After dinner had been got on the table and they were seated, there were a great many questions to ask. Ish let Em do most of the talking with Bob. She had all the mother's worries to settle. Had they been sick? Found plenty to eat? Slept warm? Discussion of the trip itself was being reserved until the others returned after dinner, and Ish felt also that he should not pump Bob about Charlie. Yet he could not resist the temptation entirely, and Bob showed no reticence.
"Oh," he said. "Charlie? Sure, we just picked him up about ten days ago, down near Los Angeles. There are quite a few people, I guess, living around Los Angeles. There are some all together, like us, and a few just scattered. Charlie was by himself."
"Did you ask him to come along, or did he just come with you?"
Ish watched, carefully. He saw that Bob was surprised by the question, but apparently not disturbed.
"Oh, I don't just remember. I don't know that I asked him. Maybe Dick did."
Ish dived into his thoughts again. Perhaps Charlie had reasons for wanting to get from Los Angeles to some other place. No, that was merely slandering a man out of prejudice without trial, and then he heard Bob going on.
"He tells lots of funny stories, Charlie does. He's a very good guy." Funny stories, yes, and one could imagine what kind. They were frank enough in all their language, these days; the concept of obscenity, you might say, had disappeared, largely because there was only one word for things in their vocabulary, at least among the younger ones. Obscenity seemed to have died a natural death, possibly as a counterpart to the death of romantic love. But Charlie—he might still be able to tell a dirty story. Although Ish had never been a prude about stories, still he felt his original resentment shifting to a kind of righteous indignation, in spite of his continually telling himself that he really knew nothing about Charlie, except the boys' opinions that he was a very fine person. Ish felt himself wishing that the water had never gone off, and shocked them into doing something about the future, and thus bringing an outsider in among them.
After dinner, they all built up a big bonfire on the hillside, and gathered about it. There was much singing and skylarking of the youngsters. It was a time of celebration.
There was much excitement, but the boys gradually got their story told.... They had encountered only a few minor washouts and landslides on the highway to Los Angeles, nothing that the jeep could not negotiate in four-wheel drive. The group of religious fanatics, wearing white nightgowns and calling themselves the People of God, lived in Los Angeles. They had focused upon religion, Ish assumed, under the influence of some strong leader who had happened to survive, just as in The Tribe for lack of such a leader, they had developed almost no interest in such things.
Out of Los Angeles, the boys had taken 66 eastward, just as Ish remembered so vividly he had done in the days following the Great Disaster, when he had not been much older than the boys were now. The highway across the desert was easy and open, except for an occasional stretch where sand had blown across. They had gone along with no more trouble than blowouts here and there. The Colorado River bridge they had found shaky, but still passable.
The next community was apparently at one of the old Indian pueblos near Albuquerque. From what he could make out from the boys' description, Ish concluded that most of the few dozen people at this little community were not very dark in complexion, but that the dominant spirit must be Indian, because their pattern of life was based on growing corn and beans as the Pueblo Indians had done for many hundreds of years. Only some of the older people talked English. This community also had drawn inward upon itself, and looked with suspicion upon the strangers. The people there had horses. They did not drive automobiles, and they rarely went into any town.
From there, the boys had swung north to Denver, and then out eastward across the plains.
"We followed a road," said Bob. "It's like 66, only just part of it." He paused, hesitant. Ish thought for a minute, and then realized that the boy was trying to describe Highway 6. Some of the markers would still be standing along it, and Bob had sensed that they were the same shape as the numerals on 66, although there was only one of them. Ish was embarrassed that his own son was not sure of the numerals.
Highway 6 had led them on through the corner of Colorado, and across the plains of Nebraska.
"Lots of cattle everywhere!" Here Dick was taking up the story. "Cattle everywhere, you always see cattle."
"Did you ever see the big brown ones with humps on their shoulders?" asked Ish.
"Yes, once we saw a few of them," said Dick.
"How about the grass? Does any of it grow straight and stiff looking, with a head on the end, and little grains forming. When you went through they should have been still soft and milky, perhaps. When you came back, you might have seen it somewhere standing all golden, with the grain hard. We called it 'wheat.'"
"No. We saw nothing like that."
"And how about corn? You know what that is. They were growing it there by the Rio Grande."
"No, there is no corn growing wild anywhere."
Onward still they had gone, finding the roads now blocked more often, since they had come to the wetter country with ranker and faster growth and heavier rains, combined with hard frosts in winter. The highways were splitting up into great chunks and blocks as the frost worked under them, wherever the surface was cracked, grass and weeds, and even bushes and young trees were springing up to block the way. Yet they had crossed what was once Iowa.
"We came to the big river," said Bob. "it is the biggest of all, but the bridge was good."
They had come to Chicago, but it was a mere desert of empty streets. It would be an inhospitable place, thought Ish, when the winter winds swept in from Lake Michigan. He was not surprised that people, with the whole continent to choose from, had drifted away from the once great city by the lake, leaving it ghost-like behind.
Leaving Chicago, the boys had lost themselves in the maze of roads in the outskirts, and had ended up (the day was cloudy, and they lost direction) by going south instead of east.
