The World Ends In Hickory Hollow

by Mayhar, Ardath

  Zack bent over her. "Tonight, for thirty minutes, we'll turn it back on. We'll put all the other lights out and just sit and enjoy the tree. Okay?"

  She looked up at him. "Okay," she whispered.

  A moment of silence followed. It was, I guessed, the first time in her short life that she had verbally answered a question. It could have been the first time that her mind was not too blocked with terror to comprehend the question that was asked. It was, without doubt, a milepost in our relationship with her.

  Then we came to ourselves, subdued our smiles to a decent level, and went about cleaning up the mess we had made. Lisa sat on one of her cushions, her eyes alert and a strange expression about her mouth. In anyone else, it would have been the beginning of a smile, but Lisa was not used to such facial gymnastics. The wide grin that had come with her red light was the first true expression that we had ever caught on her face.

  It seemed a long time before darkness fell, even though the gray day should have cut the daylight short. We puttered with small chores, engaged in teasing and tale-telling, wandered into and out of the room where the tree stood. Supper was early, just to help kill time. But at last the windows made glossy mirrors against the blackness outside, and the time had come to light the tree again.

  Lisa had eaten absently. Her face was closed again, her eyes veiled. When we had cleared away the food and cleaned the dishes, we called the children to come into the Living room to help light the tree. She came almost reluctantly. The glow of the lights filled the room with magic, as it always had. I stood with one arm around Zack, the other around Mom Allie, and I stole a peep to catch the miniature tree sparkling in her glasses, twinned, as I used to do with my own parents. The moment took me back into the deeps of childhood, for an instant, and I shivered with the nameless anticipation that the season had always brought to me.

  The children were sitting on the rug in an arc before the tree. Sam was sitting, solid and square, between Jim, whose thin figure tingled with excitement, and Sukie, who glowed between him and Candy. Lisa had returned to her cushions and was beyond the range of my vision. We didn't talk, we only sat and looked (or stood and looked) and enjoyed.

  A strangled sob interrupted us. From Lisa's corner the gulping cry brought us all about. She was bent over, the pillow in her arms, her face buried in its embroidered bosom. Her shoulders heaved with the force of her crying. I was there almost before I knew that I had moved.

  I touched her shoulder hesitantly, but there was no sign of the instant pulling-away she had always showed. I picked her up, cushion and all, and carried her to my rocking chair, where I sat with her in my lap. She wept like a man, deep, racking convulsions, not the easy tears of a child or a woman. Her thin body shook in my arms until Zack came and knelt beside the rocker, putting his arms around both of us. Encircled so, Lisa's shaking eased, and the tears flowed more naturally.

  I took the cushion from her arms, very gently, and held her head against my shoulder. Her arms crept about my neck, quite timidly, and she tucked her wet cheek against my throat. Her other hand grasped Zack's arm.

  There in the dim and magical light of the Christmas tree, I smiled at my husband. He smiled back. Outside our small world, the greater world might lie in chaos. Mankind might be cast far back along the road we had so painfully traveled. Here there was life, there was love. Here, for a time at least, some of the values that had been the crown of our age were still alive and working.

  Early though it was, I washed Lisa's tear-stained face and put on her flannel nightgown. Then I took her into her cubbyhole and laid her in her cot. I sat beside her until she hiccupped herself to sleep. Then I tiptoed out, my own eyes dampish. For the first time, I didn't latch the pantry door.

  We sat, that evening, in the dim, warm light of the tree. Not one of us felt the need to read or to sew, to play a game or to do anything that required bright light. It was as if the wonderful thing that had happened in our midst had us caught, still, in its spell, and we feared that we might rupture that brightness if we unplugged the tree and turned on the reading lamps.

  We talked quietly, letting the warmth flow through us, letting our spirits grow calm and still. When bedtime came, we took turns for warm baths, and, of course, I waited until last of all.

  Soaking in the tub, I thanked God that we had provided so well for all our needs. The abandoned refrigerator, coupled with a burned-out water-heater core, augmented the warmed water that flowed about the firebox of our cookstove and on into the pipes, giving us an ample supply. We didn't have tubsful to soak in, but five gallons of really hot water can provide a bath fit for a king. The sun and the plentiful wood supply did the work that so many had worried about for so long in our recurring "energy crises."

