Alas, Babylon

Chapter 9

They buried Porky Logan Friday morning. It was a ticklish and exhausting procedure. Randy had to draw his gun to get it done. First, it was necessary to obtain the cooperation of Bubba Offenhaus. That was difficult enough. Bubba’s funeral parlor was locked and empty and he was no longer seen in town. Since he was Deputy Director of Civil Defense as well as undertaker, a public appearance exposed him to all sorts of requests and problems which frightened him and about which he could do nothing. So Bubba and Kitty Offenhaus could only be found in their big new house, a rare combination of modern and classic, constructed largely of tinted glass between antebellum Greek columns.

When Randy found Bubba sitting on his terrace he looked like a balloon out of which air had been let. His trousers sagged front and rear and folds of skin drooped around his mouth. Dan explained about Porky. Bubba was unimpressed. “Let them bury him in Pistolville,” he said. “Plant him in his own back yard.”

“It can’t be done that way,” Dan said. “Porky’s a menace and the jewelry is deadly. Bubba, what we’ve got to have is a lead lined coffin. We’ll bury his loot with him.”

“You know very well I’ve only got one in stock,” Bubba said. “As a matter of fact it’s the only casket I’ve got left and probably the only casket in Timucuan County. It’s the deluxe model with hammered bronze handles and shield which can be suitably engraved, and reinforced bronze corners. Guaranteed for eternity and I’m damned if I’m going to give it up for Porky Logan.”

“Who are you saving it for,” Randy asked, “yourself?”

“I don’t see any point in you becoming insulting, Randy. That casket cost me eight hundred and forty-five dollars F.O.B. and it retails for fifteen hundred plus tax. Who’s going to pay for it? As a matter of fact, who’s going to reimburse me for all the other caskets, and everything else, that I’ve contributed since The Day?”

“I’m sure the government will,” Dan said, “one day.”

“Do you think the government’s going to restore Repose-in-Peace Park? Do you think it’ll pay for all those choice plots I’ve handed out, free? Like fun. I suppose you want to bury Porky in Repose-in-Peace?”

“That’s the general idea,” Dan said.

“And you expect me to use my hearse to cart the cadaver?”

“Somebody has to do it, Bubba, and you’re not only the man with the hearse but you’re in Civil Defense.”

Bubba groaned. The most stupid thing he had ever done was accept the Civil Defense job. At the time it had seemed quite an honor. His appointment was mentioned in the Orlando and Tampa papers, and he rated a whole page, with picture, in the Southeast Mortician. It was undoubtedly a bigger thing than holding office in the Lions or Chamber of Commerce. His status had increased, even with his wife. Kitty was Old Southern Family, which he had been raised in South Chicago. She had never wholly forgiven him for this, or for his profession. Secretly, he had considered Civil Defense a boondoggle, like handouts to foreign countries and spending millions on moon rockets and such. He had never imagined there would be a war. It was true that after The Day he and Kitty had been able to get supplies in San Marco that he wouldn’t have been able to get if he hadn’t been in Civil Defense. For one thing, he had been able to get gasoline out of the county garage. But the tanks had long been dry, all other official supplies exhausted. He said, “I’ve only got one hearse that will run and only a couple of gallons of gas in it. I’m saving it for an emergency.”

“This is an emergency,” Dan said. “You’ll have to use it now.”

Bubba thought of another obstacle. “It’ll take eight men to tote that lead-lined casket with Porky in it even if he’s lost weight like I have.”

Randy spoke. “We’ll get them. Plenty of strong men hanging around Marines Park.”

In the park they mounted the bandstand. Randy shouted, “Hey, everybody! Come over here!” The traders drifted over, wondering.

Bubba made a little speech. Bubba was accustomed to speaking at service club luncheons and civic meetings, but this audience, although many of the faces were familiar, was not the same. It was neither attentive nor courteous. He spoke of community spirit and cooperation and togetherness. He reminded them that they had sent Porky Logan to the state legislature and he knew Porky must have been a friend to many there. Now he asked for volunteers to help bury Porky. No hands went up. A few of the traders snickered.

Bubba shrugged and looked at Dan Gunn. Dan said, “This is in your own interest. If we leave the dead unburied we’re inviting an epidemic. In addition, in this case we must get rid of radioactive material that can be dangerous to anyone who finds it.”

Somebody yelled, “Bubba’s the undertaker, ain’t he? Well, let him undertake it.”

Some of the men laughed. Randy saw that they were bored and would soon turn away. It was necessary that he act. He stepped in front of Dan, lifted the flap of his holster, and drew out the .45. Holding it casually, so that it was a menace to no one in particular, and yet to each of them separately, he pulled back the hammer. His left forefinger jabbed at the faces of five men, big men. “You, Rusty, and you, Tom, and you there, you have just volunteered as pall-bearers.”

They looked at him amazed. For a long time, no one had ordered them to do anything. For a long time, there had not even been a boss on a job. Nobody moved. Some of the traders carried handguns in hip pockets or holsters. Others had leaned shotguns or rifles against benches or the bandstand railing. Randy watched for a movement. He was going to shoot the first man who reached for a weapon. This was the decision he had made. Regardless of the consequences he was going to do it. Having made the decision, and being certain he would carry it out, he felt easy about it. He realized they must know this. He stepped down from the bandstand, his eyes holding his five volunteers. He said, “All right, let’s get going.”

The five men followed him and he holstered his pistol.

So they buried Porky Logan. With him they buried the contaminated loot in Porky’s carton and out of the Hernandez house. Also into the coffin went the fire tongs with which Dan Gunn had handled the jewelry. When the grave was filled and mounded somebody said, “Hadn’t there ought to be a prayer for the poor bastard?”

They all looked at Randy. Randy said, “God rest his soul.” He added, knowing that it would be passed along, “And God help anybody who digs him up to get the stuff. It’ll kill them like it killed Porky.”

He turned and walked slowly, head down, to the car, thinking. Authority had disintegrated in Fort Repose. The Mayor, Alexander Getty, who was also chairman of the town council, was barricaded in his house, besieged by imaginary and irrational fears that the Russians had invaded and were intent on his capture, torture, and the rape of his wife and daughter. The Chief of Police was dead. The two other policemen had abandoned unpaid public duty to scramble for their families. The fire and sanitation departments, equipment immobilized, no longer existed. Bubba Offenhaus was frightened, bewildered, and incapable of either decision or action. So Randy had shoved his gun into this vacuum. He had assumed leadership and he was not sure why. It was enough trouble keeping the colony on River Road alive and well. He felt a loneliness not unfamiliar. It was like leading a platoon out of the MLR to occupy some isolated outpost. Command, whether of a platoon or a town, was a lonely state.

