Earth Abides

At the Flatiron Building he turned into Broadway, and followed it clear to Wall Street. There they both got out, and Princess showed interest in some kind of trail which ran along the sidewalk. Wall Street! He enjoyed walking along its empty length. With a little observation he discovered that there was some grass, weeds rather, showing green here and there in the cracks of the gutter. He remembered the family story that an early Dutch settler, one of their ancestors, had owned a good farm in this vicinity. His father, when the bills were high, used to say, “Well, I wish we had held on to that farm on Manhattan Island,” Now Ish could take the land back for all that anybody cared. Yet this wilderness of concrete and steel and asphalt was the last place where anybody would really care to live now. He would trade that Wall Street farm for any ten acres in Napa Valley, or even for a small comer of Central Park.

He walked back to his car, and drove south on Broadway still, the little distance to the Battery. There he gazed across the expanse of the lower Bay toward the ocean. This was the end of the road.

There might be communities left in Europe or South America or on some of the islands, but he could not go to find out. Right here, doubtless, his Dutch ancestor had come ashore some three hundred years ago. Now he, Ish, had rounded the full circle.

He noticed the Statue of Liberty. “Liberty!” he thought ironically. “At least, I have that! More than anyone ever thought of, when they put the lady up there with her torch!”

Close to the shore of Governor’s Island a large liner was beached. She must have been run aground at high tide, and now at low tide she loomed up far above the water, canted at a crazy angle. Secretly infected before leaving Europe, before long with passengers and crew alike dead and dying, that ship must have made desperately for port—for a port which itself had strangely ceased to send out signals. No tugs came out to meet her. Perhaps a dying boatswain on the bridge lacked even the crew to drop an anchor, and with dimming eyes merely steered her toward the mudbank. There she would rest, and doubtless the waves would wash up mud against her obstructing bulk, and in a century she would be almost indistinguishable—the rust-covered center of a little island with trees growing up around her.

Going on, Ish swung off through the East Side, struck a noisome area again at the great center of Bellevue Hospital, turned west and found the same difficulty around Pennsylvania Station and the adjoining hotels, and finally went north on Eleventh Avenue. He turned into Riverside Drive, and noticed that the sun was getting low over the smokeless smokestacks of the Jersey shore. He was just wondering where he should spend the night when he heard a voice calling out, “Hi, there!”

Princess burst into a frenzy of barking. Stopping the car, he looked back, and saw a man emerging from the entryway of an apartment house. Ish got out to meet him, leaving the barking Princess in the car.

The man advanced with outstretched hand. He was completely conventional-looking, well shaved, wearing a tropical worsted suit, with even the coat on. He was middle-aged and overweight, with a smiling face. Ish half expected him to break into the conventional shopkeeper’s greeting “Well, sir, what can I do for you today?”

“Abrams is the name,” he said, “Milt Abrams.”

Ish fumbled for his own name—it was so long since he had thought of it. Introductions over, Milt Abrams took him inside. They went into a pleasant apartment on the second floor. A blond-haired woman, about forty, well dressed, almost smart-looking, was sitting at a cocktail table, and there was a cocktail shaker before her. “Meet—the Mrs.,” said Milt Abrams, and from the way he hesitated, Ish knew that the Mrs. merely covered up his embarrassment. The catastrophe would scarcely have spared a husband and wife, and there had been no opportunity for any ceremony since. Milt Abrams was obviously conventional enough to let this worry him even under the circumstances.

The Mrs. looked at Ish with a smile, possibly at Milt’s discomfort. “Call me Ann,” she said. “And have a drink! Warm martinis, that’s all I can offer you! Not a scrap of ice in New York City!” In her own way she was as typical a New Yorker as Milt.

“I tell her,” said Milt. “I keep on telling her, not to drink that stuff—warm martinis are poison.”

“Think of it,” said Ann, “spending a whole summer in New York City—and without a scrap of ice!” Nevertheless, she seemed to have overcome her dislike of warm martinis sufficiently to have got on the outside of several of them.

“Here, I’ll offer you something better,” said Milt. Opening a cupboard, he displayed a fine shelf of Amontillado, Napoleon brandy, and selected liqueurs. “And,” he added, “they don’t call for ice.”

Obviously, Milt was a natural connoisseur in liquor. The bottle of Chateau

Margaux that he produced for dinner was further proof.