  The bad weather continued for three days, and Christmas Eve found us better prepared for the event than we had thought possible. Though the older children, even Sam, had settled the Santa Claus issue, baby Candy was agog. The others, with the grave courtesy that well-reared children can show, hung their stockings beside hers and talked excitedly about what they might expect to get in them.

  When the loft was full of children who if not asleep were at least in bed, Lucas and Skinny, Josh and Elmond, Lantana and Miss Vera came through the moonlit frost of the night, their arms burdened with large parcels. Rag dolls emerged from the bundles. Wooden soldiers with jointed arms and legs that held them upright on flat black-paint boots. Scarves and caps knitted from the wools that we had garnered in town; acorn and hickory-nut-hull dishes and manikins. The old people had used the bad weather well, and there was enough for more than five children.

  Lisa had hung her long sock beside the others, saying nothing but puzzled past words. Her speech was coming, now, with fair regularity, but the questions in her face were too big for her short supply of language. I took special joy in stuffing her sock full of small, bright things. I topped it with a joyous homemade Raggedy Ann.

  We woke to a glorious morning. The sun was just illuminating the frost-filigreed weeds and branches and pine needles outside the windows, whose shutters we had opened, when Candy came down the chilly steps from the loft. She was barefoot, and she was demanding loudly to see her "tockin."

  The others were just behind her, their blase attitudes wiped out entirely by the reality of Christmas morning. They waited impatiently while we shod Candy, then all five (Lisa having emerged from her cubby) went into the living room in a bunch. Zack had gone before and plugged in the tree. The fire was crackling in the heater. The stockings were ranged along the back of the couch, where they had been pinned the night before. Now they stood stiff as Guardsmen, against the cushions.

  There was a concerted "Ooooh!'

  Jim and Sukie, Sam and Candy fell upon their treasures and began digging into them. Lisa stood before hers in utter surprise. Raggedy Ann grinned at her, her black button eyes sprinkled with colored reflections. Timidly, the child grinned back.

  "Take her out, honey, Zack whispered. "She's yours. All yours."

  With terrible slowness, Lisa drew the doll from the tight-fitting stocking, held her up, turned her about to admire the bow that tied her apron. She suddenly hugged her close to her thin chest. With much care, she tucked the bright yarn head against her in what I realized suddenly was exactly the way I had held her the night before. My eyes misted, and I turned them to the antics of the other children.

  Each of them, from Candy to Jim, sat in a circle of items of varying degrees of brightness, usefulness, or simple interest. Their faces were ... surprised.

  Zack took my hand. "If I'd thought about it, I would have said that we'd have no time nor energy for any Christmas doings, now that we're strictly on our own. But it's not true. I remember, now, that my granddad used to tell me about the fine Christmases they had when he was little. A few handmade toys, clothes that his mother had made from the basic cotton and wool to the finished things. A lot of love and ingenuity and make-do. He remembered it all his life, the magic his parents used to
make, likely taking all year's odd moments to do it. This may be the last tree with colored lights, Luce, but we'll have a tree as long as we're able to go out and cut one."

  "And we'll make Christmas for the children, and they'll do it for theirs ... if we survive," I added.

  Then our other household descended on us, anxious to learn the effect of their long hours of work.. None were disappointed. The small things we adults had made for one another were opened and admired, but Christmas, we learned again, is seen through the eyes of children.

  And Lisa, her doll tight against her shoulder, her pockets stuffed with strung-acorn dolls and teacups made of hickory-nut hulls, opened like a flower, her thin body seeming almost to grow rounder with the fullness of her happiness. She spoke, now and again, breathless monosyllables that we took turns in answering, whether they made sense or not.

  Our Christmas feast was a bit odd. Baked hen and cornbread dressing, with every sort of vegetable, centered the table, of course. But the bright cranberries, the exotic olives that had always been a part of it were as inaccessible as if they had existed on another planet. Nuts and stewed dried fruit filled in nicely, but I felt an uncontrollable twinge as I thought of the things that I had known as part of my life that our descendants would never know, save as tales out of our youth.