When they returned to River Road at noon Randy’s boat shoes were stiff with caked clay of the graveyard. He was knocking them clear of clods, on the front steps, when he was attracted by movement in the foliage behind Florence Wechek’s house. Alice Cooksey and Florence were standing under a tall cabbage palm, steadying a ladder. At the top of the ladder, head and shoulders hidden by fronds, was Lib. He wondered why she must be up there. He wished she would stay on the ground. She took too many chances. She could get hurt. With medical supplies dwindling—Dan had already been forced to use most of their reserve—they all had to be careful. Everyone had chores and if one was hurt it meant added burdens, including nursing, on the others. A simple fracture could be compound disaster.

Bill McGovern, Malachai, and Two-Tone Henry came around the corner of the house. Bill was wearing gray flannels raggedly cut off above the knees, tennis shoes, and nothing else. His right hand grasped a bouquet of wrenches. Grease smeared his bald head and fine white beard. He no longer looked like a Caesar, but like an unkempt Jove armed with thunderbolts. Before he could speak Randy demanded: “Bill, what’s your daughter doing up that palm?”

“She won’t say,” Bill said. “She and Alice and Florence are cooking up some sort of a surprise for us. Maybe she’s found a bird’s nest. I wouldn’t know.”

Randy said, “What’s the delegation?”

Bill said, “It’s Two-Tone’s idea. Two-Tone, you talk.”

Two-Tone said, “Mister Randy, you know my sugar cane will be tall and sweet and Pop’s corn will be up in June.”

“So?”

“Corn and sugar cane means corn whiskey. I mean we can make ’shine if you says it’s okay. Pop and Mister Bill here, they say it’s up to you. I suggests it only on one account. We can trade ’shine.”

“Naturally you wouldn’t drink any, would you, Two-Tone?”

“Oh, no sir!”

Randy understood that they required something from him beyond permission. Yet if they could manufacture corn whiskey it would be like finding coffee beans. Whiskey was a negotiable money crop. In this humid climate both corn and sugar cane would deteriorate rapidly. Corn whiskey was different. The longer you kept it the more valuable it became. Furthermore, only a few bottles of bourbon and Scotch remained, and the bourbon was strictly medicinal, Dan’s anesthetic. Two-Tone, the no-good genius! Cannily, all Randy said was, “If you have Preacher’s permission, it’s all right with me. It’s Preacher’s corn.”

Bill said, “I’ve already contributed my Imperial.”

“You’ve what?”

“Contributed the guts of my Imperial. You see, to make the still we have to have a lot of copper tubing. We have to bend condensing coils, and you have to have tubing between the boiler and condenser and so forth.”

“What you’re getting at,” Randy said slowly, “is that you want me to contribute the gas lines out of my Bonneville.”

“That’s right. The lines out of my car won’t give us enough length. And we have to have your lawn roller. You see, first we’ve got to build a mill to crush the cane. We have to get the juice and boil it down to molasses before we can make whiskey, or for that matter use it as syrup. Balaam, the mule, will walk a circle, a lever harnessed to his back to turn the roller on concrete slabs. That’s the mill. That’s the way they did it a couple of hundred years ago. I’ve seen pictures.”

Randy knew it would work. He said, sadly, “Okay. Go into the garage. But I don’t want to watch.” It had been a beautiful car. He remembered Mark’s casual prediction that it wouldn’t be worth a damn to him. Mark had been wrong. Some of it was useful.

Lunch was fish, with half a lime. Orange juice, all you could drink. A square of honeycomb. Dan and Helen were at the table. The others had already finished. Helen always waited for him, Randy noticed. She was so solicitous it was sometimes embarrassing.

Dan looked at his plate and said, “A fine, thinning diet. If everybody in the country had been on this diet before The Day the cardiac death rate would have been cut in half.”

“So what good would it have done them?” Randy said. He speared his honey and munched it, rolling his eyes. “We’ve got to do more trading with Jim Hickey. We’ve got to find something Jim needs.” Randy remembered what Jim had said about half his broods going foul since The Day and how Jim suspected radiation was responsible. He told Dan and Helen what Hickey had said.

Dan stared at his plate, troubled. He cut into his honeycomb and tasted it. “Delicious,” he said, but his mind was elsewhere. At last he looked up and spoke gravely. “We shouldn’t be surprised. Who can tell how much cesium 137 showered down on The Day? How much was carried into the upper atmosphere and has been filtering down since? The geneticists warned us of damage to future generations. Well, Hickey’s bees are in a future generation.”

Helen looked scared. Randy realized that this was a more serious matter to women than to men, although frightening enough to anybody. She said, “Does that mean—will it affect humans?”

“Certainly some human genetic damage can be expected,” Dan said. “What will happen to the birth rate is anybody’s guess. And yet, this is only nature’s way of protecting the race. Nature is proving Darwin’s law of natural selection. The defective bee, unable to cope with its environment, is rejected by nature before birth. I think this will be true of man. It is said that nature is cruel. I don’t think so. Nature is just, and even merciful. By natural selection, nature will attempt to undo what man has done.”

“You make it sound comforting,” Helen said.

“Only an opinion, based on almost no evidence. In six or seven months I’ll know more. But to evaluate everything may take a thousand years. So let’s not worry about it. Right now I’ve got other worries, like tires. The tires on the Model-A are smooth, Randy, and I’ve got to make a couple of calls out in the country. Got any suggestions?”

“I’ve been thinking of tires,” Randy said. “The tires on Florence’s old Chevy will fit the Model-A. Two of them are almost new. Let’s go over and make the change.”

It was the custom of Randy and Dan to meet in the apartment at six each evening, listen for the clear channel station which would be heard at this hour if at all, and, if they were tired and the rigors of the day warranted, share a drink. At six on that Friday evening, Dan had not returned from his calls, so Randy sat at his bar alone with the little transistor portable. Life was ebbing from its last set of batteries. He feared the day when it would no longer pick up even the strongest signal, or give any sound whatsoever, and the day could not be far distant. So, what strength was left in the batteries he carefully rationed. Sam Hazzard’s all-wave receiver, operating on recharged automobile batteries, was really their only reliable source of information. He clicked on the radio, was relieved to hear static, and tried the Conelrad frequencies.

