Erika leaned forward and picked it up.
“Throw it away,” ordered Mr. Jimmon.
Molly gasped. “You’re out of your mind.”
“You’re a fool,” stated Mr. Jimmon calmly. “Why should I save that piece of paper?”
“Isn’t what you told the cop.” Jir was openly jeering now.
“I might as well have, if I’d wanted to waste conversation. I don’t know why I was blessed with such a stupid family—”
“May be something in heredity after all.”
If Jir had said it out loud, reflected Mr. Jimmon, it would have passed casually as normal domestic repartee, a little ill-natured perhaps, certainly callow and trite, but not especially provocative. Muttered, so that it was barely audible, it was an ultimate defiance. He had read that far back in prehistory, when young males felt their strength, they sought to overthrow the rule of the Old Man and usurp his place. No doubt they uttered a preliminary growl or screech as challenge. They were not very bright, but they acted in a pattern; a pattern Jir was apparently following.
Refreshed by placing Jir in proper Neanderthal setting, Mr. Jimmon went on,”—none of
you seems to have the slightest initiative or ability to grasp reality. Tickets, cops, judges, juries mean nothing anymore. There is no law now but the law of survival.”
“Aren’t you being dramatic, David?” Molly’s tone was deliberately aloof adult to excited child.
“I could hear you underline words, Dad,” said Erika, but he felt there was no malice in her gibe.
“You mean we can do anything we want now? Shoot people? Steal cars and things?” asked Wendell.
“There, David! You see?”
Yes, I see. Better than you. Little savage. This is the pattern. What will Wendell—and the thousands of other Wendells (for it would be unjust to suppose Molly’s genes and domestic influence unique)—be like after six months of anarchy? Or after six years?
Survivors, yes. And that will be about all: naked, primitive, ferocious, superstitious savages. Wendell can read and write (but not so fluently as I or any of our generation at his age); how long will he retain the tags and scraps of progressive schooling?
And Jir? Detachedly Mr. Jimmon foresaw the fate of Jir. Unlike Wendell who would adjust to the new conditions, Jir would go wild in another sense. His values were already set; they were those of television, high-school dating, comic strips, law and order. Released from civilization, his brief future would be one of guilty rape and pillage until he fell victim to another youth or gang bent the same way. Molly would disintegrate and perish quickly. Erika.…
The station wagon flashed along the comparatively unimpeded highway. Having passed the next crossover, there were now other vehicles on the southbound strip, but even on the northbound one, crowding had eased.
Furiously Mr. Jimmon determined to preserve the civilization in Erika. He would teach her everything he knew (including the insurance business?).
… ah, if he were some kind of scientist, now—not the Dan Davisson kind, whose abstract speculation seemed always to prepare the way for some new method of destruction, but the … Franklin? Jefferson? Watt? He would have to protect her night and day from the refugees who would be roaming the hills south of Monterey. The rifle ammunition, properly used—and he would see that nobody but himself used it—would last years. After it was gone—presuming fragments and pieces of a suicidal world hadn’t pulled themselves miraculously together to offer a place to return to—there were two hunting bows with steel-tipped shafts that could stop a man as easily as a deer or mountain lion. He remembered debating long, at the time he first began preparing for It, how many bows to order, measuring their weight and bulk against the other precious freight and deciding at last that two was the satisfactory minimum. It must have been in his subconscious mind all along that of the whole family Erika was the only other person who could be trusted with a bow.
“There will be,” he spoke in calm and solemn tones, not to Wendell, whose question was now left long behind, floating on the gas-greasy air of a sloping valley growing with live oaks, but to a larger, impalpable audience, “there will be others who will think that because there is no longer law or law enforcement—”
“You’re being simply fantastic!” She spoke more sharply than he had ever heard her in front of the children. “Just because It happened to Los Angeles—”
“And Pittsburgh.”
“All right. And Pittsburgh, doesn’t mean that the whole United States has collapsed and everyone in the country is running frantically for safety.”
“Yet,” added Mr. Jimmon firmly. “Yet. Do you suppose they are going to stop with Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, and leave Gary and Seattle standing? Or even New York and Chicago? Or do you imagine Washington will beg for armistice terms while there is the least sign of organized life left in the country?”
“We’ll wipe them out first,” insisted Jir in patriotic shock. Wendell backed him up with a machine gun “Brrrrr.”
“Undoubtedly. But it will be the last gasp. At any rate it will be years, if at all in my lifetime, before stable communications are reestablished—”
“David, you’re raving.”
“Reestablished,” he repeated. “So there will be many others who’ll also feel the dwindling of law and order is a license to kill people and steal cars ‘and things.’ Naked force and cunning will be the only means of self-preservation. That was why I picked out a spot where I felt survival would be easiest; not only because of wood and water, game and fish, but because it’s nowhere near the main highways, and so unlikely to be chosen by any great number.”
