Earth Abides

by George Rippey Stewart

  Then, having finished looking at the arrow, Ish handed it back. “It seems to be a very good arrow,” he said, although he did not really know much about arrows.

  Nevertheless the young man smiled with great happiness at this praise of his arrow, and Ish noted that he made a mark on it before he put it back into the quiver, as if he wished to know it and distinguish it from other arrows after what had happened. Then, as he still looked at the young man, Ish felt a sudden great love for him, and he had not been so moved for a long time since he had been sitting as an old man on the hillside. This Jack, who was of the First Ones, must be Ish’s great-grandson in the male line, and he was also Em’s great-grandson. So, as Ish looked, his heart yearned outwards, and he asked a strange question:

  “Young man,” he said, “are you happy?” The young man named Jack looked startled at this question, and he glanced in both directions before answering, and then he spoke.

  “Yes, I am happy. Things are as they are, and I am part of them.”

  Ish began to think of what this might mean and to wonder again whether the words had been spoken only in simplicity or whether there was some deep philosophy behind them, but he could not decide. At his trying to think, the fog seemed again to move in at the corners of his brain. But still he recollected vaguely that the words—strange as they were—had a ring of familiarity about them. He had not perhaps ever heard those exact words before, but they were words that someone whom he had once known might well have spoken. For in his words the young man had not questioned, but had accepted. Ish could not recall this person exactly, but he remembered softness and warmth, and warm feelings flowed through him.

  When he came out of his reverie and looked up again, no one was standing in front of him. In fact, Ish would have been unable to say surely whether the young man named Jack had been there that same day, or whether this was now some other day, or perhaps even another summer.

  Chapter 2

  He awoke so early, one morning, that the room was still in half-darkness. He lay quiet for a moment, wondering where he was, and for a moment he thought that he was a small boy again and had crawled into his mother’s bed for comfort in the early morning. Then he realized that it could not be so, and he thought that if he stretched out his hand he would find Em lying there beside him. But that was not so, either. Then he thought of his young wife. But no, she would not be there either, for long ago he had given her to a younger man because it is right that a woman should bear children so that the tribe will increase and the darkness draw farther back. So then at last he realized that he was a very old man, and was lying in the bed by himself. Nevertheless, it was the same bed and the same room.

  There was a strange dryness in his throat. After a minute he slowly got out of bed, and uncertainly on his old stiff legs he walked to the bathroom for a drink of water. As he went into the bathroom, he stretched out his right hand, and flipped the electriclight switch. It made the familiar click, and suddenly the room was brilliant to his eyes. Then after a moment he found himself in the half-darkness of dawn again, and he realized that the electric light had not flashed on. It had not so flashed for years, and would never again—and the familiar click had merely fooled his old brain, so that for a moment the room had seemed light. All this did not bother him, because it had thus happened before.

  Also, when he turned the stiff faucet-handle at the washbowl, no water gushed out merrily. Then he remembered that years ago the water had ceased to run.

  He could not get his drink of water, but he was not so much thirsty as merely bothered by that dryness in the throat.

  After he had swallowed a few times, he felt better. When he stood by the bedside again, he hesitated, sniffing. He could remember many changes of smells through the years. Far back there had been the smell of a great city. That had given way to the clean smell of green things and growth. But that also had yielded, and now there was about the old house a smell of age and decay. That smell, however, was familiar and was not bothering him. What he was trying to assay was a kind of dry smokiness. That dryness, he considered, had made him wake up so early. But he felt no fear, and crawled into bed again.

  A steady wind was blowing from the north. It tossed the pine trees that now grew closely around the house, and the branches swished and knocked against the windows and against the walls of the house.

  The noise kept him awake, and he lay there listening. He wished that he knew the time, but he no longer kept a clock wound. Time in its old sense of appointments to be kept and things to be done—all that had long since ceased to exist, both because the way of life had changed and because he himself was so old as to be almost out of life. In certain ways he had already, as it seemed, passed from time to eternity.

  Now he lay by himself in the old and half-ruined house. The others slept in other houses, or in good weather lay in the open. Perhaps they felt that ghosts walked in this old house. Well, perhaps! To Ish himself the thoughts of those who had been long dead were often more immediately present than the bodies of those now living.

  Though he had no clock, the half-light told him that the time could not be much before sunrise. Perhaps he had slept as long as an old man needed to sleep. He would lie there, turning himself over occasionally, until the sun had risen, and someone—he hoped it would be the young man called Jack—came to bring him his breakfast. There would be a well-braised beef bone on which he could suck, and some corn-meal boiled into a mush. The Tribe took good care of him, an old man. They let him have corn-meal though that was something of a rarity with them. They sent someone to carry his hammer and help him outdoors, so that he could sit on the hillside when there was sunshine. Often the one who came to help him was Jack. Yes, they took very good care of him, even though he was a useless old man. Sometimes they grew angry with him and pinched him, but that was only because they thought he was a god.