Immediately he heard a familiar voice, thin and gravelly although he turned the volume full. “…against smallpox.” Randy knew he had missed the first item of news. Then he heard:

“There have been isolated reports of disorders and outlawry from several of the Contaminated Zones. As a result, Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown, Acting President, in her capacity as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, has authorized all Reserve officers and National Guard officers, not in contact with their commanders or headquarters, to take independent action to preserve public safety in those areas where Civil Defense has broken down or where organized military units do not exist. These officers will act in accordance with their best judgment, under the proclamation of martial law. When possible, they will wear the uniform when exercising authority. I repeat this new…”

The signal hummed and faded. Randy clicked off the set. Even as he began to assimiliate the significance of what he had heard he was aware that Helen was standing on the other side of the counter. In her hands she held a pair of scissors, comb, and a silver hand mirror. She was smiling. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Yes. Today’s your haircut day, Randy. Today’s Friday.” Helen trimmed his hair and Bill McGovern’s fringe each Friday, and barbered Dan and Ben Franklin Saturdays.

“You know I’m in the Reserve,” Randy said. “I’m legal.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had to pull my gun this morning to get Porky Logan buried. I had no authority. Now I do have authority, legally.” His thoughts on the proclamation, at the moment, went no further.

“That’s fine. Now get into a chair.”

He walked into his office. Because of the swivel chair, it was also the barbershop. Helen tied a towel around his neck and began snipping, deftly and rapidly. She was some woman, he thought. Under any conditions she could keep a household running smoothly. In ten minutes it was done.

Her hand ruffled and then smoothed his hair. He could feel her breasts, round and warm, pressing against his shoulder blades. “You’re getting gray hairs, Randy,” she said. The timbre of her voice was deeper than usual.

“W<…> isn’t?”

She rubbed and smoothed his temples. Her fingers kneaded the back of his neck. “Do you like that?” she whispered. “Mark loved it. When he came home, tense and worried, I always rubbed his temples and his neck like this.”

Randy said, “It feels fine.” He wished she wouldn’t talk like that. She made him nervous. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and started to rise.

She pulled him back and whirled the chair so that he faced her. Her eyes were round. He could see beads of perspiration at the corners of her nose, and on her forehead. “You are Mark,” she said. “Don’t you believe me? Here, look!” She lifted the mirror from the desk and thrust it before his face.

He looked, wondering how he could gracefully escape, wondering what was wrong with her. It was true that his face, leaner and harder, looked like Mark’s face now. “I do look something like him,” he admitted, “but why shouldn’t I? I’m his brother.”

Her arms pinning him with unexpected strength, she kissed him wildly, as if her mouth could subdue and mold and change him.

His hands found her wrists and he forced her back. The mirror fell and smashed.

“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t push me away! You’re Mark! You can’t deny it! You’re Mark!”

He struggled out of the chair, clamping her wrists, trying not to injure her. He knew that she was mad and he fought to control the panic within himself. “Stop it!” he heard himself shouting. “Stop it, Helen! Stop it! I’m not Mark! I’m Randy!”

She screamed, “Mark!”

The door was ajar. Through it came Lib’s voice, loud and welcome, “Randy, are you shorn? If Helen’s finished, come on out. I’ve got something to show you.”

He released Helen’s wrists. She leaned against the desk, face averted, shoulders quivering, one hand stifling the sounds erupting from her mouth. He said, gently, “Please, Helen—” He touched her arm. She drew away from him. He fled into the living room.

Lib stood at the porch door, her face somber, beckoning. She said quietly, “Up to the roof, where we can talk.”

Randy followed her, knowing that she must have heard and grateful for her interference. It was something he would have had to tell Lib anyway. He would have to tell Dan too. This emotional earthquake could bring down their house. It was a problem for a physician.

Up on the captain’s walk, Randy lowered himself carefully into a deck chair. The canvas would rot before summer’s end. His hands were shaking. “Did you hear it all?” he asked.

“Yes. All. And saw some too. Don’t ever let her know.”

“What’s wrong with her?” It was a protest rather than a question.

Lib sat on the edge of his chair and put her hands on his hands and said, “Stop shaking, Randy. I know you’re confused. It was inevitable. I knew it was coming. I’ll diagnose it for you as best I can. It’s a form of fantasy.”

Randy was silent, wondering at her detachment and coolness.

“It is,” she went on, “the sort of transference you find in dreams—the substitution in dreams of one person for another. Helen allowed herself to slip into a dream. I think she is a completely chaste person. She is, isn’t she?”

“I’m sure of it, or I was.”

“Yet she is a person who requires love and is used to it. For many years a man has been the greater part of her life. So she has this conflict-intense loyalty to her husband and yet need of a man to receive her abundance of love and affection. She tried to resolve the conflict irrationally. You became Mark. It was an hallucination.”

“You’re talking like a professional, Lib.”

“I’m not a professional. I just wanted to be one. I majored in psychology. Remember?”

It was something she had told him but he had forgotten because it seemed incongruous and not in the least important. Lib looked like a girl who had majored in ballet and water-skiing at Miami rather than psychology at Sarah Lawrence. He knew that she worked for a year in a Cleveland clinic and had abandoned the job only because of her mother’s illness. When she spoke of this year, which was seldom, it was with nostalgia, as some girls spoke of a year in Europe or on the stage. He suspected it must have been the most rewarding year of her life, and certainly there must have been a man, or men, in it. Randy said, “Lib, do you think she’s crazy?”

“Helen’s not psychotic. She’s under terrible strain. She let herself go, but only for a moment. She indulged a temporary fantasy. Now it is over. Now she will be ashamed of herself. The best thing you can do is pretend it didn’t happen. One day she’ll mention it to you, perhaps obliquely, and apologize. Eventually she’ll understand why she did it and the sense of guilt will leave her. One day, when we’re better friends, I’ll make her understand it. You know there is a man in the house for Helen—a perfectly fine man. I’m going to make that my special project.”

Randy felt relieved. He looked out over the river, contemplating his ignorance of women and the peace of evening. On the end of the dock Ben Franklin and Peyton were fishing. It was understood that anyone, child or adult, could go fishing before breakfast or after assigned chores were done. Fishing was not only recreation but the necessary daily harvest of a crop providentially swimming at their feet. Presently the brass ship’s bell on the porch sang its sharp, clean, sea note. The bell was a relic of Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton’s longboats. It was the same bell that Randy’s mother had used to summon Mark and him from the river to wash for dinner. There was peace and continuity in the sound of the bell. The bell announced that there was food on the table and a women in the kitchen. So it was not only a message to the children but to Randy. Helen had pulled herself together. He watched Ben and Peyton, trailed by Graf, thread their way up through the grove. Graf still shared Randy’s couch but all day he shadowed the boy. This was right. A boy needed a dog. A boy also needed a father.

