The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (13 page)

We passed slowly through Penrose, looking in every direction for a telltale wisp of smoke, but there was nothing. All the way to Manville we wondered aloud what set of circumstances had made almost everyone leave a safe spot that was well equipped for survival to take off for parts unknown. We've never solved the riddle to our satisfaction.

Nicholson was a surprise. At the "City Limits" sign we paused to read. The "Population: 29,300" had been altered to read "950. " Below that "Amos Ledbetter, Mayor" had been added in a straggly hand.

Remembering that doughty man from our first post-blowup trip to town, I entered at a very moderate rate of speed and meticulously observed every stop sign I came to. The fact that we were the only vehicle on the street would not, I felt, moderate his wrath if we didn't mind all the outdated rules that were so dear to him. It was as well I did.

We turned off the main drag to go by Mom Allie's house. There were still a few things that she wanted to pick up, and we had room in the trunk of the car. Just as I began to pick up speed again after the turn I heard the screech of a whistle blown by mighty lungs.

"Amos?" I asked Mom Allie.

"Amos," she answered, as I pulled to a halt.

"Get out of there with
yo
' hands up!" he shouted, as he puffed up to the car. "Damn
looters're
not
goin
' to strip my town!"

We sat still, until Mom Allie put her window down and said sharply, "Amos, I declare, you're a worse fool every day you live. I'm
goin
' by my old place to get some things I left there. There aren't any looters, and if you haven't had any by now you're not
goin
' to. Now shut up and get on with your
mayorin
'.

His face fell. "Miss Alice, you really think there won't be no looters?"

"Amos," she said, less sharply, "if you got things organized here in town, all those old folks and
young'uns
the powers that be left to live or die in the armory out into housing, with something to eat, then you've done a pure D miracle. Don't get carried away with the idea of
fightin
' off gangs of bad guys Stick to the job you took on. They'll likely rename the town either
Amosville
or Ledbetter before you're through."

"Well," he said, his red face turning even brighter, "I have got things in better shape. I took over the Pioneer Village and put most
of'em
in there and in them housekeeping apartments right next to '
em
. We scrounged up enough wood
cookstoves
to do us–we cook for everybody all in the same place, then take the meals to them that can't get around. The
kids've
jumped right in and are handy as all get-out. There's a few families that still live in their own homes, too. They had fireplaces, and we've all pitched in, them that are able, to keep firewood cut and hauled in."

"How are you fixed for fuel for the trucks?" I asked him.

"It's
gettin
' mighty low, he admitted. "We're
goin
' to have to go to
haulin
' stuff on our backs pretty soon."

"No way, I said, getting out of the car with Zack's brainchild in my hand. "We've rigged up stills, out our way, to use anything you can think of to ferment into alcohol. There are plans in this packet for ethanol stills, using grain and fruit and berries of all kinds, and for making methane in an airtight drum and distilling the gas into methanol. You take this and get whoever is best at tinkering. I'11 bet you all are making your own fuel in less than two months. There are directions for altering carburetors to run on pure alcohol, too."

We drove off, leaving the mayor of Nicholson babbling his thanks. Mom Allie's face, however, was a study in mixed emotions.

"If I'd known what was to happen," she said, "and somebody had offered me a million to guess who it would be that would pull this town together and keep it
goin
', I'd never, ever, have picked Amos Ledbetter. That'll teach me to judge folks by the outside. Always been a
failin
' of mine. Amos Ledbetter! Well! And she fell silent as we turned into the drive and circumnavigated the house to her rear quarters.

It took only a short time to gather up the last of her possessions. Then we headed out toward the Loop and the acres of finished mobile homes that had been parked there by the factory that adjoined the main highway into Nicholson. They sat there looking, already, a bit battered and weathered. When we looked through a few, we shook our heads. The craftsmanship was nonexistent. They were shoddy through and through.

