by LeMay, Jim
Chapter Eleven
John awoke on the sofa by the fireplace, covered by a blanket, his head resting on a pillow. He vaguely remembered Ms. Kane returning to the room and speaking to him but he didn’t remember going to sleep on the sofa. It was still dark in the room, but Ms. Kane was there stirring up the coals, preparing to build another fire for breakfast. She turned when she heard him stir.
“I tried to be quiet,” she said. “Didn’t want to disturb you.”
He sat up, smiled. “That’s okay, Ma’am. I’ve slept enough. I feel fine.” And he realized that he did feel well rested. She warmed some milk for him while he went to the bathroom, and as he sipped it by the fire he felt ready for whatever came next that day.
Breakfast was even more anarchic than dinner since people came in to eat and departed at irregular intervals. John didn’t understand how Ms. Kane kept track of everything and made sure everyone got fed.
After breakfast the gang held a confab at one of the long tables. The men they’d met with the previous evening had told them of a place called Coleridge Gardens a day’s journey to the north that had a pretty substantial market in the fall. The older men had heard of the Coleridge market but had never visited it. Mitch suggested they try to make a deal with Hanna Kane to buy some mules or horses and start up there as soon as possible.
John’s heart sank when he heard this. That meant he was soon to be abandoned by Matt and the others and stranded in the chaotic exuberance of Kane’s Cove. Ms. Kane was working in the kitchen end of the room, careful to be out of earshot of their conversation. When Mitch approached her with their offer to purchase some mules and be on their way, she shook her head.
“We won’t have any mules to sell you till next summer,” she said. “It’ll take till then to git ’m old enough and broke. We sold ever’ head we had available this year. But y’ can’t leave. The wild man ’d never forgive me if I let you boys git away before he got back, an’ he should be here any day now. I ’spected him before now. At the very least he may want to buy some a your truck.”
“Well, that first is bad news, Hanna. It’ll take us a long time t’ pole them rafts up the river.”
“Don’t worry ’bout that, Hank. We can loan you enough horses and mules to git your truck upstream. We got stock of our own, just none to sell. An’ Billy intends to take his truck an’ extra grain t’ Coleridge Gardens’ market. You can go with him.”
As John sat through the confab, he already felt estranged from the gang. It seemed to him that they already treated him as though he weren’t there, even Matt. After it was over, he felt he had to be alone with his thoughts for awhile. He left the house and followed the rafts and suspended walkways to the bank.
Many acres along the bank had been cleared for fields. John had never seen so much land under cultivation. Closest to the cove were large gardens. A row of pumpkins looked ripe enough to pick. People worked in the fields that lay behind the gardens. They were beginning to look barren now that the harvest was about over. Several of the older children played as they watched herds of cattle on the slopes of the ridge behind the croplands.
The morning was clear and pleasantly cool. And most blessed of all, unlike the Kane’s main house, it was quiet. His spirits began to revive. For now he could put off thinking of the fate about to befall him and enjoy this brief pleasant time that he did not have to share with anyone else. He walked along the curve of the cove to the north and then east, leaving first the rafts and then the fields behind, to the gravelly point where the cove met the river. He squatted there watching the little river’s dancing current for awhile, searching the trees on the opposite bank for wild life. He skipped a few stones across the water. He felt much better.
A sound from upstream caught his attention. Seeing an approaching canoe, he stood up cautiously, unconsciously obeying the fight or flight imperative, and watched it warily. In the bow sat a huge dog with scruffy reddish hair. A man who seemed scarcely less shaggy squatted in the stern paddling. The man seemed friendly enough. He smiled and called out, “Howdy there, young feller.” John answered rather shyly.
As the canoe drew closer, John could better make out the details of the man’s face. It was stained the color and texture of old leather from exposure to the sun and lined with countless wrinkles that crinkled when he smiled, giving the appearance that he smiled with his whole face. Long graying strands of hair fell from under a strange hat made of some kind of animal pelt, and a salt-and-pepper beard hung to his chest.
The instant the canoe scrunched onto the bank’s gravel the dog leaped out. The man jumped into the shallow water with surprising agility and pulled the canoe a little way onto the bank. John noticed that he was quick and wiry, a short man though he had appeared to be of average size while sitting in the boat. Then John saw that it was the man’s legs that were too short for the rest of the body, and rather bowed. His torso was of regular size. He had broad shoulders, large hands and arms that appeared disproportionately long compared to those bowed legs. He wore buckskin trousers, worn boots, and an amazing leather jacket that contained numerous bulging pockets.
While the man beached the canoe, the dog edged closer to John in a definitely unfriendly manner, stiff-legged, sniffing suspiciously.
“Don’t mind him none,” said the man. “He just don’t like folks much. The asshole that had him as a pup treated him purty bad.” And to the dog, “Fred! Heel!” The dog went reluctantly to his side.
The man’s whole face smiled at John, including his amazingly blue eyes. “An’ who might you be, young feller? An’ how come you t’ be out here all alone?”
“I’m John Moore. I’m visiting at Kane’s Cove, and I needed to take a walk.” He decided against mentioning the gang. This man could be Chadwick himself for all John knew.
