“Now,” he said, “if you’ll forget all about the revolver and the Bowie, I’ve got some sticks here; and I’ll run you through just a few things that might help you with real knife trouble. Take one of the longer sticks. We’ll use them like knives.”
The sticks were about as thick and round as broomstick handles. Jeebee picked one that was about sixteen inches long and, standing at a little more than arm’s length from Nick, tried to imitate the other’s stance.
“If you want to make best use of the longer blade,” said Nick, “you probably shouldn’t stand like me. Let your right foot lead. You won’t be able to make much use of your empty hand, but it’ll give you another six inches of reach. All right, that’s better. Come at me, then.”
“No,” Jeebee said cautiously, “you come at me first.”
“Good. You remembered,” said Nick, “let the other man make the first move.” He was still talking when suddenly Jeebee found himself tripped by something hooked behind his right ankle. He fell heavily on his back, and a moment later one of Nick’s boots was pinning down his arm that held the stick, while the other one rested lightly with its boot edge against his Adam’s apple.
“I thought you were going to show me about knife fighting!” Jeebee said.
“That is part of knife fighting,” said Nick. “It’s your ‘third’ hand. I find people remember that part of it better if I simply show them before I tell them about it. Do you remember what I did just now?”
Jeebee had to stop and remember, as if he was rerunning a memory tape in his head. He remembered Nick suddenly dropping toward the ground, then he had been tripped—that was all that came to mind.
He said as much. Nick laughed.
“Watch,” he said, “I’ll do it slowly for you.”
He took the weight of his one boot off Jeebee’s arm and the touch of his other boot off Jeebee’s throat and stood back.
“I did this,” he said.
He dropped vertically suddenly until he was squatting on one leg. The other leg snaked out and swung in an arc at full length before him, the toe of the boot turned inward.
“That tripped you up,” Nick said. “Then it was simply a matter of stepping on your arm and on your throat. If I’d wanted to, I could have crushed your throat and everything would’ve been over right then and there.”
“I’m going to have to practice getting down and doing that leg swing,” Jeebee said ruefully.
“Practice all you want,” said Nick, “but remember that that’s just one thing you can do. When you’re fighting, a knife is just one of the things you fight with. Most people forget that, just like most people think that if you point a gun at them, it’s all over and you might as well give up. Not necessarily. Now, if you’re interested, we will work with the actual sticks themselves while we’re on our feet.”
They practiced for a while with the sticks. Jeebee tried desperately to use his longer arms and stick to keep the stick Nick held from touching him, but he was a constant failure. If they had actually been holding knives, Nick would have killed him a dozen times over.
At the same time, Jeebee’s mind was reacting in its usual manner by trying to remember what he was going through and to see some pattern in it. He was just beginning to see what he thought of as that pattern when Nick called a halt.
“Enough for now.” Nick reached out with his left hand to take the stick from Jeebee’s hand. “You’re beginning to get jumpy and poke out blindly. After you leave us, try it the same way you’d try shadowboxing. Just imagine me or somebody coming at you with a knife and imagine what you’d have to do to block him. Let’s go to breakfast.”
This morning Merry was making the breakfast, and Nick would be washing up afterwards, now that Jeebee was leaving. They ate pancakes and bacon, and after they were done, Merry took off her apron and put her hand on Jeebee’s arm.
“Come along,” she said, “come on back with me to the horses.”
Jeebee swallowed a final syrup-drenched piece of pancake, gulped the last of his coffee from its cup, and got up. The two of them went out of the wagon, climbed down to the ground, and walked together toward the back of it, behind which the horses were picketed.
Merry went briskly, so that he had to stretch his legs to keep up with her. It was almost as if she brought him along with an invisible grip on his ear with her fingers. Behind the wagon, Jeebee saw that tied directly to it was one horse already saddled, and tied to that saddle with a lead rope, another horse, which must be his packhorse, which had only a blanket on its back secured by a strap around its belly.
On the ground next to this horse was a pile of gear ready to travel. Merry took him to it.
“Here you go,” she said over her shoulder, “and here’s something I particularly wanted you to have.”
From a sack, the drawstring of which she had untied, she brought out a ball of dark blue yarn, thick strands, and a couple of long knitting needles stuck through the ball.
“There’s a book here, too,” she said, rummaging in a small box, and produced it. It was not so much a book as a thick pamphlet, with paper covers. The title
“You study this now,” she said sternly, “and you work with the needles and the yarn. Learn how to knit things for yourself. You’ll need them more than you think, and they can be more use to you than anything you can imagine. You’ll have all winter long someplace where you’ve nothing to do but knit, so you might as well start learning now. You’ll need socks, sweaters, everything else. Look here!”
From the same box she produced a pair of socks knitted of bright red yarn. They looked enormous, and Jeebee estimated that they would come well up to his knee, if not over it. The feet were very large and the legs were wide. He felt slightly embarrassed, since clearly she had guessed at his feet and leg sizes and had got them wrong.
“I don’t think you understand,” she said, looking at his face. “When winter comes, you’re going to need to wear layers of all kinds of clothes, including three or four pairs of socks. This is the pair that goes outside everything else, that’s why I made them so big. I made it exactly according to the diagram and directions on page forty-nine. The first thing you do is try to make another pair of socks just like it; and you can look at this pair to see how close you’re coming. Do you understand that?”
“Oh, I see!” said Jeebee. “I… thank you. I never thought of anything like this. I’ll do just what you say. I’ll learn how to knit.”
“You’ll make a lot of mistakes while you’re learning, and there’s going to be no one around to help. It’ll be you and the book,” said Merry. “But if you keep on trying, you’ll get to where you can make socks, sweaters—all sorts of things. Mittens too. Don’t forget mittens!”
She passed him the pamphlet and dug back into the box, coming up with another paper-bound volume. She shoved it into his hands.
“This,” she said. “This will give you instructions on how to skin animals, how to tan the hide, and how to use it making clothing and shoes. Study that, too!”
“I will,” he said. The gear that was to go on the back of Sally, the packhorse, was piled on the green plastic groundsheet that could have its edges tied together to protect its contents from rain. He stooped to put what she had just given him into one of the loading bags that had room to take it.
Pushing it into one of the bags, he stopped, staring at what was laid out on the groundsheet before him.
“Now,” said Merry’s voice crisply, “let’s see you load Sally and see if you do it right.”
He straightened up and looked at her.
“I wasn’t supposed to get all this stuff,” he said, waving a hand at the items on the groundsheet. “Paul said —”
“He changed his mind,” Merry said, still crisply. She looked straight at him. He stared back, his mind fumbling for words he wanted to say to her and finding none.
“Paul only promised… ” he began at last, unsurely.
“It’s that gold of yours,” she said, still looking him in the eye as if daring him to argue. “He’d been valuing it at the minimum he could get for it. Instead, he decided to value it for the maximum. There can be a big difference; particularly if he can sell those coins in one of the southern cities that didn’t burn itself to the ground, or have everyone in it shoot each other trying to stay alive after the power, water, and food stopped coming in.”
“He didn’t say anything about changing his mind to me.” Even to Jeebee’s ears, his own words sounded weak and unconvincing. It was hardly Paul’s way to announce his reasons for anything he did, even for a change as
