The World Ends In Hickory Hollow Read online

  It made some sense, at that. I've never found it in my heart to look too closely into the mouth of the gift horse that let us survive.

  Mom Allie wasn't through, though. "You know, Luce, most folks just don't know how to live when the electricity goes off. All my neighbors ran around like chickens with their heads off. Kept saying that there just had to be someplace where everything was working normally. I will say those folks who spent all those years working with the poor little Civil Defense program did their best. Tried to make folks see that it was best to stay where they were and feel out the situation. Nobody listened, though.

  "CD did get all the old folks out of the nursing homes and the little kids out of the Care Center and put them all together in the armory. They've got emergency generators there, and those kept some of the sick ones going for a while – the ones in respirators and such. But they've lost most of those who were going to go, now.

  "Anyway, everybody who had a camp house or a farm lit out for there, which is sensible. The others just took off. Lord knows where they've ended up. But that's not any worry of ours."

  She finished her tea in one long gulp and set aside the cup. "CD came by trying to get me to go with the rest of the incompetents. I told 'em I'd been livin' without conveniences all my life, up to the last few years. The lack of 'em wasn't going to kill me. Besides, I have enough fruit and vegetables canned and dried in this house to feed me almost forever."

  I looked at Zack. He looked at his mother. "Now I suppose you'll come back to the boondocks with us, Mom?"

  "Only thing to do," she grunted. "Can't warm this house – all electric. Got to go out in the shrubbery with a shovel, and in the weather we've been having that's no fun at all. All the water I have is what I caught in the bathtub, right off as soon as I realized what was happenin'. Farm's the only place to live like a thinking being, anyway."

  Zack had been sitting there with his wheels going around. I could tell without even looking at him. So when he said, "What did they do with the old folks? You said, but I had other things on my mind," I was way ahead of him.

  "Armory," his mother said, and her eyes began to sparkle. "Folks like Lucas Barnhart and Skinny Trotter and old Aunt Lantana Pinnery. All the brains and know-how in Nicholson are sittin' there in a corner waitin' for a chance to die decently and get out of the young folks' hair. A good six of eight of 'em who're still able and well, just older than their families were willin' to put up with."

  "You still got that tarp you used to cover your root cellar with?" I blurted.

  "And a good many old boards and pieces to make a frame with," she finished for me. Down went teacups, up came fannies from chairs. In less than an hour we had made a fair job of converting the bed of the pickup into a temporary camper, complete with Mom Allie's couch and chairs.

  When we had that done, she went to one of her many cupboards and opened it. "How you fixed for winter?" she asked over her shoulder.

  "If we ate all the time, we might get a tad tired of the same kind of thing, but we'd make the winter and part of next," I answered.

  "Then I'Il send all this stuff to the armory. They're feedin' those poor souls bought stuff."

  I stifled a giggle, while we loaded the cases and cases of beans and corn and squash and jams and jellies into the truck. While I agreed, in principle, with Mom Allie's views on "bought stuff," I had lived on it for too long to believe implicitly that it was rank poison.

  Then Zack went away to the armory, while Mom Allie and I went about salvaging what we could of her life. What could go onto the truck, we packed into small cartons, of which she always had a store, for she hated to waste them. The majority of the things, her lovely quilts and china and glassware and silver, we packed into the trunk and locked it, feeling rather silly as the locks clicked. When Zack came back, as he must, to scrounge tools and hardware, he could pick it up.

  It took a while. Our stomachs told us it was about noon, when we were done, and Mom Allie turned up her coal-oil stove again, put on a huge pot, and began dumping every sort of vegetable you can think of into it. Before long, the smell began to make my inwards rumble with anticipation.

  "Figure we'll need a good-sized lunch," she said, sitting down to wipe the steam from her glasses. Then she held the glasses up and said, "We'll need to go by the Good Will and pick up a mess of these. Old folks need new ones just to see, pretty often."

  Then it really hit me. If Jim and Sukie needed glasses, we'd just have to try our best to scrounge some. If they needed medicine, we'd have to make do on our carefully learned herbal remedies, for the stocks in the drugstores would be good for only a limited time. Dental work would go by the board, unless I could learn something about it. Zack was entirely too squeamish to mess around inside anybody's mouth.

