The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (18 page)

"To where?" came Lantana's voice from the cabin. "You
goin
' to jail everybody who spits on a sidewalk? Go along, man. There's no more government, far as we are concerned. Just little dabs of folks like us who are too busy surviving to worry about a lot of foolishness."

Schmidt's face grew pink. "Respect for the law ... " he began, but Zack finished the sentence ... "is as dead as the dodo. Like civics. Like bookkeeping. Like income taxes and dope peddling and graft and meddling government agencies.. Like state highway patrolmen. You must give yourself tickets. There's nobody else on the roads we've seen."

"People need somebody to take care
of'em
," Schmidt yelled.

"Go tell that to the
Ungers
. We've been doing fine taking care of ourselves. They've been doing their best to take care of themselves, robbing and killing what few people they can find. If you really want to do something useful, warn anybody whose road ends at the lake or the river that those critters are loose and armed. Better yet, get some
of'em
together and bring '
em
here and we'll all go down together to the lake and finish off the whole mess."

"Or you can take them off to jail," I added sweetly to
Zaclr's
statement.

Schmidt's face grew even pinker. "Folks like you're the very ones got this country in the fix it's in," he grunted. "
Takin
' the Law for
somethin
' to laugh at.
Coddlin
'
pinkos
and pansies and niggers. I'm not
lettin
' you get away with it. I've got me an organization started, and we're
goin
' to clean up this end of the state. Maybe the rest of the country's gone, but we're
goin
' to have law and order right here."

"You poor goop," said Zack patiently, "can't you see that even if you had a thousand nuts like yourself you couldn't get things back like they were? People just don't have time to play games any more. We're busy, every day of every week of every month, just making sure that we and our family can survive for the next day and week and month. You try to take up our time with permits and such, and we'll not stand for it."

"Besides," I added, "I can't see even you running around the roads trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again and letting your people go hungry. So I gather that you're a bachelor with no family. But anybody who has people who depend on him isn't going to bother with you, whether he agrees with you or not."

From the frown that crossed his face, I decided that I was at least partly right. That didn't prevent him from making another reckless gesture with his handgun.

Evidently Mom Allie had had enough. A slug
thunked
into the ground beside his polished boots, and she said, "Drop that thing, sonny, before you hurt somebody."

He dropped it. I would have, too, for she used the voice a good mother uses just before she unlimbers the peach tree switch.

Zack bent over and picked it up, jacked the cartridges out. Then he tossed the gun back to Schmidt. "Put that away. Maybe you can talk sense without having it in your hand."

A bit of the stuffing seemed to disappear with the weapon, for he didn't know what to do with his hands as he listened to my husband put our position into the simplest English he could manage.

"We are surviving. We are taking in anyone who is willing to work with us. We have hurt only those people who have tried kill us. We will not take any guff off a tin-pot clunk that nobody needs anymore. You come back, alone or in company, with the idea of arresting us or making us toe your imaginary mark, I will send you back with lead in your pants. I hereby declare this the United Area of Hickory Hollow, free and independent of any body or governmental entity that went before. We have one code–work for the common good or get out, alive or dead, as you prefer."

I put my arm around him and gave him a hug.

Schmidt glared at us for a moment, got in his truck, and backed out around the curve of the drive. We could hear him gunning his engine all the way up the road and out of earshot.

"If we're lucky, he'll run out of gas before he can get back around to us," Zack sighed. "But isn't it strange how some people just can't accept the fact that things have changed?

Mom Allie came out of the cabin wiping her hands on her apron. "We'll have to keep an eye out for him, now, just as we do the
Ungers
. That's the kind that can't take the idea that he has lost his clout. I've met a thousand of him, along the way. They're worse than the seven-year itch. Can't seem to get rid of '
em
."

Lantana, following her, nodded. "Might be," she said worriedly, "we ought to warn '
em
downriver, just in case he works the other road. Way he talked, the
Fanchers
might have trouble with him."

We looked at one another. We had worked without letup in the fields and the gardens. It was too early for planting the fall gardens, the hay was coming on, the corn gathered and its stalks also chopped and fermenting in our alcohol vats. We needed ... really needed ... a holiday.

The whole crew was at supper at the long table under the
sweetgum
tree in the back yard of the cabin. We had found that cooking two meals was a waste of manpower, so we combined forces during peak working seasons. When we broached the subject of a combined day off and picnic down the river, they were fired with enthusiasm.

"But can we risk
leavin
' the places empty?" Lucas asked at last. "Seems pretty dangerous."

"I think I can solve that," Zack answered. "My job in 'Nam was booby traps. And if you can undo them, you can, by golly, do them. Though I hate the thought of it."

So it was that the next morning was spent in sandwich-making (we had figured a way to make sour-dough bread using a mix of cornmeal and ground oats that would hang together pretty well) and in booby-trapping buildings. Zack, with his usual long-range vision, took all the children with him to "help. " They would always know where the traps were and what they looked like, as a consequence. And after he "blew" one for their edification, they were unwilling to get too near any of the locations. Children, contrary to the views of our late culture, are not fools.

By ten o'clock we were ready. Most of us elected to walk. Some rode horses. The older folk preferred to ride in the wagon. We looked like the Westward Migration when we started off through the cut-fence road.

Our first stop at the
Fanchers
' was welcomed enthusiastically. We found the family gathered about a sick cow. Mom Allie and Lucas diagnosed her problem as bloat and Lucas inserted the small blade of his pocket knife into the barrel of her belly just before the hip. A rush of foul gas sent us all retreating into shade of the yard.

The
Fanchers
were as ready for a holiday as we were. In a fast scramble, they got food together, set their standing traps and trip ropes against intruders, and were ready to join us. So we set out again across the pastures.

