The jeep which had been in the process of being repaired was only some ten feet behind the one they had chosen to try. If they could shove that one forward out of gear, they might send it against the rear of the other with enough momentum to make something give. Also they might smash something, but that was no matter!
They brought this jeep within two feet of the other, and rested. Then, altogether, they shoved again.
There was a satisfactory bang of metal on metal. Going to look, they found that the first jeep had moved three inches. After that, they could move it with hard pushing, even when it was in gear. Ish began to feel triumphant.
"You see," he said, "once you get something moving it's easier to keep moving!" (Then he wondered whether that principle applied to groups of people, as well as to engines.)
The battery of course was dead, but Ish had faced that problem before. First, however, he gave the boys instructions to drain all oil out of the car and replace it with oil from sealed cans, using the lightest oil available.
Leaving them at work, he went off with a dog-team. In half an hour he was back with a battery. He connected it, and turned the key in the ignition switch, watching the needle on the ammeter. Nothing happened. Perhaps the wiring was gone somewhere.
But he tapped the ammeter, and the long unused needle suddenly disengaged and went jiggling over to Discharge. There was life! He felt around for the starter-button.
"Well, boys," he said, "here's a real test.... Yes, I guess this is the acid test, seeing that that's what we have in the battery!" But the boys grinned blankly, never having heard the expression, and Ish found himself a little disturbed that he had been able to make a pun at such a climax. He pressed t ' he starter-button. There was a long grunt.
Then slowly the engine turned!
After the first turn it moved more easily, and then more easily still. So far, so good!
The gasoline-tank was empty, like most of them these days. Probably their caps were not air-tight, or else the gasoline seeped through the carburetor-Ish did not know.
They found gasoline in a drum, and poured five gallons into the tank. Ish put in fresh spark-plugs. He primed the carburetor, feeling a little proud that he knew enough to do so. He got into the seat, set the choke, snapped the ignition on again, and tramped on the starter-button.
The engine grunted, turned over, turned faster, and then suddenly roared into life.
The boys were shouting. Ish sat triumphantly, nursing the throttle with his foot. He felt a sense of pride in the old achievements of civilization-in all the honest design and honest work of engineers and machinists which had gone into fashioning this engine, fit to work after twenty-some years of idleness.
The engine, however, died suddenly when the gas in the carburetor was exhausted. They primed and ran it again, and still again, and finally the ancient pump brought up gas from the tank, and the engine ran continuously. The problem now—and perhaps the worst of all—was tires.
In the same display-room there was one of the usual tireracks well raised above the floor. But the tires had been standing upright for so long that they had sagged a little under their own weight, and the rubber, where it had rested against the rack, was badly indented. Such tires, even though they might last for a few miles, held obviously little possibility for a long run. By searching carefully, they finally found some fires which had been resting on their sides, and these seemed to be in'better condition, although the rubber was hard and full of little cracks, and gave an impression of being dead.
They found a jack, and raised the first wheel from the ground. Even to get the wheel off was a struggle, for the nuts had begun to rust to the threads.
Bob and Dick were unaccustomed to the use of tools, and little Joey kept getting in the way with his eagerness, and was more hindrance than help. Even in the Old Times Ish had never dismounted a tire except once or twice in an emergency, and he had forgotten the tricks, if he had ever known them.
They spent a long time sweating the first tire off the rim. Bob barked a knuckle, and Dick tore a finger-nail half off. Getting the "new" tire onto the rim was even more of a struggle, both because of their clumsiness and because of the tire's own aged stiffness. At last, tired and thoroughly irritated with one another and with the whole job, they finished getting this one tire onto the rim.
Just as they were pausing, triumphant but tired, Ish heard Joey calling to him from across the garage.
"What is it, Joey?" he answered, a little petulantly.
"Come here, Daddy."
"Oh, Joey, I'm tired," he said, but he went, and the two other boys trailed with him. Joey was pointing at the spare wheel of one of the jeeps.
"Look, Daddy," he said, "why couldn't you use that one?"
All Ish could do was to burst out laughing.
"Well, boys," he said to Dick and Bob, "that's the time we made fools of ourselves!"
The tire on the spare wheel had been suspended in the air all these years, and it was already on a wheel. They had not needed to shift any tires. All they had needed to do was to take this and the other spares, pump them up, and put them on their own jeep. They had done a lot of work for no purpose because they had just barged along and not used their heads.
Then Ish, suddenly recognizing his own stupidity, strangely gained a new pleasure. Joey was the one who had seen! But by now it was time for lunch.
They had brought along only their spoons and always essential can-openers. Now they went off to the nearest grocery store.
