Earth Abides

In sudden anger, Ish shook the yielding body. The man revived a little, opened his eyes, and emitted a kind of grunt which might have meant, “What is it?” Ish shoved the inert body to a sitting position; as he did so, the man’s hand fumbled for the half-empty bottle of whiskey which was propped in the comer of the seat. Ish grabbed it, threw it out, and heard it splinter on the curbing. He was filled only with a deep bitter anger and a sense of horrible irony. Of all the survivors whom he might have found, here was only a poor old drunk, good for nothing more in this world, or any other. Then as the man’s eyes opened and Ish looked into them, he felt suddenly no more anger, but only a great deep pity.

Those eyes had seen too much. There was a fear in them and a horror that could never be told. However gross the bloated body of the drunkard might seem-somewhere, behind it all, lay a sensitive mind, and that mind had seen more than it could endure. Escape and oblivion were all that could remain.

They sat there together on the seat. The eyes of the drunken man glanced here and there, hardly under control. Their tragedy seemed to grow only deeper. The breath came raspingly. On sudden impulse, Ish took the inert wrist and felt for the pulse. It was weak and irregular. The man had been drinking, doubtless, for a week. Whether he could last much longer was questionable.

“This, then is it!” thought Ish. The survivor might have been a beautiful girl, or a fine intelligent man, but it was only this drunkard, too far gone for any help.

After a while Ish got out of the car. He went into the liquor store for curiosity. A dead cat, it seemed, lay on the counter, but as he looked, it stirred to life and he realized that it had merely been lying, after the habit of cats, in such a position that it looked dead. The cat looked at him with a kind of cold effrontery, as the duchess at the chambermaid. Ish felt uncomfortable, and had to remind himself that this was the way cats had always behaved. The cat seemed contented and looked well fed.

Glancing around the shelves, Ish saw what he had been curious about. The man had not even bothered to pick out the better whiskey. Rot-gut had been good enough for his purposes.

Coming out, Ish saw that the man had now managed to find another bottle somewhere, and was taking a long drink. Ish realized that there was nothing much he could do about it. Still, he wanted to make a last try.

He leaned in at the window of the car. The man, revived perhaps by his last drink, was a trifle more alert. He looked at Ish, seeming able to focus his eyes, and he smiled, rather pathetically.

“Hi-ah!” he said in a thick drawl.

“How are you?” said Ish.

“Ah-bar-el-low!” said the man.

Ish was trying to make out what the sounds meant. The man gave his pathetic little child-like smile again, and repeated a trifle more clearly.

“Ah-nay-bar’l-low!”

Ish half caught it.

“Your name’s Barello?” he asked. “No, Barlow?”

The man nodded at the second name, smiled again, and before Ish could do anything, he was taking another drink. Ish felt himself close to tears, far from anger. What difference did a man’s name make now? And yet Mr. Barlow, in his befuddled mind, was trying to make what had been in civilization the first gesture of good will.

Then quite gently Mr. Barlow slumped down on the seat in stupor again, and the whiskey from the unstoppered bottle gurgled out to the floor of the car.

Ish hesitated. Should he cast in his lot with Mr. Barlow, get him sobered up, and make him reform? From what he knew of alcoholics, he did not think the prospects good. And by staying he might lose the chance to make contact with some more likely person.

“You stay here,” he said to the collapsed body, on chance that it might still be able to hear. “I promise to come back.”

Having said this, Ish felt he had fulfilled a kind of minimal duty. He had really no hope. The eyes showed that Mr. Barlow had seen too much; the pulse, that he had gone too far. Ish drove away, making note, however, of the location.