When the children were close to the house Randy yelled down, “What’d you get?”

Ben held up a string of bream and speckled perch. “Sixteen,” he shouted, “on worms and crickets. I got fifteen, she only got one.”

Peyton danced in indignation, a slim shrill-voiced sprite. “Who cares about fish? If I grow up I’m not going to be a fisherman!”

Helen called from the kitchen window. The children disappeared.

Randy said, “Did you ever hear a little girl say ‘If I grow up’ before?”

“No, I never did. It gives me the creeps.”

“Not their fault,” Randy said. “Ours.”

“Would you want children, Randy?”

Randy considered the question. He thought of Jim Hickey’s bees, and Peyton’s “if,” and of cow’s milk you would not dare feed a baby in a contaminated zone, even if you had a cow, and of many other things.

Lib waited a long time for an answer and then she leaned across the chair and kissed him and said, “Don’t try to answer now. I’ve got to go down and help with dinner. Don’t come downstairs for a few minutes, Randy. We’ve whipped up a surprise.”

At seven, conscious that he had not heard Dan return, Randy went downstairs. The table was set as if for a feast—a white cloth, two new candles; a salad bowl as well as plate at each place. A laden salad-boat of Haitian mahogany rode on the circular linen lagoon. Garnishing the inevitable platter of broiled fish was a necklace of mushrooms. He tasted the salad. It was delicate, varied, and wonderful. “Who invented this?” he asked. He had not tasted greens in months.

Helen had not met his eyes since he entered the dining room. She said, “Alice Cooksey. Alice found a book listing edible palms, grasses, and herbs. Lib did most of the picking.”

“What all’s in it?”

“Fiddlehead ferns, hearts of palm, bamboo shoots, wild onions, some of the Admiral’s ornamental peppers, and the first tomatoes out of Hannah Henry’s garden.”

Lib said, “Wait’ll you try the mushrooms. That was Helen’s idea. It’s furury, for the last week they’ve been growing all over, right in front of our eyes, and only Helen recognized them as food.”

“No toadstools I hope,” Randy said.

Helen smiled and for the first time looked at him directly. “Oh, no. Alice thought of that too. I’ve been wandering around the hammock with an illustrated book in one hand and a basket in the other.”

Now that she could see he was treating the incident in his office as something that hadn’t happened, she was regaining control of herself. He said, “Helen, you be careful in that hammock. And Lib, you stay out of palm trees. We don’t want any snake bites or broken legs. Dan has troubles enough.” He put down his fork. “Where is Dan?”

Nobody knew. Dan was usually home before six. Occasionally, he was as late as this or later when he encountered an emergency. Still, it was impossible not to worry. It was at times like this that Randy truly missed the telephone. Without communications, the simplest mechanical failure could turn into a nightmare and disaster. He finished the fish, mushrooms, and salad, but without appetite.

Randy fidgeted until eight and then said, “I’m going to see the Admiral. Maybe Dan stopped there for dinner.” He knew this was unlikely, but he tried in any case to visit Sam Hazzard each evening and watch him comb the frequencies. There were other reasons. He stopped at the Wechek and Henry houses like a company commander checking his outposts. He slept uneasily unless he knew all was well around his perimeter. More compelling, Lib usually went with him. It was their opportunity to have a little time alone. It was paradoxical that they lived in the same house, ate almost every meal elbow to elbow or across the bar in his apartment, slept within twenty feet of each other, and yet they could be alone hardly at all.

Ben Franklin said, “Wait until I get the shotgun, Randy. I’ll go with you. It’s my night to stand guard.” He raced upstairs. Helen said, “Do you really think you ought to let him do it, Randy?”

“It’d break his heart if I didn’t. I think he’ll be okay. Caleb is going to stay up with him and Malachai will be right there. Malachai will sleep with one eye open.”

“Why are you letting him have your shotgun?”

“Because if something comes around the Henrys’ yard I want him to hit it, not just pop away at it in the dark with a twenty-two. I’ve taught him how to handle the shotty. It’ll be loaded with number two buck. He’ll do all right.”

Ben came out on the porch carrying the gun. Lib said, “Am I invited?”

Randy said, “Certainly.” He turned to Bill McGovern. “If Dan shows up, give me three bells, will you?” Three strokes of the ship’s bell meant come home, but it was not an emergency signal. Five bells was the panic button. The bell could be heard for a mile along the shore and across water.

Pale yellow lamplight showed in the Henrys’ windows. Randy knocked and Missouri, looking almost svelte in a newly acquired waistline, opened the door. “Mister Randy. I guessed ’twas you. I want to thank you for the honey. Tasted mighty good. Will you come in and have some tea?”

“Tea!” Randy saw a kettle steaming on a brick oven in the fireplace.

“We calls it tea. I grow mints under the house and dry ’em until they powders. So we has mint tea.”

“We’ll skip it tonight, Mizzoo. I just came to put Ben Franklin on his stand. Caleb ready?”

Missouri’s son stepped out of the shadows, teeth and eyes gleaming. Incredibly, he carried a six-foot spear.

“Let me see that,” Randy said. He hefted it. It had been fashioned, he saw, from a broken garden edger, the blade ground to a narrow triangle. It was heavy, well balanced, and lethal. “Uncle Malachai made it for me,” Caleb said proudly.

“It’s a wicked weapon, all right,” Randy said, and returned it to the boy.

Malachai, carrying a lantern, joined them. Malachai said, “I figured that if Ben Franklin missed with the shotgun Caleb best have it for close-in defense, if it’s truly a wolf, like Preacher says.”

Randy was certain that whatever had stolen the Henrys’ hens, and the pig, it wasn’t a wolf, but he wanted to impress Ben Franklin with the seriousness of his watch. “Probably not a wolf,” he said, “but it could be a cougar—a panther. My father used to hunt ’em when he was young. Plenty of panther in Timucuan County until the first boom brought so many people down. Now there aren’t so many people, so there will be more panther.”

They walked toward Balaam’s tired barn. The mule snorted and rattled the boards in his stall. “It’s only me, Balaam,” Malachai said. “Balaam, quiet down!” Balaam quieted.

Randy pointed to the bench alongside the barn. “That’s your stand, Ben.” Bill McGovern had sat on the bench the previous night and seen nothing.