  The wind still blew, and the branches brushed and slapped against the house. But he had apparently not slept as much as he needed to sleep, and after a while he drowsed off, in spite of the noises.

  The cuts in the hills and the long embankments for the roads—they will still show as narrow valleys and ridges even after ten thousand years have passed. The great masses of concrete that were the dams—they will remain like the dikes of the granite itself.

  But the steel and the wood will pass quickly. The three fires will take them.

  Slowest of all is the fire of rust that burns at the steel. Yet give it some short centuries, and the high trestle that spans the canyon will be only a line of red soil on the slopes below.

  Faster by far is the fire of decay that feeds on the wood.

  But fastest of all is the fire of the flames.

  Then suddenly someone was shaking him hard. He awoke with a great shock. As he focused his old eyes, he saw that the person who was shaking him was the young man named Jack, and that Jack’s face was tense with fear.

  “Get up! Get up quick!” Jack was saying. With the shock of the sudden awakening, Ish’s mind seemed clearer than before, and both his body and his mind reacted faster. He moved quickly, pulling on some clothes. Jack helped him. Smoke was heavy in the room now, no longer a mere smell. Ish coughed, and his eyes watered. He heard a crackle and a dull roar. They went downstairs quickly, and out the front door, and down the steps toward the street. Only when he was out of the house did Ish realize how strongly the wind was blowing. Smoke rolled before it, and bits of burning leaves and bark swirled along.

  Ish was not surprised. He had known always that this must happen some time. Every year the oat-grass grew tall, and then ripened and dried where it stood. Every year the bushes of the deserted gardens had grown more thick, and the dead leaves had fallen among them. It was only a question of time, he had always known, until some hunter’s campfire would escape from him, and with a strong wind driving it, the fire would make a clean sweep on this side of the Bay, as it had on the other.

  Just as they reached the sidewalk, the thick clump
of underbrush around the next house to the north suddenly went up in a roar of flame so that Ish shrank away from the heat. Jack began to hurry him along the sidewalk away from the approaching fire, and just at that moment Ish realized that he had forgotten something although he could not remember just what.

  They came to two other young men who were standing there looking at the approaching flames. Then Ish remembered.

  “My hammer!” he cried out. “Where is my hammer?”

  As soon as he had cried out, he was ashamed of himself to have made so much fuss about a trifle in a time of emergency. After all, the hammer was of no importance. Then he was amazed to see what a tremendous impression his words had made upon the three young men. They looked at each other as if they were panic-stricken. Suddenly, Jack dashed back toward the house, even though the bushes in the garden itself were now beginning to smoke.

  “Come back! Come back!” Ish called after him, but his voice was not very strong, and he was half choking on account of the smoke.

  This was a terrible thing, Ish was thinking to himself, that Jack should be burned in the fire about such a small matter as a hammer.

  But then Jack came running out. His lion-skin cloak was singed, and he himself was rubbing at some burns where sparks had fallen on him. But otherwise he was not hurt. The other young men seemed strangely relieved that he was carrying the hammer in his hand.

  Obviously, they could not stay where they were very long because the flames were bearing down upon them.

  “Where shall we go, Ish?” one of them asked. Ish felt that this was a strange question for anyone to ask of him, who was only an old man and would scarcely know what to do as well as the young ones would. Then he remembered that they sometimes asked him which direction they should take for their hunting. When he did not answer, they pinched him. He did not like to be pinched, and so he thought hard now, as to which way they should go. The young men themselves, he realized, could outrun the fire, but he himself would not be strong enough. So he thought more intensely than he had thought for a long time, both because he wished to save his own life and the lives of the young men, and also because he was afraid that they would pinch him. Thinking so intently, he remembered the bare flat rock where they had carved the numerals of the years in the time long ago. Round this flat rock were other high rocks where nothing grew, and in the spaces among these rocks they could find shelter because nothing was there to burn.

  “Let us go to the rocks!” he said then, being sure that they would know what rocks he meant.

  Even though the young men helped him, Ish was very tired when they got to the safety of the rocks. Once they were there, however, he lay quietly, panting and recovering his strength. The fire was soon burning all around, but among the rocks they were not in danger. There was an overhang to the one rock, and another tall rock close by, so that they were almost in a cave.

  As he lay there, Ish dozed off with his weariness, or perhaps it was more as if he had fainted, because his old heart was pounding wildly after the dash ahead of the flames. But after a while he came to himself, and lay there quietly, and his mind seemed closer than it had been for a long time.

  Yes, he thought, it is now the dry autumn, and the time of bad fires because of dry north winds. And this is the autumn following that summer when I first came to know Jack, and talked to him about the arrowheads. Since then Jack has been the one who has chiefly taken care of me, as The Tribe at its meeting has undoubtedly ordered him to do. After all, I am very important. I am a god. No, I am not a god. But perhaps I am the mouth-piece of a god. No, I know that I am not that either. But at least they give me care, and I have comfort, because I am the last American.