Like all the others it was a scene of devastation and litter and ruin. A mess! It was depressing to Ish, even horrible, in spite of the many times he had seen its like. The boys, however, thought nothing of it, never having seen a grocery store in any other state. Rats and mice had chewed into all the cartons, and the floor was deep with the remnants of cardboard and paper, mixed with rodent droppings. Even the toilet paper had been chewed, probably for nesting.
But the rodents could do nothing with glass or tin, and so the bottles and cans were undisturbed. They even looked startlingly neat, at first glance, in contrast with the mess elsewhere. When you looked closer, they were not really neat. Droppings were scattered even on these shelves, and many labels had been chewed, probably because of the paste beneath the paper. Also the colors had faded, so that the once bright red tomatoes on the labels were a sickly yellow, and the rosy-cheeked peaches had almost disappeared.
The labels, however, were still readable. At least, Ish and Joey could read them, and the others, though they got stuck on many hard words like apricots and asparagus, could at least tell what was inside by looking at the pictures. They selected what they wanted.
The boys were quite ready to sit down in the litter and eat. Ish, however, wanted to get outside. So they went and sat on the curb in the sun.
They did not bother with a fire, but ate a cold lunch out of the cans, each to his choice, from a selection of baked beans, sardines, salmon, liver loaf, corned beef, olives, peanuts, and asparagus. Such a meal, Ish knew, ran high in proteins and fats and low in carbohydrates, but there were few carbohydrates that had been canned or bottled, and the few that you could find, like hominy and macaroni, called for heating. For drink, they had tomato juice. They ate a desert of canned nectarines and pineapple.
When they had finished, they wiped off the spoons and can-openers and put them back into their pockets. The half-empty cans they merely left lying. There was so much litter in the street already that something more did not matter.
The boys, Ish was glad to notice, were in a hurry to get back to work at the car. They had apparently begun to feel a little of the intoxication that was likely to come from a mastery over power. He himself was a little tired, and a new idea was shaping in his mind.
"Say, boys," he said, "Bob and Dick, I mean. Do you think you can go back and shift those wheels by yourselves?"
"Sure," said Dick, but he looked puzzled.
"What I mean is—well, Joey is too little to be much use, and I'm tired. It's only four blocks to the City Library from here. Joey can go with me. Want to, Joey?"
Joey was already on his feet with the excitement of the idea. The other boys were happy to get back to the tires.
As they walked toward the Library, Joey ran ahead in his eagerness. It was ridiculous, thought Ish, that he had never taken Joey there before. But all this matter of Joey's reading and intellectual interests had developed very rapidly.
Because of his policy of saving the great University Library as a reserve, Ish had been using this library for his own purposes for many years, and had long since forced the lock on the main entrance. Now he pushed the heavy door open, and entered proudly with his youngest son.
They stood in the main reading-room, and then wandered through the stacks. Joey said nothing, but Ish could see his eyes drink the titles in as he passed. They came out from the stacks again, and stood in the main lobby by the entrance looking back. Then Ish had to break the silence.
"Well, what do you think of it?"
"Is it all the books in the world?"
"Oh, no! Just a few of them."
"Can I read them?"
"Yes, you can read any you want to. Always bring them back, and put them in place again, so they won't get lost and scattered."
"What's in the books?"
"Oh, something of pretty near everything. If you read them all, you would know a lot."
"I'll read them all!"
Ish felt a sudden warning shadow fall on the happiness of his mind.
"Oh, no, Joey! You couldn't possibly read them all, and you wouldn't want to. There are dull ones and stupid ones and silly ones, and even bad ones. But I'll help you pick out the good ones. Now, though, we'd better go."
He was actually glad to get Joey away. The stimulation of seeing so many books so suddenly seemed almost more than was good for the frail little boy. Ish was glad that he had not taken him to the University Library. In due time now he could take him there.
As they walked toward the garage, Joey did not run ahead. This time he kept close to his father; he was thinking. Finally he spoke:
"Daddy, what is the name of those things that are on the ceilings of our rooms—like shiny white balls? You said once they used to make light."
"Oh, those are called 'electric lights.'"
"If I read the books, could I make them make light again?"
Ish felt a sudden intoxication of pleasure, and immediately after it a sense of fear. This must not go too fast!
"Well, Joey, I don't know," he said, trying to speak with unconcern. "Maybe you could, maybe not. Things like that take time, and a lot of people working together. You've got to go slow."
Then they walked without speaking. Ish was proud and triumphant that Joey had absorbed so much of his own feeling, and yet he was fearful. Joey was moving even too fast. The intellect should not run ahead of the rest of the personality. Joey needed physical strength and emotional solidity. Still, he was going far!
