Earth Abides

by George Rippey Stewart

  Now from across the street he heard the sound of a saw, and he realized that George was back at work with his beloved wood. George would not spend much time thinking about what had happened. Neither would Ezra, or the boys. Of them all, only he, Ish, thought much. And now, since he could not help it, he thought back again. Again he wondered, as so often before, what really were springs of action. Did it come from the man inside? Or from the world, the outside? Take all this that had just happened. The water had failed, and then they had sent the boys on their expedition as the result of losing the water, and from the expedition had come Charlie, and from Charlie, who was part of the outside, had come all that had happened afterwards. Yet he could not say, either, that this was all an inevitable succession of happenings from the initial failure of the water. His own mind had worked creatively, throwing out the suggestion for the expedition, seeing imaginatively what might be done. And then again he thought of Joey, that other one who saw what was not there, who looked to the future.

  Em came in. She had not been at the oak tree; that was not woman’s work. But she too had written the word upon the ballot. Yet Em, he realized, would not consider too much or worry. She was a person too unified in nature.

  She spoke: “Don’t think about it now. Don’t worry about it.”

  He took her hand in his, and pressed it against his cheek. For a moment it was cool, and then he felt it warm to the flush of his own skin. Many years it was now since he had first seen her standing in the light of the doorway, and heard her speak, not a challenge or a question, but in quiet affirmation. Twenty-one, twenty-two, years—and now he knew that no matter what happened there would be no question in the final relationship between the two of them. They would have no more children; yet that relationship still was warm. She was ten years older than he. Some might say that she was the mother more than the wife for him. Let it be! As things were, so let them stand.

  “I’ll never keep from it!” he said at last. “From worrying, I mean. I suppose I really get pleasure from it. But I have to try to look ahead, peering into the mist. I guess I had picked out the right profession for myself in the Old Times; I’d have made a good research professor. But it’s something of a bad joke, I think, that I was left as one of the survivors. What was needed was only men like George and Ezra; they drift without thinking much, or acting, either. Or else the new times needed men who could act, be leaders, without too much thinking. Men, maybe—well, maybe Charlie was really that kind. Me, I only try. I’m not one like Moses, or Solon—or, or—Lycurgus. Those were the ones who made the laws and founded nations. What has happened—yes, what is going to happen to us all—it would all be different if I were different.”

  She pressed her cheek against his for a moment.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I don’t want you different.”

  Well, that was what a wife should say! It was trite, but it was comforting.

  “Besides,” she went on, “how do you know? Even if you were Moses, or—one of those others with the funny names—still you couldn’t control what the world does, all of it, pressing in around us.”

  One of the children called, and Em went away. Ish rose, and went to the desk, and from one of the drawers he drew out the little cardboard box which the boys had brought back with them from the tiny community near the Rio Grande. Ish knew what was in it, but because of all that had been happening with such incredible speed he had not yet had the time, or the peace of mind, to examine it.

  He opened the little box, and put his fingers down among the cool and smooth kernels. He squeezed some of them in his palm, took a handful out, and looked at them. They were red and black, small, pointed at the ends—not the large flat kernels, yellow or white, that he had expected to see. Yet this was what he should have expected. The large kernels were from a highly developed, perhaps even artificially hybridized, variety of corn. The little black and red ones were more primitive, what the Pueblo Indians had always raised.

  He took the box back to his chair. Again he put his hand into it; he picked up more of the black and red kernels, and let them run into the box again through his fingers. He played with them, and as he played, merciful forgetfulness moved in upon him, and there was a new peace in his heart. This also had come from the expedition eastwards. In the corn was life, and the future.

  Looking up, he saw Joey—ever the curious one—gazing at him from across the room with interest. He felt himself warm toward Joey, and called to him to come and see. Joey was interested, as always. Ish explained to him about the corn. During the passage of the years their own community had delayed so long in trying to raise corn that in the end he had not been able to find any still living seed. Now there was another chance.

  Then, even though it seemed a terrible thing to do, Ish took the little box, and went out into the kitchen with Joey. They lighted a burner in the gasoline stove, and took a frying-pan. Carefully, allowing themselves only two dozen kernels, they poured some corn into the frying-pan, and parched the kernels over the flame.

  Even though they thus wasted some of the seeds, Ish felt too Much moved emotionally to resist the temptation, and he justified himself by thinking that the actual demonstration to Joey, immediately, was necessary.

  The corn did not parch well, and was barely edible. Neither of them cared for it much. Actually Ish could only remember having eaten parched corn as a sophisticated cocktail-relish, but he explained to Joey that parched corn had been a regular food on the American frontier and that his ancestors must often have depended largely upon it.

  The big eyes, bright in the thin little face, showed that Joey appreciated the story.

  “I wish,” thought Ish, “that he might grow stronger, and be something firmer to count on. Well, I have wasted two dozen of them, but perhaps in Joey’s mind I have planted a more important seed.”

