The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (10 page)

There was a cobbler's last, with the funny-shaped hammer. These had been flung into the fireplace. All in all,
Sim
had a treasure trove, and I had a Plymouth-load almost before Zack had finished taking down the stovepipe and getting the cook-stove ready so that the
Jessups
could move it right out.

When we got back to the stone house, it was getting late.. We hurriedly unloaded a pile of iron utensils, which
Canie
received with groans of pleasure. When we added the news of the cook-stove, she turned to Horace.

"The old pickup–it'll still run, if we use the battery off the Ford. Tomorrow we've got to go down and get that thing, if we break both our backs. I've had a blistered face for almost two months now, and I'm ready for a change."

Bill
Fancher
grinned. "Long about eight o'clock, I'll come over and go with you to help you load and unload. We've got plenty of cooking stuff, but there's likely some old axe heads and such that I could fix up to use. I'd like to take a look around there, myself."

So it was arranged, and we dropped Bill off at his house just as the sun began to sink behind the trees. It was strange, driving home along empty roads, with never a light along the way to mark someone's home. Only once, as we came over the last hill that gave an overview of the whole river valley, did we see, far away to our right, a tiny point of reddish light.

Our passenger rode in dead silence. She had entered the car with terror, her eyes rolled back like those of a spooked horse, and once we had her secured to the seat, she had sat, tense and wary, making no sound. I turned, now and again, to speak to her, but she seemed not to be used to having words addressed to her. I had a sneaky idea that what instruction she had had taken the form of slaps and harder blows.

When we turned into the yard of home, I looked back and said, "This will be your home, now. There are other children here. Nobody is going to hurt you if you behave yourself. Don't bite. Don't try to kill anybody. If you do, we'll have to keep you tied up."

Uncomprehending silence answered me.

The
Savonius
, with its banks of batteries salvaged from the phone-company warehouse, had become so familiar to us that we never thought of the effect of electric lights on a child who had probably never seen them, even before the blowup. The brightly lighted kitchen window drew her gaze, and she stared with hypnotic intensity while we bundled out the wares that I had kept from
Sim's
store. When she realized that we were going to take her into the house that was lighted with that
eery
illumination, she shrieked like a calliope.

That brought out the troops, sure enough. Jim, peering into the back seat of the car, where his father and I were struggling with the wild young creature, touched me on the shoulder. "Mom," he whispered, "why don't you try letting
Sukie
do it?"

Zack and I looked at one another in the dim light, then we nodded.
Sukie
crawled into the other side as we wriggled out on the driver's. She sat there for a short time, simply looking at the other child. For the first time, I realized that the past weeks had matured my children incredibly.
Sukie
was sizing up the situation, gauging the exact depth of the little Unger's terror and rage, and deciding her own strategy in dealing with it. Though she was more than a year younger than the other, she seemed almost adult by comparison.

Then she reached over and loosed the knots that we had tied, out of our captive's reach, in order to hold her in her seat. When the ropes were off,
Sukie
took the grubby hand she had freed and helped the child from the car, never saying a word. Something that she was projecting toward the wild little creature was calming her.

Though her eyes were still glazed with fear, the girl came into the brightly lighted kitchen compelled only by the touch of
Sukie's
fingers on her arm. The smell of roasting meat and baking cornbread brought her to full awareness. Then it was only a matter of feeding her until she could hold no more, wiping the tears and food stains from her face and hands, and putting her to bed. She was so soundly asleep by that time that she had no idea of what was happening. We put her on a cot in the pantry, securing the door from outside as a precaution. Food and rest might well send her into new efforts at murder and sudden death.

Sukie
sat at the supper fable, wordless and thoughtful. I leaned over the table and patted her shoulder..

"I'm proud of you," I said. "But what did you do? And how did you make her understand, without talking to her?"

Sukie
looked at me patiently. "She's just like the young coon we caught. Don't you remember? Its eyes looked just the same. It didn't know anything about words, either. I got it to stop trying to throw itself through the walls of the pen, and I did it just the same way. I ... felt at it. All sort of sleepy and soft and relaxed. It worked."

Behind me, Zack sighed. Then he sat down, his cup of comfrey tea steaming, and cut a hot wedge of cornbread. "Makes me feel old," he said to us all, stirring honey into his cup. "When my own baby has more gumption than I do, it just purely makes me feel old ... but good. " He took a scalding sip and grinned at
Sukie
, and she grinned back at him.

Mom Allie chuckled. "Now you're beginning to understand how I feel," she said wryly. "But it's going to take more than feeling at that
young'un
to civilize her. Don't anybody have any ideas about that?"

We all sat and pondered. Then Jim's eyes lit up like Christmas trees. Exactly like Christmas trees.

"It's not long until Christmas," he said, "Maybe if we ... one last time ... put lights on the tree and all our old pretty things ... I'll bet she's never seen anything pretty, let alone gorgeous like Mom can make a tree look. This last time that there'll be enough bulbs to light it up, let's do it up right. We've got the tree cut already ... it's soaking out by the porch right now ... let's see if it won't ... do something..."

Though he was only marginally coherent, we all saw the possibilities at once. Christmas was a time for miracles, anyway. Perhaps we might wring one last miracle from it, with the aid of our scrounged-up power system.

For a little while each night, we decided, a wisp of the old, lost world would intrude into this harsh new existence.

CHAPTER NINE

We had moved in such a fury of concentrated effort in the time since early November that we had taken little thought of the approaching season. Mom Allie had knitted new mittens for the children–all four of them. Zack had whittled some knickknacks from seasoned hickory. We had spent most of our time thinking of surviving, however, and the Christmas magic hadn't really percolated through us with all its old fervor. Even when the children had brought in a stout little pine tree and set it to soak in a tub, we had noticed with only part of our minds.

