Earth Abides

“This is it,” he said. “It’s simple enough. We’re a pretty good bunch of people here, not mental giants, any of us I guess, but still nobody too downright stupid. We don’t want a lot of little half-witted brats running in on us, the sort of children Evie would have.”

Only when he had stopped speaking, did he realize that by speaking at all in reply to Charlie’s question, he had made a mistake. Like any intellectual, he had been happy to stop commanding and begin arguing, and so he had admitted that his command was non-effective. Now, in spite of himself, he felt in second place, with Charlie the leader.

“Hell!” said Charlie. “What makes you think she’s been around here all this time and not had plenty of chances to have kids with all those boys around, if she was going to have any?”

“The boys never touched Evie,” said Ish. “She was something they grew up with; she was taboo. And besides, all the boys were married off as early as they could be.”

He was still arguing, and was perhaps at the bad end of the argument.

“So you say again!” Charlie’s words had the confident ring of the voice of a man feeling himself in control. “What you really ought to be glad for is that I picked on that one around here, the only one old enough who ain’t married already. What if I’d liked one of the others, and she, me? Then you might have a pretty mess on your hands. You better be glad I was so agreeable.”

Ish thought wildly for something to say. What more could be said? You could not threaten with the police or say that the district attorney might be interested. He had flung the challenge and been met head on.

No, there was nothing more to say. Ish got up, turned on his heel, and walked off. He had a sudden quick memory in his mind of once long before, when he had met a man just after the Great Disaster, and had turned, and walked away with the feeling that he might be shot in the back. Yet, after that first memory, he was not afraid, and it was the more humiliating that he was not. He realized that Charlie would think there was no need of shooting. He, Ish, had come off second-best.

He was in the depths of bitterness as he walked back toward his own house, He had forgotten how deep humiliation would be. The hammer was mere weight now, not a symbol of power. For years things had gone easily, and he had been a leader. But after all he was not so different from the strange youth that he now could hardly remember. The youth who had existed in the old days before the Great Disaster; the one who was afraid to go to dances, the one who was never quite at ease with other people, and had never been a leader. He had changed much, he had outgrown much, but he could not outgrow it all.

Then as he came, deep in bitterness, through the door of the old house, Em was there waiting for him. He laid down the hammer. He took her into his arms, or perhaps she took him into hers, he was not sure. But after that he felt suddenly a new confidence. Sometimes she did not agree with him. They had argued just the night before about Charlie, but in the end he knew that he would renew his confidence from her.

They sat on the davenport, and he poured out the story. He did not wait to hear what she thought, but he felt her sympathy flow out and enfold him. He felt the raw edge of his humiliation healing over. She spoke at last:

“You shouldn’t have done it! You should have had the boys to back you. He might have shot you right there. You’re strong at thinking and knowing things, not in meeting a man like that.”

Then it was she was began to take the next action.

“Go get Ezra and George and the boys,” she said. “No, I’ll send one of the children. No one can move in on us like this, and say what he and we are going to do!”

Yes, Ish realized, he had been wrong. There had been no need to feel again the Great Loneliness. Small and weak though it might be, there was still the strength of The Tribe to rally warmly about him.

George was the first to come, and after him, Ezra. Ish caught the movement as Ezra’s quick eyes shifted from George to Em and back again. “He has something,” Ish thought, “he wants to say to me alone.” But Ezra made no attempt to gain the opportunity. Instead he ended by looking at Em in a half-embarrassed manner.

“Molly’s had to lock Evie up in one of the upstairs rooms,” he said. Ish could tell what a hard matter it was for Ezra, a highly polite and civilized person, to have to speak in public thus about the burst of passion that had suddenly come upon a half-witted girl at a man’s caresses.

“What’s to keep her from jumping out the window anyway?” said Ish.

“Nothing, I guess,” said Ezra.

“I could fix up some bars,” said George, eagerly. “We could put something across the window, all right.”

They all laughed a little in spite of the seriousness. George was always so happy to do a little more carpentry somewhere on the houses. But it was obviously impossible to keep Evie locked up for the rest of her life.