  Wheat and corn—they too, like dog and horse, marched and shared with man, friends and helpers on the long way…

  Far in some dry corner of the Old World the little spiked grass sprouted more thickly around the edges of the campsites where the disturbing and enrichment of the soil gave it ground to its liking. So first, perhaps, it adopted man, but soon man adopted it. The more it repaid his care, the more he coddled it. With his fostering it grew taller and stronger, yielding more seed; but also it came to demand the tilled soil and the seedbed free of the competition of the wilder grasses.

  The first Year after there were no more plowed fields, the volunteer wheat sprang up on thousands of acres, but soon there was less of it and then still less. Like wolves upon the sheep, the fierce native grasses returned. They formed tough sod; year after year, they grew from the same roots, thriving the better for lack of cultivation.

  After a while there was no more wheat, except that far off in the dry lands of Asia and Africa, here and there, the little spiked grass still was growing, as it had grown before an incident called Agriculture…. So also with the maize. From the tropics of America, it too journeyed far with man. Like the sheep it traded its freedom for a fat and pampered life. It could no longer even shed its own seeds, held tight within the tough husk. Even sooner than the wheat, the maize vanished. Only, on the Mexican High lands, in thick clumps the wild teosinte still pushed up tasseled tops against the high sun….

  So it will go, unless here and there a few men still linger. For if man cannot prosper without the wheat and the corn, still less can they prosper without man.

  Although George and Maurine kept track of the months and the days of the months (or thought they did), all the rest went more by the position of the sun and the state of the vegetation. Ish took pride in being able to estimate the time of the year, and when he compared notes with George’s calendar, he was generally pleased to see that he was not more than a week or so wrong—if indeed he might not be right and George wrong, for Ish had no strong faith in George’s accuracy.

  In any case, a week or two made no difference when it came to planting the corn. Obviously the season
was too far advanced. The cold weather would arrive before the corn was more than well sprouted. Next year they would try it.

  In the next few days, however, Ish spent some time scouting about in the vicinity, trying to locate a good spot for the corn-patch. He took Joey along with him, and the two were soon talking learnedly about exposures, soil, and possibilities for keeping the wild cattle out. Actually, Ish realized, their particular region was about the worst place in the United States for corn-growing. A variety which was adapted to the dry and hot Rio Grande valley might not even mature at all in the chilly and fog-blanketed summers near San Francisco Bay. Moreover, he himself was not a farmer, and had never even had a green thumb for gardening. His knowledge of plants and soils was mostly theoretical, gained from his studies in geography. He remembered how podzols and chernozems were formed and he thought he might even recognize them when he saw them, but that did not make him a farmer. No one else in The Tribe had been one either, although Maurine had grown up on a farm. This accident, so you might call it, that they had no one who was close to the soil, had already been of much importance in determining their communal outlook on life.

  One day—more than a week had passed, and the memory of Charlie and the oak tree had faded somewhat—Ish and Joey came back to the house after having located what seemed the most favorable site they had yet seen. Em came out on the porch to meet them, and Ish knew immediately that something had happened. “What’s the matter?” he asked quickly.

  “Oh, nothing much,” she said, “I hope anyway. Bob seems to be sick, a little.” Ish stopped dead on the porch, and looked at her.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m no doctor, but I don’t think it’s anything like that. I don’t even see how it could be. Come and take a look at him. He says he’s felt a little bad for the last few days.”

  During the years Ish had usually taken the responsibility of doctoring. He had developed some skill at treating cuts and bruises and sprains, and had once set a broken arm. But he had gained practically no experience with disease, because there were only the two that seemed to exist in The Tribe.

  “Bob hasn’t just got a case of that sore throat?” he asked. “I can fix that soon enough!”

  “No,” she said, as he had known she would—she would not be so obviously worrying about the sore throat. “No,” she repeated, “he hasn’t got a sore throat at all. He just seems laid out, flat.”

  “Sulfa will probably do the job anyway,” said Ish, cheerfully. “As long as there are thousands of pills in the drug stores, and still good, we’re lucky! And if sulfa won’t work, I’ll take a chance with penicillin.”

  He went upstairs quickly. Bob was lying in bed, lying very still with his face turned away from the light.

  “Oh, I’m all right!” he said, irritably. “Mother gets excited!”

  Proof enough to the contrary, thought Ish, lay in his taking to bed. A sixteen-year-old did not go to bed, before he was too sick to stand.

  Ish looked around and saw Joey, peering curiously at his brother.

  “Joey, get out of here!” he snapped.

  “I’d like to see. I want to know about being sick!”

  “No, you keep your nose out of this. When you get bigger and stronger, I’ll show you, and teach you. But we don’t want you getting sick too. The first thing to learn about sickness is that it may go from one person to another.”

  Joey backed out reluctantly, his curiosity stronger than any theoretical fear of being sick. The Tribe had so little experience with disease that the children had no respect for it.

