Earth Abides

by George Rippey Stewart

  But here Ezra paused, so that Ish himself could speak.

  “Yes,” said Ish, “you are right, I think…. And I, I could live because I stood at one side and watched what was happening. And as for Em…”

  There he too paused, and Ezra spoke again.

  “Well, as we were, so The Tribe will be. It will not be brilliant because we were not like that. Perhaps the brilliant ones were not suited to survive…. But as for Em, there is no need to explain, for we know that she was the strongest of us all. Yes, we needed many things. We needed George and his carpentry, and we needed your foresight, and perhaps we needed my knack of making one person work better with another, even though I did little by myself. But most of all, I think, we needed Em, for she gave us courage, and without courage there is only a slow dying, not life.”

  Almost while they sat there, it seemed to Ish, a fast-growing tree sprang up on the hillside below them, and grew until it cut off the view across the Bay, where the rustred towers of the great bridge still stood high. And then after a while the tree seemed to sicken and die and fall. Again, from where he liked to sit in the sun on the hillside, he could look out and see the bridge. And once, as he looked, there was great fire raging in the ruinous city beyond the Bay, and he remembered that far, far back—even before he had been born—that city had burned before. Now it burned for a week, with the dry north wind driving the flames; there was no one to put it out, and no one even to care whether it burned. When the flames died down, nothing was left to burn.

  There came a time when even talking seemed a labor. So mostly now Ish merely sat comfortably in the sun, and beside him sat an even older man who coughed and grew thinner. It was hard to tell just how the days passed and how they ran into weeks, and even the years seemed to flow with a man’s scarcely noticing them. Yet Ezra remained, and sometimes Ish thought to himself, “Though he coughs and coughs and grows thinner, yet he will outlive me.”

  But now, since even talking was a labor, the mind turned inward on itself, and Ish thought of all this strange life. What was the difference in the end? Even if there had been no Great Disaster, he would now be a very old man. Now doubtless, if it had not happened otherwise, he would be Professor Emeritus, puttering around, taking some books out of the Library and intending to do some research, a little of a nuisance to the younger men in their fifties and sixties who now ran the Department—though they might say loyally to the graduate students, “That’s Professor Williams—a great scholar, once. We’re very proud of him.”

  Now the Old Times were deeper buried than Nineveh or Mohenjodaro. He himself had seen everything crash and go under. Yet curiously, too, all that crash had not been able to destroy his personality. He was still the same person he would have been as Professor Emeritus, even though now the shadows were closing in on his mind while he sat on a lonely hillside as the dying patriarch of a primitive tribe.

  At some time in those years something else strange began to happen. The younger men had always come to Ish for advice, but now—even though the shadows were closing in on his mind—they began to come in a different way. Whether he sat on the hillside in the sun, or whether, during rain and fog, he sat in the house, still they began to come to him bearing little gifts—a handful of ripe berries of which he was fond, or a bright stone or piece of colored glass to flash in the sun. Ish did not care for the glass or stones, even though the stones were sometimes sapphires or emeralds taken from a jewelry store, but he appreciated the gifts because he realized that the young men were giving him things by which they themselves would be pleased.

  Having given him something, they would formally ask a question, while he sat holding his hammer. Sometimes they asked about the weather, and then Ish was glad to answer. He could still look at his father’s barometer, and so he could often say—what the young men could not know—whether the low clouds would soon vanish before the sun’s heat or they indicated an approaching storm.

  But sometimes they asked him other questions—as, for instance, in which direction they should go for good hunting. Then Ish did not wish to answer, for he knew nothing of such matters. But when he did not answer, the young men were displeased, and then they would pinch him roughly. Because he was in pain he answered them, even though he knew nothing. He would cry out, “Go south!” or “Go beyond the hills!” Then the young men were pleased and went off. Ish sometimes feared that they would come back and pinch him because they had not found good hunting, but they never did.

  During those years, there were days when he thought clearly, and other days when a fog seemed to hang in all the corners of his brain. But one day when they came to ask him a question and he was clear-minded, he realized that he must have become a god, or at least an oracle by which a god spoke. Then he remembered that time long ago when the children had been afraid to carry the hammer and when they had nodded knowingly at his saying he was an American. Yet he had never wished to be a god.

  One day Ish sat on the hillside in the sun, and after a while he looked at his left side, and saw that no one sat there. Then he realized that at last Ezra, the good helper, was gone, and that no one would ever sit there beside him on the hillside again. At that thought he gripped the handle of the hammer, which in these days was very heavy for him to lift, even with both hands.

  “It is called a single-jack,” he thought, “but now it is too heavy for my one hand. Yet now it has become the symbol of a tribal god, and it is still with me, though all the others, even Ezra, have gone.”

  Then, because the shock of that sudden knowledge about Ezra had made him think and see more clearly, he looked alertly about him, and observed that he was sitting on the slope of the hill where many years before there had been a neat garden and was now only a trampled place of tall grass in the midst of overgrown bushes and high trees, with a half-ruined house standing up from among the tangle.