“Stand?” Ben Franklin said.

“That’s what you call it in a deer hunt. When I was your age my father used to take me hunting and put me on a stand. There are a couple of things I want you to remember, Ben. Everything depends on you—and you, Caleb—keeping absolutely still. Whatever it is out there, is better equipped than you are. It can see better and hear better and smell better. All you’ve got on it is brains. Your only chance of getting it is to hear it before it hears or sees you.” Randy looked at the sky. There were only stars. Later, there would be a quarter moon. “Chances are you’ll hear it before you see it. But if you talk, or make any sound, you’ll never see it at all because it’ll hear you first and leave. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said.

“You’ll get cramped and you’ll get tired. So when you sit on the stand you move around all you want at first and find out just how far you can move without making any noise. You got shells in the chambers?”

“Yes, sir, and four extra in my pocket.”

“You’ll only need what’s in the gun. If you don’t get him with two you’ll never get him at all. And Ben—”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hold steady on it and don’t miss. We want to get rid of this thing or somebody will have to sit up all night every night.”

Ben said, “Randy, suppose it’s a man?”

This possibility had been restless in Randy’s mind from the first and he had not wanted to mention it, but since it was mentioned he gave the unavoidable answer. “Whatever it is, Ben, shoot it. And Caleb, if he misses I depend on you to stick it.” He turned to Malachai. “Thanks for lighting us out. We’re going on to Admiral Hazzard’s house now. Good night, Malachai.”

“Good night,” Malachai said. “I sleep light, Mister Randy.” Lib took his hand and they walked to the river bank and down the path that led toward the single square of light announcing that Sam Hazzard was in his den. Randy chuckled, thinking of Caleb’s spear. “We have just witnessed an historic event,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“North American civilization’s return to the Neolithic Age.”

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Lib said. “I didn’t like the way you spoke to Ben Franklin. It was brutal.”

“In the Neolithic,” Randy said, “a boy either grows up fast or he doesn’t grow up at all.”

Sam Hazzard’s den was compact and crowded, like a shipmaster’s cabin stocked for a long and lonely voyage. It was filled with mementos of his service, ceremonial and Samurai swords, nautical instruments, charts, maps, books on shelves and stacked in corners, bound files of the Proceedings, The Foreign Affairs Quarterly, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The admiral’s L-shaped desk spread along two walls. One side was preempted by the professional-looking shortwave receiver and his radio log. The radio was turned on, but when Randy and Lib entered the room all they heard was a low hum.

Sam Hazzard was not as tall as Lib and his weathered skin was drawn tautly over fine bones. In slippers and dragon blazoned shantung robe—his implacable gray eyes shadowed and softened by the indistinct lighting and horn-rimmed glasses, cottony hair like a halo—he appeared fragile; a deception. He was tough as an antique ivory figurine which has withstood the vicissitudes of centuries, and can accept more. He said, “A place for the lady to sit.” He sailed a plastic model of the carrier Wasp—the old Wasp cited by Churchill for stinging twice in the Mediterranean and then herself stung to death by torpedoes—to the far corner of the desk. “Up there,” he ordered Lib, “where you can be properly admired. And you, Randy, lift those books out of that chair. Gently, if you please. Welcome aboard to both of you.”

Randy said, “You haven’t seen Dan Gunn, have you?”

“No. Not today. Why?”

“He hasn’t come home.”

“Missing, eh? That sounds ungood, Randy.”

“If he comes home while we’re out Helen or Bill will ring the bell. Can we hear it in here?”

“Yes indeed, so long as the window’s open. It always startles me.”

Randy saw that the Admiral had been working. The Admiral was writing something he called, without elaboration, “A Footnote to History.” A portable typewriter squatted in the center of a ring of books. Research, Randy supposed. He recognized Durant’s Caesar and Christ, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, and Von Kriege by Clausewitz, indicating a footnote to ancient history. Randy said, “Any poop this evening?”

“I suppose you heard the Civil Defense broadcast.”

“I caught part of it. Then my batteries quietly expired.” The Admiral gave his attention to the radio. He turned the knob changing frequencies. “I’ve been listening for a station in the thirty-one meter band. Claims to be in Peru. I heard it for the first time last night. It put out some pretty outlandish stuff. It doesn’t seem to be on yet, so we’ll try for it again later. I’ve just switched to five point seven megacycles. That’s an Air Force frequency I can tap sometimes. You’ve never heard it, Randy. Interesting, but cryptic.”

The speaker squealed and whined. “Somebody’s transmitter is open,” the Admiral interpreted. “Something’s coming.”

A voice boomed with shocking loudness in the small room: “Sky Queen, Sky Queen. Do not answer. Do not answer. This is Big Rock. This is Big Rock. Applejack. Repeat, Applejack. Authentication X-Ray.”

Lip spoke, excitedly, “What is it? What does it mean?” Hazzard smiled. “I don’t know. I’m not up on Air Force codes and jargon. I’ve heard that Sky Queen call two or three times in the past month. Sky Queen could be a bomber, or a patrol plane, or a whole wing or air division. Big Rock—whoever that is—could be telling Sky Queen—whatever she may be—any number of things. Proceed to target, orbit, continue patrol, come home all is forgiven. I can’t even make an informed guess. However, I do know this. That was a good American call and so we’re still in business.” The smile departed. “On the other hand, it indicates that the enemy is still in business too.”

“How do you figure?” Randy asked.

“That ‘Do not answer’ phrase. Why does Big Rock order Sky Queen to be silent? Because if Sky Queen acknowledges the call then somebody might be able to take a radio fix on her, estimate speed and course, and vector fighters—or launch ground-to-air rockets to shoot her down.”

Randy considered this. “Then Sky Queen is probably stooging around over enemy territory.”

“That’s good deduction but we can’t be certain. For all we know, Sky Queen may be hunting a sub off Daytona. It makes me wild, listening to the damn Air Force—you will please pardon me, Lib—but if the enemy is listening on this frequency it must make them wild too.”

Lib asked, “What did that ‘Authentication X-Ray’ stand for?”

“X-Ray is simply international code for the letter X. My guess is that before every mission they change the authentication letter so that the enemy can’t take over the frequency and give Sky Queen a false heading, or phony instructions.”

“You know, I enjoyed hearing that,” Lib said. “It gave me a nice feeling. Big Rock has a solid Midwest accent.”

Sam Hazzard moved a candle so that better light fell on his dials. “Big Rock won’t be back again tonight,” he said. “I’ve never heard him more than once a night. He makes his call and that’s it. I’ll try the thirty-one meter band again.”

