by Pat Frank
She wasn't upstairs. She was waiting in the gloom of the porch. She said, "I saw you drive it in. It's beautiful. Did you get the gas to go with it?"
"Total of seventeen gallons including what's in the tank. We can cruise for a day or two if we take it easy. Are you tired, darling?"
"Not too."
"If you're going to be up at five with the others you really ought to be in bed."
"I've been waiting for you, Randy. I worry. I'm not tired, really."
They walked through the grove down to the dock.
The river whispered, the quarter-moon showed its profile, the stars moved. She lay on her back, head resting on her locked fingers, looking up at the stars.
His eyes measured her - long, lender, curved as if for flight, skin coppery, hair silvered by the night. "You're a beautiful possession," he said. "I wish we had a place of our own so I could keep you. I wish we had just one room to ourselves. I wish we were married."
Instantly she said, "I accept."
"I'm not sure how we'd go about it. Last I heard the courthouse in San Marco wasn't operating. For a while it was an emergency shelter like our school. I don't know what they use it for now but certainly not for issuing marriage licenses. And the county clerk has disappeared. I heard in the park that he took his family and started for an uncontaminated zone in Georgia where he used to live."
Without moving her head she said, "Randy, under martial law, can't you make your own rules?"
"I hadn't thought about it. I suppose so."
"Well, make one."
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"I certainly am. It may be an old-fashioned, Before-The-Day attitude but if I'm going to have children I'd like to be married."
"Children! Are you going to have a baby?" Thought of the difficulties, dangers, and complexities of having a baby, under their present circumstances, appalled him.
"I don't know. I can't say that I am, but then again I can't say that I'm not, can I? I would like to marry you tomorrow before you go off chasing highwaymen." She turned on her side, to face him. "It isn't really convention. It is only that I love you very much, and that if anything happened - I don't have any bad premonitions, dear, but you and I know that a bad thing could happen. - well, if anything happened I would want the child to have your name. You'd want that too, wouldn't you?"
"Yes," Randy said, "I would want that very much. I'm not going to put the truck on the road until late in the afternoon - that's when the highwaymen took Dan - so there'll be time."
"That's nice," she said. "It'll be nice to marry on Easter Sunday."
He took her hands and drew her up and held her. Over her shoulder he saw a pair of green eyes and a dark snout sliding downstream past the edge of the dock. It was spring and the gators were out of their holes. He had heard somewhere that the Seminoles ate gator meat. Cut their tails into steaks. It was a source of meat that should be investigated. He knew he shouldn't be thinking about food at this time but he was hungry again.
[11]
Elizabeth McGovern and Randolph Bragg were married at noon that Easter Sunday. The bride wore the same white silk dress she had worn to the sunrise service in Marines Park. She was unsteady on high heels, for she had not worn heels since The Day.
The groom wore his Class A uniform with the bold patch of the First Cavalry Division on his arm and the ribbons of the Korean War and Bronze Star on his chest, along with the blue badge of the combat infantryman. He wore the uniform not because of the wedding but because it was required in the radioed orders to reservists assuming active duty, such as ambushing and killing highwaymen, which he presently intended to do.
The bride was given away by her father, W. Foxworth McGovern, the retired Cleveland manufacturer. Bill McGovern, who had been helping Malachai cut gun ports in the thin steel sides and rear doors of the grocery truck, wore greasy dungarees. A chisel had slipped and one of his hands was bleeding.
The best man was Doctor Daniel Gunn. He was clad in a tentsized, striped bathrobe. Grinning through his red beard, his head bandaged, a square gauze patch covering his right eye, he looked like a turbaned Mediterranean pirate.
Among the guests was Rear Admiral Samuel P. Hazzard (USN, retired) who wore khaki shorts, a khaki hunting vest bulging with buckshot shells, and during the ceremony held his gold-braided cap across his stomach.
The matron-of-honor was Mrs. Helen Bragg, the presumed widow of Colonel Mark Bragg. She furnished the wedding ring, stripping it from her own finger.