Now the season took on an extra dimension. In addition to its closeness of feeling, we hoped from it something very strange. For, in truth, if this didn't wedge open a chink in the heart of the child we had fallen heir to, we had no idea what, if anything, ever could.

Not that we had time or inclination to give our all to the celebration. A spell of good weather sent us into the fields, breaking the stubble of last year into the soil and turning it to catch the winter rains. The horses were used for plowing, along with Maud (to all their intense disgusts), for we had scrounged enough plow tools to keep three teams busy. Jim was tall enough to do his first plowing, under the tutelage of Maud;
Sukie
, measuring herself against the plow handles, swore that by next fall she'd be tall enough to do it too.

The child was a problem. We named her Lisa for no good reason other than the fact that we had to call her something. She was quiet as death, most of the time. It's true that she began to realize that "Lisa" was directed only toward her, and she would duck her head when she heard the name. But she still flinched when anything at all came at her fast, particularly at head height. She seemed puzzled that we didn't beat her, too, though we watched her too closely to let her get into mischief.

Still, we couldn't really trust her to stay in the house alone, even though she had shown no inclination toward running back to her erstwhile "family. " Then
Sukie
solved the problem of what to do with Lisa while we were in the fields. We put her on the back of one of the horses. Her weight was negligible, she was delighted–as far as we could tell from her enigmatic face –and we could keep an eye on her without looking away from our work.

For three days we worked to get some of the fields in order. Then, four days before Christmas, a howling
norther
blew in, bringing freezing rain, sleet, hail, volleys of snow, and an end to outside work for a time. The children took their well-soaked tree from its tub, set it in our old tree stand, and bore it into the front room.

Lisa watched uncomprehendingly as they decided just where to put it, arranged it to their exact specifications, then bustled the Christmas boxes down from the closet in the loft. She edged nearer as they opened the boxes (themselves antiques, some of them) and began taking out the hanks of tinsel, the fragile glass balls, the handmade "cookie" ornaments.

Zack strung the lights out (his inevitable method) and began putting bulbs in the sockets, noting sadly that we had very few extras. As the first light winked green, then one flashed red, one blue, the child's eyes grew wide with astonishment. She inched forward until she almost touched the string, watching each new bulb inserted with rapt attention. Zack casually handed her a red one. She looked at it, watched as he put one more in its socket, then set the bulb in its place and began screwing it carefully.

Her concentration was such that she didn't notice when the lot of us stopped work to observe the operation. When the red light leaped into being, she sat back, the veneer of her face cracked wide open and pure joy beaming forth. "
Ooohh
!" she crowed, and it was the first sound other than a scream or a growl that I had ever heard her make.

She looked around at all of us. Nine smiles as large as her own met her gaze (Miss Vera was visiting for the occasion). She blushed almost as red as her light and scuttled back into her corner, where I had put two fat cushions for her exclusive use. There she stayed, as the other four children decorated the tree, to constant advice from the adults on the sidelines.

Zack disconnected the lights while they put them on the tree. Then we waited while the glittering ornaments were attached (with much disagreement as to whether they were properly balanced). When the last plastic icicle (they glowed in the dark) was hung, the star firmly affixed to the top, Zack plugged in the lights..

I didn't watch the tree. I kept my eyes on Lisa.. And I wasn't disappointed. The tree didn't light up one bit more than she did.

We moved about it, exclaiming that it was, in purest truth, the prettiest ever. That it was probably the last of its exact kind was a thought that nobody uttered. Future trees might have lights, but they would grow fewer and fewer until all the bulbs were burned out.

When we had agreed that nothing at all needed changing, we unplugged it. There was a wail from Lisa's corner.

Zack bent over her. "Tonight, for thirty minutes, we'll turn it back on. We'll put all the other lights out and just sit and enjoy the tree. Okay?"

She looked up at him. "Okay," she whispered.

A moment of silence followed. It was, I guessed, the first time in her short life that she had verbally answered a question. It could have been the first time that her mind was not too blocked with terror to comprehend the question that was asked. It was, without doubt, a milepost in our relationship with her.

Then we came to ourselves, subdued our smiles to a decent level, and went about cleaning up the mess we had made. Lisa sat on one of her cushions, her eyes alert and a strange expression about her mouth. In anyone else, it would have been the beginning of a smile, but Lisa was not used to such facial gymnastics. The wide grin that had come with her red light was the first true expression that we had ever caught on her face.

It seemed a long time before darkness fell, even though the gray day should have cut the daylight short. We puttered with small chores, engaged in teasing and tale-telling, wandered into and out of the room where the tree stood. Supper was early, just to help kill time. But at last the windows made glossy mirrors against the blackness outside, and the time had come to light the tree again.

Lisa had eaten absently. Her face was closed again, her eyes veiled. When we had cleared away the food and cleaned the dishes, we called the children to come into the Living room to help light the tree. She came almost reluctantly. The glow of the lights filled the room with magic, as it always had. I stood with one arm around Zack, the other around Mom Allie, and I stole a peep to catch the miniature tree sparkling in her glasses, twinned, as I used to do with my own parents. The moment took me back into the deeps of childhood, for an instant, and I shivered with the nameless anticipation that the season had always brought to me.

The children were sitting on the rug in an arc before the tree. Sam was sitting, solid and square, between Jim, whose thin figure tingled with excitement, and
Sukie
, who glowed between him and Candy. Lisa had returned to her cushions and was beyond the range of my vision. We didn't talk, we only sat and looked (or stood and looked) and enjoyed.