The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (20 page)

horror. The man had practically been skinned. Aside from having on nothing but sneakers, he was almost denuded of hair and skin and even strips of flesh. Afraid to

touch him, we waited for the wagon.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There was only one thing to do. The
Londowns
,
willy
or
nilly
, must be divided up among those best able to care for them. Once we got Curt into the wagon, we dared not delay. We took him straight to the
Jessups
and
Sim
Jackman
, picking up Lantana as we went back by the site of the destroyed house, where she was salvaging what she could. She was our best nurse, and we knew that Carrie and the girls would need her.

Bill and Annie were making Cheri ready to travel the short way to their own new dwelling. They had decided that she would be more biddable with one of her children to keep her company, so they took Cookie with them. Our own crew gathered up Carl and Carol and bore them back to the Burrow before they had a chance to come apart at the seams. In the twinkling of an eye, as it says in the Bible, the touch-me-not
Londowns
had become our care and responsibility. It was almost frightening.

"Remind me not to get to thinking we're sufficient unto ourselves," I said to Zack as we squelched along behind the slow-moving wagon. "It doesn't seem to be safe anymore."

"The hand of God," said Lantana over the still lump that was Curt
Londown
. "This fellow, he gets to thinking he's the best thing God ever turned a hand to; better than all the rest. Gets to thinking he can take care of anything comes along, no matter what. Just give him a gun in his pocket and not
Ungers
nor niggers will dare to bother him. But Old Man Twister, he just waltzed right in and tore right out again."

"It scares me to death," I admitted, and I felt Zack's hand tighten on mine. "We always knew we could count on having droves of people come tearing in, when anything like this happened, and they'd try their best to save whoever could be saved, get things in shape, everything. I guess this, more than anything, makes me feel lonesome. That was one of the few good things about the world as it was."

"What's tearing me up," said Zack in a carefully emotionless voice, "is the notion that there may be folks all up and down the country, hurt and homeless, children wet and in shock, and nobody to come. Makes me wish we had ten times the people, so we could send some out scouting along the right directions to see if anybody needed help.

I shuddered, and not only with the wet chill of my ripped shirt and pants. Then I scrunched up under his arm, put my right hand in his left pocket, and said, "We're doing what we can, honey. There are so few people now, surely it won't have hit any more. Seldom did they make a long track of destruction, even when the country was full of folks."

He said nothing, and we walked along, sharing what little warmth we had between us. The alcohol lantern Lantana had lighted swung from the stanchion we had built onto the wagon, and our shadows wavered in monstrous shapes beside us as we forged ahead to warn the
Jessups
of a new influx of wounded.

The warm light of their lamp guided us the last few hundred yards, and Zack stopped to hail them before getting too close. "Ho, the
Jessups
!" Three times he called.

After the first hail, the lamp went out, leaving us with only the unsteady will-o'-the-wisp of the lantern far behind us. Then Horace's voice boomed, "That you, Zack?"

They were wonderful people. Before ten words had passed, they understood enough to have Grace rouse
Sim
from his after-supper nap, Laura lighting extra lamps and firing up the
cookstove
, and their long-suffering table stripped, once again, for action.

"You should put up a sign–Jessup Hospital and Nursing Home," I laughed. "We come in here every few months, bringing desperately injured people. It's a wonder you don't shoot us on sight."

"We know that if we blow our horn, you'll be here as fast as feet can bring you," Carrie answered. "We may have lost the greater community that everybody depended on, but we seem to have landed on our feet with this smaller, closer, maybe more caring one. We may not have all the life-saving things that used to be available, but you know, child, dying isn't all that bad a thing. We used to know that. Sometimes it's a pure blessing just to die."

"But not if we can help it," I gritted, as the wagon groaned to a stop and Maud
whuffed
disapproval through her nostrils. Like it or not,
Sim
was the nearest thing we had to a doctor. Luckily, our needs, up to now, had been in his line–accident and gunshot wounds. What we'd do when somebody came up with a hot appendix I hated to think, but until that time we'd make do with
Sim's
rough skills.

The old man came out of his bedroom, hair on end, looking like the sort of stick figure first-graders used to draw. He sighed when he saw me.

"Don't take it amiss,
Miz
Hardeman," he drawled, "but whenever I see you I look past you for whoever's near dead this time."

"Curt
Londown
," I said, opening the door for Zack and Horace to carry the slack figure inside. We had laid him in a sheet that
Suzi
brought in the wagon, and they carefully maneuvered him, sheet and all, onto the table. The cloth was streaked with blood now. The man on it seemed flayed.

"Fore God!"
Sim
whispered. "I don't know, folks. I've seen a man bit by alligators, tore by a bobcat, but this 'un–this 'un is bad."

Lantana edged by him with a basin of warm water. "Got to get this mess off, before we can see to tend him," she grunted. "Then we'll know can we do or can we don't."

