Earth Abides

by George R. Stewart

  Half an hour later, when they came to the proper streetcorner, Ish looked through the dirty display-window, and his heart jumped with boyish excitement at seeing a jeep actually standing there.

  The boys tied up the teams, and the dogs, well-trained, lay down in orderly fashion without snarling the tram. Dick tried the door; it was locked.

  "Here," said Ish, "take the hammer, and smash the lock."

  "Oh, here's a brick!" said Dick, and then went running off down the street toward the remains of a chimney that had fallen in the earthquake. Bob went with him.

  Ish had a feeling of irritation. What was wrong with those boys? At best a brick was not as good as the hammer for smashing a door in. He ought to know; he had smashed a lot of them.

  He stepped three strides across the sidewalk, and swinging with the hammer on the rhythm of his last stride, he sent the door crashing inwards. That would show them! After a, there had been sense in bringing the hammer!

  The jeep that was standing there in the display-room had four flat tires, and showed a thick layer of dust, but under the dust the red paint was shiny. The speedometer showed a total of nine miles. Ish shook his head.

  "No," he said, "this one's too new. I mean, she was too new! One that was better broken in will be easier for us."

  In the garage behind the display-room, there were several others. All their tires were flat, extremely flat. One had its hood up and various of its parts were scattered around. It must have been in for a repair-job. Ish passed that one by.

  There seemed little to choose between the others. The speedometer of one of them stood at six thousand, and Ish decided to try that one.

  The boys looked at him expectantly, and Ish felt that he was putting himself to the test.

  "Now remember," he said defensively, "I don't know whether I can get this thing going or not. I don't know whether anyone could—after twenty years and more! I'm not even a mechanic, you know! I was just one of those ordinary fellows who had driven a car quite a lot and could change a fire, or tighten a fan-belt, maybe. Don't expect too much.... Well, first, we might try to see if we can move her."

  Ish made sure that the brake was off and the gears in neutral.

  "All right," he said. "The tires are flat, and the grease is stiff in the wheel-bearings, and for all I know maybe the bearings themselves have gone flat from standing twenty years the same way. But come on and get behind her, and we'll shove. This floor is level anyway.... All right, now. All together—shove!" The car lurched suddenly forward!

  The boys were yelping with pleasure and excitement, and their noise set the dogs to barking. You would have thought it was all over, whereas all that had been proved was that the wheels still would turn.

  Next Ish put the gear into high, and they shoved again. This was a different story. The car did not budge.

  The question was now whether the engine and gears were merely stiff from disuse or whether they were actually rusted tight somewhere.

  Looking under the hood, Ish saw that the engine was well smeared with grease, as engines usually were. There was little sign of external rust, but that might show nothing about what had happened inside.

  The boys looked at him expectantly, and he thought of expedients. He could try the other car. He could have the boys bring the dog-teams in and hitch them to the car. Then he had another idea.

  The jeep which had been in the process of being repaired was only some ten feet behind the one they had chosen to try. If they could shove that one forward out of gear, they might send it against the rear of the other with enough momentum to make something give. Also they might smash something, but that was no matter!

  They brought this jeep within two feet of the other, and rested. Then, altogether, they shoved again.

  There was a satisfactory bang of metal on metal. Going to look, they found that the first jeep had moved three inches. After that, they could move it with hard pushing, even when it was in gear. Ish began to feel triumphant.

  "You see," he said, "once you get something moving it's easier to keep moving!" (Then he wondered whether that principle applied to groups of people, as well as to engines.)

  The battery of course was dead, but Ish had faced that problem before. First, however, he gave the boys instructions to drain all oil out of the car and replace it with oil from sealed cans, using the lightest oil available.

  Leaving them at work, he went off with a dog-team. In half an hour he was back with a battery. He connected it, and turned the key in the ignition switch, watching the needle on the ammeter. Nothing happened. Perhaps the wiring was gone somewhere.

  But he tapped the ammeter, and the long unused needle suddenly disengaged and went jiggling over to Discharge. There was life! He felt around for the starter-button.

  "Well, boys," he said, "here's a real test.... Yes, I guess this is the acid test, seeing that that's what we have in the battery!" But the boys grinned blankly, never having heard the expression, and Ish found himself a little disturbed that he had been able to make a pun at such a climax. He pressed t ' he starter-button. There was a long grunt.

  Then slowly the engine turned!

  After the first turn it moved more easily, and then more easily still. So far, so good!

  The gasoline-tank was empty, like most of them these days. Probably their caps were not air-tight, or else the gasoline seeped through the carburetor-Ish did not know.

  They found gasoline in a drum, and poured five gallons into the tank. Ish put in fresh spark-plugs. He primed the carburetor, feeling a little proud that he knew enough to do so. He got into the seat, set the choke, snapped the ignition on again, and tramped on the starter-button.

  The engine grunted, turned over, turned faster, and then suddenly roared into life.

