Since Mary was their daughter, they controlled the wedding. In the end, they had no ceremony at all, except that Ralph and Mary stood before Ezra, and he told them that now they were being married and that they would assume a new responsibility to the community and that they must try to fulfill it well. Mary bore a child before the year was out, and so for that reason, it was called the Year of the Grandchild.
The Year 17 they called, mostly at the children’s prompting, the Year the House Busted. The reason was that one of the nearby houses had suddenly collapsed and crashed down with a great noise just in time for some of the children to see it as they came running out at the first crack. On investigation, the matter proved simple enough, because termites had a chance now to work in the house for seventeen years undisturbed, and had eaten through the underpinning. But the incident had made a great impression upon the children, and so it gave the name to the year, although it was not really a matter of importance.
In the Year 18, Jean bore still another child. This was the last of all that were born to the older generation, but by this time there were two marriages of the second generation, and two more grandchildren were born.
This was called the Year of the Schoolteaching…. Ever since the first children had been old enough, Ish had tried, in a more or less desultory way, to give them some kind of teaching, so that they could at least read and write and do a little arithmetic, and know something of geography. But it had always been difficult to get the children together, and there seemed to be so many things that they wanted to do, either in play or in earnest, and the schoolteaching had never accomplished very much, although most of the older children could read after a fashion. At least they had once been able to read, but Ish doubted whether some of them—such as Mary, who was now a mother with two babies—could at the present moment do more than spell out words of one syllable. (Though she was his own beloved oldest daughter, he admitted to himself that Mary was not intellectual—no need to say she was stupid.)
In this Year 18, however, Ish really tried to get together all of the children who were of proper age, so that they would not grow up completely ignorant. It worked for a while, and then again it lapsed, and it was hard to say whether he had accomplished anything or not, and he felt a sense of frustration.
The Year 19 was named the Year of the Elk, again because of a little incident which impressed the children. One morning some of them saw Evie, now grown to be a woman, looking out and pointing and crying excitedly in her strange voice, which did not quite form words. When they looked, they saw that she was pointing at a new kind of animal. This turned out to be an elk, which was the first one that they had seen in all these years. Apparently, the herds had now increased enough so that they had worked down from the north and were coming back into this region, where they had lived before the arrival of white men.
There was no question about the Year 20. It was the Year of the Earthquake. The old San Leandro Fault stirred again, and early one morning there was a sharp jolt and the sound of falling chimneys. The houses in which they all lived stood the shock, because George always kept them in excellent repair. But the houses that had been weakened by termites or undermined by washing water or damaged by rot came crashing down. After that there was hardly a street which was not littered here and there with brick or with other debris, and because of damage from the earthquake deterioration began to accelerate.
The Year 21 Ish had thought they might call the Year of the Coming of Age. They now numbered thirty-six— seven of the older ones, Evie, twenty-one of the second generation, and seven of the third. In the end, however, this year was named, like many others, from a small incident…. Joey was one of the twins, who were the youngest of the children born to Ish and Em. He was a bright boy, though small for his age and not so good at play as some of those who were even younger than he. He got a certain favoring from both his father and mother, because he was, with his twin, the youngest. On the whole, however, in such a large group of children, nobody had paid him any great attention, and now he was nine years old. But just at the end of this year, they suddenly discovered to their great amaze meant that Joey could read—not only could read in the slow, halting way of the other children, but could read quickly and accurately and with pleasure. Ish felt a sudden warming of his heart toward the youngest son. This was the one in whom the light of intellect really was still burning.
The other children also were much impressed, and so at the ceremony they cried out that this should be called the Year When Joey Read.
PART II: The Year 22
There must be in their social bond something singularly captivating, and far superior to anything to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become Europeans!
Chapter 1
After the ceremony at the rock was over and the numerals 2 and 1 stood out sharply and freshly cut on the smooth surface, the people started back toward the houses. Most of the children scuttled ahead, calling back and forth, eager with ideas about the bonfire which traditionally ended the New Year celebration.
Ish walked beside Em, but they talked little. As always at the date-carving Ish felt himself thinking deeper thoughts than usual and wondering what would happen in the course of the year. He heard the children shouting out:
“Go to the old house that fell down; you can pull off lots of dry wood there…. I think I can find a can of gasoline…. I know where there is toilet paper; it burns fine.”
The older people, as was the custom, gathered at Ish and Em’s house, and sat around for a little conversation. Since it was a time for festivity, Ish opened some port, and they all drank toasts, even George, who ordinarily did not drink. They agreed again, as they had at the rock, that the Year 21 had been a good year and that the prospects for the coming one were good also.
Yet in the midst of the general self-congratulation, Ish himself felt a renewed sense of dissatisfaction.
“Why,” he thought, feeling the words flow through his mind, as if he were arguing aloud, “why should I be the one who in times like this always has to start thinking ahead? Why am I the one that has to think, or try to think, five years or ten years, or twenty years into the future? I may not even be
Yet he knew, as he thought again, that this last was not altogether true either. The people who live in any generation do much, he realized, either to create or to solve the problems for the people who come in the generations later.
In any case, he could not help wondering what would happen to The Tribe in the years that were ahead. It worried him. After the Great Disaster, he had thought that the people, if any survived at all, would soon be able to get some things running again and proceed gradually toward re-establishing more and more of civilization. He had even dreamed of a time when electric lights might go on again. But nothing like that had happened, and the community was still dependent upon the leavings of the past.
Now he looked around, as he had often looked before, at the ones who were with him. They were, so to speak, the bricks out of which a new civilization must be fashioned. There was Ezra, for instance. Ish felt himself growing warm with the mere pleasure of friendship as he looked at that thin ruddy face and pleasant smile, even though the smile showed the bad teeth. Ezra had genius perhaps, but it was the genius of living on easy and friendly terms with people, and not the creative drive that leads toward new civilizations. No, not Ezra.
And there beside Ezra was George, good old George—heavy and shambling, powerful still, though his hair had turned wholly gray. George was a good man, too, in his fashion. He was a first-class carpenter, and had learned to do plumbing and painting and the other odd jobs around the house. He was a very useful man, and had preserved
