killing a tame chicken. I eat them myself, as we always did, and I have not yet fired a shot from any of my guns, not once since before the war.
He put the chicken down on top of the wagon, and then, without waiting to pluck or clean it, started out immediately down the road in the direction of the church and the store—and the cows. He took the smaller rifle with him; also the glass tube.
For this first day, at least, I thought I had better keep him in sight as much as I could—until I get to know something about his habits. So again I went along a path I know in the woods, about two-thirds of the way up the hillside. That way I could watch him closer up, better than from the cave, where the road disappears for stretches when trees grow near it. I took my binoculars and my own rifle.
He saw the cows right away, as soon as he got past the barn and the fence. They were off by the pond, in the far field. My father used to grow oats there, but luckily that last spring he had rotated it to fescue. They were grazing there quietly, with the calf between them; they were not fenced in, but as I thought they would, they had stayed near home. When he came towards them, a stranger, they ran off, though not very far. Cows can tell people apart all right, though it’s true they don’t care much.
He started to follow them, then changed his mind and walked to the edge of the pond. He stared into the water, first from a few feet away then, obviously very interested, kneeling down with his face close to the surface. I could tell. He was looking at the minnows—there are always some up near the edge. He took his glass counter and held it close to the water; finally he stuck one end of it
He went on. To the church, where he stayed a few minutes. To the store, where he stayed much longer. I couldn’t tell what he did inside—examined what was there, I suppose, and checked it with his counter. When he came out he was carrying a box of something, tinned stuff I thought. That’s as far as he walked; from the store he headed back towards the house. With the box, the rifle and the counter he was quite heavily loaded.
Once, on the way, he suddenly put the box down, raised the rifle and fired into some bushes by the edge of the road. He probably saw a rabbit. There are quite a few in the valley; also squirrels, though the song birds are all gone except for a few crows who seem to have had the sense to stay in it. The other birds, moving around as they do, flew out into the deadness and died. Apparently he missed the rabbit.
It was now nearly eleven o’clock; the sun was high and bright and the day had turned warm. Wearing that plastic suit and carrying all that stuff, I could tell he was getting too hot: he stopped twice to rest and put the carton down. And that was why, when he got back to the house, he made the mistake. He went swimming, and took a bath, in the dead stream, Burden Creek.
First he put the carton down on top of the wagon and took things out of it. As I guessed, most of it was tinned food. But he also took out a couple of bars of soap—I recognized the blue wrappers. Next, to my astonishment, he took off the plastic suit. He simply unzipped it down the front, pulled it down over his legs and stepped out of it. Underneath he was wearing what looked like a very thin, light weight blue coverall. Down the back and arms it was soaked with sweat.
After that, having been so cautious up till then, he was careless. I can see how he did it. He thought, not knowing the geography of the valley very well, that it was all the same stream. He did not know that there were two streams, and he had seen the fish. Being so hot—and, maybe, not having had a bath in a long time—he picked up the soap and ran across the road. There he took off the blue coverall and jumped in with a splash. If he had been a little less eager he might have noticed that there were no fish there, and that all the grass and weeds have died back for about two feet along both the banks. Quite a few of the trees along there are dying, too. But he didn’t. He stayed in quite a long time with his piece of soap.
I said I don’t know how bad a mistake it was. That’s because I don’t know what is wrong with that water. The stream merges with the other one, the pond-stream, farther down the valley and they flow out of the gap as one. Down stream from where they merge they are both dead—I have looked many times, thinking that maybe, after all this time, the water in Burden Creek might be all right again. But no fish swims into it, or if it does, it dies and drifts away.
It might be dial if he had taken his glass rod he would have found the water is radioactive. But I don’t know that; I’m not so sure that is what the poison is. On the radio at the end of the war they said the enemy was using nerve gas, bacteria, and “other anti-personnel weapons”. So it could be anything. All I can do is wait and watch. I hope it doesn’t kill him.
Chapter Four
It is night again, and I am in the cave with one lamp lit.
An inexplicable thing: the dog, Faro, has come back. How that is possible I don’t know. Where has he been? How has he lived? He looks terrible—as thin as a skeleton, and half the hair is gone from his left side.
I think I have already written that Faro was David’s dog. He came with David when David moved in with us about five years ago after his father died and he became an orphan (his mother died when he was born). Joseph and David were within six months of the same age, so they became really close friends—all three of us were, in fact. But Faro was always really David’s dog; he would never go with any of us unless David went, too. He was—he is—a mongrel, but mostly setter, and he loved to hunt. When we went hunting, when he even saw a gun come out, he would get so excited you would never believe he would freeze on a point, but he always did; he was really good. So when David left with my father and mother, and then later the dog disappeared, I assumed he had gone looking for David, through the gap into the deadness. (He used to follow the truck sometimes if David was in it; you had to tie him up.) But apparently he did not go through the gap. He must have been living in the woods up there near it, waiting for David to come, eating what he could catch.
I suppose he heard the two gunshots, and that’s what brought him back. I was watching at the time. It was about one-thirty and the man, wearing his blue coverall—he did not put the plastic suit back on—had cleaned the chicken with a knife from his wagon and was cooking it on a spit he had made. The dog came up very cautiously and stood at the edge of the front garden, watching and sniffing. When the man looked up and saw him he stopped turning the spit and stared, not moving. Then he took a step towards Faro, and Faro backed away. The man crouched down, slapped his knee, whistled, and said something; I could hear the whistle but not the words. I knew he was calling him, though; he wanted to make friends with him. He walked forward again, and Faro backed away, keeping the same distance between them.
The man gave up and went back to the fire. That is, he seemed to have given up, but he had not really, I could tell. He had an idea, a very simple one, and he kept looking up to see if the dog was still there. When the chicken was cooked, just a few minutes later, he went into the house and came out with two plates (mine!). He cut off a big chunk of chicken. He opened a tin from the store-box, some kind of meat. He put the chicken and some of the meat on one plate and carried it, moving very gently, past the edge of the garden to about where the dog had first appeared. And he put it down there.
Back to his spit he went, very unconcerned, and carved up his chicken and ate it, along with some kind of dried bread he took from his wagon. (I could have given him some fresh-baked cornbread.) He ate the whole chicken, very quickly too, and as he ate he watched the dog from the corner of his eye. Faro crept up, looking at the man, then the plate of food, then the man again, until finally he reached it. Standing as far back as he could he stretched out his neck, snatched the chicken and ran back fifty feet. He swallowed it in two gulps, came back for the other meat and did the same again.
Having eaten, the dog came back to the plate, licked it, and then slowly began circling the garden, sniffing as he went, still keeping away from the man. He went all the way round the house twice. Then, to my horror, he started wagging his tail the way he used to when he was tracking, and he turned from the house and headed up the hill towards the cave. He had found my tracks.
The man stared after him as he left, whistled loudly, and started to follow. But the dog was out of sight by then, and he gave up after a few steps. Fortunately the area between the house and the cave has a lot of trees and