“Sometimes a feller needs t’ do that. When did you git t’ the cove?”
“Yesterday. I came with Buck and Willard. Do you know Buck and Willard?”
The man sighed. “Sometimes better ’n I want to. They treatin’ you right over t’ the cove?”
“They’re real nice, especially Ms. Kane. She’s my favorite.”
“Mine too. Hop in. I’ll give y’ a ride back.”
“Okay,” said John, though he looked apprehensively at the dog. “Do you live at Kane’s Cove?”
“Shore do. When I’m not gallivantin’ anyhow.”
John suddenly knew exactly who the man was. “Are you Wild Billy Kane?”
“Shore am. Pleased t’ make y’r acquaintance, John Moore.”
* * * *
Matt and Lou sat on top of the truck on one of their rafts, ostensibly to check the tarps that covered it, but mostly because they needed to get away from the others for awhile. Hanna and Verbena had released the young students from the school they oversaw for recess. One of the young wives supervised the youngest as they ran and shrieked on the open raft behind the main houseboat. Lou watched them dispassionately. He had been quiet all morning, probably due to the burgeoning of one of his periods of depression. Matt wondered what he thought about during those times.
Matt’s own mood was not so good that day. He had awoken with the sensuous melody of Faure’s Pavane stroking his mind and had lived with it all morning, a mocking reminder that the music he loved was completely lost to him, except for an occasional poorly rendered piano sonata or string quartet performance in Nellie’s Fair. At least Lou didn’t have that loss. He had only listened to the various descendants of rock and roll that had evolved throughout the twenty-first century and was still played in most places they went.
Then Lou said with a nod toward the kids playing on their raft, “Sounds like more evidence that at least the human part of the Great Dying might be over.”
“I’ll have to agree,” said Matt. “We homo saps are on our way back up all by ourselves. Without the help of your technics.”
Lou turned to glare at him, and Matt regretted his comment. No use taking his foul mood out on his
friend, especially when Lou was building a mood one of his own.
“Y’ know what you are, Matt?” Lou said quietly. His deep bass voice sounded ominous when he spoke quietly, the feeling emphasized by his huge size. “You’re a fucking snob. You love sitting aloof making pronouncements about the way things should be (your way, of course), criticizing the way the rest of us live and what we read and the music we listen to. Science and technology were our highest achievements, and all you’ve done is castigate them without knowing a goddamned thing about ’m.”
Matt bristled. “Your precious science and technology didn’t do so hot against bacteria. But even if the Chou superbug hadn’t developed, they weren’t very good at most other stuff either. They weren’t able to stop global warming or mankind’s slaughter of each other and other species or pollution or overpopulation. They couldn’t save New Orleans or Venice or Bangladesh from the rising oceans. They couldn’t even control the weather, or even predict it very well.”
Lou was shaking his head. “Science took a long time to develop with all the ignorance that stood in its way and it had only been around for a few hundred years. It hadn’t had time to prove itself. You told me yourself that 90% of all the scientists that had ever lived were alive in 2072. Politicians and people’s general foolishness caused all the problems you mentioned, and they’ve been around forever.
“Look at the things we did accomplish through techne. We at least reduced the rate of pollution growth. The rate of population growth was getting closer to zero in spite of the average age being around 120 and rising, at least in developed countries. The world population had barely hit twelve billion in 2072, and fifty years before it was projected to be fifteen billion by then. And technology made it possible to feed the world. Just because a lot of people still went to bed hungry wasn’t the fault of the technics but the politicians. You can’t blame the technics for politicians’ crimes against humanity.”
“As you know, Lou, I agree with your last point, the culpability of those who ran the world. But techne didn’t improve humanity’s ... uh ... humanity. At every stage of civilization, only a few people get to the top. Some get there because they’re tough enough to beat the shit out of everyone else or clever enough to snow the multitudes into following them. Those are the politicians. Then there are others who make it because of some arcane knowledge available only to them. That has historically been religious knowledge, from that of the Paleolithic shaman to the Pope.
“All techne did was replace religion with a new form of knowledge restricted by a new kind of tyranny. A more insidious type of knowledge because it controlled every aspect of a person’s life. You can avoid religious tyranny to some extent by the personal things you and your family do in private. Techne made you absolutely dependent on it. You could no longer raise your own food or provide heat for your home. Techne provided everything, and you had to do whatever techne demanded to receive it.
“Technical knowledge became more restricted over time. By money. At the same time the technics became wealthier, the cost of higher education rose. By the time you and I went to school, technical education was beyond everyone except people as lucky as you and me. And the education was dehumanizing. Colleges turned out only cookie-cutter technicians. No more thinkers and tinkers.”
“That’s certainly not true, Matt. Our higher education system produced you, and you certainly are a thinker and tinker – even if you are a goddamn snob! – and I like to think I’m not one of the unimaginative zombies you always talk about.” (This was the latest installment of an argument that Matt and Lou had carried on for years.) “Science and engineering and the technology deriving from them have been improving man’s humanity for a long time. Hell, science started out by giving us the scientific method, one of mankind’s greatest achievements!”
