by LeMay, Jim
Across the slope Matt saw Leighton fill his wooden pipe with some of the pot from Summerfield Crossing, suck in a deep draught, and pass it to Kincaid. Then he retrieved the pipe and angled up the slope toward Matt, sat down, and without a word, passed the pipe to him. Matt took in a deep hit, felt the familiar deep relaxed tingle spread out toward his extremities. He handed the pipe to Leighton who inhaled deeply and passed it back. Matt’s next hit spread the luxurious feeling yet further.
“Y’ know, Perfessor,” said Leighton after another turn with the pipe. “You talk just like y’ was a book. I can’t read a course, but if I could ... I mean, what y’ said ’bout me an’ the boys back there ... I mean, I bet there’s somethin’ written in a book somewheres that sounds like that.”
Another deep inhalation sent the pleasant tingle all the way to Matt’s fingertips. “Like as not,” he said. Leighton left after they finished the pipe.
That was Leighton’s way, he realized, of thanking him for support in the confab.
* * * *
Though Matt and Lou left for Summerfield Crossing before first light, the late summer heat was already stifling. They stayed out of the open as much as possible, not only to avoid detection by Chadwick’s men but by local people as well. Matheson’s group may have offered them a reward just as the Brown Man had Matt. Of course they had learned to avoid unfamiliar settlements over the years in any case. Most of them were, quite understandably, hostile to armed gangs.
“A price on our head,” joked Lou when he and Matt discussed the Brown Man’s offer, “just like some gang out of the old west – Butch Cassidy or Jesse James or Sam Bass.”
But the only sign of habitation they saw was a thread of smoke from a cook fire rising from a distant chimney. Lou thought he saw a shadowy figure moving in the trees around the house. “Probably went out for his morning shit,” he guessed. They kept their distance.
The only town, village really, they came across had burnt completely to the ground. They had no way of telling if it had been the victim of lightning or pillage. They saw a few farmhouses and outbuildings, mostly in ruins as well, some burnt, some sagging in collapse. Many of these had probably been uninhabited even before the Last Days. People leaving the cities tended to stay near them, in existing older villages or new developments built just for expatriates from the cities, not in areas as remote as this. They remained alert even when they saw no signs of habitation or their enemies, spoke little, and moved quickly across openings in the vegetation. Their grim mission and the growing humid heat oppressed them, as did the quiet. As always, it depressed Matt to pass through a desolate wilderness that had once been populated.
They were closer to the clearing than they thought; they reached it well before midday. Before starting their main task, they looked around for items Matheson and his men may have missed. Stony had tried to thwart the “critters” by hanging their food in bags in the trees, but all but one had been plundered, a bag of dried beans.
“Damn, I’m sick of beans,” said Lou when he found them.
“At least the squirrels have good taste,” said Matt. “They took everything but the beans.”
They had especially hoped to find one or both of the crossbows. Johnson had purchased these expensive but very powerful weapons out of the gang’s funds to use for hunting. The dwindling supply of ammunition for firearms was too dear to squander on game. Regular bows were more accurate for shooting at longer distances, but no one in the gang was a good enough archer to manipulate one and the crossbow could be aimed more or less like a firearm. Unfortunately, as expected, they found neither of them.
Then the task of burial could be delayed no longer. They found precious little of Johnson and Dodd to bury, and scavengers had dragged parts of what they did find all over the clearing and beyond. They found nothing at all of Downing.
Afterwards, Matt and Lou never spoke of this day and tried to think of it as little as possible.
They reached the Newcastle bank after dark. Stony had left out some cold smoked venison. Tired and not very hungry, they ate only a little and went right to sleep.
* * * *
The next morning Mitch woke everyone early. It was still dark in the basement, but when Matt went outside to piss with the others, he saw the first glimmer of dawn tint the sky above the buildings across the street. They had a breakfast of dried apricots (of which they were all heartily sick by now) and corn meal cakes Stony had prepared. (Doc offered his opinion that Stony had gained his nickname from the consistency of these cakes rather than from his name, Harold Stone.)