The ceremony was held in the high-ceilinged parlor of the Bragg house. The marriage was performed by the Reverend Clarence Henry, pastor emeritus of the Afro-Repose Baptist Church.
Randy was certain it was perfectly legal. It was performed under his Order No. 4, written that morning in Sam Hazzard's house.
Malachai and Bill McGovern had been working on the truck, and Randy was breakfasting with Dan Gunn, when the women and children returned from Marines Park. The services had been wonderful, they said, but the news they brought was terrible. During the night highwaymen had raided the isolated home of Jim Hickey, the beekeeper, on the Pasco Creek Road
. They had killed Jim and his wife. The two children had walked to Fort Repose and found their aunt's home. Whether it was the same band that had beaten Dan Gunn was uncertain. The Hickey children were inarticulate and hysterical with fear and shock.
Randy, raging for immediate retaliation, had raced to the Admiral's house with the news. The Admiral's experience in meeting the unpredictable and brutish pranks of war had saved them from premature or imprudent action. "Wasn't this sort of thing exactly what we expected?" Sam Hazzard asked.
"I suppose so, but dammit-"
"I don't think we should change our plans by so much as a minute. If we put out with the truck now we'll just burn fuel for nothing. These people operate like beasts, Randy. Having gorged themselves in the night they sleep through the mornings, perhaps through the whole day."
Randy, recognizing the sense of this, had calmed himself. They had talked of the wedding, and the legal problems attending martial law, and the Admiral had helped him in framing Order No. 4. It read:
Until county offices resume operations and normal communications are reestablished between this town and the Timucuan County seat, the following regulations will govern marriages and births in Fort Repose.
1. Marriages can be performed by any ordained minister. Marriage licenses and health certificates are waived.
2. Marriage certificates will be issued by the presiding minister, and will be valid when signed by the contracting parties, the minister, and two witnesses.
3. So that a permanent record may be preserved, a copy of the certificate will be left at the Fort Repose Library. I designate Librarian Alice Cooksey custodian of these records. I designate Miss Florence Wechek her deputy.
4. Birth records, signed by the attending physician or midwife, or by the mother and any witnesses if medical attention is unavailable, will be deposited in the same manner.
One copy of this order is to be kept with the records in the library. This order is retroactive to The Day, so that any births or marriages that have occurred since The Day ay be properly recorded.
Randy signed Order No. 4 and said, "Well, when the rules are off you make your own."
"This is a good one," Sam Hazzard said. "I wonder what they're doing elsewhere?"
"Elsewhere?"
"There must be hundreds of towns in the same fix we're in - local authority collapsed or inoperative, communications out. I fancy that elsewhere they're not doing so good."
"How could they be worse?" Randy was thinking of what had happened to Dan Gunn and the Hickeys.
"They could be," the Admiral said, positively.
Randy had gone to see Preacher next. "Preacher,", he said, "you're an ordained minister, aren't you?"
"I sure am," Preacher said. "I am not only ordained but in my church I can ordain people."
"Would you mind marrying Miss McGovern and me? We don't have a regular courthouse license, naturally, but I have fixed it up to make it legal under martial law."
"Miss McGovern told me you was going to wed, Mister Randy. I will be happy to marry you. I don't need papers. I've joined maybe a thousand pairs in my life. Some had papers, some didn't. Some stuck, some didn't. The papers didn't make the difference. Its the people, not the papers."
So they were married, in a room filled with flowers of the season and furniture of less bitter centuries and people of all ages.
Randy produced the certificate and when Preacher signed it he signed "Rev. Clarence Henry," and Randy realized that this was the first time he had ever known Preacher's full name although Preacher had always been there.
Randy had found a large-scale county map in his desk and they had planned their movement as carefully as a Q-ship captain plotting his course through submarine alley. There were four roads that led out from Fort Repose. River Road stretched east along the Timucuan until it swung into a main highway to the beaches. The Pasco Creek Road
ran north, the San Marco Road west
, from the bridge across the St. Johns. A narrow, substandard road followed the St. Johns toward its headwaters.
