Z for Zachariah (14 page)

"No," he said, his voice very quiet, but angry and hard. "You could
not
go. Understand that. Keep away from the suit. Never touch it."

I started to remind him that I had already touched it. But I caught myself in time. I realized that he probably did not even remember that, since he had been sick and delirious at the time. We ate on in rather tense silence, I wondering why he was so extremely sensitive about it. It occurred to me that maybe he was afraid I would see the bullet holes. Yet that seemed unlikely since I had never talked to him about his dreams—how would I know what the patches were?

His lunch finished (his appetite was not impaired!) he went on, sounding a little less unfriendly. In fact he tried to smile, but still it was rather like a lecture.

"You must understand," he said, "that except for ourselves, that suit is the most important thing in the world. There is no other, and no way, now, of making another. Except for this valley the rest of the world, as far as we know, is dangerous and uninhabitable. I don't know how long it's going to be that way—maybe forever.

"But as long as it is, the suit is the only way to go out there and stay alive. The idea of taking it to get some novels—it's too foolish to consider. If you took it out, and something went wrong, I could never get it back. I couldn't go out after it, couldn't even try. It would be lost forever."

That is what Edward had been up against—even some of the words were the same. Yet I could not argue. After all, it was his suit. And also, of course, what he said was true. I could survive without novels.

Still it had been a pleasant thing to think about; I had even let my imagination run to the point of making several trips, building up a real home library. But I could see now it was not too practical, especially from Mr Loomis's point of view. But I will hope even so that when he can walk better, if he goes to get technical books he might slip in at least one or two books for me to read. That might be a less offensive idea.

For the moment I changed the subject to something less controversial. I asked him: "How far did you walk?"

"Four steps, holding on to the bed. This morning, three steps."

"As soon as you can do a little more, I could put a chair for you outside on the front porch. Then, if you like, you could get out of this room for a while."

"I had thought of that. And on the back porch, too, where I can see the planting."

"The corn is beginning to come up," I said. "In a few more days I'll have to thin it. The beans are in, but not up yet."

"How about beets? And wheat?"

"Well, I had not planned—"

"You must plan. Not just for next year, but beyond. Beets make sugar. Wheat makes flour."

I had started to say that since I could only plant and cultivate so much, I had not included beets—and quite a few other things, like pumpkins, turnips, squash, and so on. There were seeds for all of those in the store. But it was true, when I made those plans I had not counted on the tractor.

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "There's plenty of sugar in the store. I saw that. And it keeps. But when it's gone—what then? You see, that's foolish and shortsighted." His voice had grown edgy again.

He went on: "I've been lying in the bed for a long time now, with nothing to do but think. And I realized that we've got to plan as if this valley is the whole world, and we are starting a colony, one that will last permanently."

It was the same thought, or nearly the same, as the feeling I had had when I was ploughing, and felt as if I was helping the world to stay alive. Then I was happy, but his saying it, or the way he said it, made me feel uneasy. I am not sure why.

As I was taking the tray out he said another thing: "When you go to your church, if you want something to pray for, pray for that bull calf."

I said: "I don't understand." The calf seemed perfectly healthy.

He said: "When the petrol is gone, cattle can pull the plough."

It was true that some of the Amish, being slow to change their ways, used to plough with mules or oxen; I remember seeing them when I was small. There was even an old wood and leather harness hanging on the wall of our own barn, though I had never seen it used.

What he meant was that we needed to breed more cattle, and I had planned that, at least, from the beginning.

He asked me to bring him a new razor and blades from the store. I did, and he has shaved his whiskers off again. It makes him look healthier.

Chapter Sixteen

June 24th

In these few days my uneasiness has grown worse.

At Mr Loomis's urging, I planted wheat and beets. I put the beets, two long rows of them, in the same field with the corn, next to the soy beans. If the crop is good, that will be more beets than we can eat; but the object is to harvest the seed. If I do that each year then some day, when we need them for sugar, we will have them. I admit that is a sensible idea.

There was not room for the wheat in that field, so I planted it—about a half-acre—in the far field beyond the pond. That means there will be a little less pasture, but that does not matter, since after I cut what I need for seed—a few bushels should be enough—the cows can eat the rest. The chickens can eat it, too, though they like corn better.

I explained to Mr Loomis why I had not planned to grow wheat—that is, that I had no way to mill it for flour.

"That's not important," he said. "When I get well enough, when I can walk further, we can learn how to mill it. The important thing is not to let the species die out."

None of that had anything to do with my feeling uneasy. It was caused by something else.

As I had said I would, I put a chair out for him on the front porch—a small upholstered armchair I got from my parents' bedroom. It also has a matching footstool, and I brought that down, too, along with a pillow and a blanket. It is really quite comfortable, and is shaded by the porch roof.

As he requested, I also put a chair on the back porch; there is not enough room there for a footstool, so it is not quite as nice. However, yesterday morning when I asked him he said that was where he would like to sit.

It was the first time since his sickness that he had ventured so far, but he did quite well. I remembered, searched for and found in the front coat cupboard something I had forgotten: a cane my father once used when he had a sprained ankle. With that, plus leaning heavily on my shoulder, he made it to the porch and into the chair. His knees still buckle under him, and he cannot lift his feet properly, but tends to drag them and then thump them forward.

He sat there all morning—rather like an overseer—watching while I ploughed, harrowed and then planted the two rows of beets. At lunch time I turned the tractor off, leaving it in the field to save petrol, and walked back up to the house.

After lunch he slept in his room while I started on the wheat field. When the sun began moving over the hill I came back to the house; he was awake and wanted to go out again, this time to the front porch. I helped him to the chair, got his feet on the footstool, and covered him with the blanket. Then I went inside to open up the stove and start the dinner.