  Some of us were likely going to suffer ... maybe die ... for lack of the things we had taken for granted for so long. Well, people had survived for a long time without anything except their native wits, and I figured that we were well ahead of the game. We could find out what we needed. If not from our own thousands-of-volumes library, then from the nearby school libraries. Or from the one here in town.

  I suppose my adrenals were taking up the slack, for I began to feel more vigorously ambitious than I had since our move from Houston. By the time Zack got back, I was pacing the floor with impatience to get started ... with what, 1 don't quite know. Maybe survival.

  The truck groaned around the curve of the drive, and Mom Allie beat me out to meet him. It was still mizzling rain, just above the freezing mark, but people started coming out of the pickup-camper. Old and young, dark-skinned and light. Lucas and Skinny, sure enough, their long thin faces so alike that they might have been brothers instead of cousins. Aunt Lantana, short and round, her dark-walnut face alight and interested. A young woman who was definitely Oriental – ah! Suzi Lambert, the Japanese student-bride Chuck had brought home from the University of Colorado. In her arms was a toddler with silken black hair.

  Vera Nicholson, grande-dame of the town, descendant of the first family to settle here. Married her cousin so as not to lose the name, most thought. She hopped out next and shook her skirt down to a decent level. She held by the hand her little great-grandson, Sam Volpe. Behind her came two elderly gentlemen who were total strangers to me, though Mom Allie went up and hugged them both.

  That seemed to be all, though I peeped into the truck to see if anybody had been stifled in the crush. Except for the cases of canned goods it was empty.

  Zack looked over my shoulder. "I decided that all these extra mouths might run us short. 1 held onto this. They had canned stuff all over the place down there. A lot of the folks had left, and the ones who were still there seemed pretty numb, except for this bunch. They were just aching for a way to get out and do something.

  "We'll fix up the other house, Dad's place, for some of them ... the ones who won't fit into ours," I said. "Our systems can handle a lot more than we've ever burdened them with, too. We may have to do a good bit of hunting and fishing, this winter, though. Nine extra is a lot."

  By this time, Mom Allie had hustled the newcomers into her kitchen and was doling out soup in any container that came to hand–teacups, small saucepans, bowls, mugs, tin cans, you name it. The soup was disappearing at unbelievable speed.

  Miss Vera set down her cup with a sigh. "Alice, that's the first real food I've tasted in over a week. They swooped down on the nursing home and grabbed us up and off to the armory. Fed us on dried army rations for two days, then on cold canned stuff. I'd made up my mind to die, but Sam's folks had gone to Dallas for a week and left him with his nurse. Lord only knows what's happened to those poor children, but I walked over to the house, soon as I knew what had happened. Good thing, too. That fool woman was gabbling and babbling and getting ready to leave that child all by himself while she went off looking for her boyfriend.

  "I sent her packing, took him in tow, and we were waiting out whatever is going to happen when Zack came in and
offered us a chance. I may be stiff and cranky, by heaven, but I'm not useless yet."

  "Well, now you'll get a chance to do some real bossin'," chuckled Mom Allie. "Never saw a woman in my life could get coattails to poppin' in the wind as fast as you can, Vera. We'll need you. You can see what's to be done and who's best to do it while the rest of us are still wonderin' what we ought to be wonderin' about."

  The two old friends went off into quiet laughter, and the faces about them took on a bit of their cheer. Mom Allie had seasoned that soup with hope, more than anything else, and we all were warmed and strengthened by it.

  We got the rest of the stuff loaded into the pickup in jig time. Most of our rescued crew had little but what they stood up in, so we dug out one of the "everything boxes" that Mom Allie kept for hand-me-downs from many sources and in all sizes. Moth-eaten jackets, sturdy army blankets, sweaters and scarves and boots and all sorts of useful things emerged. We bundled the whole thing up and tied it to the top of the pickup cab, wrapped in garbage bags to keep out the wet.

