and a new idea was shaping in his mind.
“Say, boys,” he said, “Bob and Dick, I mean. Do you think you can go back and shift those wheels by yourselves?”
“Sure,” said Dick, but he looked puzzled.
“What I mean is—well, Joey is too little to be much use, and I’m tired. It’s only four blocks to the City Library from here. Joey can go with me. Want to, Joey?”
Joey was already on his feet with the excitement of the idea. The other boys were happy to get back to the tires.
As they walked toward the Library, Joey ran ahead in his eagerness. It was ridiculous, thought Ish, that he had never taken Joey there before. But all this matter of Joey’s reading and intellectual interests had developed very rapidly.
Because of his policy of saving the great University Library as a reserve, Ish had been using this library for his own purposes for many years, and had long since forced the lock on the main entrance. Now he pushed the heavy door open, and entered proudly with his youngest son.
They stood in the main reading-room, and then wandered, through the stacks. Joey said nothing, but Ish could see his eyes drink the titles in as he passed. They came out from the stacks again, and stood in the main lobby by the entrance looking back. Then Ish had to break the silence.
“Well, what do you think of it?”
“Is it all the books in the world?”
“Oh, no! Just a few of them.”
“Can I read them?”
“Yes, you can read any you want to. Always bring them back, and put them in place again, so they won’t get lost and scattered.”
“What’s in the books?”
“Oh, something of pretty near everything. If you read them all, you would know a lot.”
“I’ll read them all!”
Ish felt a sudden warning shadow fall on the happiness of his mind.
“Oh, no, Joey! You couldn’t possibly read them all, and you wouldn’t want to. There are dull ones and stupid ones and silly ones, and even bad ones. But I’ll help you pick out the good ones. Now, though, we’d better go.”
He was actually glad to get Joey away. The stimulation of seeing so many books so suddenly seemed almost more than was good for the frail little boy. Ish was glad that he had not taken him to the University Library. In due time now he could take him there.
As they walked toward the garage, Joey did not run ahead. This time he kept close to his father; he was thinking. Finally he spoke:
“Daddy, what is the name of those things that are on the ceilings of our rooms—like shiny white balls? You said once they used to make light.”
“Oh, those are called ‘electric lights.’”
“If I read the books, could I make them make light again?”
Ish felt a sudden intoxication of pleasure, and immediately after it a sense of fear. This must not go too fast!
“Well, Joey, I don’t know,” he said, trying to speak with unconcern. “Maybe you could, maybe not. Things like that take time, and a lot of people working together. You’ve got to go slow.”
Then they walked without speaking. Ish was proud and triumphant that Joey had absorbed so much of his own feeling, and yet he was fearful. Joey was moving even
Ish came out of his thoughts to the sound of retching, and saw that Joey was vomiting upon a pile of rubble.
“That lunch!” thought Ish guiltily. “I let him eat too much mixture. He’s done this before.” Then he realized that the excitement had probably been more a factor than the lunch.
When Joey felt better, and they finally got back to the garage, they found that the boys had finished the work of shifting tires and pumping them up. Ish felt his old curiosity about the car and the expedition rising up again.
He got into the car, and once more started the engine. He nursed it lovingly, and then raced it a little to let it grow warm. Well, the engine was running and the tires were holding, at least temporarily. But there were a lot of questions about clutch and transmission and steering-gear and brakes, besides all those mysterious but vital things which lurked somewhere in the make-up of automobiles and of which he scarcely even knew the names. They had filled the radiator, but the water-circulation might well be clogged somewhere, and even that was enough to render a car of no value. But here we are again worrying about the future!
“All right!” he said. “Let’s go!”
The engine was muttering contentedly. He threw the clutch out, and worked the stiff transmission into low gear. He let the clutch in, and the car lurched forward heavily, as if its bearings were almost too stiff to be started again, as if their fine steel balls like the rubber tires, had flattened from long standing in one position. Yet the car moved, and he felt it respond to the stiff steering gear. He pressed upon the brake, and the car came to a stop, having moved only six feet. Yet it had moved, and (of equal importance) it had stopped.
He had a sudden feeling of more than pleasure, reaching to, the height of exaltation. It was not all a dream! If in one day work a man and three boys could get a jeep to running again, what could not a whole community accomplish in the course of a few years?
The boys unloosed the dogs from one of the wagons to home by themselves. They hitched the wagon behind one the others. Then Dick drove one team, and Bob the other. Ish, with Joey beside him, started out bravely.
Fallen buildings had left heaps of debris in the street, blowing winds had drifted leaves and dust upon the bricks and the winter rains had washed the whole into semblances natural banks and hillocks. Grass was growing thickly; on o little mound there was even a fair stand of bushes. Ish stiffly hither and thither, finding a way along the clogged streets. He was nearing home when he sharply over a brick and heard a bang as the left rear tire out. He ended the day driving home on one flat tire, badly, but taking it slowly and making the last grade successfully, a little ahead of the dog-teams. In spite of this final mishap, he felt that he had done well.
He let the jeep roll to a stop in front of the house, leaned back in triumphant relief. At least he had got it home.
Then he pressed the horn-button, and after these years of silence it responded wonderfully—TOOT-A- TOOT-TOOT!
He expected children, and older people too, to come hurrying from all directions at the unaccustomed sound, but there was no one. Only a sudden barking of dogs sprang up from everywhere. Then the team-dogs joined in the chorus, as they now came up the hill, and the boys joined him. Ish felt a sudden emptiness of fear inside him. Once before, long ago, he had come into a strangely empty town, and blown the horn of his car, and now it was easy enough to think that something might have happened when your whole universe consisted of only some thirty more or less defenseless people. But that was only for a moment.
Then he saw Mary, her baby on her arm, come unconcernedly out of the house down the street, and wave to him. “They’ve all gone bull-dodging!” she called.
The boys were suddenly excited to join the sport. They loosed the dogs from the carts, and were off, not even asking permission of Ish. Even Joey, now wholly recovered from his illness, rushed off with the others. Ish felt suddenly left alone and neglected, his triumph at restoring transportation gone suddenly sour in his mouth. Only Mary came to look at the jeep. She stared with big enough eyes, but was as untalkative as the baby, who also stared.
Ish got out of the jeep, and stretched. His long legs were cramped from its close quarters, and his bad loin ached from even this small amount of bumping.
“Well,” he said with a little pride in his voice, “what do you think of it, Mary?” Mary was his own daughter, but she was not much like either of her parents, and her stolidity often bothered him.
“Good!” she said with a Choctaw-like imperturbability.