In the candlelight Hazzard’s hands shone with the silky, translucent patina of age and yet they were remarkably deft. They discovered a fascinating squeal. His fingers worked the band spreader delicately as a master cracksman violating a safe and he pressed his face forward as if he expected to hear tumblers click. Very gradually, a faint voice replaced the squeal. He turned up the power. They heard, in English with an indefinite accent:

“Continuing the news to North America.

“The representative of the Argentine has informed the South American Federation that two ships with wheat have sailed for Nice, in southern France, responding to radio appeals from that city. The appeals from Nice say that several hundred thousand refugees are camped in makeshift shelter on the Cote d’Azure. Many are starving. The casino at Monaco and the Prince’s palace have been converted into hospitals.

“In a Spanish-language broadcast heard here today, Radio Tokyo announced that the Big Three meeting in New Delhi has approved preliminary plans for flying desperately needed vaccines and antitoxins to uncontaminated cities in Europe, North America, and Australia.”

“Big Three!” Randy said. “Who’s the Big Three?”

“Sh-h!” said the Admiral. “Maybe we’ll find out.”

The announcer continued:

“China, where ‘Save Asia First’ sentiment is strong, urged that first priority for vaccine aerial shipments go to the Soviet Union’s maritime provinces, where typhus is reported. India and Japan felt that the smallpox epidemic on the West Coast of the United States, Canada, and in Mexico should receive equal priority. The universal shortage of aviation gasoline will make any quick aid difficult, however…”

The squeal insinuated itself into the voice and subdued it. Hazzard caressed the band-spreader. “The atmospherics have been crazy ever since The Day.” Abruptly he asked Randy: “Do you believe it?”

“It’s weird,” Randy said. “Maybe it’s a Soviet bloc propaganda station pretending to be South American, set up to confuse us and start rumors. I’ll admit I’m confused. I thought the Chinese were in it, on the other side.”

“The Chinese never liked Russia’s preoccupation with the Med,” Hazzard said. “Maybe they opted out, which would be smart of them. It could be simpler. If they didn’t have nuclear capability we wouldn’t bother hitting them on The Day, and without nuclear weapons they wouldn’t dare stick their noses into a real war. If that was it, they were lucky.”

“I noticed that station quoted Tokyo? How is it you didn’t hear Tokyo?”

“I’ve never been able to pick up any Asiatic stations. I used to get Europe fine—London, Moscow, Bonn, Berne. Africa, too, especially the Voice of America transmitter in the Tangier. Not any more. Not since The Day.”

The signal cleared. They heard:

“…but as yet the Big Three have been unable to reopen communications with Dmitri Torgatz. According to Radio Tokyo, Torgatz headed the Soviet government while the Soviet Union’s capital was in Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia. The medium-wave station operation from Ulan Bator is no longer heard.”

“That doesn’t sound like Soviet propaganda to me,” Randy said. “Who is Dmitri Torgatz?”

The Admiral glanced up at a shelf of reference works. He selected a slender book, Directory of Communist Leaders, found the name, and read: “Torgatz, Dmitri; born Leningrad 1903? Married, wife’s name unlisted; children unlisted; Director Leningrad Agitprop 1946–49; Candidate member Presidium 1950–53; Director water works, Naryan Mar, Siberia, since fall of Malenkov.”

“Looks like they had a shakeup,” Randy said. “Looks like they had to reach way down and find a minor league bureaucrat.”

“Yes. It’s surprising that Torgatz should be running Russia,” the Admiral said, “until you consider that a female, last on the list of Cabinet members, is running the United States.”

Randy could see that Lib wasn’t listening. She was staring at the tassel of a sword resting on pegs behind his head, her lips parted, eyes unblinking. Her thoughts, he had discovered, frequently raced ahead of his or sped down dark and fascinating byways. When she concentrated thus she left the party. She murmured, “Smallpox.”

Not understanding that Lib, mentally, was no longer in the room with them, Sam Hazzard inquired, “What about smallpox?”

“Oh!” Lib shook her head. “I think of smallpox as something out of the Middle Ages, like the Black Plague. It’s true that every so often it cropped up, but we always slapped it down again. What happens now without vaccine? What about diphtheria and yellow fever? Will they start up again? Without penicillin and DDT, where are we? All good things came to us automatically. We were born with silver spoons in our mouths and electric dishwashers to keep them sanitary and clean. We relaxed, didn’t we? What happened to us, Admiral?”

Sam Hazzard disconnected the radio’s batteries and pulled his chair around to face them. “I’ve been trying to find the answer.” He nodded at his typewriter and the books massed on his desk. “I’ve been trying to put it down in black and white and pass it along. Up to now, no bottom. All I’ve found out was where I myself—and my fellow professionals—failed. I’ll explain.”

He opened a drawer and drew out a folder. “I called this ‘A Footnote to History.’ You see, I was in the Pentagon when we were having the big hassles on roles and missions and it occurred to me that I might be one of the few still alive who knew the inside of what went on and how the decisions were reached and I thought that future historians might be interested. So I set it all down factually. I set down all the arguments between the big carrier admirals and the atomic seaplane admirals and the ICBM generals and pentomic division generals and heavy bomber generals and manned missile generals. I told how we finally achieved what we thought was a balanced establishment.

“When I finished I read it over and realized it was a farce.” He tossed the manuscript on the desk as if he were discarding unwanted fourth class mail.

“You see, I confused the tactical with the strategic. I think we all did. The truth is this. Once both sides had maximum capability in hydrogen weapons and efficient means of delivering them there was no sane alternative to peace.

“Every maxim of war was archaic. The rules of Clausewitz, Mahan, all of them were obsolete as the Code Duello. War was no longer an instrument of national polity, only an instrument for national suicide. War itself was obsolete. So my ‘Footnote’ deals with tactical palavers of no real importance. We might as well have been playing on the rug with lead soldiers.”

The admiral rose and unkinked his back. “I think most of us sensed this truth, but we could not accept it. You see, no matter how well we understood the truth it was necessary that the Kremlin understand it too. It takes two to make a peace but only one to make a war. So all we could do, while vowing not to strike first, was line up our lead soldiers.”

“That was all you could do?” Lib asked.

