by Kate Wilhelm
“No,” Lawrence said, and looked at him questioningly. Barry shook his head.
They watched the crew working on the boat for a few minutes, and then Barry said, “Lawrence, how good are the younger brothers at boat building?”
“The best,” Lawrence said promptly.
“I don’t mean just following orders. I mean, has one of the younger brothers come up with an idea you could use?”
Lawrence turned to study him again. “What’s bothering you, Barry?”
“Have they?”
Lawrence frowned and was silent for what seemed a long time. Finally he shrugged. “I don’t think so. I can’t remember. But then, Lewis has such clear ideas of what it has to be, I doubt if anyone would even think of contradicting him, or adding to anything he has planned.”
Barry nodded. “I thought so,” he said, and walked away on the snow-cleared path, edged on either side by a white fence as high as his head. “And it never used to snow this much, either,” he said to himself. There. He had said it aloud. He thought he probably was the first one of the inhabitants to say that. It never used to snow this much.
Later that day he sent for Mark, and when the boy stood before him, he asked, “What are the woods like in the winter, when there’s snow like now?”
Mark looked guilty for a moment. He shrugged.
“I know you’ve managed to learn to walk with snowshoes,” Barry said. “And you ski. I’ve seen your trail leading up into the woods. What is it like?”
Now Mark’s eyes seemed to glow with blue fires, and a smile formed, then left. He ducked his head. “Not like summer,” he said. “Stiller. And it’s pretty.” Suddenly he blushed and became silent.
“More dangerous?” Barry asked.
“I guess so. You can’t see dips, they fill up with snow, and sometimes snow hangs on ridges so you can’t be real sure where the land ends. You could go over an edge that way. I guess, if you didn’t know about it.”
“I want to train our children in getting around on snowshoes and skis. They might have to be in the woods in winter. They have to have some training. Can they find enough material to make fires?”
Mark nodded.
“We’ll start them on making snowshoes tomorrow,” Barry said decisively. He stood up. “I’ll need your help. I’ve never seen a pair of snowshoes. I don’t know how to begin.” He opened the door and before Mark left he asked, “How did you learn to make them?”
“I saw them in a book.”
“What book?”
“Just a book,” Mark said. “It’s gone now.”
In the old house, Barry understood. What other books were in the old house? He knew he had to find out. That night when he met with his brothers they talked long and soberly about the conclusions he had drawn.
“We’ll have to teach them everything they might ever need,” Barry said, and felt a new weariness settle over him.
“The hardest thing we’ll have to do,” Bruce said thoughtfully after a moment, “will be to convince others that this is so. We’ll have to test it, make certain we are right, then prove it. This will put a terrible burden on the teachers, on the older brothers and sisters.”
They didn’t question his conclusions. Each of them, given his direct observations, would have come up with the same conclusions.
“I think we can devise a few simple tests,” Barry said. “I made some sketches this afternoon.” He showed them: a stick figure of a man running, climbing stairs, sitting down; a sun symbol, a circle with rays extending from it; a tree symbol, a cone with a stick in the base; a house made of four lines, two parallel, an angle for the roof; a disc moon; a bowl with steam rising from it in wavy lines . . .
“We could have them finish a story,” Bruce said. “Keep it as simple as the drawings. A three- or four-line story without an ending, which they must supply.”
Barry nodded. They knew what he was after. If the children lacked the imagination to abstract, to fantasize, to generalize, they had to know it now and try to compensate. Within a week their fears were realized. The children under nine or ten could not identify the line drawings, could not complete a simple story, could not generalize a particular situation to a new situation.
“So we teach them everything they’ll need to know to survive,” Barry said harshly. “And be grateful they seem able to learn whatever we teach.”
They would need different lesson material, he knew. Material from the old books in the farmhouse, lessons in survival, in how to build simple lean-tos, how to make fires, how to substitute what was at hand for what was missing . . .