The number of men available for scrounging was limited. Doc refused to let Mitch or Stony scrounge or man the guard posts until their wounds healed further. As leader, Mitch could have excluded himself from guard duty in any case (Johnson always did) but he insisted that they were too shorthanded as it was. He would take his turn as soon as Doc permitted. They needed to leave town as soon as possible with as much truck as possible if they were to find a market before the season was over. Despite the need for scroungers, though, Mitch insisted that the guard posts be maintained against the possibility, albeit slight, that their enemies returned. That left five men to scrounge. Those not on guard duty divided into two crews and began work.
Doc did declare Stony fit enough to set snares in the brush and other rabbit haunts around the town’s perimeter and to search for edible vegetables. Matt and Lou found the basement vacant when they returned from their guard posts in the evening. They headed for the draw; everyone but their replacements must have been there. Even before they reached it, the scent of a brothy stew assailed their nostrils. They were suddenly ravenous. Stony was just finishing preparation of their first meal featuring fresh food since arrival. His snares had yielded four rabbits, and he had found some wild onions and a few herbs. These joined some of the dwindling supply of potatoes in the pot. The result was wonderful. No one ragged Stony about his cooking that evening.
The next morning Matt got up early to make good on his promise to chop wood for Maude and the others. He set off for the edge of town with the axe Maude had loaned him and searched for large fallen limbs that weren’t too badly rotted. He also watched for signs of game, especially deer. Their dwindling food supply meant they would have to hunt soon. It was still too dark to see well under the trees, but he finally found several suitable fallen limbs. He chopped them into stove lengths and carried a couple of armloads back to the woodpile in the alley behind the apartment. Beside the woodpile was an upended section of stump, undoubtedly placed there to use for splitting wood. He used it for that purpose, setting each limb section on end on the stump and chopping down. The wood was cured well enough that he could usually cleave each section with a single satisfying blow. Soon he developed a comfortable rhythmic swing that completely absorbed his attention.
The back door of the store opened. He looked around to see the boy John emerge from it. John noticed Matt as he closed the door and stood watching him rather warily for a moment. Matt grinned at him and stood up to stretch his back, surprised to find that he was sweating, though the extreme heat of the previous few weeks had abated somewhat. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm and said hello. John answered rather shyly. He was holding a fishing pole and line and a rusty can that apparently held bait.
“Going fishing, huh?” said Matt. “Fish sure would be good for breakfast.”
The boy looked down shyly, scuffed the toe of his shoe in the dust. “Yep, that’s what I figured.”
He remained there as if he wanted to continue talking but was too shy. Matt had never been around children very much. He certainly didn’t know what to say to them. At last he tried to keep the conversation alive with, “I’ll bet you know all the best places to catch fish.”
“Yep. I know better places than Clarence. I know better places to find mushrooms, too. It really pisses Clarence off.”
Matt laughed. “Good for you. How old are you?”
“I tu
rned twelve last month. How old are you?”
“Forty-two.” John didn’t seem too awed by this advanced age. But of course all the other adults he knew were a lot older.
“Would you like me to show you where the fishin’s best?” said John hopefully.
“Why – uh – sure,” said Matt. “Some day. I got to work today, though.” He shifted as if to resume splitting wood, and John took the hint.
“Okay,” the boy said. “See y’ later.” He turned and started away.
Matt finished splitting the wood and left to start his day’s work.
* * * *
The next morning Matt split the rest of the wood he had chopped the day before for the townsfolk. He didn’t see anything of the boy or the others, and he didn’t go back to the apartment the next day. That evening he and Lou chopped and split a large pile of wood for the gang.