At the
Londowns
' fence we paused to send Zack to the house. We crossed the "hostile territory" and waited for him beyond the fence that bounded his land on its other side. It wasn't long before Zack came pelting back, and I could tell the way he sat his horse that he was mad clean through.

Though he said nothing to the others, he hitched his horse to the tail of the wagon and walked beside me for a while. When we were far enough behind the others, he said very softly, "That bastard Curt is enough to make you sick. He never thanked me for warning him about Schmidt... said he sounded like the sort of man who ought to take things in hand now. 'We need a strong hand,' he told me. Strong hand! What those two want is a penny-ante dictatorship set up in the place of the state that's gone. With themselves in the driver's seat, of course. Wouldn't surprise me if that fool went galloping off to join Schmidt and left his family to take care of themselves."

I could feel him seething beside me as we walked, so I said, "Why don't we have Bill keep a very distant eye on their place and warn us if Curt leaves for any length of time? The
Ungers
would be on them fast, if they knew he was gone. Cheri and the two older children just haven't enough numbers to hold them off. " He grunted agreement. And we walked in silence for a time in the blaze of the July morning. A hawk circled high, and two buzzards moved even higher as barely discernible specks. A
coachwhip
snake went shooting through the grass beside us, and crackles of grasshoppers fanned up in front as we wandered across the deep-grown grass.

From the wagon, Nellie called, "Could we go by the house? I'd like .... I'd like to put some greenery on Jess's grave. " We turned toward the distant roof, but the track we had followed in the winter was now lost in the rampant growth of grass and hushes. The yard, too, was lost in weeds and grass. But in the orchard small sweet peaches hung on the trees.

"We'll get a load of these when we come back," Nellie said. "I know how to dry them ... Mother used to do that."

There was deep shade about Jess Sweetbrier's resting place, and we sat there while Nellie found ferns and planted them about the now-sunken grave. Then we moved into the orchard again to eat our lunch, finishing it off with peaches in disgraceful amounts.

After a short rest, we moved away again, and I saw that Nellie didn't look back even once. I nodded to myself, and Zack, always on top of everything, took my hand.

"We're all of us through with looking back," he said. "Forward is going to be all anybody can handle for quite a while."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Our short day of outing was over too soon, but it renewed the ties we felt with those down the way. The
Jessups
were faring well, though
Sim
had never fully regained his strength. All of them came with us a bit of the way, when the lowering sun told us it was time to start homeward.

Zack and I, walking at the rear of the big group of people, felt like the founders of some new tribe. Carrie and Horace, walking with us, voiced our feelings well when Horace said, "You know, it seems odd to us older ones, but this is the way it's going to be, from now on. Groups like this, every kind of people from all kinds of backgrounds, working together."

"Like a family, Carrie chimed in. "Fighting like crazy, sometimes. Having all sorts of fits and fallings-out. But still standing up for one another when things get tight.

"You know, we intend to go over, when we've the time, and pull things together at the Sweetbrier place. We feel as if, with all these young ones, in a few years there'll be new families to need houses. It'd be a shame to let good houses fall down from lack of care, when they'll be needed."

"Now who's looking ahead?" I teased her. "I hadn't thought that far, myself, but you're right. We could make this whole five miles of river land one community. Except for the
Londowns
, of course."

She frowned, but Horace boomed, "Sounds as if
Londown
and Schmidt would make a good team. Hang on to old prejudices and worn-out rules and useless things like that until you manage to put the rest of us under, that's the motto of that kind. I suppose they just can't let themselves realize that the old world is gone as thoroughly as ancient Greece."

Zack sighed. "Some people–a lot of them, really hadn't any inside security. Just artificial things like authority or feeling superior because of their color or politics or suchlike gave them their self-esteem. And now we have to cope with surviving, with
Ungers
and their kind, and with witless wonders like those, too. What a pain!'

Nevertheless, the reminder of Harley Schmidt cast a pall over our good-byes. It wasn't leavened much by Horace's parting gift. He had carried a long, oddly shaped parcel all the way, and as we reached the first fence line he thrust it into Zack's hands. "
Here.
Try it out. When you get home, let '
er
rip for a few blasts. If we can hear you, then we'll know you can hear us, if anything comes unglued."

It was a battered trumpet. Zack raised it to his lips and emitted a wild squawk, but Horace stood there in the hot summer afternoon and gave him a short lesson in getting the most sound possible from the thing. And when Zack raised a respectable blast, Horace grinned. "Got one like it," he said. "Just say if either end of the line hears a hoot, it's a sign of trouble. If, that is, it can be heard. I'll answer you, if I hear you, and we'll all be listening, in about an hour or so."

The young ones could hardly wait to get home and try out the new system, so we made good time across the grown-over fields and pastures. As we crossed
Londowns
', we could see the whole family lined up before their garden fence, watching us. There was no wave, no hail, nothing. It seemed such a pity, with so few of us left, that his children should be so isolated, but I suppose he thought our dark-complexioned children had already contaminated our lighter ones and would also spread some sort of plague to his own.

The shadows were long before we reached our own lane. Lucas and
Elmond
slipped ahead of the bunch to reconnoiter, and we followed slowly, quietly, waiting for their signal. The birds were celebrating the first coolness of evening with many-voiced enthusiasm. Along the creek beside us the frogs had tuned up, trebles first, then mid-tones, and lastly the true bassos. It was a moment so lovely, so fragile, that I held my breath, fearing that our scouts might find something terribly amiss to spoil it. But Lucas's clear old voice called, "All's fine and dandy," and we came up the lane under a crimson-streaked sky.