Barry and his brothers went to the old farmhouse with crowbars and hammers, ripped off the boarding at the front entrance, and went inside. While the others examined the yellowed, crumbly books in the library, Barry climbed the stairs to Molly’s old rooms. Inside, he stopped and took a deep breath.
There were the paintings, as he remembered them, and more, there were small objects made out of clay. There were wood carvings, a head that had to be Molly, done in walnut, done cleanly, expertly, like but unlike the Miriam sisters. Barry couldn’t explain how it differed, but knew it was not like them, and was like Molly. There were works done in sandstone, in limestone, some of them complete, most of them rough, as if he had started them and lost interest. Barry touched the carved likeness of Molly and for no reason he could name, he felt tears forming. He turned abruptly and left the room, closing the door carefully behind him.
He didn’t tell his brothers, and he didn’t understand the reason for not telling them any more than he had understood the tears he had shed over a piece of wood hacked out by a child. Later that night when images of the head kept intruding when he tried to sleep, he thought he knew why he hadn’t told. They would be forced to find and seal off the secret entrance Mark used to enter the house. And Barry knew he couldn’t do that.
Chapter 24
The paddle-wheel boat was bedecked with bright ribbons and flowers; it dazzled under the early morning sun. Even the wood pile was decorated. The steam engine gleamed. The troops of young people filed aboard with much laughter and gaiety. Ten of these, eight of those, sixty-five in all. The boat crew stood apart from the young explorer-foragers, watching them warily, as if afraid the carnival spirit of the morning might damage the boat somehow.
And indeed the infectious exuberance of the young people was dangerous in its spontaneity, drawing into itself the onlookers ashore. The gloom of the past expeditions was forgotten as the boat made ready to churn its way downriver. This was different, the mood cried, these young people had been specially bred and trained for this mission. It was their life fulfillment they sought. Who had a better right to rejoice at seeing life’s goal within reach?
Tied securely to the side of the paddle boat was a fourteen-foot canoe made of birch bark, and standing protectively by it was Mark. He had boarded before the others, or had slept there, perhaps; no one had seen him arrive, but he was there with his canoe that could outrun anything else on the river, even the big paddle wheel. Mark watched the scene impassively. He was slender, not tall, but his slim body was well muscled and his chest was deep. If he was impatient to be under way, he showed no sign of it. He might have stood there for an hour, a day, a week . . .
The elder members of the expedition now came aboard, and the cheering and singing ashore grew in volume. Nominally the leaders of the expedition, the Gary brothers nodded to Mark and took their places in the stern.
Standing on the dock, Barry watched smoke puff up from the stack as the boat started to foam the water, and he thought about Ben and Molly, and those who had not come back, or had come back only to go into the hospital and never emerge. The children were almost hysterically happy, he thought. They might be going to a circus, or a tournament, or to enlist in the king’s service, or to slay dragons . . . His gaze sought Mark’s. The bright blue eyes didn’t waver, and Barry knew that he at least understood what they were doing, what the dangers were, the prizes. He under
stood this mission meant the end of the experiment, or a new beginning for them all. He knew, and he, like Barry, was not smiling.
“The terrible heroics of children,” Barry muttered.
At his side Lawrence said, “What?” and Barry shrugged and said it was nothing. Nothing.
The boat pulled away steadily now, leaving a wide wake that spread from shore to shore and made waves that broke against the dock. They watched until the boat was out of sight.
The river was swift and muddy, high with runoff from the mountains. Crews had been out for over a month clearing the rapids, marking safe channels among the boulders, repairing the winter damage to the dock at the head of the falls, working on the overland detour. The paddle wheel made good time, and they arrived at the falls shortly after lunch. All afternoon they worked at unloading the boat to transport the supplies to the shelter.