The map, with two crosses to mark where the highwaymen had stopped Dan Gunn and killed the Hickeys, lay on the garage floor. They bent over it, Randy tracing the route they would take. The highwaymen could be anywhere. They could be one band, or two, or more. They could be gone entirely. It was all guesswork, and yet it was necessary to plan the route so as to cover the most territory using the least amount of gas, for when the truck's tank was empty, that would be all. There was no reserve, not anywhere. They would take River Road
first because it was closest. After twelve miles a little-used lateral led toward Pasco Creek and they would go almost to Pasco Creek and then cut into the road for Fort Repose. Thus, by using the clay or washboard laterals, they could avoid retracing the same highway and save a few miles.
On his hands and knees, his seagoing cap pushed back on his pink head, the Admiral murmured, " 'Give me a fast ship for I intend to go in harm's way' - Paul Jones. Remember, Randy, this should be a very slow ship. The slower we go the less gas we use and the more chance they have of spotting us."
Randy was going to drive. Malachai, Sam Hazzard, and Bill McGovern were to be concealed in the body of the truck. Randy said, "I don't like to drive slow but I can. I think about twenty miles an hour is right. Anything slower would look suspicious."
He checked the weapons. They were taking everything that might be handy - the automatic sixteen for the Admiral and the double twenty for Bill McGovern. Malachai would have the carbine. The big Krag, long as a Kentucky squirrel rifle and as unwieldy, would be in reserve. From Dan's description of how the highwaymen had acted, Randy guessed that the fire fight, when it came, would be close in, and the shotguns of greater value than the rifles. He himself, alone behind the wheel, would have only the .45 automatic on the seat beside him. That, and the hunting knife which was almost, but not quite, razor sharp, in a sheath at his belt.
Randy walked around the truck for a final look. He thought he was doing something that was familiar and then he remembered that he had seen aircraft commanders do this before takeoff. He examined the tires. They were good. The battery water had been replenished and the battery run up. Malachai and Bill had done a good job on the gun ports, fairing them into the big, painted letters, "AJAX SUPER-MARKET." On each side, one port in the "J" and one in the "M." Camouflage. The holes cut into the rear doors, under the tiny glass windows, were more conspicuous. Randy went outside and returned with a handful of mud. He spread it on the edges of the ports, erasing the glint of freshly cut metal.
It was four o'clock, the time to sortie. "You know your positions," he said. "Sam, you have the starboard side. Bill takes the port. Malachai, the stern. If I see your fire can't be effective from inside I'll yell, 'Out!' and everybody gets out fast while I cover you."
Then, at the last second, there was a change.
Malachai suggested it. "Mister Randy, I want to say something. I don't think you ought to drive. I think I ought to drive."
Randy was furious, but he held his voice down. "Let's not get everything screwed up now. Get in, Malachair"
Malachal made no move. "Sir, that uniform. It don't go with the truck."
"They won't see it until they stop us," Randy said. "Then it'll be too late. Anyway, all sorts of people are wearing all sorts of clothes. I'll bet you'd see highwaymen in uniforms if they got their hands on them."
"That ain't all, sir," Malachai said. "It's your face. It's white. They're more likely to tackle a black face than a white face. They see my face they say, 'Huh, here's something soft and probably with no gun.' So they relax. Maybe it gives us that extra second, Mister Randy:"
Randy hesitated. He had confidence in Malachai's driving and in his judgment and courage. But it was the driver who would have to do the talking, if there was any talking, and who would have to keep his hands off the pistol. That would be the hardest thing.
The Admiral spoke, very carefully. "Now Randy, I'm not trying to outrank you. You're the Captain. You're in command and it's your decision. But I think Malachai is right. Dungarees and a black face are better bait than a uniform and a white face."
Randy said, "Okay. You're right. You drive, Malachai. You take the pistol up front. Keep it out of sight. There is only one thing to remember. When they stop us they'll all be watching you. They don't know we're here. They'll be watching you and they'll kill you if you go for your gun. So leave your gun alone until we start shooting."