  Bob complained of a headache, and a general sense of unlocalized discomfort. He kept very still in bed, obviously prostrated. Ish took his temperature and found it just under 101, not too good or too bad. He prescribed two sulfa pills and a full glass of water. Bob gagged over the pills; he was not used to swallowing such things.

  Telling Bob to get some sleep, Ish went out, and closed the door.

  “What is it?” Em asked him.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing that sulfa won’t cure, I guess.”

  “I don’t like it, though. So soon…”

  “Yes. There’s such a thing, however, as coincidence, you remember.”

  “I know that. But you’re the one that will be worrying.”

  “I’ll give the pills every four hours, overnight at least, before I begin.”

  “That’s fine, if it’s so!” she said as a last word, and went off.

  And Ish, before even he had got all the way downstairs, knew that her skepticism was justified. After all, why should a man not worry? In the Old Times when you lived with all the protection of doctors and public-health services, even then the mysterious and sudden onset of disease was terrifying. How much more so, now!

  Now, just as man lacked the all-embracing power of a nation around him, so also he felt himself bare and exposed and helpless for lack of that age-old tradition of medical skill.

  “It’s my fault!” he thought. “All these years of grace! I should have been studying the medical books. I should have made myself into a doctor.”

  Yet the study of medicine had never appealed to him, even far back in the Old Times when he had been thinking about a profession. And a man couldn’t be a universal genius! Besides, there had been no pressure, when nearly all the diseases seemed to have died out.

  That fact, when he thought of it, sometimes even made the Great Disaster seem beneficent—a magnificent wiping off of the state which allowed man as a species to escape from most of the aches and pains he had been accumulating for so many centuries, and start anew. Originally each little isolated tribe must have developed and maintained its own special infections. If the evidence had been available, the anthropologists would probably have said that the Neanderthal men could be identified as well by their own special parasites as by their own special ways of chipping flint. In archeology, when you found one culture just on top of another one, you assumed that Tribe B had wiped out Tribe A. So doubtless it had. But its weapons had probably been stronger parasites more often than longer spears.

  As he thought, he grew more alarmed. Although less than half an hour had passed, he went upstairs, and looked in at Bob. Evening had come, and Bob lay quietly in the half-dark room. Ish did not want to disturb him, and so went downstairs again.

  He sat in a big chair and smoked. He would have liked to talk the matter over with someone, but Em did not have the background, and Joey was still too inexperienced. So he thought to himself.

  The Tribe—they themselves, that is—had preserved measles and some kind of sore throat. Someone, he himself perhaps, had been the carrier, or else the germs were maintained by some animal with which they were in contact—the dogs, or the cattle, or any one of a hundred smaller ones. But the people in Los Angeles might be free of measles, and have preserved mumps and whooping-cough. And those on the Rio Grande would probably have kept dysentery.

  And now Charlie! Even if he had not had those particular diseases of which he boasted, he might well have been a carrier of whatever happened to be prevalent around Los Angeles. That had not been such a fine idea—sending the boys off to explore! Suddenly Ish began to feel an unreasoning fear of any stranger. Give them two-hundred-yards law, that was the idea, and then look at them over the sights of a good rifle!

  A fly buzzed in front of his nose, and the overemphatic way he struck at it showed that his nerves were tense. Josey called for him to come in to dinner.

  Unlike the human lice, the house-fly—not having irrevocably linked its destiny with man’s—had suffered nothing that approached annihilation. Like the house rat, the house mouse, the human flea, and the cockroach, this other intimate household companion had suffered only a considerable reverse. Where formerly it had buzzed by hundreds and thousands, now it was reduced to its twenties or tens. Nevertheless, it survived.

  For, like that lord whom Price Hamlet calls a “water-fly,” the house-fly also was secure in “the possession
of dirt,” though for it dirt must mean, not lands and estates, but the word in its dysphemistic sense, as when the Bible of King James declares primly that Ehud struck King Eglon in the belly, “and the dirt came out.” Thus, even though man should be reduced to the vanishing point or disappear altogether, the house-fly was secure as long as the larger animals still lived and continued to leave droppings behind them. The eggs of the fly, thus deposited, soon hatched out, and the larvae found themselves embowered in rich and succulent food on which to feast, as snakes upon rats, woodpeckers upon grubs, and men on the flesh of dead animals.

  Still, with man eclipsed, times were hard. No longer did barnyards offer sites as rich as the ancient gift of the Nile, no longer was the countryside studded with beneficently unscreened privies, no longer did innumerable slums offer their choice piles of garbage and filth. Only here and there some few accumulations of nourishing excrement permitted the house-fly to lay numerous eggs and breed up well-fostered larvae and send forth vigorous and busily traveling adults.

  A week later the epidemic was in full course. Dick, Bob’s companion on the expedition, had been the next to go down. But now Ezra and five of the children lay stricken. In proportion to its numbers, the community was in the grip of a devastating outbreak of what must be—Ish felt certain—typhoid fever.