by Ward Moore
Not “Uncle Dan,” twitteringly imposed false avuncularity, but striking through it (and the facade of “Pearl and”) and aside (when I was a child I … something … but now I have put away childish things); the wealth of implicit assertion. Ah yes, Mother, we all know the pardonable weakness and vanity; we excuse you for your constant reminders, but Mother, with all deference, we refuse to be forced any longer to be parties to middle-age’s nostalgic flirtatiousness. One could almost feel sorry for Molly.
… middle age’s nostalgic flirtatiousness …
… nostalgic …
Metaphorically Mr. Jimmon sat abruptly upright. The fact that he was already physically in this position made the transition, while invisible, no less emphatic. The nostalgic flirtatiousness of middle age implied—might imply—memory of something more than mere coquetry. Molly and Dan.…
It all fitted together so perfectly it was impossible to believe it was untrue.
The impecunious young lovers, equally devoted to Dan’s genius, realizing marriage was out of the question (he had never denied Molly’s shrewdness; as for Dan’s impracticality, well, impracticality wasn’t necessarily uniform or consistent. Dan had been practical enough to marry Pearl and Pearl’s money.) could have renounced …
Or not renounced at all?
Mr. Jimmon smiled; the thought did not ruffle him. Cuckoo, cuckoo. How vulgar, how absurd. Suppose Jir were Dan’s? A blessed thought.
Regretfully he conceded the insuperable obstacle of Molly’s conventionality. Jir was the product of his own loins. But wasn’t there an old superstition about the image in a woman’s mind at the instant of conception? So, justly and rightly Jir was not his. Nor Wendell for that matter. Only Erika, by some accident. Mr. Jimmon felt free and lighthearted.
“Get gas at the next station,” he bulletined.
“The next one with a clean rest room,” Molly corrected.
Invincible. The Earth-Mother, using men for her purposes: reproduction, clean rest rooms, nourishment, objects of culpability, Homes & Gardens. The bank was my life; I could have gone far but: Why, David—they pay you less than the janitor! It’s ridiculous. And: I can’t understand why you hesitate; it isn’t as though it were a different type of work.
No, no different; just more profitable. Why didn’t she tell Dan Davisson to become an accountant; that was the same type of work, just more profitable? Perhaps she had and Dan had simply been less befuddled. Or amenable. Or stronger in purpose? Mr. Jimmon probed his pride thoroughly and relentlessly without finding the faintest twinge of retrospective jealousy. Nothing like that mattered now. Nor, he admitted, had it for years.
Two close-peaked hills gulped the sun. He toyed with the idea of crossing over to the northbound side now that it was uncongested and there were occasional southbound cars. Before he could decide the divided highway ended.
“I hope you’re not planning to spend the night in some horrible motel,” said Molly. “I want a decent bath and a good dinner.”
Spend the night. Bath. Dinner. Again calm sentences formed in his mind, but they were blown apart by the unbelievable, the monumental obtuseness of.… How could you say it, It is absolutely essential to drive until we get there? When there were no absolutes, no essentials in her concepts? My dear Molly, I.
“No,” he said switching on the lights.
Wendell would be the next to kick up a fuss. Till he fell mercifully asleep. If he did. Jir was probably debating the relative excitements of driving all night and stopping in a strange town. His voice would soon be heard.
The lights of the combination wayside store and filling-station burned inefficiently, illuminating the deteriorating false-front brightly and leaving the gas pumps in shadow. Swallowing regret at finally surrendering to mechanical and human need, and so losing the hard-won position; relaxing, even for a short while, the fierce initiative that had brought them through in the face of all probability, he pulled the station wagon alongside the pumps and shut off the motor. About halfway—the worst half, much the worst half—to their goal. Not bad.
Molly opened the door on her side with stiff dignity. “I certainly wouldn’t call this a clean station.” She waited for a moment, hand still on the window, as though expecting an answer.
“Crummy joint,” exclaimed Wendell, clambering awkwardly out.
“Why not?” asked Jir. “No time for niceties.” He brushed past his mother, who was walking slowly into the shadows.