The next three days went much the same. There were guard and scrounging details. Accumulated truck was stored on the second floors of buildings along the main street. The younger gang members griped about lugging it up the stairs; the truck could just as well have been stored downstairs as up, they said, someplace like the lobby of the bank. But, Mitch insisted, an obvious store of truck would be a sure giveaway to Chadwick’s men if they did return. And storing it in the bank lobby was like posting a sign saying, “Look for us here first.”
Stony was the gang member with the greatest aptitude for fixing things, or for taking things apart and putting them back together in ingenious, more useful ways. One of the most tiresome aspects of life before the Last Days, according to Stony, was that you couldn’t take things apart to fix them or even to see how they worked. Most products were solidly encased in impenetrable casings. If you did succeed in opening them, you found incomprehensible electronics or less definable components. He had been told that some of these components were organic. This, he steadfastly refused to believe. You just had to draw the line somewhere; no one would ever convince him that there were animals in his commcomp or his car’s computer.
Because of this “flaw” in technology, there were fewer “handy” people in the world. There was simply nothing for them to fix. Despite this, Stony had always loved to work with his hands, to build things, to fix things. He built model airplanes and automobiles to scale. Large ones, up to 1/6th scale, equipped with period internal combustion engines that really worked. The airplanes flew and the cars drove.
During his partial convalescence, Stony grew restless, started exploring the buildings downtown. He found some dust-covered bicycles in what must have been a bicycle repair shop, as well as bicycle parts, tires, and tools. In other stores he found miscellaneous tools, equipment, and junk that only he would recognize as useful. He spent a lot of his recuperation time in the bicycle shop. At times the others heard hammering and grinding sounds and occasional cursing. At different times, Mitch and Doc asked him what the hell he was up to. He only grinned secretively and told them that he was making something that would make their lives a lot easier.
Notwithstanding Doc’s head shaking every time he changed the dressings on Mitch’s and Stony’s injuries, they continued to heal. On the fourth evening, Doc pronounced Stony’s wound sufficiently healed for him to join the scrounging detail the following day if he didn’t lift anything too heavy.
The next morning Matt got up early again and chopped several more armloads of wood for the townspeople. He had emptied an armload on the woodpile and turned to go after another when he saw John emerge from the back of the building.
“Where y’ goin’?” he asked Matt.
“After another load.”
“Can I help?”
“I never turn down good help.”
John followed him without a word, and they each carried more wood to the woodpile. John sat on the edge of the woodpile for awhile watching Matt split wood, then asked, “Can I chop some?”
“Ever used an axe before?”
“Nope.”
“Then I’d probably better finish it. I don’t want to explain to Maude how you came to have one less foot.”
John sat silently watching. When Matt finished, they said good-by and went their own ways.
Matt arrived back at the bank in time to see the unveiling of those innovations of Stony’s that promised to make the gang’s life so much easier. In the middle of the street in front of the bank were two cart-like contrivances mounted on bicycle wheels. Stony proudly demonstrated how the wheels acted independently on their axles to make turning easier. He had made the bodies as lightweight as possible while still maintaining their structural integrity. A skeleton of aluminum tubing supported floors of ridged translucent plastic and sides of the kind of woven wire used for fencing. The cart could be held level by resting it on a solid leg that unfolded at the front, and each cart was equipped with a handle that looked like those in pictures of rickshaws.
With these “trucks” as he called them, truck could be brought back to the main street more easily and when they left town, transported to the river. He planned to make at least two more. The scrounging crews set off with the two carts. At day’s end all agreed that the carts made the day’s work more efficient.
They felt more secure sleeping in the basement, but because of its musty smell and dark dreariness, they spent every waking hour they could away from it. For that reason they held their confabs in the draw. That evening, on their fifth day of scrounging, Mitch called for a confab there. He suggested they take the next day off from scrounging to hunt for food. They had gathered more truck than expected in such a short time, but their larder was rapidly dwindling. The potatoes and dried fruit were gone, and the corn meal and smoked venison and the beans Matt and Lou had brought from Summerfield Crossing nearly so. Fresh venison would taste pretty good.
