older than Fort Repose. Looking around, Randy could find no spot more suitable for a grave. He stepped off six feet and marked a rectangle within the crescent. He and Dan began to dig.
After a few minutes Randy removed his sweater. This was no easy job. Dan stopped and inspected his plans. He said, “I’m getting ditch digger’s hands. Very bad for a surgeon.” They continued to dig, steadily, until it was awkward working from the surface. Randy stepped into the deepening grave. They had made a discovery. A grave designed to accommodate one person must be dug by one person alone.
When Randy paused, winded, Bill McGovern stepped down and took the shovel, saying, “I’ll spell you.”
From above, Lib watched. Presently she said, “That’s enough for you, Dad. Remember the blood pressure. I don’t want to lose you too.” She stepped into the hole and relieved him of the shovel. After he climbed out, panting and white-faced, she thrust the shovel savagely into the sand. As she dug, her stature increased in Randy’s eyes. She was like a fine sword, slender and flexible, but steel; a woman of courage. It was not gentlemanly, but Randy allowed her to dig, recognizing that physical effort was an outlet for her emotions. When her pace slowed he dropped into the hole and took the shovel. “That’s enough. Dan and I will finish. You and your father had better go back to the house and get on with your packing.”
“You don’t want us to help you carry her out, do you?” “I think it would be better if you didn’t.”
Dan reached down and lifted her out of the hole.
When the grave was finished, they wrapped Lavinia’s emaciated body in her bed sheets, Her coffin was an electric blanket and her hearse a wheelbarrow. They lowered her into the five-foot hole and packed in the sand and loam afterwards, leaving an insignificant mound. Randy knew that when spring came the mound would flatten with the rains, the grass would swiftly cover it, and by June it would have disappeared entirely.
Randy called the McGoverns. There was no service, no spoken word. They all stood silent for a moment and then Bill McGovern said, “We don’t even have a wooden marker for her, or a sliver of stone, do we?”
“We could take something out of the house,” Randy suggested, “a statue or a vase or something.”
“It isn’t necessary,” Lib said. `The house is my mother’s monument.”
This of course was true. They turned from the grave and back to their work.
That evening Bill McGovern, with some eagerness, walked to the Henrys’ house and talked to Malachai. Together they went along the river bank to Sam Hazzard’s house and conferred with him on a plan for supplying power for the Admiral’s short-wave receiver.
Dan Gunn drove to Fort Repose to visit the homeless, some of them sick or burned, lodged in the school.
Randy and Lib McGovern sat alone on the front porch steps, Lib’s elbows on her knees, her chin supported by her hands, Randy’s arms encircling her shoulders. She was speaking of her mother. “I’m sure she never really comprehended what happened on The Day, or ever could. Perhaps I am only rationalizing, but I think her death was an act of mercy.”
Randy heard someone running up the driveway and then he saw the figure and recognized Ben Franklin. “Ben!” he called. “What’s the matter?”
Ben stopped, out of breath, and said, “Something’s happened at Miss Wechek’s!”
Randy rose, ready to get his pistol. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was just walking by her house and I heard somebody scream. I think Miss Wechek. Then I heard her crying.”
Randy said, “We’d better take a look, Lib. You stay here, Ben.”
Yellow candlelight shone from Florence’s kitchen. They went to the back door. Florence was wailing and Randy entered without bothering to knock.
As he opened the screen door green and yellow feathers fluttered around his feet. Florence’s head rested on her arms on the kitchen table. She was dressed in a quilted, rose-hued robe. Alice Cooksey was with her, coaxing water to a boil on a Sterno kit. Randy said, “What seems to be the trouble?”
Florence raised her head. Her untidy pink hair was moist and stringy. Her eyes were swollen. “Sir Percy ate Anthony!” she said. She began to sob.
“She’s had a terrible day,” said Alice Cooksey. “I’m trying to make tea. She’ll be better after she’s had tea.”