Malachai grinned and said, "Yes, sir," and they got in and departed. Looking through the glass in the rear door, Randy saw his wife and Helen and Dan on the porch. They were waving. Peyton was there too but she was not waving. She had her face buried in her mother's dress.
They drove east on River Road
. After a few miles Randy told Malachai to look for signs of the place where Dan Gunn had been decoyed and beaten. They found a sign. Since there was no longer any care of the roads, the grass had grown high on the shoulders and in one place it was trampled. In a ditch, nearby, they discovered slivers of broken glass. Then they found the twisted and empty frame of Dan's glasses. The frame was useless and yet Randy picked it up and shoved it in a pocket. A lawyer's gesture, he thought. Evidence.
They drove on, past the Sunbury home. Randy was tempted to order a stop to inquire about the children's typhoid. Dan would want to know. He did not stop. The Sunburys were good people and he trusted them, but the truck was a secret, a military secret, and it was senseless to expose it.
River Road was clear. Nothing moved on River Road
. They took the lateral north. Even though Malachai avoided the worst potholes and drove with exasperating deliberation, it was rough riding. It shook up Bill McGovern and Sam Hazzard. They were older and they would tire.
Near Pasco Creek they passed a group of inhabited shacks. Approaching them, Malachai called back, "People!"
Randy turned and looked over Malachai's shoulder. He could see, from behind the front seat, but not be seen. He saw two children scurry indoors and at another place a bearded man crouched behind a woodpile, training a gun on the truck. He made no hostile move, but the muzzle tracked them. It was obvious that few people traveled this road and those who did were not welcome.
Randy was relieved when they turned into the better road toward Fort Repose. They were all stiff by then, for it was impossible to stand upright in the panel truck. The Admiral and Bill could sit cross-legged on the floor and view the landscape through their ports, but Randy had to half-crouch to see through the rear windows. When the truck reached higher ground, here the road was straight and they could see anything approach for nearly a mile, he told Malachai to stop. "We'll take ten," he said.
He threw open the back doors and got o
ut, groaning, feeling permanently warped. He walked, waving his arms and flexing his knees. Bill McGovern shuffled down the road, humpbacked. The Admiral tried to stretch, and a joint or tendon cracked audibly. He cursed. Malachai grinned.
"Now I see why you wanted to drive!" Randy said. He looked both ways. Nothing was coming. He went back to the truck and found the thermos Lib had given him. He opened it, expecting water. It was sweetened black coffee. "Look!" he said. "Look what Lib - my wife did for us!" He knew it was the last of the jar.
There was a cup for each, but they decided to take only half a cup then, saving the rest for the tag end of evening when they might need it more.
They got back into the truck and continued the patrol, past the Hickey house, empty, door open, windows wantonly smashed. Randy noticed that the beekeeper's car was gone. Jim Hickey, with such valuable trading goods as honey and beeswax, must have been holding gasoline. In the past month anyone who had it would have traded gas for honey. The objective of the highwaymen was probably the car and the gas, Randy deduced, rather than honey. This conclusion disheartened him. The highwaymen might be hundreds of miles from Fort Repose now.
Nearing Fort Repose - they must avoid being seen in the town - they turned off on a winding, high-crowned clay road that ran two miles to an antique covered bridge across the St. Johns. Once across the river they would turn south and shortly thereafter hit the road to San Marco.
Rattling over the clay washboard, it seemed hardly worth while to keep a watch from the back, and yet Randy did. Suddenly he saw that they were being followed. He had seen no car on the Pasco Creek Road
before making the turn. They had passed no car on the clay lateral, nor any houses either. The car was simply there, following them at a respectable distance, making no effort to catch them and yet not dropping back. He recalled an abandoned citrus packing shed at the turn. It must have been concealed there. Randy called so that Malachai could clearly hear, "We've got company - about three hundred yards back."