"Let's find Amos," Mom Allie said at last. "We need a good older one that folks have lived in and kept up, but don't need any more."

It wasn't hard to find Amos. We just went back to the spot where we had left him and leaned on the car horn. He was there in five minutes.

Once he understood what we needed (and why), he knew exactly where to go. South of town there had been a huge tract of mobile homes, put there for the workers in several industries nearby. Not one family was left, though every sort and style and size of mobile home stood there.

He picked out a twelve-by-sixty, and I looked at it in dismay. "We'll never pull a really big one with this car, Amos!'

"No sweat, Miss Luce. Now we know how to make
somethin
' to burn, we can use one of the big trucks. Better still, if you can drive one, you just take it on with you. Likely you'll need one, sometime."

To one who began driving a
Farmall
tractor when she was three, too short to reach the brake so that my father set a bucket on the footrest plate for me to sit on, and I steered by reaching up above my head, this seemed like nothing much. With no traffic to contend with, I couldn't see too much that could go wrong, once I felt out the gears. I took it around the block two or three times, shifting up and down the range to get the feel. Then I backed up to the trailer again, missing it only twice. The third time I was right on the button.

Amos buckled up the hitch. Then we jacked up the supports, checked the tires for air, looked inside for personal things that should be left in town, on the remote chance that the owners might return and look for them. There wasn't a stitch of clothing, a spare toothbrush left. Only household items, sheets, cook ware, and such, were left.

Suzi
took the wheel of the Plymouth, and I set out for home, going extremely slowly until I was able to judge the length and breadth of my load accurately. But once we hit the highway I was able to let her out a bit. By midafternoon we were turning off the
oiltop
onto the long stretch of dirt road that wound past the
Harkriders
' and Mrs.
Yunt's
places.

We got home to find chaos compounded. As I swung cautiously into the curve that ended in our driveway, a slug glanced off my windshield, leaving a starred crack in its wake. I stuck my hand out the window and frantically signaled
Suzi
to stay where she was. I kept going, feeling like a juggernaut with my big tractor and huge load. Hunkering down until I could just see over the dash, I nosed the thing into the stretch of lawn that sloped downhill from the house to the creek.

A spatter of shot peppered the cab, but I kept on, seeing now a number of crouching shapes in the shrubbery on the downhill side of the house.

Zack's voice rang out, "Keep to the uphill side of the truck, Luce! The
Ungers're
down toward the creek!"

As I interposed the bulk of my vehicle between the house and its attackers, Zack, Lucas, and
Elmond
loped down to meet me. From their new vantage point the they made it so hot for the attacking women that they hit for the river again, leaving one huddled shape among our japonicas. We waited for a while, to make certain that it wasn't a feint.

"What happened?" I asked Zack, as we peered from between the multiple wheels of the trailer.

"They hit the house. Thought, I suppose, that with the car gone and most of us in the fields they could wade in and loot the house without much opposition. Jim sent
Sukie
out the loft window into the chinaberry tree, and she scooted and got us. We've been keeping the heavy rifles in the field with us, just in case, and it was a good thing. Jim and Skinny held them off with the ten-and twelve-gauges, and Josh kept them from circling with the .22. He's a dead shot with that little popgun. When we got here they'd gone into a huddle down there in the bushes. We've been having spells of quiet and quick fire fights since about two o'clock. " He craned his neck, then stood and nodded.

"They're gone. I didn't think they had the intelligence to fake anything, but it's just as well to be sure."

Lucas hurried around the bend to wave the Plymouth on in, while the rest of us moved carefully toward the dreadfully still form on the ground where the wild violets always grew thickest in spring. She was older than the two I had seen when I shot the Unger. Maybe fifty, which would have made her one of the old woman's oldest daughters, I guessed. Like her mother, she was heavy and dirty, and under her grubby mackinaw she wore a red sweater. I had the uncanny feeling that it was the same sweater the Unger had worn when I shot her. She was as dead as they come.