“All. The answer was not in the Pentagon, or even in the White House. I’m looking elsewhere. One place, here.” He tapped Gibbon. “There are odd similarities between the end of the Pax Romana and the end of the Pax Americana which inherited Pax Britannica. For instance, the prices paid for high office. When it became common to spend a million dollars to elect senators from moderately populous states, I think that should have been a warning to us. For instance, free pap for the masses. Bread and circuses. Roman spectacles and our spectaculars. Largesse from the conquering proconsuls and television giveaways from the successful lipstick king. To understand the present you must know the past, yet it is only part of the answer and I will never discover it all. I have not the years.”

Randy saw that the Admiral was tired. “I guess we’d better get back,” he said. “Thanks for an entertaining evening.”

“Next time you come over,” Hazzard said, “I want you to look at my invention.”

“Are you inventing something too? Everybody’s inventing something.”

“Yes. It’s called a sailboat. It is a means of propulsion that replaces the gasoline kicker. I sacrificed my flagpole and patio awning to make it. The cutting and sewing was done by Florence Wechek and Missouri and Hannah Henry. I can now recommend them as experienced sailmakers.”

“Thanks, Sam.” Randy grinned. “That’s a wonderful invention and will become popular. I know I’m going to get one right away, and I will use your firm of sailmakers.”

They walked to the path along the river bank. Swinging at its buoy Randy saw the Admiral’s compact little cruiser with covered foredeck, useless kicker removed, a slender mast arcing its tip at a multitude of stars. There were many sailboats on Florida’s lakes, but Randy had seen very few in the upper reaches of the St. Johns, or on the Timucuan.

“I love the Admiral,” Lib said. “I worry about him. I wonder whether he gets enough to eat.”

“The Henrys see that he eats. And Missouri keeps his place neat. The Henrys love him too.”

“As long as we have men like that I can’t believe we’re so decadent. We won’t go like Rome, will we?”

He didn’t answer. He swung her around to face him and circled her waist with his hands. His fingers almost met, she was so slim. He said, “I love you. I worry about you. I wonder whether I tell you enough how I love you and want you and need you and how I am diminished and afraid when you are not with me and how I am multiplied when you are here.”

His arms went around her and he felt her body arch to him, molding itself against him. “There never seems to be enough time,” he said, “but tonight there is time. When we get home.”

She said, “Yes, Randy.” They walked on, his arm around her waist. “This is a bad time for love,” she said. “Oh, I don’t mean tonight is a bad time, I mean the times. When you love someone, that should be what you think of most, the first thing when you wake in the morning and the last thing before you sleep at night. Before The Day that’s how I thought of you. Did you know that? First in the morning, last at night.”

Randy knew, without her saying it, that it must be the same for her as it was for him. At day’s end a man was exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally. Each sun heralded a new crisis and each night he bedded with old, relentless fears. He awoke thinking of food and fell onto his couch at night still hungry, his head whirling with problems unsolved and dangers unparried. The Germans, in their years of methodical madness, had discovered in their concentration camps that when a man’s diet fell below fifteen hundred calories his desire and capacity for all emotions dwindled. Randy guessed that he managed to consume almost fifteen hundred calories each day in fish and fruit alone. His vigor was being expended in survival, he decided. That, and worry for the lives dependent upon him. Even now, he could not exclude worry for Dan Gunn from his mind.

The hodgepodge outlines of the Henry place loomed out of the darkness above them. They were within fifty yards of the barn and Ben Franklin was somewhere in that shadow, shotgun over his knees, enjoined to silence, alert to shoot anything that moved; and they were moving, silhouetted against the star-silvered river. He stopped and held Lib fast. “Ben!” he called. “Ben Franklin! Do not answer. Do not answer. This is Randy. We’re on our way home.”

They walked on.

“You know, you sounded just like that radio call on the Air Force frequency,” Lib said.

“I did sound like that, didn’t I?” He smiled in the darkness, snapped his fingers, and said, “I think I know now what was going on. It wasn’t the way Sam thought. It was just the other way around. Big Rock was the plane, and Sky Queen the base. Big Rock had been somewhere and was coming home and was telling Sky Queen not to shoot, just like I told Ben Franklin.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Not that it matters to us. I’ve heard them up there on still nights, but they never come low enough to see. The Admiral hears them talk on the radio but they never have a word for us. Maybe they’ve forgotten us. Maybe they’ve forgotten all the contaminated zones. We’re unclean. It makes me feel lonely and, well, unwanted. Isn’t that silly? Does it make you feel like that?”

“They’ll come back,” he said. “They have to. We’re still a part of the United States, aren’t we?”

They came to the path that led though their grove from house to dock. “Let’s go out on the dock,” Lib said. “I like it out there. No sound, not even the crickets. Just the river whispering around the pilings.”

“All right.”

They turned left instead of right. As their feet touched the planking the ship’s bell spoke. It clanged three times rapidly, then twice more. It kept on ringing. “Oh, damn it to hell!” Randy grabbed her hand and they started the run for the house, an uphill quarter mile in sand and darkness. After a hundred yards she released his hand and fell behind.

By the time he reached the back steps Randy couldn’t climb them. He was wobbling and his knees had jellied, but before The Day he could not have run the distance at all. He paused, sobbing, and waited for Lib. The Model-A wasn’t in the driveway or the garage. He concluded that Dan hadn’t returned and something frightful had happened to Helen, Peyton, or Bill McGovern.

He was wrong. It had happened to Dan. Dan was in the dining room, a ruined hulk of man overflowing the captain’s chair, arms hanging loose, legs outstretched, shirt blood-soaked, beard blood-matted. Where his right eye should have been, bulged a blue-black lump large as half an apple. His nose was twisted and enlarged, his left eye only a slit in swollen, discolored flesh. He’s wrecked the car, Randy thought. He went through the windshield and his face took along the steering wheel.

Helen laid a wet dish towel over Dan’s eyes. Peyton, face white and pinched, stood behind her mother with another towel. It dripped. Except for Dan’s choked breathing, the dripping was for a moment the only sound in the room.

Dan spoke. The words came out slowly and thickly, each an effort of will. “Was that you, Randy, who came in?”

“It’s me, Dan. Don’t try to talk yet.” Shock, Randy thought, and probably concussion. He turned to Helen. “We should get him into bed. We have to get him upstairs.”

“I don’t know if he can make it,” Helen said. “We could hardly get him this far.” Helen’s dress and Bill McGovern’s arms were blood stained.

“Bill, with your help I can get him up all right.”

So, with all his weight on their shoulders, they got Dan upstairs and stretched out on the sleigh bed. Bill said, “I’m going to be sick.” He left them. Helen brought clean, wet towels. Dan’s body shook and quivered. His skin grew clammy. He was having a chill. Randy lifted his thick wrist and after a time located the pulse. It was faint, uneven, and rapid. This was shock, all right, and dangerous. Randy said, “Whiskey!”

