thought Ish, when the winter winds swept in from Lake Michigan. He was not surprised that people, with the whole continent to choose from, had drifted away from the once great city by the lake, leaving it ghost-like behind.
Leaving Chicago, the boys had lost themselves in the maze of roads in the outskirts, and had ended up (the day was cloudy, and they lost direction) by going south instead of east.
“After that,” said Bob, “we got one of these things out of a store. It points direction—” And he looked at Ish for the word.
“Yes, a compass,” said Ish.
“We hadn’t needed one before, but now we used it and got going east again, until we came to the river we couldn’t cross.”
Ish figured out quickly that it might have been the Wabash. Floods of twenty-two years, or—more likely—just one great flood, had swept away the bridges. After exploring southward and finding no passage, the boys had to go northward to Highway 6 again, which more or less followed a height of land.
The progress eastward had become more and more laborious. Floods, windstorms, and frost had transformed the once open and smooth highways into rough lines of concrete chunks strewn with gravel from washouts, overgrown with vegetation, and crisscrossed with fallen tree-trunks. Sometimes the jeep could push through the bushes or detour the tree-trunks. But often the boys had to make a passageway with ax or shovel, and the constant work wore them down. Also the loneliness began to oppress them.
“There was a cold day with a north wind,” Dick confessed, “and we were afraid. We remembered what you used to tell us about snow, and we thought we might never get home.”
Somewhere, probably near Toledo, they had turned back. At turning back, a kind of panic came upon them. At the same time heavy rains began to fall, and the roads were often flooded. They had the fear that some of the bridges over the larger rivers might be carried away, leaving them cut off from their own people. They had not tried to go south, as Ish had wished, but had back-tracked along their own trail, gradually being reassured by their ability to get back to places that they had seen already. On their return home, therefore, they had learned little that they had not learned on the way east.
Ish did not blame them at all. In fact, he thought that they had acted with great determination and intelligence. He blamed himself, if anyone—for sending the boys toward Chicago and New York, the great cities of the Old Times. He might have done better to have chosen some southern route toward Houston and New Orleans, instead of a route into the inhospitable country of northern winters. And yet, east of Houston at least, floods would have been more severe and growth of vegetation much more rapid than farther north. Because of the climate, Arkansas and Louisiana would have reverted to impassable wilderness much sooner than Iowa and Illinois.
The children were dancing and shouting around the bonfire. Was there a kind of wild primitiveness in the scene, or was that merely his imagining? Perhaps any children would have done the same. Evie, who of course was mentally a child, was dancing with them. Her blond hair streamed spectacularly behind her.
Ish sat, looking on, and thinking. Well, the chief result of the expedition was not the discovery that the country was returning to the wilderness. Anybody would have known that! The important thing was the making of contact with two other communities. That is, if you could call it contact, when the other communities were fighting off all advances from strangers. Was that from mere blind prejudice, or was it from some deep instinct of self- preservation?
Yet, at least, to know that there were people in Los Angeles and near Albuquerque—growing communities— took away a little of that basic feeling of loneliness.
Two little groups of people, discovered on a single trip, going and coming by the same road! At that rate, there should be several dozen in the area of the whole United States. He remembered the Negroes whom he had seen in Arkansas, long ago. In that rich country of easy winters, there was no reason in the world why those three should not have survived and become a nucleus to which others, either black or white, could attach themselves. Yet that community in its ways of life and thought would be vastly different from the one in New Mexico and from either of the two in California. This divergence opened vast questions for the distant future.
But this was no time to be carrying philosophical speculation far into the future. The dancing and shouting of the children around the fire had become even more bacchanalian. In the excitement the older boys, even some of the married ones, were joining the revel. They were playing crack-the-whip, an the more exciting because the one who was thrown off the end of the whip had to dodge the fire. Suddenly Ish felt himself stiffen. Charlie was playing! In the line, linked between Dick and Evie, he was swinging the whip. The children were obviously delighted to have a grown-up, especially this stranger, playing with them.
Ish tried to argue down his resentment. Why not? Why shouldn’t one of the older ones play that way? Me— I’m just as bad as those people in Los Angeles and Albuquerque, not wanting to accept the stranger! Yet I don’t think I’d have minded, if Charlie had been a different kind of person.
But, try as he could, Ish felt himself unable to stifle some deep-seated sense of dislike. He began to revise his estimate of the importance of the boys’ trip. However important the discovery of the other communities could be for the distant future, the immediate problem was Charlie.
By now it was getting late and mothers were gathering their children. But after the celebration was over, most of the older ones went home with Ish and Em, to hear still more from the two boys and from Charlie.
“Sit here,” said Ezra to Charlie, pointing to the big chair in front of the fireplace. It was a place of honor, and comfort too, and Ish thought how characteristic that was of Ezra, to sense the human relationship so quickly. He himself, though he was host, had not thought of it, and so had not been able to make Charlie feel really welcome. And then he wondered, in quick reaction, whether he really wanted to make Charlie feel at home.
It was a chilly evening, and Ezra called for a fire. The boys brought some wood, and before long the sticks were blazing cheerily. The room grew comfortably warm.
They talked, Ezra leading the conversation, as usual. Charlie asked if he might have a drink. Jack brought him a bottle of brandy and a glass. He drank steadily, but with the habitual drinker’s slow absorption. He gave no sign of either excitement or drunkenness.
“I’m still chilly,” said Ezra.
“You’re not getting sick, are you?” said Em.
Ish himself felt a little chill of uneasiness. Sickness was so uncommon with them that any occurrence of it was a matter of note.
“Don’t know,” said Ezra. “If this was the Old Times, I’d think I was getting a cold. Of course, it can’t be that now.”
They piled more wood on the fire, and the room grew so uncomfortable to Ish that he took off his sweater and sat in his shirt sleeves. Then Charlie took off his coat also, and unbuttoned his vest, but did not take it off.
George comfortably settled down into his end of the davenport, and went to sleep. His absence did not make much difference in the conversation. Charlie continued his work on the bottle of brandy, but still it made no difference to him except that from the heat of the fire and from the brandy, his forehead was greasy with perspiration.
Ish could tell now that Ezra was swinging the conversation around, this way and that, to get more information about Charlie’s background. But finesse seemed not to be required, for Charlie talked frankly enough whenever the subject came close to him.
“So after she croaked—” he said. “That was after we’d lived together for quite a few years, ten or twelve, I guess. Well, after my woman died, I didn’t want to stay there no more, not around that place. So, when your boys came along, and I liked them, I picked up and came.”
As Charlie talked, Ish began to feel himself swinging in the other direction again. The boys liked Charlie immensely, and they had been with him for some time already. There was strength in Charlie, and charm also. Perhaps he would be a good man to add to the community. He noticed now that whole beads of sweat were standing out on Charlie’s forehead.
“Charlie,” he said, “you’d better take that vest off and be comfortable.”
Charlie started, but did not say anything.
“I’m sorry,” Ezra said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I’d better go home, get to bed.” But he made no move to go.
“Surely you can’t be getting a cold, Ez,” said Em. “There’s never been a cold!”
They persuaded Charlie to move, himself and his brandy bottle, to a place farther from the fire, but he kept his vest on.