  When we were loaded up, we looked like the Grapes of Wrath plus two. The pickup bulged fore and aft, above and below, with bundles and boxes. If there had been another vehicle (containing gas) to be had, we'd have commandeered it, but the flight from Nicholson to wherever had been nearly total, it seemed.

  We crept along, the worn-out shocks letting the truck sag and sway as we rounded corners. As we rounded the last bend before hitting the state highway, we were brought up short by a stout figure in wrinkled khaki. It leaped into the center of the street and waved both arms commandingly.

  "Stop that truck and get out!" came a bellow, surprisingly loud from such an unimposing man.

  Zack obligingly stopped the truck, but none of us had the slightest intention of getting out of it. The round face, cross-barred by an ash colored moustache, grew alarmingly red, and the person... official? ... deputy? ... whatever... tugged at the snap of the holster at his hip and stalked over, pistol in hand.

  "You the one kidnapped them old folks from the armory?" he demanded, poking his red face toward the crack of window that Zack had opened. "You're under arrest, and you've got to get 'em right back where they belong, under U.S. Government auspices!" He exhaled the last word with such prideful emphasis that we were devoutly grateful the window was all but closed.

  Zack sighed and leaned his elbows on the steering wheel. "These people are every one of them here because they want to be," he said quietly. "I'm not going to take them back to the armory to die with the rest of those numbskulls. Now you can shoot me–shoot us all–but you can't make us go back there."

  "As for U.S. Government auspices," crackled a voice twice as commanding as any I'd ever heard, "I've had enough of those over the last sixty years to make me glad this mess has finally blown up in their faces. The precious U.S. Government has been made up of nitwits, timeservers, and busybodies for half my life, and they dug us deeper and deeper into debt and chaos with every year that went by. I'm glad it's blown to smithereens, Amos Ledbetter! Now you'd better get out of our way, unless you intend to add murder to stupidity!" Miss Vera Nicholson planted her short square feet on the wet pavement, crossed her arms on her sagging bosom, and glared at the bemused Amos with both thunder and lightning in her eyes.

  "But Miss Vera," he pleaded, "my orders is to keep all the old folks in the armory. And to keep out-of-town looters"–here he glared at Zack and the loaded pickup--"out. I'm just doin' what I was told."

  'You poor ninny," Miss Vera crackled. "You haven't seen anybody capable of giving an order in over a week. They're all gone, and they've taken most of the foodstuff out of all the stores with em. They left enough there at the armory for a few weeks, maybe, then they took off. You'd better scrounge up some way of living for yourself and let the rest of us go about surviving. " She turned her back, and unseen hands hauled her back into the crowded truck bed.

  Zack smiled sympathetically at Ledbetter and eased the truck into gear. "Ill be coming back to town for the rest of my mother's stuff," he said. "Don't think I'm a looter and shoot me." And he pulled away, leaving the damp khaki-clad shape to dwindle in the distance.

  The day hadn't improved a bit. The mist seemed to be on the verge of freezing on the windshield as we retraced our way, still looking for some sign that people still lived in the countryside. When we topped the long rise west of the Nagache Creek, and the long sweep of bottomland spread itself before us in shades of gray, we could see, away off to the left, a spiral thread of smoke.

  Mom Allie gave a satisfied sort of grunt. "Cindy Howard got her whole crew over there into the woods at the Pioneer House," she said. "'Maybe now they'll realize that she's worth more than a potful of Ph.D.'s. That gal moved 'em right out of that all-electric brick veneer monstrosity they built and put 'em right back in the tight old log house they grew up in. They'll live to bless a fireplace with cranes and that artesian well that flows out of solid rock."

  "But how do you know?" I asked her.

  She snorted. "What I'd do myself, given a bunch of slack-twisted gumps like hers. Lucky I've got a couple of kids with something under their hats besides hair."

  She settled back. Her face, which had been so grayed with sadness and worry, seemed to be smoothing and brightening. "You know, it's not going to be near as bad as a lot of folks might think. We're going to be so busy we won't have time to get depressed and so tired we'll just purely have to sleep when we hit the bed. It's not going to be any cakewalk, but I think we're going to get stronger, smarter, tougher ... or else we're going to die, every man jack of us."