  The boys were shouting. Ish sat triumphantly, nursing the throttle with his foot. He felt a sense of pride in the old achievements of civilization-in all the honest design and honest work of engineers and machinists which had gone into fashioning this engine, fit to work after twenty-some years of idleness.

  The engine, however, died suddenly when the gas in the carburetor was exhausted. They primed and ran it again, and still again, and finally the ancient pump brought up gas from the tank, and the engine ran continuously. The problem now—and perhaps the worst of all—was tires.

  In the same display-room there was one of the usual tireracks well raised above the floor. But the tires had been standing upright for so long that they had sagged a little under their own weight, and the rubber, where it had rested against the rack, was badly indented. Such tires, even though they might last for a few miles, held obviously little possibility for a long run. By searching carefully, they finally found some fires which had been resting on their sides, and these seemed to be in'better condition, although the rubber was hard and full of little cracks, and gave an impression of being dead.

  They found a jack, and raised the first wheel from the ground. Even to get the wheel off was a struggle, for the nuts had begun to rust to the threads.

  Bob and Dick were unaccustomed to the use of tools, and little Joey kept getting in the way with his eagerness, and was more hindrance than help. Even in the Old Times Ish had never dismounted a tire except once or twice in an emergency, and he had forgotten the tricks, if he had ever known them.

  They spent a long time sweating the first tire off the rim. Bob barked a knuckle, and Dick tore a finger-nail half off. Getting the "new" tire onto the rim was even more of a struggle, both because of their clumsiness and because of the tire's own aged stiffness. At last, tired and thoroughly irritated with one another and with the whole job, they finished getting this one tire onto the rim.

  Just as they were pausing, triumphant but tired, Ish heard Joey calling to him from across the garage.

  "What is it, Joey?" he answered, a little petulantly.

  "Come here, Daddy."

  "Oh, Joey, I'm tired," he said, but he went, and the two other boys trailed with him. Joey was pointi
ng at the spare wheel of one of the jeeps.

  "Look, Daddy," he said, "why couldn't you use that one?"

  All Ish could do was to burst out laughing.

  "Well, boys," he said to Dick and Bob, "that's the time we made fools of ourselves!"

  The tire on the spare wheel had been suspended in the air all these years, and it was already on a wheel. They had not needed to shift any tires. All they had needed to do was to take this and the other spares, pump them up, and put them on their own jeep. They had done a lot of work for no purpose because they had just barged along and not used their heads.

  Then Ish, suddenly recognizing his own stupidity, strangely gained a new pleasure. Joey was the one who had seen! But by now it was time for lunch.

  They had brought along only their spoons and always essential can-openers. Now they went off to the nearest grocery store.

  Like all the others it was a scene of devastation and litter and ruin. A mess! It was depressing to Ish, even horrible, in spite of the many times he had seen its like. The boys, however, thought nothing of it, never having seen a grocery store in any other state. Rats and mice had chewed into all the cartons, and the floor was deep with the remnants of cardboard and paper, mixed with rodent droppings. Even the toilet paper had been chewed, probably for nesting.

  But the rodents could do nothing with glass or tin, and so the bottles and cans were undisturbed. They even looked startlingly neat, at first glance, in contrast with the mess elsewhere. When you looked closer, they were not really neat. Droppings were scattered even on these shelves, and many labels had been chewed, probably because of the paste beneath the paper. Also the colors had faded, so that the once bright red tomatoes on the labels were a sickly yellow, and the rosy-cheeked peaches had almost disappeared.

  The labels, however, were still readable. At least, Ish and Joey could read them, and the others, though they got stuck on many hard words like apricots and asparagus, could at least tell what was inside by looking at the pictures. They selected what they wanted.

  The boys were quite ready to sit down in the litter and eat. Ish, however, wanted to get outside. So they went and sat on the curb in the sun.

  They did not bother with a fire, but ate a cold lunch out of the cans, each to his choice, from a selection of baked beans, sardines, salmon, liver loaf, corned beef, olives, peanuts, and asparagus. Such a meal, Ish knew, ran high in proteins and fats and low in carbohydrates, but there were few carbohydrates that had been canned or bottled, and the few that you could find, like hominy and macaroni, called for heating. For drink, they had tomato juice. They ate a desert of canned nectarines and pineapple.

  When they had finished, they wiped off the spoons and can-openers and put them back into their pockets. The half-empty cans they merely left lying. There was so much litter in the street already that something more did not matter.

  The boys, Ish was glad to notice, were in a hurry to get back to work at the car. They had apparently begun to feel a little of the intoxication that was likely to come from a mastery over power. He himself was a little tired, 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 too fast. The intellect should not run ahead of the rest of the personality. Joey needed physical strength and emotional solidity. Still, he was going far!

  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.

&nb
sp; 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's 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 run 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 of natural banks and hillocks. Grass was growing thickly; on one little mound there was even a fair stand of bushes. Ish steered stiffly hither and thither, finding a way along the debris-clogged streets. He was nearing home when he bumped sharply over a brick and heard a bang as the left rear tire out. He ended the day driving home on one flat tire, bumping 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, and 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.