What happened after that is, I suppose, partly my own fault. Having put the food in the oven and the kettle on to boil, I got a chair from the dining-room, took it out on the porch and sat down beside him. The sun was just setting, and again we watched the light turning from yellow to red as it went down.

I had a reason for doing this, besides just wanting to rest a few minutes. It was a feeling that had been growing on me, and bothering me more each day since he first began to recover. And that was the fact that I did not know him at all. When he had first come I had been so excited and apprehensive about the presence
of any
other person that I did not think too much about
who
Mr Loomis was; he had seemed attractive and friendly. But lately I felt I did not understand him at all.

He had told me only the barest account of how he went to work in the laboratory on the plastic and the safe-suit, and about the trip he had made to the underground Air Force headquarters. I had learned from his nightmares about his fight with Edward. But that was all I knew. He never talked about himself at all except his plans for a generator and a little about planting. Nor did he seem to have any curiosity or interest in me, except once he seemed to like my playing the piano.

I even had a theory about it. I thought the murder of Edward, the months alone in the laboratory, the long desperate walks, also alone, through the dead countryside—all that had been so horrible and deadening it had blotted out everything else in his mind. When he thought back, that was what popped up, so he did not think back, nor talk about the past. After all this time, he still seemed like a stranger.

I did not want to discuss the thing about Edward (I decided probably not ever) nor the laboratory, but wanted to get him talking about the times before that. I sat down beside him but I did not know how to do it. In books and films they say, let's talk about you, or, tell me all about yourself—but that is when they first meet, and seems trite anyway.

Remembering that he liked my playing music, I asked:

"When you were young, did somebody in your family play the piano?"

He said: "No. We didn't have a piano."

"Were you poor?"

"Yes. I had a cousin I used to visit. They had a piano, and his mother played it. I liked to listen to that."

"Where was that?"

"A town in New York. Nyack."

He did not elaborate, and the conversation lagged since I knew nothing about Nyack, New York.

I tried again.

"Before you went to Cornell what did you do?"

"What everybody does. Went to school, high school, college, worked in the summers."

He seemed determined to be uninteresting and untalka-tive. I said: "Is that all?"

"After college, four years in the Navy."

That seemed to open a door.

"On a ship? Where did you sail?"

"In a naval ordnance laboratory in Bristol, New Jersey. I was a chemistry major in college. The navy needed chemists. That's where I got started in plastics. They used more plastics than anybody, and kept testing new kinds. For ship fittings, gun covers, frogman suits, even hulls. Plastics that wouldn't chip, freeze, crack, corrode or leak."

"I see." I saw the conversation steering into a circle.

"And when I finished there, I applied at Cornell graduate school." End of circle.

It seemed hopeless, and I should have given up, but I did not. Instead I said:

"But were you ever—did you ever—get married?"

He looked at me in a queer way. He said: "I thought you were coming to that."

And then it happened. To my absolute astonishment, he did not even smile, but reached over and took my hand. "Grabbed" would be a better word. He took it very quickly and hard, pulled it to his chair, jerking me towards him so that I almost fell over. He held my hand between both of his.

He said: "No, I never got married. Why did you ask that?"

I was so startled that for a minute I just sat and stared at him. All I could think of at first was that somehow he had misunderstood something I had said.

After that I felt embarrassed, and awkward, and afraid, in that order. Embarrassed for a quite unimportant reason

—because my hand was hard and his were soft, mine from work, his I suppose, from wearing those plastic gloves so long; awkward because the way he had pulled me I could not sit right in my chair, but was leaning off balance. And afraid, finally, because when I tried to pull away he just tightened his grip. There was nothing gentle about the way he held my hand, and no expression at all in his face. He just looked at me as he had at
The Farm Mechanic
.

He said again: "Why did you ask that?"

I said: "Please let go."

He said: "Not until you answer."

I said: "I asked because I was interested." I felt myself beginning to tremble. I was really frightened.

He said: "Interested in what?" And instead of letting go he tightened his grip, pulling me further off balance.

I could not help what happened next. I felt myself falling from the chair, falling towards him, and quite instinctively I threw my right hand up (he was holding the left one) to catch myself. It hit him in the face, not very hard, on or near his left eye. In that moment he pulled back and relaxed his grip. I snatched my hand away and sprang back.

In a very quiet voice he said: "You should not have done that."

Why should I have apologized? I do not know what would have been right, but that is what I did.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to. I was falling." In my confusion I may even have tried to smile; I cannot remember clearly. Then I left the porch and went back to the kitchen. As I left he said:

"You held my hand once before."

In the kitchen I was shaking so hard that at first I could not continue the cooking; I could not think clearly. I thought I was even going to cry, something I seldom do, but I managed to hold back. I sat on the kitchen stool and tried to calm down. I told myself it was not really so important. It was what the girls at school used to call a "pass"; they used to talk about it and laugh after they had had a date. But that was when they were in a car, after a film, and on their way home to their parents. It is different when there is no one else present, no one to turn to or tell about it. And I found myself doing what I have long since banned myself from doing—that is, imagining my parents were coming back, with David and Joseph, and wishing they were. I put the thought out of my head, as I have learned to do. I felt some what calmer then, and was able to continue with the dinner.

He walked back to the bedroom by himself. I was still cooking when I heard the sound of his cane and the dragging thump of his feet; he was holding himself up by leaning against the wall. Eventually I heard the bed creak as he reached it, and when I carried in his food he was sitting there surrounded by his diagrams. He took the tray calmly, as if nothing had happened. I ate in my usual place at the card table, but we did not talk.