Helen said, “I’ll handle this, Randy. No whiskey. Blankets.” He respected Helen’s judgment. In an emergency such as this, Helen functioned. This was what she was made for. He found extra blankets in the closet. She covered Dan and disappeared. She returned with a glass of fluid, held it to Dan’s lips, and said, “Drink this. Drink all you can.”

“What are you giving him?” Randy asked.

“Water with salt and soda. Much better than whiskey for shock.”

Dan drank, gagged, and drank more. “Keep pouring this into him,” Helen ordered. “I’m going to see what’s in the medicine cabinet.”

“Almost nothing,” Randy said. “Where’s his bag? Everything’s in there.”

“They took it; and the car.”

“Who took it?”

“The highwaymen.”

He should have guessed that it hadn’t been an accident. Dan was a careful driver and rarely were two cars on the same road. Traffic was no longer a problem. In his concern for Dan, he did not immediately think of what this loss meant to all of them.

Helen found peroxide and bandages. This, with aspirin, was almost all that remained of their reserve medical supply. She worked on Dan’s face swiftly and efficiently as a professional nurse.

Randy felt nauseated, not at the sight of Dan’s injuries—he had seen worse—but in disgust at the beasts who in callous cruelty had dragged down and maimed and destroyed the human dignity of this selfless man. Yet it was nothing new. It had been like this at some point in every civilization and on every continent. There were human jackals for every human disaster. He flexed his fingers, wanting a throat in them. He walked into the other room.

Lib’s head lay across her arms on the bar. She was crying. When she raised her face it was oddly twisted as when a child’s face loses form in panic or unexpected pain. She said, “What are you going to do about it, Randy?”

His rage was a hard cold ball in his stomach now. When he spoke it was in a monotone, the voice of someone else. “I’m going to execute them.”

“Let’s get with it.”

“Yes. As soon as I find out who.”

At eleven Dan Gunn came out of shock, relaxed and then slept for a few minutes. He awoke announcing he was hungry. He looked no better, he was in pain, but obviously he was out of danger.

Randy was dismayed at the thought of Dan, in his condition, loading his stomach with cold bream and catfish, orange juice, and remnants of salad. What he needed, coming out of shock, was hot, nourishing bouillon or broth. On occasion, when Malachai or Caleb discovered a gopher hole and Hannah Henry converted its inhabitant to soup, or when Ben Franklin successfully stalked squirrel or rabbit, such food was available; but not on this night.

The thought of broth triggered his memory. He shouted, “The iron rations!” and ran into his office. He threw open the teak sea chest and began digging.

Lib and Helen stood behind him and watched, perplexed. Helen said, “What’s wrong with you now, Randy?”

“Don’t give him any food until you see what I’ve got!” He was sure he had tucked the foil-covered carton in the corner closest to the desk. It wasn’t there. He wondered whether it was something he had dreamed, but when he concentrated it seemed very real. It had been on the day before The Day, after his talk with Malachai. In the kitchen he had collected a few nourishing odds and ends, tinned or sealed, and dubbed them iron rations, for a desperate time. Now that the time was desperate, he couldn’t find them.

He found the carton in the fourth corner he probed. He lifted it out, tore at the foil, and exposed it for them to see. “I put it away for an emergency. I’d forgotten it.”

Lib whispered, “It’s beautiful.” She examined and fondled the jars and cans.

“There’s beef broth in here—lots of other stuff.” He gave up the carton. “Give him everything he wants.”

Dan drank the broth and chewed hard candies. Randy wanted to question him but Helen stopped it. “Tomorrow,” she said, “when he’s stronger.” Helen and Lib were still in the bed room when Randy stretched out on the living-room couch. Graf jumped up and nuzzled himself a bed under Randy’s arm, and they slept.

Randy awoke with a gunshot echoing in his ears and Graf, whining, struggling to be free of his arm. He heard a second shot. It was from the double twenty, he was sure, and it came from the direction of the Henrys’ house. He slipped on his shoes and raced down the stairs, Graf following him. He grabbed the .45 from the hall table and went through the front door. Now was the time he wished he had live flashlight batteries.

The moon was up now so it wasn’t too difficult, running down the path. From the moon’s height he guessed it was three or four o’clock. Through the trees he saw a lantern blinking. He hoped Ben Franklin hadn’t shot the shadows.

He wasn’t prepared for what he saw at the Henrys’ barn. He saw them standing there, in a ring: Malachai with a lantern in one hand and in the other the ancient single-barreled shotgun that would sometimes shoot; Ben with his gun broken, extracting the empty shells, the Admiral in pajamas, Preacher in a nightshirt, Caleb, his eyes white-rimmed, tentatively poking with his spear at a dark form on the ground.

Randy joined the circle and put his hand on Ben Franklin’s shoulder. At first he thought it was a wolf. Then he knew it was the biggest German shepherd he had ever seen, its tremendous jaws open in a white snarl of death. It wore a collar. Graf, tail whipping, sniffed the dead dog, whined, and retreated.

Randy leaned over and examined the brass plate on the collar. Malachai held the lantern closer. “‘Lindy,’” Randy read aloud. “‘Mrs. H. G. Cogswell, Rochester, New York. Hillside five one-three-seven-nine.’”

“That dog come an awful long way from home,” Preacher said.

“Probably his owners were visiting down here, or on vacation,” Randy guessed.

“Well,” Malachai said, “I can see why we’ve been losin’ hens and how he could take off that pig. He was a mighty big dog, mighty big! I’ll get rid of him in the day, Mister Randy.”

Walking home, Ben Franklin said nothing. Suddenly he stopped, handed Randy the shotgun, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed. Randy squeezed his shoulder, “Take it easy, Ben.” Randy thought it was reaction after strain, excitement, and perhaps terror.

“I did exactly what you told me,” the boy said. “I heard him coming. I didn’t hardly breathe. I didn’t pull until I knew I couldn’t miss. When he kicked and I thought he was getting up I let him have the choke barrel. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known he was a dog. Randy, I thought it was a wolf!”

Randy stopped in the path and said, “Look at me, Ben.” Ben looked up, tear streaks shining in the moonlight.

“It was a wolf,” Randy said. “It wasn’t a dog any longer. In times like these dogs can turn into wolves. You did just right, Ben. Here, take back your gun.”

The boy took the gun, tucked it under his arm, and they walked on.