“Erika,” began Mr. Jimmon, in a half-whisper.
“Yes, Dad?”
“Oh … never mind. Later.”
He was not himself quite sure what he wanted to say; what exclusive, urgent message he had to convey. For no particular reason he switched on the interior light and glanced at the packed orderliness of the wagon. Then he slid out from behind the wheel.
No sign of the attendant, but the place was certainly not closed. Not with the lights on and the hoses ready. He stretched, and walked slowly, savoring the comfortably painful uncramping of his muscles, toward the crude outhouse labeled MEN. Molly, he thought, must be furious.
When he returned, a man was leaning against the station wagon. “Fill it up with ethyl,” said Mr. Jimmon pleasantly, “and check the oil and water.”
The man made no move. “That’ll be five bucks a gallon.” Mr. Jimmon thought there was an uncertain tremor in his voice.
“Nonsense; I’ve plenty of ration coupons.”
“OK.” The nervousness was gone now, replaced by an ugly truculence. “Chew’m up and spit’m in your gas tank. See how far you can run on them.”
The situation was not unanticipated. Indeed, Mr. Jimmon thought with satisfaction of how much worse it must be closer to Los Angeles; how much harder the gouger would be on later supplicants as his supply of gasoline dwindled. “Listen,” he said and there was reasonableness rather than anger in his voice, “we’re not out of gas. I’ve got enough to get to Santa Maria, even to San Luis Obispo.”
“OK. Go on then. Ain’t stopping you.”
“Listen. I understand your position. You have a right to make a profit in spite of government red tape.”
Nervousness returned to the man’s speech. “Look whyn’t you go on? There’s plenty other stations up ahead.”
The reluctant bandit. Mr. Jimmon was entertained. He had fully intended to bargain, to offer two dollars a gallon, even to threaten with the pistol in the glove compartment. Now it seemed mean and niggling even to protest. What good was money now? “All right,” he said, “I’ll pay you five dollars a gallon.”
Still the other made no move. “In advance.”
For the first time Mr. Jimmon was annoyed; time was being wasted. “Just how can I pay you in advance when I don’t know how many gallons it’ll take to fill the tank?”
The man shrugged.
“Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pay you for each gallon as you pump it. In advance.” He drew out a handful of bills; the bulk of his money was in his wallet, but he’d put the small bills in his pockets. He handed over a five. “Spill the first one on the ground or in a can if you’ve got one.”
“How’s that?”
Why should I tell him; give him ideas? As if he hadn’t got them already. “Just call me eccentric,” he said. “I don’t want the first gallon from the pump. Why should you care? It’s just five dollars more profit.”
For a moment Mr. Jimmon thought the man was going to refuse, and he regarded his foresight with new reverence. Then he reached behind the pump and produced a flat-sided tin in which he inserted the flexible end of the hose. Mr. Jimmon handed over the bill, the man wound the handle round and back—it was an ancient gas pump such as Mr. Jimmon hadn’t seen in years—and lifted the drooling hose from the can.
“Minute,” said Mr. Jimmon.
He stuck two fingers quickly and delicately inside the nozzle and smelled them. Gas all right, not water. He held out a ten-dollar bill. “Start filling.”
Jir and Wendell appeared out of the s
hadows. “Can we stop at a town where there’s a movie tonight?”
The handle turned, a cogtoothed rod crept and retreated, gasoline gurgled into the tank; movies, rest rooms, baths, restaurants. Gouge apprehensively lest a scene be made and propriety disturbed. In a surrealist daydream he saw Molly turning the crank, grinding him on the cogs, pouring his essence into insatiable Jir and Wendell. He held out twenty dollars.
Twelve gallons had been put in when Molly appeared. “You have a phone here?” he asked casually. Knowing the answer from the blue enameled sign not quite lost among the less sturdy ones advertising soft drinks and cigarettes.
“You want to call the cops?” He didn’t pause in his pumping.
“No. Know if the lines to LA”—Mr. Jimmon loathed the abbreviation—“are open yet?” He gave him another ten.
“How should I know?”