By now there was a babble of talk as the children came from the house, the three women followed Lucas from the car, and Skinny and Josh hobbled out to see what was going on. One was missing, though. I rapidly tallied grownups and children, and suddenly I realized that Lisa was missing. With a word to Zack, I slipped away from the rest and went into the house.

She was crouched in a corner of the pantry that had been her bedroom until she was secure enough to join the rest of the young ones in the loft. Her hands were over her ears, and she was shaking so hard that her narrow bones seemed ready to clack together. When I lifted her. she shrieked, and her face screwed up into a mask of fear.

"
Shhh
,
shh
," I whispered, carrying her into the living room to the rocker. "It's all right, now. The shooting's stopped and nobody ... " Then I thought. Somebody was killed. It might have been her mother or her grandmother who lay out there surrounded by enemies. "None of us are hurt," I finished after only a short pause.

She gave a shuddering sigh, and I felt her begin to relax against me. We sat there, slowly rocking, saying nothing, until the rest of the family came back. It was quite a long time, and I felt sure that Zack and Mom Allie, between them, had realized that the dead woman must be buried quickly and secretly, so that Lisa would never know. When Zack caught my eye and nodded, I knew that it had been done.

Now I missed another. "Where is Miss Vera?" I asked. She didn't answer our calls. She wasn't in the kitchen or the living room. But she was in the bigger bedroom, sitting in the small rocker there, a surprised expression on her face. Her heart, we surmised, had simply not been up to the stress of the day.

When Lisa saw her and realized that she was dead, she did a very surprising thing. She walked quietly to the rocker, kissed Miss Vera on the cheek, and closed her eyes with one motion of her thin hand. It was a tender thing, lovingly done, and I wondered then and wonder still where she got the idea–or if, for once in her terrible childhood, she had seen someone among her own people do such a thing.

So. We had exchanged one for one, but these were not pawns but living women. The reality of our situation came home to us with new clarity as we prepared Miss Vera for burial. We put her in my family's little plot beyond my old
homeplace
.

Sam was inconsolable. First the loss of his parents into the uncertain limbo of the blowup, then his grandmother's death seemed to shake the world beneath his small, square feet. Yet again, Lisa filled the gap. She took Sam into her lap in the big rocker, though he was hugely heavy for her, and she rocked him to sleep, though not one of us who were older had been able to manage it.

When all slept, at last, I lay awake beside Zack listening to the night. Tomorrow, I well knew, would find us grappling with problems that we had hoped never to have to tackle.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was only one bright spot in the next few days. Our four young newcomers to the family were well on their way to health again. Though they grieved loudly for their lost nurse, they continued to fill out and to thrive. So it was that when the first planting of corn was in the ground, we all pitched in to set the new "house" in place. The cabin seemed to be growing smaller by the moment.

It was a good time for digging. The wet winter had left the embankment soft enough for working, and we pitched into it and soon had a grave-like trough dug back into it. The trench was evened out to come just to the bottoms of the windows, and a slot was cut to give access to the door, once we had backed the thing into its permanent location. Then we proceeded to cover it over with the dirt we had removed, forming shored-up holes to the windows and adding a long vent pipe into the outside air for added ventilation. Onto one of these we attached a heat-grabber that slanted southward and that, with one of the pot-bellied stoves we had scrounged from town, was more than enough to keep it toasty on even the coldest days.

Suzi
insisted on taking the job of "dorm mother. " She had taken her turn, uncomplainingly, at everything we attempted, and we were glad to give her something to do that would absorb her time and attention to the exclusion of anything else. So one overcast day in late February, we had a housewarming for the new household in our growing commune. Lisa and Sam, La-
Tonsha
, Lillian,
Jashie
, Jim,
Sukie
, and Joseph crowded into the Burrow, as we had named the new house. Candy rode on Zack's shoulders, her head almost brushing the ceiling, and crowed with delight at everything.