  Then he looked at the sun, and saw that it was in the east, not in the west, as he had thought it would be. Also, it was far to the north, so that the season must be nearly mid-summer, whereas he had thought it should be early spring. Yes, in all those years, as he had sat on the hillside, he had lost hold of time itself, so that the swinging of the sun from east to west with the passing of the day seemed much the same as the swinging of the sun from north to south with the passing of the seasons, and he had lost track of them both. This thought made him feel very old and very sad.

  Perhaps that sadness brought back to him the thought of other sadness also, and he thought:

  “Yes, Em is gone, and Joey, and even Ezra, my helper, is gone now.”

  When he thus recalled all that had happened, and his loneliness, he began to cry gently, for he was an old man, and he could not control what he did. And he thought to himself, “Yes, they are all gone! I am the last American!”

  End of the second inter-chapter called Quick Years.

  PART III: The Last American

  ’Tis merry, ’tis merry in good greenwood.

  — Old Song

  Chapter 1

  Perhaps it was that same day or perhaps it was only that same summer or perhaps even it was another year…. When Ish looked up, he saw, very clearly, a young man standing in front of him. The young man wore a neat-enough pair of blue jeans with copper rivets shining brightly, and yet over his shoulders he wore a tawny hide with sharp claws dangling from it. In his hand he held a strong bow, and over his shoulder was a quiver with the feathered ends of arrows sticking from it. Ish blinked, for in his old eyes the sunshine was strong.

  “Who are you?” said Ish.

  The young man answered respectfully, “I am Jack, Ish, as indeed you yourself well know.”

  The way he said “Ish” did not indicate that he was trying to be unduly familiar with an old man, thus calling him by a nickname, but rather it carried something of great respect and even of awe, and as if “Ish” stood for much more than merely the name of an old man.

  But Ish himself was confused, and he squinted, peering more ca
refully, because at short distances he no longer saw clearly. But he was sure that Jack should have dark hair, or perhaps turned somewhat gray by now, and this one who called himself Jack had long wavy yellow hair.

  “You should not make jokes with an old man,” said Ish. “Jack is my oldest son, and I would recognize him. He has dark hair, and he is older than you.”

  The young man laughed, but politely, and said, “You are talking, Ish, of my grandfather, as indeed you yourself well know.” Again the way in which he said “Ish” had a certain strange sound to it, and now Ish noticed also the strangeness of his other repeated words, “as indeed you yourself well know.”

  “Are you of the First Ones?” Ish asked. “Or of the Others?”

  “Of the First Ones,” he said.

  Then, as Ish still looked, he was puzzled that the young man, who was certainly not a child, was carrying a bow instead of a rifle. “Why do you not have a rifle?” he asked.

  “Rifles are good for playthings!” the young man said, and he laughed, a little scornfully perhaps. “You cannot be sure of a rifle, as indeed you yourself, Ish, well know. Sometimes the rifle works, and it makes the big noise, but other times you pull the trigger, and it only goes ‘click.’” Here he snapped his fingers. “So you cannot use the rifles for real hunting, although the older men say that this was not so in the long past years. But now we use the arrow because it is sure, and never refuses to fly and besides,” here the young man held himself proudly, “besides, it is a matter of strength and skill to shoot with the bow—but anyone, they say, could shoot with a rifle, as you yourself, Ish, well know.”

  “Let me see an arrow,” said Ish.

  The young man took an arrow from the quiver, and looked at it, and then handed it across.

  “That is a good arrow,” he said. “I made it myself.”

  Ish looked at the arrow and felt the weight of it. This was no plaything for a child. The shaft was nearly a yard long, split cleanly from a billet of flawless straight-grained wood, and then rounded and smoothed. It was well feathered, with pinions of some kind, although Ish could not see well enough to know what bird had yielded the feathers. By feeling, however, he could tell that they were arranged carefully so that the arrow in flight would spin like a rifle-bullet, and thus keep its true course and carry farther.

  Then he observed the arrowhead, again more by feel than by sight. The arrowhead was very sharp both at the point and along the edges. Ish nearly pricked his thumb. It had the bumpy yet slick feel which told him that it was of hammered metal. Though he could not see very clearly, he made the color out as silvery-white.

  “What is that made of?” he asked.

  “It is from one of the little round things. They have faces on them. The old men have a name for them, but I do not remember exactly. It is something like corns.”

  The young man paused, as if to be told the right word, but when he had no reply, he went on again, being obviously eager to show off his knowledge about arrowheads.

  “We find these little round things in the old buildings. Often there are many—many—of them in the boxes and drawers. Sometimes they are rolled up together in bundles like short round sticks, but heavier than sticks. Some are red and some are white, like this one, and there are two kinds of the white. The one kind of white—the one that has the picture of the hump-backed bull—we do not use those because they are harder to pound.”

  Ish considered, and thought that he understood.

  “And this white one here?” he asked. “Was there a relief—picture—on this one?”

  The young man took the arrow from Ish, and looked at it, and then handed it back.

  “They all have pictures,” he said. “But I was looking to see if I could still make out what picture was on this one. It has not quite all gone because of the hammering. This was one of the littlest ones, and it had the picture of the woman with the wings growing out of her head. Some of them have pictures of hawks—but not real hawks.” The young man was talking very happily. “Others have men; at least, they look like men—one with a beard, and one with long hair hanging behind him and another with a strong-looking face, without a beard and with short hair, and heavy-jawed.”