“That’s the way it started, Lou, but by our time it had become as decadent as the rest of our society.”
“Not science; it was as full of potential as ever. But you’re right about the decadence of society. Our species was just leaving its adolescence behind, moving into our first years of maturity. And to people like you who preached that culture was dying, I say, it’s about time. Let its adolescence become obsolescent so that we can mature.”
Matt laughed. “That’s good, Lou. You oughta write that phrase down, put it in your next book.” The argument was lightening both their moods.
“Thanks. I think I’ll put it in the cover letter to my publisher.
“But all bullshit aside, Matt, I believe that as the old culture faded, a new one was about to fill its void, one with a new ethical system, our first true one, the one developed by engineers and scientists, based on the scientific method. Everything would be open to peer review. No more cover-ups. Every profession would be forced to open all activities to public scrutiny. Churches would have to disclose their incomes and the sins of their clergy, the medical profession their incompetent doctors and filthy hospitals, especially the ones that killed people. Get rid of that guild mentality, left over from the Middle Ages and before. Guilds, as you know, were formed to keep secrets safe inside the organization. Not only how they did things, but all the mistakes and deceptions too. But engineers and scientists are subject to review by peers everywhere in the world. You can’t bullshit people who know as much about your field as you do.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “I remember your vision for utopia: Plato’s Republic, but with you engineers and scientists replacing the philosophers.”
Lou ignored Matt’s sarcasm and said solemnly, almost to himself, “We lost something precious during the Last Days. We were right on the verge of maturity. Oh, hell, everything wouldn’t ’ve turned up roses all at once, and most people will always be superstitious and believe dumb things, but at least we finally had a chance to move up a notch. The old world we were losing was a good thing to lose, and the new one just might’ve had a lot of fabulous new things.”
Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “You might be right, Lou. If we had enough people like you to run things, it definitely would have been a better world.” And to himself, I’m just too cynical to believe they’d let people like you take charge.
“On nights I can’t sleep, Matt, I think a lot about my wife and my little boy and wonder what life with them would have been like. And I wonder if the world was changing in the way I thought and what that world would have been like. But sadly I’ll never know.” They sat there in silence for awhile, Lou sunken in the full depths of his dark reverie.
Then Matt looked up to see a dugout canoe approaching. Billy’s big part-mastiff mongrel rode in the bow, and behind the dog, to Matt’s great surprise, sat John! With a twinge of guilt, he realized that he hadn’t even known where the boy was. He hadn’t spent much time with him for the last two days and resolved to do so as soon as possible, especially since they would be parting soon.
When the canoe got close enough, Billy leaped out of it onto the raft with his customary alacrity. He slapped the two men’s shoulders and shook their hands.
“Look what I found on the river bank,” he said, nodding toward John. “Shoulda known I’d find you fellers here when I run in t’ this fine young man. Where’d y’ find him? No, don’t tell me yet. Wait till I hug my woman and wet my whistle and kick some a my boys’ ass. First thing I do when I git home is kick their ass, even afore I know what they done, ’cause I know they done somethin’ t’ deserve it. ’Specially Buck an’ Willard. I swear them young’ns is makin’ a ol’ man out a me.”
Matt watched John cautiously follow the surly dog out of the canoe and make the canoe fast to the raft. He didn’t think Buck and Willard had to worry much about an ass-kicking.
Billy thanked John for taking care of the canoe and retrieved his gear from it: scratch bag, sleeping bag, shotgun, and a large bow and quiver of arrows. He had told Matt that the bow was for hunting and the shotgun for emergencies as related to two-legged predators. Matt and Lou helped Billy with his gear. His arrival seemed to
lighten even the big man’s mood.
Billy started for the front door, inviting them all to join him with a nod. His very entrance introduced a festive air to the room. In only a few minutes, he had hugged Hanna, the little kids playing on the floor, and the older girls helping Hanna sort clothes to be washed. Verbena brought him a large mug of beer. He was quiet only long enough to gulp a good third of it down.
“How did you two run into each other?” asked Matt, looking at Billy and then John.
Billy only winked and said, “Me an’ my new little buddy John Moore here, we been scoutin’ the cove.”
Hanna had set out a plate of salted beef, cheese, and bread at one end of the table and refilled his mug.
“Forgive my poor manners, fellers,” he said, “but gallivantin’ builds up a powerful thirst an’ hunger in me. An’ I got t’ git fortified afore I go out t’ see the damage these young assholes is done t’ the place. Don’t leave, though.” He suddenly turned serious. “I want t’ hear your news. Sounds like it’s bad. We been hearin’ rumors.”
“Hanna said you were looking for us,” said Matt.
“Yep. I s’pose y’ve heard by now that Chadwick’s after your ass.”
“More than ‘heard’.” said Matt.
While Billy was eating, Matt and Lou rounded up the rest of the gang, and after Billy finished they told him their story as they had to Hanna and how they had planned to purchase mules or horses from him to carry their truck to market until Hanna had told them there were none available. They said some of his people had recommended the market at Coleridge Gardens. Did he agree?