Mr. Jimmon beckoned his wife around the other side of the wagon, out of sight. Swiftly but casually he extracted the contents from his wallet. The 200 hundred-dollar bills made a fat lump. “Put this in your bag,” he said. “Tell you why later. Meantime why don’t you try and get Pearl and Dan on the phone? See if they’re OK?”
He imagined the puzzled look on her face. “Go on,” he urged. “We can spare a minute while he’s checking the oil.”
He thought there was a hint of uncertainty in Molly’s walk as she went toward the store. Erika joined her brothers. The tank gulped; gasoline splashed on the concrete. “Guess that’s it.”
The man became suddenly brisk as he put up the hose, screwed the gascap back on. Mr. Jimmon had already disengaged the hood; the man offered the radiator a squirt of water, pulled up the oil gauge, wiped it, plunged it down, squinted at it under the light and said, “Oil’s OK.”
“All right,” said Mr. Jimmon. “Get in, Erika.”
Some of the light shone directly on her face. Again he noted how mature and self-assured she looked. Erika would survive—and not as a savage either. The man started to wipe the windshield. “Oh, Jir,” he said casually, “run in and see if your mother is getting her connection. Tell her we’ll wait.”
“Aw furcrysay, I don’t see why I always—”
“And ask her to buy a couple of boxes of candy bars if they’ve got them. Wendell, go with Jir, will you?”
He slid behind the wheel and closed the door gently. The motor started with hardly a sound. As he put his foot on the clutch and shifted into low he thought Erika turned to him with a startled look. As the station wagon moved forward, he was sure of it.
“It’s all right, Erika,” said Mr. Jimmon, “I’ll explain later.”
He’d have lots of time to do it.
Lot’s Daughter
Mr. Jimmon put a finger tenderly against an upper molar. It did not ache yet, but he knew the signs, felt the pain waves still of too high a frequency for translation into sensation. Tomorrow he would be in agony, and for days afterward. Then the pain would go; six months or a year later the gray, porous shell would work loose and drop out. It had happened several times in the six years—Mr. Jimmon was pretty sure it was six years, not seven—since.… Mr. Jimmon didn’t care to finish the sentence, even mentally, for he was a man who shrank from the too-dramatic, the over-romantic. And if you did not stop short you would have to conclude: since the End of Civilization, or since we Fled the Holocaust, or since Man Decided on Suicide. All capitalized. Theatrical, even if accurate.
Should’ve had them all extracted, he thought as he had thought so often. And appendix. Apprehension projected a detailed picture of unendurable pain while Erika stood by helpless to ease him. As he had stood by when.…
But that was natural, in the course of nature, he objected. Bring forth your young in labor; rationalization from observation, transferred to a supernatural command. No prophet ever got a revelation reading: Thou shalt die miserably of an inflamed bowel.
“If you expect to eat, you better get up now.”
Erika’s voice was matter-of-fact, emotionless. She was not nagging him at the moment; she did not condemn his idleness, she stated the incontrovertible. He who doesn’t work won’t eat. In a dead world the cliché was immortally triumphant.
“You hear me, Dad?”
“Heard you,” said Mr. Jimmon.
He tried to shut his ears against the sounds of her moving about, and the boy’s “I want something to eat,” as he shut his eyes to the dawn light. He was not sleepy, not tired even; he just didn’t want to leave his bed. Hadn’t wanted to for the last few days, in fact; his habitual energy and determination seemed to have slipped away. Perhaps it had been gone for a long time.
Certainly the pile of dry grass on which he was lying was no snugly comfortable couch. There were stiff, thick weeds mixed through it, and the grass itself was matted in spots as though it had not been properly dried out. She had been careless in curing it again.
“Heard you,” he repeated.
Long ago he’d decided they dare not keep food anywhere near the shelter lest it attract predators. Each day’s provision must be sought afresh except on the rare occasion when he succeeded in shooting a large animal. They gambled then, gorging; using the meat up faster than they need have, listening for the soft padding or inquisitive snuffle of carnivores.
“Dad!”