Ish came out of his thoughts to the sound of retching, and saw that Joey was vomiting upon a pile of rubble.
"That lunch!" thought Ish guiltily. "I let him eat too much mixture. He's done this before." Then he realized that the excitement had probably been more a factor than the lunch.
When Joey felt better, and they finally got back to the garage, they found that the boys had finished the work of shifting tires and pumping them up. Ish felt his old curiosity about the car and the expedition rising up again.
He got into the car, and once more started the engine. He nursed it lovingly, and then raced it a little to let it grow warm. Well, the engine was running and the tires were holding, at least temporarily. But there were a lot of questions about clutch and transmission and steering-gear and brakes, besides all those mysterious but vital things which lurked somewhere in the make-up of automobiles and of which he scarcely even knew the names. They had filled the radiator, but the water-circulation might well be clogged somewhere, and even that was enough to render a car of no value. But here we are again worrying about the future!
"All right!" he said. "Let's go!"
The engine was muttering contentedly. He threw the clutch out, and worked the stiff transmission into low gear. He let the clutch in, and the car lurched forward heavily, as if its bearings were almost too stiff to be started again, as if their fine steel balls like the rubber tires, had flattened from long standing in one position. Yet the car moved, and he felt it respond to the stiff steering gear. He pressed upon the brake, and the car came to a stop, having moved only six feet. Yet it had moved, and (of equal importance) it had stopped.
He had a sudden feeling of more than pleasure, reaching to the height of exaltation. It was not all a dream! If, in one day's work a man and three boys could get a jeep to running again, what could not a whole community accomplish in the course of a few years?
The boys unloosed the dogs from one of the wagons to run home by themselves. They hitched the wagon behind one the others. Then Dick drove one team, and Bob the other. Ish, with Joey beside him, started out bravely.
Fallen buildings had left heaps of debris in the street. Blowing winds had drifted leaves and dust upon the bricks and the winter rains had washed the whole into semblances of natural banks and hillocks. Grass was growing thickly; on one little mound there was even a fair stand of bushes. Ish steered stiffly hither and thither, finding a way along the debris-clogged streets. He was nearing home when he bumped sharply over a brick and heard a bang as the left rear tire out. He ended the day driving home on one flat tire, bumping badly, but taking it slowly and making the last grade successfully, a little ahead of the dog-teams. In spite of this final mishap, he felt that he had done well.
He let the jeep roll to a stop in front of the house, and leaned back in triumphant relief. At least he had got it home. Then he pressed the horn-button, and after these years of silence it responded wonderfully—TOOT-A-TOOT-TOOT!
He expected children, and older people too, to come hurrying from all directions at the unaccustomed sound, but there was no one. Only a sudden barking of dogs sprang up from everywhere. Then the team-dogs joined in the chorus, as they now came up the hill, and the boys joined him. Ish felt a sudden emptiness of fear inside him. Once before, long ago, he had come into a strangely empty town, and blown the horn of his car, and now it was easy enough to think that something might have happened when your whole universe consisted of only some thirty more or less defenseless people. But that was only for a moment.
Then he saw Mary, her baby on her arm, come unconcernedly out of the house down the street, and wave to him. "They've all gone bull-dodging!" she called.
The boys were suddenly excited to join the sport. They loosed the dogs from the carts, and were off, not even asking permission of Ish. Even Joey, now wholly recovered from his illness, rushed off with the others. Ish felt suddenly left alone and neglected, his triumph at restoring transportation gone suddenly sour in his mouth. Only Mary came to look at the jeep. She stared with big enough eyes, but was as untalkative as the baby, who also stared.
Ish got out of the jeep, and stretched. His long legs were cramped from its close quarters, and his bad loin ached from even this small amount of bumping.
"Well," he said with a little pride in his voice, "what do you think of it, Mary?" Mary was his own daughter, but she was not much like either of her parents, and her stolidity often bothered him.
"Good!" she said with a Choctaw-like imperturbability.
Ish felt that there was not much to follow up along that line. "Where's the bull-dodging?" he asked.
"Down by the big oak tree."
Just then they heard the loud sound of yelling, and Ish knew that someone had made a good maneuver at dodging.
"Well, I guess I might as well go down and see the national sport," he said, though he knew the irony would be wasted.
"Yes," said Mary, and began to stroll back with her baby toward her own house.
Ish went off on the path down the hill, across lots, through what had once been someone's backyard. "National sport!" he was still thinking to himself bitterly, although he realized that the bitterness might be partly because his own triumphant entry had been spoiled. He heard another shout from ahead which indicated that again someone put himself within a few inches of the bull's horns.