  Then I thought of the things that had been twisted and warped, the things that we had fled from when we left Houston. Those, too, were gone, just as irrevocably. I smiled about the table. My husband, my children, my mother-in-law and my friends who were fast becoming family smiled back, and I wouldn't have changed a thing that had happened in the past weeks, even if I could have.

  CHAPTER TEN

  With the turning of the year, new vigor seemed to surge in all of us, as well as in the soil underfoot. Even Nellie Sweetbrier mended quickly and was able to wander about the nearer wood and the gardens, looking for wild edibles to transplant, planning rows of vegetables to come. And, in truth, we all felt the sap beginning to flow again.

  Those in the unfortunate North must wait until spring to begin their farming, but here we break garden ground in January, the weather permitting, and plant greens and radishes and lettuce and many things that germinate in cool ground. And we were fortunate in the new year. The bitter weather that had raked November and part of December gave way to warm days and nights just chilly enough to be brisk.

  While Lantana, Mom Allie, Miss Vera, Suzi, Nellie, and I took turns turning the gardens behind the fat pony, the men were breaking ground for corn. The breeze came from the south, balmy in midday, and the soil crumbled richly to the plows. Now we knew that we must scrounge in earnest. We had saved seed corn, the old-fashioned flint variety that bred true.

  But we had had no way to know that it must serve so many, or that there would be no way to buy any more. Lucas and Skinny put their heads together and came up with four names. "Arthur Simkins, Lanny Bushing, Teddy Bolt, and Lemuel Satterwhite raise lots of popcorn and Indian corn," Lucas said.

  "They've always held a lot for seed. If they're there, we can trade honey or alcohol or canned stuff for it. If they're not: ... well, it's not the same world that it was."

  So Miss Vera and I went scrounging for seed-corn, taking the pickup, which we had finally adapted to burn alcohol. That being in good supply, because of the ample supply of acorns, hickory nuts, spoiled corn, and such that we continually fed into the fermenting buckets, we carried extra in five-gallon milk cans that we had salvaged from one of the abandoned dairies up the road. Whether we might need it for trading or for refueling we didn't know, but it felt good to have it along.

  The roads had gone wild in those few weeks. In places, so much debris had blown onto the asphalt that it was invisible for as much as forty feet. Branches, loose grass, and dirt that had washed about in the flooding we had experienced, even trees, made a weird tangle of the road that had, two months before, been exceptionally smooth and well cared for. We used the chain saw several times in order to go through.

  The Bolt farm was south of us, Miss Vera said. As she knew every man, child, and dog that lived anywhere in the county or ever had, I followed her directions, and we arrived safely at a mailbox that was labeled rather fancifully with a large bolt run through a flange welded to its top. Smoke was coming from the chimney of the house, and we smiled at one another as we bumped down the washed-out driveway toward the square frame house.

  Before we had gone halfway, a lanky figure had started up the drive to meet us. Though there was a wide grin on his face, Bolt carried a ten-gauge shotgun in the crook of his arm. When he saw Miss Vera's round face, though, he gave a loud whoop, and a short, dumpy woman came out into the open, setting down her own shotgun to come forward and greet us as we jounced to a stop.

  "Hellfire!" he yelled. "Josie, it's Vera! Thought she'd be dead an' gone, with all the rest of the folks we knew. But here she is, sound as a dollar."

  "Teddy," grunted his wife, "you're a fool. The dollar doesn't even exist anymore. Sound as a dollar! Sound as a hickory nut, maybe. Not a dollar!"

  So, squabbling amiably, they escorted us from the car into their house. It was the sort of shoddily built shanty that most of the poorer people have lived in as long as I can remember. You could see out of cracks around the window frames. The door sagged so that a wedge of sky showed above one corner. The room was hot, however, from the ferocious blaze on the dinky brick hearth.

  When we stated our errand, Teddy Bolt's face grew even redder than its normal turkey-gobbler hue. "Alcohol! Lord, I'd give anything I've got, 'cept Josie, for a drink of good old white lightnin'. Sure, I've got more seed-corn than I can ever plant for just the two of us. Alcohol."