  Then again, since he was exhausted from his flight in front of the flames, he fell asleep, or perhaps fainted.

  After a while he came to himself once more. He could not have been unconscious for very long, for he heard the flames still crackling. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was the grayness of the rock-overhang above him, and he realized that he must be lying on his back. He heard little noises of scuffling and the playful growls of a dog.

  But now with this return to consciousness his mind seemed even clearer than before, so clear indeed that he was startled at first, and then a little frightened. For he seemed to know all the past and all the future too, as well as what was actually present.

  “This second world—it has gone too.” The thoughts flickered through his mind. “I saw the great world go. Now this little world, my second world, is going. It is going by fire. This fire that we have known so long—fire that warms us; fire that destroys us. They used to say that because of the bombs we would go back and live in caves. Well, here is a cave—but we have not marched by the road that anyone imagined. I survived the loss of that, my great world, but I shall not outlast the destruction of this, my little world. I am an old man now, and also my mind is too clear. I know. This is near the end. From the cave we came, and to the cave we return.”

  Just as his mind had grown clearer, so also his sight seemed clearer than usual. After a while, feeling stronger, he sat up, and then he could see all the others. At first he was surprised because there were not only three young men but also two dogs. He did not remember having seen the dogs before. They were ordinary dogs of the kind used for hunting—not large, long haired, mostly black with some white on them, a kind of sheep dog, he supposed they would have been called in the Old Times. They were intelligent dogs, and even well-mannered. They lay quietly now in the cave-like overhang of the rocks, and did not make any excitement of barking.

  Then Ish looked at the young men. Since now, all at once, he seemed to see the past and the future as well as the present, he could look more clearly at the young men for the mixture of the past, present and future that they really were. Their clothing was like Jack’s. They had soft, well-fashioned moccasin-like footgear of deer-hide; they also wore blue jeans with bright copper rivets in them. Above their waists they had only the tawny lion-skins with the dangling paws and the claws still attached. Each one of them had his bow and quiver of arrows, and each wore a knife at his belt, although they could not make knives. One of them had a spear with a shaft as tall as himself, and extending above the shaft, a spear-head. When Ish looked at it more carefully, he saw that it was really an old butcher-knife with an eighteen-inch blade. The blade had been socketed into the end of the spear-shaft, and since the blade was very sharp-pointed, this was a formidable weapon for the close fighting.

  Then at last Ish looked at the faces of the young men, and he saw that they were different from the faces of the men of long ago. These faces were young, but also they were calm, and they seemed to bear on them few lines of strain and worry and fear.

  “See!” said one of them, and he was nodding in the direction of Ish. “See—he is better now! He is looking around.” Ish realized that the voice was kindly, and he felt a great love for the young man even though a little while ago he had been afraid that that particular one would be the first to pinch him.

  Something else that was strange also, Ish thought now, was that after all these years the young men still talked a language which people had once called English.

  Only, as he considered more carefully, he realized that the language too had changed. When the young man had said the word “see,” the sound was not quite as it should be. Instead it sounded more as if it were “tsee,” or perhaps, “tchee.”

  Some smoke was drifting in between the rocks now, so that they coughed a little. Outside, there was a great crackle of flame; a clump of trees or a near-by house must be burning. The dogs whined a little. Yet the air remained cool enough, so that Ish was not afraid.

  He wondered what had become of all the others. There must be several hundred people in The Tribe now. The labor of asking questions seemed too much, and he could tell from the calmness of the young men that there could have been no disaster. Most likely, he thought, the others had left at the first threat of fire, and perhaps on
ly at the last moment Jack had remembered the old man—who was also a god—who was sleeping alone in the house.

  Yes, now it was easier merely to sit and look and think, without asking questions. So he looked at the faces again.

  Now one of the young men was playing with a dog. He put out his hand, and then jerked it away quickly, and the dog snapped playfully and growled. The dog and the young man seemed almost to meet at the same level, and both seemed happy. One of the others was carving a piece of wood. The sharp knife bit deeply into the soft wood, and a figure took shape as Ish watched. Ish smiled quietly to himself, for he saw that the figure had wide hips and generous breasts, and he realized that young men had not changed altogether. Though he did not even know their names, except for Jack, yet they must all be his grandsons or great-grandsons. Here they sat in the cave-like gap between two high rocks, and they played with a dog or carved lusty little images while outside the fire crackled. Civilization had gone years ago, and now the last of the city was burning around them, and yet the young men were happy.

  Was it all for the best? From the cave we come and to the cave we go! If that other one had lived, if there had been others like him, it might have been different. Again he thought of Joey—Joey! And yet would that have been better? He wished suddenly that he could live for a long time still—for a hundred years more, or even a hundred after that. All his life now he had observed the ways of the peoples on the earth, and he wished that he could still observe in the future. The next century and the next millennium would be interesting.