Bull-dodging was dangerous, too, although actually no one had ever been killed or even badly hurt. Ish rather disapproved of the whole business, but he did not feel that he was in a position to set himself firmly against it. The boys needed some way to get rid of their energy, and perhaps they even needed something dangerous. By and large, life was perhaps too quiet and too safe these days. Possibly—the image of Mary came to his mind again—too safe and unadventurous life tended to produce stolid people. These days children never had to be warned against crossing the street because of automobiles, and there were dozens of other daily hazards of the old civilization such as the common cold, not to mention atomic bombs, which nobody ever needed to consider. You had the ordinary run of sprains, cuts, and bruises, what you expected among people living largely in the open, and handling tools like hatchets and knives. Once, too, Molly had burned her hands badly, and there had been a near-drowning when a three-year-old had slipped from the pier at fishing.
Now he came into the edge of the little open space on the side of the hill, fairly level, close to the flat rock where the numerals of the years were incised. It had once been a park. The bull was being played in the center of the grassy spot. It was not a lawn such as you expected in a park. The grass was a foot tall at this time of year, and would have been taller if it had not been eaten down by cattle and elk.
Harry, Molly's fifteen-year-old, was playing the bull, and Ish's own Walt was backing him up—what they called "playing halfback"—a bit of jargon surviving from the Old Times. Although Ish did not consider himself an expert, his first glance was enough to let him know that this particular bull was not very dangerous. He must have been of almost pure Hereford blood, and still had the red coat with the white face and front markings. Nevertheless he showed the cumulative effects of ancestors who for twenty-one years had lived as range cattle, knowing no man-supplied shelter or food and surviving as best they could. The legs were longer; the barrel of the body, slimmer; the horns, bigger. At the moment, there was a pause in the game as the already tiring bull stood uncertain, and Harry was taunting him to charge.
At the edge of the glade among the trees on the uphill side, the spectators were sitting—almost everybody from the community in fact, including Jeanie with her baby. Among the trees they would have no trouble getting out of the road of the bull, if by any chance he should suddenly decide to leave the open ground. There were several dogs to be loosed in an emergency, and Jack sat with a rifle across his knees.
The bull suddenly came to life, and charged ponderously uphill with enough power to have wiped out twenty boys. But Harry dodged neatly, and the bull came to a halting stop, uncertain and confused.
A little girl (she was Jean's Betty) sprang suddenly from the group, and cried out that she wanted to take over. She was a wild, dashing little figure, her skirts tucked up high around her thighs, her long sun-tanned legs flashing back and forth in the sunshine. Harry yielded place to his half-sister. The bull was tired now, and fit for a girl to take over. Betty, aided by Walt, managed to provoke a few charges which were of no difficulty to dodge. And then, suddenly, a little boy cried out loudly, "I'm going in!"
It was Joey. Ish frowned, but he knew that he would not have to exert himself to forbid it. Joey was only nine, and it was strictly against the rules for anyone so young to try bull-dodging, even as halfback. The older boys enforced this discipline quickly enough. They were kindly, but firm.
"Aah, Joey," said Bob from his age of sixteen, "you're not big enough yet. You've got to wait a couple of years, anyway."
"Yeah?" said Joey. "I'm as good as Walt is, anyway."
The way he said it, suggested to Ish that Joey might have been doing a little practice on his own, sneaking off to find some easy-looking bull and playing it for a while, perhaps with the aid of Josey, his devoted twin sister. Ish felt a quick coldness pass through him at the thought of any danger to Joey—to Joey, particularly.
After a few more half-hearted protests, however, Joey had to subside.
By this time the bull, fat from the good grazing, was thoroughly tired and winded. He stood, only pawing the grass a little, while the wildly cavorting Betty swarmed around him, and even turned a handspring. But the sport was obviously over, and the spectators began to drift off. The older boys called to Betty and Walter. Suddenly the bull, much to his relief, doubtless, was merely left standing alone in the center of the grassy spot.
Back at the houses, Ish went to look at the well, to see how much work had been done during the day. He found that it had been sunk only a foot or so. Shovels and picks were left scattered about. All too obviously, the easygoing nature of the community and the special attraction of bull-dodging had prevented much labor being performed. Ish looked at the shallow hole a little grimly.
Yet during the day enough water had been carted in from a spring to provide plenty for all practical purposes. At dinner the veal roast was extremely good, and the only thing lacking to make a really excellent meal for Ish was that his Napa Gamay had soured a little in the bottle, after standing for better than a quarter-century, if the vintage-date on the label could be trusted.