“I wish you’d stop harping on that insane idea. You’re just a little too old and flabby for pioneering. Even when you were younger you were hardly the rugged outdoor type.”
No, thought Mr. Jimmon, I was the sucker type. I would have gotten somewhere if I’d stayed at the bank, but like a bawd you pled your belly; the insurance business brought in the quick money for you to give up your job and have Jir and the proper home. If you’d got rid of it as I wanted. Flabby, flabby! Do you think your scrawniness is so enticing?
Controlling himself, he said aloud, “We’ve been through all this. Months ago. It’s not a question of physique, but of life.”
“Nonsense. Perfect nonsense. Responsible people who really know Its effects.… Maybe it was advisable to leave Malibu for a few days or even a few weeks. And perhaps it’s wise to stay away from the larger cities. But a small town or village, or even one of those ranches where they take boarders—”
“Aw, Mom, you agreed. You know you did. What’s the matter with you anyway? Why are you acting like a drip?”
“I want to go shoot rabbits and bears like Dad said,” insisted Wendell.
Erika said nothing, but Mr. Jimmon felt he had her sympathy; the boys’ agreement was specious. Wearily he debated going over the whole ground again, patiently pointing out that what Molly said might work in the Dakotas or the Great Smokies but was hardly operative anywhere within refugee range of the Pacific Coast. He had explained all this many times, including the almost certain impossibility of getting enough gasoline to take them into any of the reasonably safe areas; that was why they’d agreed on the region below Monterey, on California State Highway 1, as the only logical goal.
A solitary car decorously bound in the legal direction interrupted his thoughts. Either crazy or has mighty important business, he decided. The car honked disapprovingly as it passed, hugging the extreme right side of the road.
Passing through Buellton the clamor again rose for a pause at a filling station. He conceded inwardly that he could afford ten or fifteen minutes without strategic loss since by now they must be among the leaders of the exodus; ahead lay little more than the normal travel. However he had reached such a state of irritated frustration and consciousness of injustice that he was willing to endure unnecessary discomfort himself in order to inflict a longer delay on them. In fact it lessened his own suffering to know the delay was needless, that he was doing it, and his action was a just—if inadequate—punishment.
“We’ll stop this side of Santa Maria,” he said. “I’ll get gas there.”
Mr. Jimmon knew triumph: his forethought, his calculations, his generalship had justified themselves. Barring unlikely mechanical failure—the station wagon was in perfect shape—or accident—and the greatest danger had certainly passed—escape was now practically assured. For the first time he permitted himself to realize how unreal, how romantic the whole project had been. The docile mass perished; the headstrong (but intelligent) individual survived.
Along with triumph went an expansion of his prophetic vision of life after reaching their destination. He had purposely not taxed the cargo capacity of the wagon with transitional goods; there was no tent, canned luxuries, sleeping-bags, lanterns, candles or any of the paraphernalia of camping midway between the urban and nomadic life. Instead, besides the weapons, tackle and utensils, there was in miniature the List For Life On A Desert Island: shells and cartridges, lures, hooks, nets, gut, leaders, flint and steel, seeds, traps, needles and thread, government pamphlets on curing and t
anning hides and the recognition of edible weeds and fungi, files, nails, a judicious stock of simple medicines. A pair of binoculars to spot intruders. No coffee, sugar, flour; they would begin living immediately as they would have to in a month or so in any case, on the old, half-forgotten human cunning.
“Cunning,” he said aloud.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“I still think you should have made an effort to reach Pearl and Dan.”
“The telephone was dead, Mother.”
“At the moment, Erika. You can hardly have forgotten how often the lines have been down before. And it never takes more than half an hour till they’re working again.”
“Mother, Dan Davisson is quite capable of looking after himself.”
Mr. Jimmon shut out the rest of the conversation so completely he didn’t know whether there was any more to it or not. He shut out the intense preoccupation with driving, with making speed, with calculating possible gains. In the core of his mind, quite detached from everything about him, he examined and marveled.
Erika. The cool, inflexible, adult tone. Almost indulgent, but so dispassionate as not to be. One might have expected her to be exasperated by Molly’s silliness, to have answered impatiently, or not at all.
Mother. Never in his recollection had the children ever called her anything but Mom. The “Mother” implied—oh, it implied a multitude of things. An entirely new relationship, for one. A relationship of aloofness, of propriety without emotion. The ancient stump of the umbilical cord, black and shriveled, had dropped off painlessly.
She had not bothered to argue about the telephone or point out the gulf between “before” and now. She had not even tried to touch Molly’s deepening refusal of reality. She had been … indulgent.