  "Theodore!" snapped Miss Vera, "this is fuel alcohol, not drinkin' alcohol. You drink this stuff and you'll look like your great-uncle Robert that had the jack-leg when he was young, from moonshine. If you live, that is. We make a little good stuff for medicine and such, but the stuff that comes out of the barrels would kill a goat."

  His face fell, and Josie grinned unsympathetically. "Got nothin' to burn it in," she chuckled. "You have anythin' else to trade?"

  "Honey and canned goods," I said.

  Both their faces broke into grins.. "Honey! We've intended for years to get us some bees, but never seemed to get around to it. We'll trade you corn all day and all night for a good jug of honey."

  "A gallon do?" asked Miss Vera, and both nodded vigorously. So the deal was made, and we left the Bolts behind, bickering happily over who would make the biscuits to spread the honey on. I met nobody else, then or ever, who lived so nearly as they always had, without fear of the present or worry about the future. They paid us a visit, a year later, riding two spavined mules that must have taken a full week to cover the forty miles between our farms, and they were no older, no sadder, no wiser than they had been on that first visit. They were perfect examples of the best and the worst of the "po' white trash" that so many had labored for so long to bring into the mainstream of ambition, ulcers, and money. They were healthy, tough, and durable, and they'll die as they've lived, in their own way and at their own time.

  Miss Vera had routed us in a large arc, so as to make all the farms we needed to make contact with, yet avoid backtracking. The Satterwhites were west of us, northwest of the Bolts. We rattled and rumbled over mud roads that were no better and no worse than ever, as they were always just short of impassable. We snaked back and forth, up and down hills, and when we hit Highway 69 we were less than five miles from the place we were aiming for.

  There was a white gate, closed across a neatly graveled drive. In the distance we could see an immaculately white house, low and many-windowed beneath its green roof. No sign of life moved about it, no smoke curled from the stone chimney. We opened the white gate and crept down the drive cautiously, in case anyone there might be trigger-happy.

  No one was. Not a living soul was on the place, though there was enough wood cut for the winter, the root cellar was full, and in the fields b
ehind the house cattle scrounged through the winter-killed grass. The door wasn't locked, and Miss Vera, with the self-confidence of her age and class, tapped once, yoo-hooed, and walked in.

  She walked back out immediately, her face white.

  "Somebody's in there ... dead. Mighty dead. I don't want to know. Let's go look in the crib in the barn. " She turned on her heel.

  The barn was tidier than my house usually stays. Everything was whitewashed that would hold still for it, all the woodwork was in good repair, and even the corncrib was clean. No cobwebs festooned the corners, no felted layers of dust lay on the piles of bags in the corners. The seed-corn was in coarse white bags, labeled clearly "popcorn" and "colored Indian corn."

  We took a bag of each, feeling like thieves, even though we well knew that whoever came to live here again would not be a Satterwhite and would never know or care that part of the seed-corn was gone. While I manhandled the bags to the truck, Miss Vera, in her indomitable way, poked about the barn, then went into the stables.

  Once again, her curiosity got her into trouble. I heard a stifled cry and dropped the last bag into the pickup, then hotfooted it for the stable. In the gloom I could see her round figure coming toward me, and her face was, again, white.

  "It's Amos. Ella must have died of something, there in the house. When she was gone, Amos came out here and ... " She gestured.

  In the corner a long figure swayed from a beam. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I could see that it was a man of about sixty. He had been so thin that even the bloat of death hadn't made him look much larger than he had in life. The scent of the alfalfa hay stored along the wall muted the stink until it was little noticeable-or perhaps Amos had been so emaciated that there wasn't anything left to smell.

  Two months before, I would have been profoundly shaken. Now I looked at him, looked at Miss Vera, and asked, "Do you want me to bury him?"

  She shook her head. "I wouldn't feel right about doing him and not doing Ella. And she ... she'd be a terrible chore. As the Bible says, let the dead bury the dead. 1 never understood that before. Now I know."