The building at the foot of the falls was a duplicate of the dormitories in the valley, and inside it the large group of travelers found it easy to forget this building was isolated, that it was separate from the others. Each evening the road crew assembled in the building, and the boatmen gathered there, and no one was left outside in the black woods. Here at the shelter the woods had been pushed back to the edge of the hills that rose precipitously behind the clearing. Soybeans and corn would be planted later, when the weather warmed enough. Fertile land was not to be wasted, and those people stationed in the shelter were not to be idle during the weeks between the arrivals and departures of the paddle wheels.
The following day the new expeditionary force loaded the big boat at the foot of the falls, and that night they slept in the shelter. At dawn they would embark on the second phase of the trip to Washington.
Mark allowed no one to handle his pack, or his canoe, which he secured to the second boat. This was the fourth canoe he had made, the largest, and he felt no one else understood the mixture of fragility and strength that combined to make this canoe the only safe way to travel the rivers. He had tried to interest some of the others in canoes, but failed; they didn’t want to think about traveling the wild rivers alone.
The Potomac was rougher than the Shenandoah, and there were ice floes in it. No one had mentioned ice floes, Mark thought, and wondered about the source this late in the year. It was mid-April. The forests screened the hills here, and he could only guess there was still snow and ice in the high country. The paddle wheel moved slowly down the river, its crew busy and alert to the dangers of the wide, swift stream. By dark they were well into the Washington area, and tied up that night to a bridge foundation that jutted from the water, a sentinel left behind when the rest of the bridge yielded to the intolerable pressures of water, wind, and age.
Early the next morning they began to unload, and it was here that Mark was to leave the others. It was hoped he would return within two weeks, with good news about the accessibility of a route to Philadelphia and/or New York.
Mark unloaded his own belongings, unslung the canoe and carefully lifted it off the paddle wheel, and then shrugged his backpack into place. He was ready. A long knife was sheathed at his thigh, a rope hung from his braided steerhide belt; he was dressed in hide trousers, moccasins, and a soft leather shirt. The ruined city was oppressive to him; he was eager to be back on the river. Already the transfer was being made; supplies were unloaded, and stacks of materials that had been found and put in storage near the river were being taken aboard. For a few moments Mark watched, then silently he lifted his canoe, swung it over his head, and began to walk.
Throughout the day he walked amid the ruins, always keeping to a northeast direction that eventually would see him clear of the city, into the forest again. He found a small stream and floated his canoe, following the meandering waterway for several hours before it turned south, where he shouldered the canoe and took to the forest. Now the forest was thick and silent, familiar for all its strangeness. Before dark he found a place to camp, and made a fire and cooked his dinner. His supply of dried food was sufficient for two to three weeks, if he didn’t find other food to supplement it, but he knew he would find wild food. No forest failed to yield fern tips, or asparagus shoots, or a variety of other edible greens. Here nearer the coast, there was less frost damage than inland.
As the light faded he dug a shallow trench and filled it with soft pine needles, spread his poncho over them, pulled the canoe into position to make a cover, and stretched out on the bed he had made. His worse enemy would be the spring rains, he knew. They could be heavy, and unexpected. He made a few sketches and notes, then rolled on his side and watched the dying fire until it was a glow in the blackness, and soon he was asleep.
The next day he entered Baltimore. It had burned, and there was evidence of a great flood. He didn’t explore the ruins. He launched his canoe in Chesapeake Bay and started north. The forest came to the water’s edge here, and from the water there were no traces of any of man’s works. There was a strong current, the effects of an outgoing tide combined with the flow from the Susquehanna River. Mark fought it for several minutes, then headed for shore to wait for low tide. He should cross the bay, he thought, and hug the shoreline there. As he drew nearer the delta of the Susquehanna the water would be rougher and it might be impossible to get the small boat through at all. There were ice floes here, not large, and mostly flat, as if they had broken away from a river that had frozen over and was only now thawing.
He stretched out on the ground and waited for the tide to turn. Occasionally he checked the water level, and when it stopped falling he sat on the shore and watched until sticks he threw into the water started to float northward, and then he set out once again. This time he started to paddle northeast, heading for open water and the other shore.