"After that," said Bob, "we got one of these things out of a store. It points direction—" And he looked at Ish for the word.
"Yes, a compass," said Ish.
"We hadn't needed one before, but now we used it and got going east again, until we came to the river we couldn't cross."
Ish figured out quickly that it might have been the Wabash. Floods of twenty-two years, or—more likely—just one great flood, had swept away the bridges. After exploring southward and finding no passage, the boys had had to go northward to Highway 6 again, which more or less followed a height of land.
The progress eastward had become more and more laborious. Floods, windstorms, and frost had transformed the once open and smooth highways into rough lines of concrete chunks strewn with gravel from washouts, overgrown with vegetation, and crisscrossed with fallen tree-trunks. Sometimes the jeep could push through the bushes or detour the tree-trunks. But often the boys had had to make a passageway with ax or shovel, and the constant work wore them down. Also the loneliness began to oppress them.
"There was a cold day with a north wind," Dick confessed, "and we were afraid. We remembered what you used to tell us about snow, and we thought we might never get home."
Somewhere, probably near Toledo, they had turned back. At turning back, a kind of panic came upon them. At the same time heavy rains began to fall, and the roads were often flooded. They had the fear that some of the bridges over the larger rivers might be carried away, leaving them cut off from their own people. They had not tried to go south, as Ish had wished, but had back-tracked along their own trail, gradually being reassured by their ability to get back to places that they had seen already. On their return home, therefore, they had learned little that they had not learned on the way east.
Ish did not blame them at all. In fact, he thought that they had acted with great determination and intelligence. He blamed himself, if anyone—for sending the boys toward Chicago and New York, t
he great cities of the Old Times. He might have done better to have chosen some southern route toward Houston and New Orleans, instead of a route into the inhospitable country of northern winters. And yet, east of Houston at least, floods would have been more severe and growth of vegetation much more rapid than farther north. Because of the climate, Arkansas and Louisiana would have reverted to impassable wilderness much sooner than Iowa and Illinois.
The children were dancing and shouting around the bonfire. Was there a kind of wild primitiveness in the scene, or was that merely his imagining? Perhaps any children would have done the same. Evie, who of course was mentally a child, was dancing with them. Her blond hair streamed spectacularly behind her.
Ish sat, looking on, and thinking. Well, the chief result of the expedition was not the discovery that the country was returning to the wilderness. Anybody would have known that! The important thing was the making of contact with two other communities. That is, if you could call it contact, when the other communities were fighting off all advances from strangers. Was that from mere blind prejudice, or was it from some deep instinct of self-preservation?
Yet, at least, to know that there were people in Los Angeles and near Albuquerque—growing communities—took away a little of that basic feeling of loneliness.
Two little groups of people, discovered on a single trip, going and coming by the same road! At that rate, there should be several dozen in the area of the whole United States. He remembered the Negroes whom he had seen in Arkansas, long ago. In that rich country of easy winters, there was no reason in the world why those three should not have survived and become a nucleus to which others, either black or white, could attach themselves. Yet that community in its ways of life and thought would be vastly different from the one in New Mexico and from either of the two in California. This divergence opened vast questions for the distant future.
But this was no time to be carrying philosophical speculation far into the future. The dancing and shouting of the children around the fire had become even more bacchanalian. In the excitement the older boys, even some of the married ones, were joining the revel. They were playing crack-the-whip, all the more exciting because the one who was thrown off the end of the whip had to dodge the fire. Suddenly Ish felt himself stiffen. Charlie was playing! In the line, linked between Dick and Evie, he was swinging the whip. The children were obviously delighted to have a grown-up, especially this stranger, playing with them.
Ish tried to argue down his resentment. Why not? Why shouldn't one of the older ones play that way? Me—I'm just as bad as those people in Los Angeles and Albuquerque, not wanting to accept the stranger! Yet I don't think I'd have minded, if Charlie had been a different kind of person.
But, try as he could, Ish felt himself unable to stifle some deep-seated sense of dislike. He began to revise his estimate of the importance of the boys' trip. However important the discovery of the other communities could be for the distant future, the immediate problem was Charlie.
By now it was getting late, and mothers were gathering their children. But after the celebration was over, most of the older ones went home with Ish and Em, to hear still more from the two boys and from Charlie.
"Sit here," said Ezra to Charlie, pointing to the big chair in front of the fireplace. It was a place of honor, and comfort too, and Ish thought how characteristic that was of Ezra, to sense the human relationship so quickly. He himself, though he was host, had not thought of it, and so had not been able to make Charlie feel really welcome. And then he wondered, in quick reaction, whether he really wanted to make Charlie feel at home.
It was a chilly evening, and Ezra called for a fire. The boys brought some wood, and before long the sticks were blazing cheerily. The room grew comfortably warm.
They talked, Ezra leading the conversation, as usual. Charlie asked if he might have a drink. Jack brought him a bottle of brandy and a glass. He drank steadily, but with the habitual drinker's slow absorption. He gave no sign of either excitement or drunkenness.