  “And who—who do you think—were all these men?”

  The young man glanced both ways, as if a little nervous.

  “These—oh, these—yes! These, we think—as you yourself, Ish, well know—these were the Old Ones that were before our Old Ones!”

  When there was no thunder from heaven and when the young man could see that Ish was not displeased, he went on:

  “Yes, that must be it—as you yourself, Ish, well know. These men, and the hawks, and the bull! Perhaps the woman with the wings growing from her head sprang from the marriage of a hawk and a woman. But, however it is, they do not seem to mind our taking their pictures and hammering them up for arrowheads. I have wondered about it. Perhaps they are too great to care about little things, or perhaps they did their work a long time ago and have now grown old and weak.”

  He stopped talking, but Ish could see that he was pleased with himself, and liked to talk, and was thinking quickly of something more to say. He, at least, had imagination.

  “Yes,” the young man continued, “I have an idea. Our Old Ones—they were the Americans—made the houses and bridges and the little round things that we hammer out for arrowheads. But those others—the Old Ones of the Old Ones—perhaps they made the hills and the sun, and the Americans themselves.”

  Then, though it was a cheap trick to play on the young man, Ish could not resist talking in double meaning.

  “Yes,” he said, “I have heard it said that those older Old Ones produced the Americans—but I rather doubt that they made the hills and the sun.”

  Though he could not have understood, perhaps the young man caught the irony in the tone, and so said nothing.

  “But, go on,” Ish continued then. “Tell me more about the arrowheads themselves. I am not interested in your cosmogony.” He used the last word in good-humored malice, knowing that the other would not understand it, but would be impressed by its length and strange sound.

  “Yes, about the arrowheads,” the young man said, hesitating a moment, and then regaining confidence. “We use both the red and the white. The red are good for shooting cattle and lions. The white are for deer and other game.”

  “Why is that?” Ish asked sharply, for he felt his old-time rationalism stirring at the thought of all such magic and hocus-pocus. The question, however, seemed only to surprise and confuse the young man.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why? How could anyone know why? Except you yourself, Ish! This matter of the red and white arrowheads is merely something that is. It is like—” He hesitated, and then the sunlight seemed to catch his attention. “Yes, it is like the sun that keeps on going round the earth, but naturally no one knows why, or asks why. Why should there be a why?”

  Having said these last words, the young man was obviously very pleased with himself as if he had propounded some great philosophical dictum, although undoubtedly he had spoken only in great simplicity. But when Ish turned the matter over in his mind, he was not sure. Perhaps even in this simplicity there was a depth. Was there ever an answer to “why”? Did not things just exist in the present?

  Yet, Ish was certain, a fallacy lurked somewhere in the argument. A sense of cause-and-effect was necessary for the life at the human level, and this matter of the different-colored arrowheads was a proof of it, not the contrary. Only the sense of causation here was faulty and irrational. The young man was maintaining an absurdity—that cattle and lions could be better killed with copper arrowheads hammered from pennies, whereas deer were better killed with silver ones hammered from dimes or quarters. Yet there could obviously not be enough difference in hardness or sharpness to matter. Only, in these primitive minds, the secondary matter of color had in some way come to be considered—this was rank superstition!—the determining factor.

  Deep
within him, Ish again felt his old hatred of loose thinking boil up.

  Though he was an old man, still he might do something.

  “No!” he said, so sharply that the young man started. “No! That is not right. The white arrowheads and the red! One just as well as….”

  Then, slowly his voice trailed off. No, he thought, that was not the way it was destined to be. He heard a rich contralto voice saying to him, “Relax!” Perhaps he might persuade this young man named Jack, who was undoubtedly a remarkably intelligent and imaginative young man, possibly even somewhat like that little one named Joey. But what would it accomplish? Only, perhaps to make the young man confused and ill at ease among all the others. And what was really the difference? At least, copper arrowheads were not less effective against lions, and if the bowman thought them more effective, the thought gave him courage and steadied his hand.

  So Ish said nothing more about the matter, and smiled at the young man reassuringly, and looked again at the arrow. Another thought came to him, and he asked:

  “Can you always find plenty of those little round things?”

  The young man laughed merrily, as if this were a strange question.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “There are so many that if all of us spent all our time pounding out arrowheads, still we should never run short.”

  Ish considered. Yes, that was probably true. Even if there were a hundred men in The Tribe by now, there must be thousands and thousands of coins readily to be found in tills and cash-boxes, even in this one corner of the city. And if the coins should be exhausted, there would be thousands of miles of copper telephone wire. When he had first made an arrow, he recollected, he had imagined that The Tribe would revert to stone arrowheads. Instead they had taken a short-cut, and were already fashioning metal. So perhaps The Tribe, his own descendants, had already passed the turning-point, were no longer forgetting more old things than they were learning new things, and were no longer sinking toward savagery, but were maintaining a stable level or perhaps gradually beginning to win new security. By showing them how to make bows, he had helped, and he felt greatly comforted.