Earth Abides

He had a sudden feeling of more than pleasure, reaching to, the height of exaltation. It was not all a dream! If, in one day’ work a man and three boys could get a jeep to running again., what could not a whole community accomplish in the course of a few years?

The boys unloosed the dogs from one of the wagons to home by themselves. They hitched the wagon behind one the others. Then Dick drove one team, and Bob the other. Ish, with Joey beside him, started out bravely.

Fallen buildings had left heaps of debris in the street. blowing winds had drifted leaves and dust upon the bricks and the winter rains had washed the whole into semblances natural banks and hillocks. Grass was growing thickly; on o little mound there was even a fair stand of bushes. Ish stiffly hither and thither, finding a way along the clogged streets. He was nearing home when he sharply over a brick and heard a bang as the left rear tire out. He ended the day driving home on one flat tire, badly, but taking it slowly and making the last grade successfully, a little ahead of the dog-teams. In spite of this final mishap, he felt that he had done well.

He let the jeep roll to a stop in front of the house, leaned back in triumphant relief. At least he had got it home.

Then he pressed the horn-button, and after these years of silence it responded wonderfully—TOOT-A-TOOT-TOOT!

He expected children, and older people too, to come hurrying from all directions at the unaccustomed sound, but there was no one. Only a sudden barking of dogs sprang up from everywhere. Then the team-dogs joined in the chorus, as they now came up the hill, and the boys joined him. Ish felt a sudden emptiness of fear inside him. Once before, long ago, he had come into a strangely empty town, and blown the horn of his car, and now it was easy enough to think that something might have happened when your whole universe consisted of only some thirty more or less defenseless people. But that was only for a moment.

Then he saw Mary, her baby on her arm, come unconcernedly out of the house down the street, and wave to him. “They’ve all gone bull-dodging!” she called.

The boys were suddenly excited to join the sport. They loosed the dogs from the carts, and were off, not even asking permission of Ish. Even Joey, now wholly recovered from his illness, rushed off with the others. Ish felt suddenly left alone and neglected, his triumph at restoring transportation gone suddenly sour in his mouth. Only Mary came to look at the jeep. She stared with big enough eyes, but was as untalkative as the baby, who also stared.

Ish got out of the jeep, and stretched. His long legs were cramped from its close quarters, and his bad loin ached from even this small amount of bumping.

“Well,” he said with a little pride in his voice, “what do you think of it, Mary?” Mary was his own daughter, but she was not much like either of her parents, and her stolidity often bothered him.

“Good!” she said with a Choctaw-like imperturbability.

Ish felt that there was not much to follow up along that line. “Where’s the bull-dodging?” he asked.

“Down by the big oak tree.”

Just then they heard the loud sound of yelling, and Ish knew that someone had made a good maneuver at dodging.

“Well, I guess I might as well go down and see the national sport,” he said, though he knew the irony would be wasted.

“Yes,” said Mary, and began to stroll back with her baby toward her own house. 200

Ish went off on the path down the hill, across lots, through what had once been someone’s backyard. “National sport!” he was still thinking to himself bitterly, although he realized that the bitterness might be partly because his own triumphant entry had been spoiled. He heard another shout from ahead which indicated that again someone put himself within a few inches of the bull’s homs.

Bull-dodging was dangerous, too, although actually no one had ever been killed or even badly hurt. Ish rather disapproved of the whole business, but he did not feel that he was in a position to set himself firmly against it. The boys needed some way to get rid of their energy, and perhaps they even needed something dangerous. By and large, life was perhaps too quiet and too safe these days. Possibly—the image of Mary came to his mind again—too safe and unadventurous life tended to produce stolid people. These days children never had to be warned against crossing the street because of automobiles, and there were dozens of other daily hazards of the old civilization such as the common cold, not to mention atomic bombs, which nobody ever needed to consider. You had the ordinary run of sprains, cuts, and bruises, what you expected among people living largely in the open, and handling tools like hatchets and knives. Once, too, Molly had burned her hands badly, and there had been a near-drowning when a three-year-old had slipped from the pier at fishing.