Nagging now. “I’m getting another bad tooth,” he stated, staring upward. There was no question; he could see the light coming through the roof in several places. The next rain would sluice in as though there were nothing to stop it. For the hundredth—or five hundredth—time he decided he ought to do something drastic about putting a real roof on the shelter. Have done with the makeshift of branches and thatch and soil. Get boards. Real boards, from the nearest house. Five miles. Ten trips, twenty trips … 100 miles. He was easily capable of walking 100 miles, fifty of them burdened with lumber. But for what? A hundred miles for a tight roof; was it worth it now that all the stuff that could be ruined by rain had already been water-soaked?
“Well. This time I certainly hope you’ll let me knock it out with a nail before you waste weeks moaning about it.”
Mr. Jimmon shook his head silently. He was not afraid of the pain. Or even revolted by the savagery of putting a large nail against the aching tooth and giving it a sharp blow with the hammer. The shudder induced was at pictures of choking to death on the dislodged tooth or the awful realization of a broken jaw.
“It’s the diet,” he muttered. “No bones or gristle. Even crusty bread.”
A hundred miles. If he could jump into the station wagon, explore till he found exactly what he wanted, load up and come back. If. No use dwelling on the tragedy of that immobilization.
“If you ever got up early the way you used to, you might get a deer or a rabbit; they feed at dawn. And if you walked a few miles you could kill a cow again.”
He covered his eyes with his hands. “No cattle left. Either drifted away or just haven’t adapted.”
“More likely somebody’s got them herded.”
Mr. Jimmon sighed; it was the old argument. “Don’t you suppose we’d have seen some sign of this enterprising, mythical character? The one who not only herds cows but rigs up gadgets and has machinery working. And what about the dogs he must have tamed; why haven’t we heard the barking or noticed them sniffing around?”
“You’ve been too busy hiding to notice anything.”
“A smart man hides from savages until the savages kill each other off or until he has some means of subduing them.”
“You have no way of knowing that what you thought was going to happen before we left Malibu has actually happened.”
“I was right about other things; the panic, the crowded highways, the extortion for gasoline, the destruction. Why should I suddenly be wrong?”
“But you don’t know. And you don’t want to find out.”
The fixed notion that there could be numbers going about their business as though It had never happened could become irritating. Probably fostered by c
oncern for the boy; he remembered no such obstinacy on her part before he was born. During those frightening months her need for others had been imperative enough to induce a desperate faith in the existence of survivors. Civilized survivors like themselves trying mightily not to relapse. A faith against all reason.
“Be logical, Erika. Visualize the probabilities. First the destruction of the cities. How many died instantly? Ten million? Twenty million? Thirty million?” He began to feel some relish for the discussion, in displaying his own smooth reasoning even though he was merely repeating what he’d said so often. “Be conservative; say twenty million.”
“That’s only a guess. The radio never gave the figures.”
“It’s a logical guess, and the radio’s reticence is one of the factors in the logic. But the initial destruction was only the beginning. Radiation sickness doesn’t show up right away. And the disease, spread by refugees; epidemics. Filth-borne plagues, polluted water on top of malnutrition. Another thirty million anyway. Fifty million, third of the population, from only primary effects. Then crop failures. Industrial farming couldn’t survive; gasoline shortages, no manpower, breakdown of equipment. Shrinking markets; lack of transportation. In the West, end of irrigation. New malnutrition, second wave of epidemics. Deaths from starvation, from rioting between the late city-folks and the farmers. Murder. Fighting for women. Gang wars. Floods and disasters due to the disappearance of government services, and a third wave of epidemics after them. Your remnant: two or three million, widely scattered in disorganized, roving bands.”
“That’s only the way you see it. People don’t turn into savages overnight just to fit a theory—”
“No.” Mr. Jimmon could not resist the opening. “They’re savages already. Disruption cracks off the surface hiding the savagery underneath.”
She tossed her head. “People have an instinct for cooperation; I bet it’s stronger than the savagery you’re always expecting. Because savagery means less food and comfort in a short time, no matter how it pays off for a moment. People aren’t as stupid as you think they are; they must have organized ways of stopping the epidemics, raised food even if they had to use hoes and horses, done all kinds of things to get started again.”