The turbulence was minor near the shore, but as he drew nearer the center of the bay he could feel the force of the tide meeting the rush of the river and, although little of the fierce battle showed on the surface of the water, it was transmitted through the boat; he could feel it in the oar, in the way the small boat pulled to one side, then the other. His arms strained at the paddle, he could feel the tautness of his back and legs as he fought the current and the tide, and he felt only exhilaration at being in the battle.
Abruptly he was through it, and now the tide carried him strongly northward, and he had only to steer and search the shoreline for the best place to make a landing. It was sandy, with sparse growth; the danger there would be hidden rocks that could pierce the bottom of the canoe. The sun was very low when he felt the first gentle scraping of boat on sandy beach, and he sprang out into the cold water and pulled the canoe ashore.
With his canoe safe on high ground, he stood on the beach and looked back the way he had come. Forests, black, solid-looking, the green-blue water streaked with the muddy water of the river, deep blue sky, the sun low in the west, and nowhere another person, nowhere a sign of human life, no buildings, no roads, nothing. Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed, a joyous, almost childish laugh of triumph. It was his. All of it. No one else wanted it. No one was there to contest his ownership, and he claimed it all.
He whistled as he made a fire of driftwood. It burned with incredible colors: greens, blues, copper flames, scarlet. He cooked his dried corn and beef in sea water and marveled at the taste, and when he fell asleep before the last light had faded, he was smiling.
By dawn the next morning he was ready to follow the shoreline north, searching for the old intercoastal waterway that joined Chesapeake Bay with Delaware Bay. When he found it, little remained of the canal; now there was a wide marsh with cattails and marsh grasses hiding the land and water alike. Immediately on entering the marsh the grasses closed in about him and he was cut off from the world. At times the water deepened and no grasses grew in those places, and he was able to move ahead faster, but most of the day he pushed his canoe through the tough stems, using them, clumps of roots, whatever he could find, to propel himself eastward. The sun rose higher and he took off his shirt. No
wind moved among the grasses. The sun lowered and the air became cold and he put his shirt back on. He paddled when he could, pushed against the grasses when he could not use the paddle any other way, and slowly he made his way through the marsh. He didn’t stop to eat or rest all day; he knew he didn’t want to be among the high grasses when the sun went down, when darkness came.
The shadows were very long when he finally felt the difference in the water beneath the boat. He began to move faster now; each dip of his paddle made the boat glide forward in a more natural response, not impeded by the rough, grasping stems that had held him back all day. The grasses parted, thinned out, then disappeared, and there was turbulent, freely moving water before him. He knew he was too tired to fight yet another current, and he let it take him downstream, to land on the shore of Delaware Bay.
The next morning he saw fish. Moving carefully, he opened his pack and found the net he had made the previous winter, to the amusement of the other children. The net was five feet square, and although he had practiced throwing it in the river in the valley, he knew he was inexpert with it, that his first throw would probably be the only chance he would have. He knelt in the canoe, which had begun to drift as soon as he stopped paddling, and waited until the fish swam closer. Closer, he whispered at them, closer. Then he threw, and for a moment the canoe rocked dangerously. He felt the heaviness of the weighted net increase, and jerked and tugged hard and began to pull it in. He gasped when he saw his catch: three large, silvery fish.
He sat back on his heels and studied the fish flopping about, and for a time his mind was a blank about what to do with them. Slowly he began to remember what he had read about cleaning them, how to sun-dry them, or roast them over an open fire . . .
On shore he cleaned the three fish and spread them in the sun on flat rocks to dry. He sat looking at the water and wondered if there were shellfish here also. He took the canoe out again, this time keeping very close to shore. He came to a half-submerged rock where he found a bed of oysters, and on the bottom of the sandy bay there were clams, which disappeared when he disturbed the water. By late afternoon he had gathered many of the oysters and dug pounds and pounds of clams. His fish were not dry, and he knew they would spoil if he didn’t do something else. He pondered, staring at the bay, and he realized the ice floes were the answer.