"I'm still chilly," said Ezra.
"You're not getting sick, are you?" said Em.
Ish himself felt a little chill of uneasiness. Sickness was so uncommon with them that any occurrence of it was a matter of note.
"Don't know," said Ezra. "If this was the Old Times, I'd think I was getting a cold. Of course, it can't be that now."
They piled more wood on the fire, and the room grew so uncomfortable to Ish that he took off his sweater and sat in his shirt sleeves. Then Charlie took off his coat also, and unbuttoned his vest, but did not take it off.
George comfortably settled down into his end of the davenport, and went to sleep. His absence did not make much difference in the conversation. Charlie continued his work on the bottle of brandy, but still it made no difference to him except that from the heat of the fire and from the brandy, his forehead was greasy with perspiration.
Ish could tell now that Ezra was swinging the conversation around, this way and that, to get more information about Charlie's background. But finesse seemed not to be required, for Charlie talked frankly enough whenever the subject came close to him.
"So after she croaked—" he said. "That was after we'd lived together for quite a few years, ten or twelve, I guess. Well, after my woman died, I didn't want to stay there no more, not around that place. So, when your boys came along, and I liked them, I picked up and came."
As Charlie talked, Ish began to feel himself swinging in the other direction again. The boys liked Charlie immensely, and they had been with him for some time already. There was strength in Charlie, and charm also. Perhaps he would be a good man to add to the community. He noticed now that whole beads of sweat were standing out on Charlie's forehead.
"Charlie," he said, "you'd better take that vest off and be comfortable." Charlie started, but did not say anything.
"I'm sorry," Ezra said. "I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe I'd better go home, get to bed." But he made no move to go.
"Surely you can't be getting a cold, Ez," said Em. "There's never been a cold!"
They persuaded Charlie to move, himself and his brandy bottle, to a place farther from the fire, but he kept his vest on.
Charlie sat there, and the two house-dogs came nuzzling around him. Obviously, even the dogs were interested in the stranger; he must mean a lot of new smells. But they sensed that the stranger had been received. Although at first they were merely neutral, soon they relaxed comfortably under Charlie's pulling of their ears and scratching of their backs. Their tails wagged.
Ish, always realizing that people were likely to baffle him, felt himself swing back and forth. Now he sensed both power and charm in Charlie, and felt almost warm toward him. And then the very sense of power and charm caused him to react, perhaps with fear for his own position as a dominant force in the community, and he felt Charlie only as a thing of evil.
At last George woke from his nap, stretched his big body and rose, saying that it was time for him to get home to bed. The others made ready to go with him. Ish knew that Ezra would want to say a word to him personally before going, and so he drew Ezra aside into the kitchen.
"You feeling bad?"
"Me? No," said Ezra. "Never felt better in my life."
Ezra smiled, and Ish began to see light. "You weren't chilly?" he asked.
"Never felt less chilly in my life," said Ezra. "Just wanted to see if we could make Charlie take his vest off. I didn't think we could. He don't like to be away from it. Makes me pretty sure about what I think I see anyway. He's got a vest-pocket he's deepened himself, enlarged it. He's got in it one of those little things they used to make for ladies to carry around in their purses—just a small piece of hardware!"
Ish had a sudden sense of relief. Anything as simple and concrete as a pistol—that could be handled! His relief faded as Ezra went on:
"I wish I was sure about him. Sometimes I think there's something ugly and dirty and mean—clear to the middle of him. Sometimes I th
ink he'll be my best friend. Always, though, I know he's one that knows what he wants and generally gets it."
When they went back to the living-room, George was just leaving.
"This is the best thing that's happened to us for a long time," he was saying to Charlie. "We've needed another strong man. We hope you stay with us."
There was a general confirmation chorus from the others, as all of them, Charlie and Ezra included, went out the door.
Ish was left standing with his thoughts. He had tried to join in the chorus, but his tongue had been suddenly stiff and his mouth dry. All he could think now was: "Something dirty and ugly and mean—clear to the middle of him."
* * *
Chapter 7
After they had gone, Ish thought of something that he had not done during all those years. In fact, after he had decided to do it, he was not sure whether he still could. Yet, when he went into the kitchen, he found that there was a bolt on the back door. He could remember his mother having had it put there because she never trusted ordinary locks. He shot that bolt. Then he went to the front door, and found that there was still a workable night-latch.
In all these years, there had been no need to secure a door. No one in the community was to be feared; no stranger, if there had been one, would have had a chance of getting through the cordon of dogs. But now there was someone, perhaps not to be trusted, and he had made friends with the dogs. Had that patting of the dogs had calculation behind it?
When Ish had gone to bed and shared his apprehensions with Em, he found her not very responsive. Sometimes, he realized, she was too all-accepting for him.
"What's so remarkable about him carrying a gun?" she said. "You carry one yourself, lots of the time, don't you?"
"Not concealed! And I'm not afraid to take my vest off, and be away from my weapon."
"Yes, but maybe you should give him a break for being nervous and uncomfortable, too. You don't like his looks; maybe he don't like yours. He's among strangers—surrounded!"