Then, almost without knowing what had happened, Ish found himself on his feet. He was talking. In fact, he was making a speech. “Look here,” he was saying, “we’ve got to do something about all this. We’ve waited long enough!”
As he stood there, he was only in his own living-room, and he was talking only to the few people who were there. He knew that they were only a few, and yet it seemed to him not so much as if he were talking just to these few in this little room, but rather that he was in some great amphitheater and talking to a whole nation or to all the people of the world.
“This has got to stop!” he said. “We mustn’t go on living forever just in this happy way, scavenging among all the supplies that the Old Times left here for us, not creating or doing anything for ourselves. These things will an give out some day—if not in our years, in our children’s, or grandchildren’s. What will happen then? What will they do when they won’t know how to produce more things? Food, they can get, I suppose—there will still be cattle and rabbits. But what about all the more complicated things we enjoy? What, even, about building fires after the matches have all been used, or spoiled?”
He paused, and looked around again. They all seemed pleased, and seemed to be agreeing with him. Joey’s face was transcendent with excitement.
“That refrigerator you were talking about just now, all of you!” Ish went on. “That’s an example. We talk about it, but we never do anything. We’re like that story—that old king in the old story—the one who sat enchanted and everything moved around him, but he could never make any move to break the spell. I used to think we were just suffering from the shock of the Great Disaster. Perhaps that was it, in those first days. When people have their whole world go to pieces around them, they can’t expect to make a fresh start immediately. But that was twenty- one years ago, and many of us have even been born since that time.
“There are lots of things we should do. We should get some more domestic animals, not just dogs. We ought to be growing more of our own food now, not just raiding the old grocery stores still. We ought to be teaching the children to read and write more. (No one has ever supported me strongly enough in that.) We can’t go on scavenging like this forever—we must go forward.”
He paused, searching for words by which to point out to them the old truism that unless we go forward we inevitably go back, but suddenly they all applauded loudly, as if he had finished. He thought that he had really swayed them by a sudden flood of eloquence, but then he realized, as he looked around, that the applause was largely in good-natured irony.
“That’s the fine old speech again, Dad,” Roger remarked. Ish glared at him angrily for a moment; having really been the leader of The Tribe for twenty-one years, he did not like to have himself put down thus as merely an old codger with some funny ideas. But then Ezra laughed good-naturedly, and everybody joined in the laughter, and the tension fell off.
“Well, what are we going to do about it then?” Ish asked. “I may have made the same speech before, but even if I have, it’s true, nevertheless.”
He paused expectantly. Then Jack, who was Ish’s oldest son, unlimbered himself from where he was lolling on the floor, and got to his feet. Jack was taller and much more powerful than his father now; he was, himself, a father.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” he said, “but I’ve got to go.”
“What’s the matter? What is it?” Ish snapped back to him, a little irritated.
“Well, nothing so very much, but there’s something I have to do this afternoon.”
“Won’t it wait?”
Jack was already moving toward the door.
“I suppose it might wait,” he said, as he put his hand on the door knob. “But I think I’d better be going anyway.”
There was silence for a moment, except for the sounds of the door opening, and shutting, as Jack went out. Ish felt himself suddenly angry, and he knew that his face was flushed.
“Go on talking, Ish,” Ish heard the voice, and knew through his anger that it was Ezra’s. “We would like to hear just what you think we ought to do; you have the ideas.” Yes, it was Ezra’s voice, and Ezra as usual was saying something quickly to cover up the difficulty and make people feel better. He was even flattering Ish.
Nevertheless, at the voice, Ish relaxed. Why should he be angry with Jack for acting independently? He should, rather, be happy. Jack was a grown man now, no longer a little boy and merely a son. The flush faded from Ish’s face, but still he felt a profound sense of trouble within him, and he was led on to talk more. If the incident could do nothing else, at least it could supply him with a text.
“This business with Jack right here now, that’s something I want to talk about, too. We’ve drifted along all these years not doing anything about producing our own food and getting civilization back into some kind of running-order, as regards all the material things. That’s one matter, and an important one, but it isn’t the only one. Civilization wasn’t just only gadgets and how to make them and run them. It was all sorts of social organization too—all sorts of rules, and laws, and ways of life, among people and groups of people. The family—that’s all we have left of a that organization! That’s natural, I suppose. But the family can’t be enough when there get to be more people. When a little child does something we don’t like, the father and mother correct it, and bring it into line. But when one of the children grows up, that’s all over. We haven’t any laws—we aren’t a democracy, or a monarchy, or a dictatorship, or anything. If someone—Jack, for instance—wants to walk out on what seems to be a kind of important meeting, nobody can stop him. Even if we take a vote here and decide to do something, even then, there’s no means of enforcement—oh, a little public opinion, perhaps, but that’s all.”
He had trailed off to a lame ending, rather than coming to a conclusion. He had been speaking more from the emotional drive that Jack’s move had aroused in him. He was not a trained orator, and had certainly no practice.
Yet, as he looked around, he saw that the speech had apparently made a very good impression. Ezra was the one who spoke first.
“Yes, you bet!” he said. “Don’t you remember all of those wonderful times we used to have back in those days. Golly, what wouldn’t I give just now to be over there with George’s big radio and turn it right on and hear Charlie McCarthy again! Don’t you remember the way that little guy would talk, making fun of the other guy, whatever his name was, you know, and here that other one was just the same as him all the time.”
Ezra took out the big Victorian penny that had served him for a pocket-piece during all these years. He tossed it back and forth from one hand to the other in sheer stimulation at the thought of hearing Charlie McCarthy again.
“Yes, you remember too,” he went on. “Why, you used to be able to go down to the picture-house and pay your money and go right in! And you would hear all that music going with the film, and see—oh, maybe—Bob Hope or Dotty Lamour. Yes, those were the days all right! Do you suppose that p’raps if we all got together and worked hard we could find some of those films and rig them up to show them to all the kids? I can just hear them laughing. Maybe we could get a Charlie Chaplin film somewhere!”
Ezra took out a cigarette and a match, and as he scratched the match it broke into a bright flame. Matches never seemed to deteriorate if they were in a fairly dry place. Yet nobody knew how to make matches, and at every sudden spurt of flame there was one match the fewer. Ish had a strange feeling about Ezra, who was thinking of civilization chiefly as the return of motion-pictures, and at the same time was scratching a match. George was the one who spoke next:
“If there was any way of making people help me, just one or two of the boys, I could get that gas-