“What about the ‘no guns’ rule for huntin’?” asked Doc. “We don’t have the crossbows no more.”
“If we don’t make an exception this time, we’re gonna git mighty hungry,” said Mitch. “We’ll use guns at least this once.”
Matt sat with Mitch and Lou during supper, the last remaining original gang members together. A thought struck him.
“Say,” he said, “this might sound goofy but that boy John claims he knows the best places to fish. Should I try to go fishing with him in the morning? Join you guys later to hunt?”
“Don’t sound goofy t’ me if it works,” said Mitch. “They’s plenty a us t’ go huntin’ without y’. If y’r lucky, stay with him as long as the fish is bitin’.”
“I’d better go see Maude about that after supper,” said Matt. “They don’t seem to trust me much, may not want me off alone with the kid.”
Matt found the townsfolk all sitting around a rickety folding table set up on the little patch of grass behind their store/apartment. Empty plates and silverware stacked on the table showed that they had just finished eating. He exchanged greetings all around. Except for Clarence they seemed marginally less aloof.
Then he said, primarily addressing Maude, “John invited me to go fishing with him some time. I’ve got the day off tomorrow. Wondered if you folks had any objections to us going in the morning. That is if John wants to.”
He looked at the boy.
“You bet,” said John immediately.
“Don’t know why y’ need the boy t’ help do y’r fishin’,” said Clarence suspiciously.
Matt shrugged. “He says he knows the best spots. I don’t even know where the nearest creek is around here. You’re quite welcome to come along, Clarence. Or anybody else for that matter.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” said Maude. “Go with him if you want, Johnny. You go too if you want, Clarence, or stay here and gripe all day. I imagine Matt and his friends could use a nice mess of bullheads for supper tomorrow.”
“And John’s our luckiest fisherman,” said the one Matt thought was named Vernor or Vernon with a big, largely toothless smile.
“I’m our best fisherman,” said Jo
hn with a grin and a playful smack against the old man’s shoulder. Laughter all around. Apparently this was the latest installment of an ongoing joke.
* * * *
Matt got to the back door of the townspeople’s apartment at first light the following morning. John, waiting for him on the upended stump, stood up and smiled when he noticed Matt.
After the y exchanged greetings, Matt said, “One other thing I was hoping you could help me with ... I don’t have any tackle. You know, hooks, lines, stuff like that.”
John held up a tackle box. “I brought this just in case.”
They followed a pocked street that turned into a dusty road that was being slowly but inexorably devoured by weeds, brush, and even saplings. Within a decade or so, scarcely a trace of it would remain. The road finally led downhill into the shade of trees that had been there for many years, even before the Last Days. About fifteen minutes from the apartment, they came to a bridge that crossed a lazy narrow muddy creek of a kind common enough in north Missouri.
“Clarence likes to fish from under the bridge,” John explained, “because it’s handy to get to, but you don’t catch much there. I think he likes to hide and sleep there so he can get out of work.”
“I take it you have a place that’s more productive but harder to get to.”
John grinned at him, rather proudly. “Just follow me.”
So Matt did, south along the creek bank, through thickets of willows and brush, and around large old cottonwoods and over fallen logs. John, and undoubtedly others in years past (when there had been others), had walked along here often enough to wear a trace of passage that could almost be considered a trail. Another five minutes or so brought them to a curve in the creek where a little cove had formed, overshadowed by trees. John sat down on a log on the bank that appeared to have been placed there by some long-gone fisherman. Its position was too conveniently perfect to have been an accident, and the bark had long ago been worn away, exposing wood polished smooth by previous fishermen’s butts. He indicated that Matt should also sit. John unwrapped the line from around the pole, extracted some bait from the rusty can he had carried, a giant earthworm, threaded it on the hook, and handed the pole to Matt.