  CHAPTER THREE

  That was the most concentratedly hectic afternoon I've ever spent. Our house, with the best will in the world, just couldn't hold nine extra people, plus Mom Allie. Two downstairs bedrooms, with the sleeping loft for the children, would have been wall-to-wall people. My Dad's house, though we had fixed the windows with tight shutters and mended the roof, was cold through, with no supply of wood to hand to feed the fireplace and cookstove. That could be remedied with little trouble, but not in time for this night. Then I had a bright idea.

  As we jounced along the last few miles, I suddenly gasped and caught Zack's arm. "Mrs. Yunt! If she's home, she'll be tickled pink to have some of these people with her, and if she's gone, she won't mind a bit. She's got bottled gas, as well as that good wood stove she cooks on when she's in the mood.. And we hauled her two cords of wood up there, ourselves, when we cleared the new garden ground. There's plenty of food right here in the truck, so if she took most of hers with her, that's all right, too. They can stay the night there, all or part of them, and then tomorrow we can get to work fixing up Dad's place for them."

  "See what I mean?" murmured Mom Allie. "Brains to burn, that one.."

  There was nobody at Grandpa Harkrider's, still, and no smoke curled from his stovepipe. As we went by I peered around the house and saw that his '71 Valiant was gone from the shed. Wherever he and his son had gone, I wished them well, though I questioned their judgment in leaving the river for the uncertain pickings elsewhere.

  Then I looked down the road again, watching the ditches, now well filled with water, slide by in a splatter of mud. That slush, which had seemed so normal and winterish when we came, was suddenly suspect, now that I knew what had happened. What contaminants were falling all over our land, our river, and our woods right now? Without a Geiger counter there wasn't any way to know, so I shut it out of my mind and tried to exist, for this little time left, without thinking.

  Too soon, we arrived at the oak-arched turnoff to Mrs. Yunt's drive. The door of her mailbox hung open like a dropped jaw, and already there was a litter of dead leaves and oddments collecting in its empty recess. No more mail! For a long time. Maybe forever. The thought was cold and lonely, and I mentally said good-bye to the few far-scattered friends with whom I corresponded on an infrequent basis.

  I wondered, as we bumped gently around to the back door, why we hadn't thought it odd that our
own box had remained so stubbornly empty, here in November when bright little catalogs seem to sprout in the box like fungus. The few times Zack or I had thought to check it, we had been unconcerned that even the meager light bill hadn't come. Well, if nothing else, it was the end of bills, junk mail, and government forms. That alone was worth a lot.

  Mrs. Yunt had carefully locked her house and left a note for us under the clip on the screen door.

  "Must go see about Julie," it said. "Know you'll come out in a while and check on me, so I'm asking you to take care of the place until I get back. Key's in the usual spot. " It was dated October 28, which meant that poor Mrs. Yunt was probably in Houston when the bombs fell, for her daughter had lived there. She had been the best sort of neighbor, not much on visiting back and forth, but ready to lend a hand when she was needed and not too proud to accept help when she had her own difficulties.

  However, we said nothing to our guests, just fished the key out of the well on its all but invisible fishing line and opened the house. We lit the gas heater in the living room to drive off the chill and the damp. Then Mom Allie and Miss Vera supervised the unloading of some of the canned stuff while Zack and I brought in armloads of wood and put it on the porch to dry.

  When the wood-fired cookstove was well alight, the fire muttering away like a purring cat, the kitchen began to warm up, too. Miss Vera set about making supper for the nine refugees, who had decided to stick together, at least for that night. There was a quilt box full of handmade covers and a closet full of blankets. Three double beds in two big bedrooms were made up, together with the twin couches in the living room. Then Zack, Mom Allie, and I headed out for home, well pleased with our day's work.

  The children were at the big window as we drove up. Their faces, pale from their long bout of sickness, brightened when they saw their grandmother, and they met us at the door in a rush of "What took you so long?" and "Is Gramma going to stay with us always?"