“What all happened?” Randy asked.
“It really began yesterday,” Alice said. “When we woke up yesterday morning the angelfish were dead. You know how cold it was night before last, and of course without electricity there’s no heat for the aquarium. And this morning all the mollies and neons were dead. As a matter of fact nothing’s alive in the tank except the miniature catfish and a few guppies. And then, this evening-”
“Sir Percy,” Florence interrupted, “a murderer!”
“Hush, dear,” Alice said. “The water will be boiling in a moment.” She turned to Randy. “Florence really shouldn’t blame Sir Percy. After all, there’s been no milk for him, and very little of anything else. As a matter of fact, we haven’t seen Sir Perry in three or four days-I suppose he was out hunting for himself but a few minutes ago when Anthony flew home Sir Percy was on the porch.”
“Ambushed poor Anthony,” Florence said. “Actually ambushed him. Killed him and ate him right there on the porch. Poor Cleo.”
“Where’s Sir Percy now?” Randy asked.
“He’s gone again,” Alice said. “He’d better not come back.” Randy was thoughtful. Hunting cats would be a problem. And what would happen to dogs? He still had a few cans of dog food for Graf, but he could foresee a time when humans might look upon dog food as a delicacy. He said aloud, but speaking to himself rather than the others, “Survival of the fittest.”
“What do you mean?” Lib said.
“The strong survive. The frail die. The exotic fish die because the aquarium isn’t heated. The common guppy lives. So does the tough catfish. The house cat turns hunter and eats the pet bird. If he didn’t, he’d starve. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Florence had stopped crying. “You mean, with humans? You mean, we humans are going to have to turn savage, like Sir Percy? Well, I can’t do it. I don’t want to live in that kind of a world, Randy.”
“You’ll live, Florence,” Randy said.
Walking back to his own house, Randy said, “Florence is a guppy, a nice, drab little guppy. That’s why she’ll survive.” “What about you and me?” Lib said.
“We’re going to have to be tough. We’re going to have to be catfish.”
Chapter 8
On a morning in April, four months after The Day, Randy Bragg awoke and watched a shaft of sunlight creep down the wall. At the foot of the couch, Graf squirmed and then wormed his way upward under the blanket. During the January cold spell Randy had discovered a new use for Graf. The dachshund made a most satisfactory foot warmer, mobile, automatic, and operating on a minimum of fuel which he would consume anyway. Randy flung off the blanket and swung his feet to the floor. He was hungry. He was always hungry. No matter how much he ate the night before, he was always starving in the morning. He never had enough fats, or sweets, or starches, and the greater part of each day was usually spent in physical effort of one kind or another. Downstairs, Helen and Lib would be preparing breakfast. Before Randy ate he would shower and shave. These were painful luxuries, almost his only remnant of routine from before The Day.
Randy walked to the bar-counter and began to sharpen his razor. The razor was a six-inch hunting knife. He honed its edges vigorously on a whetstone and then stropped it on a belt nailed to the wall. A clean, smooth, painless shave was one of the things he missed, but not what he missed most.
He missed music. It had been a long time since he had heard music. The record player and his collection of LP’s of course were useless without electricity. Music was no longer broadcast, any where. Anyway, his second and last set of batteries for the transistor radio was losing strength. Very soon, they would have neither flashlights nor any means of receiving radio except through the Admiral’s short wave. WSMF in San Marco was no longer operating. Something had happened to the diesel supplying the hospital and the radio station and it was impossible to find spare parts. This was the word that had come from San Marco, eighteen miles away. It had required two days for the word to reach Fort Repose.
He missed cigarettes, but not so much. Dan Gunn still had a few pounds of tobacco, and had lent him a pipe. Randy found more pleasure in a pipe after each meal, and one before bedtime, than he had ever found in a whole carton of cigarettes. With tobacco so limited, each pipe was a luxury, relaxing and wonderful.