It seemed impossible that
Londown's
chest could still be rising and falling. Still, he was breathing, fairly regularly, and his heart was beating, though slowly. As Lantana's ministrations removed the crusted blood, the extent of his lacerations seemed to worsen.
Sim
bent over him, his monkey-like face screwed up with concern, and suddenly the man's eyes opened.

"The wind... " he mouthed, though no voice came through.

"Twister's gone now, son," said
Sim
, and Lantana laid her dark hand on Curt's forehead as his pale eyes turned up toward her. "The
Fanchers
-they came." His voice was less than a croak.

Zack answered him. "They came. They signaled for us to come, too. They're taking care of your wife, who isn't too badly hurt, and the children, who are all fine."

The pale eyes closed for a moment, then opened. "Don't eat crow worth a damn," he said clearly. Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, and he was gone.

We looked across the pool of lamplight at one another. My face must have held the shock that marked all the others, for it seemed almost as if the man had chosen to die rather than to give up his dearly held beliefs.

Carrie folded the edges of the sheet together over the mutilated body. Tears were running down her cheeks, but her hands were steady as she covered the face, first closing the blank eyes. "We tried," she said to Horace as she turned into his arms. "It just wasn't enough."

"His lungs must of been tore up,"
Sim
muttered, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. "Couldn't have fixed him up, anyway, Miss Carrie. He was too far gone. It's just that there's so damn few of us any more."

We buried him that night. It was a weird procession, by
lanternlight
, but we took him to the Sweetbriers' and laid him beside Jess. Somehow, we hated to think of him lying alone, and we felt that this would perhaps comfort Cheri.

It didn't. though. We had, of course, known Cheri even less than we had Curt. None of us had ever heard her open her mouth and utter words, even. We just took it for granted that she was something like the rest of us, determined to survive and to make her children survive. We weren't prepared for the reality of Cheri
Londown
.

I've known a few people–two women and one man, actually – who were fairly decent and acceptable people, seemingly. All three had been married to (or the child of) one person who had the reputation of being hard and strict to the point of cruelty. In the cases I knew, when the dominant person was suddenly removed (by death, in my cases) this ostensibly equable person suddenly became hell on wheels. Unreasonable, demanding, arbitrary. All the worst traits you can think of.

Cheri made them all look like
pikers
.

Her injuries were severe enough to keep her immobile for quite a while, though luckily she developed no infections. When she had been with the
Fanchers
a week, Annie made the trek to Hickory Hollow to pour out her woes. "She thinks we're there to fetch for her. Got nothing else to do, she thinks. Yells at the babies, gets onto her own child until I could cry for the little thing. She's a miserable person, Luce. What we going to do?"

"I'll swap you the other two children for her," I offered. "They are bright kids. Once they realized their dad was dead and their house really gone for good, they buckled to and changed their ideas. I don't think you'll have a bit of trouble with them. They get along fine with all our bunch, now.

"But what'll you do with Cheri? She's a pill I tell you."

"
I'Il
turn her over to Lantana and Mom Allie. Did you ever see somebody break a colt to the plow by hitching him between two big mules? He'll do his best to buck and snort, but the wise old heavyweights just amble along without even knowing he's there. I can't see Cheri having the spunk to even tackle the two of them, much less bother either one."

First, of course, 1 consulted my "mules. " They laughed at the notion, but both agreed to try their hand at civilizing! our invalid. As the cabin was now less closely tenanted since the children had moved out, we put her in Lisa's old pantry bedroom. Though it seemed sheer callousness, I felt that we might as well get the idea across to her, soon and early, that she was an added burden, not an honored guest. That tight, dark cubicle should tell her something, I thought.

It did. Then she told us, at length and at the top of her voice. Complete with obscenities that I had thought well lost with the outside world. When I finished washing out her mouth, I grabbed the foot of the army cot on which she lay, Lantana took the head, and we zipped her out of the house, down the backyard, and behind the smokehouse.

"Now you can say just what you think," Lantana said sternly, "without
contaminatin
' our ears. We'll check on you, now and again, to make sure you're all right. And when you think you can behave, we'll bring you back inside. " Then, turning to me, she asked, "Have we got an old tarp we can throw over her if it rains?'

We left her screaming after us. I, for one, felt like a villain, but I knew this was necessary. She must either shape up or be sent out.

She was brought back inside three days later. Her head, be it known, was the harder sort. She kept thinking, every time one of us went down to feed her or to help her relieve herself, that she could talk us into submission. It wasn't until we left her out in the rain all night that she capitulated. It wasn't a real storm, thank heaven, but even a light drizzle must seem like a cloudburst when you lie out under a tarp and hear it pattering on top of you for five or six hours.

After that, she quieted down and stopped demanding. Still, I'd catch a strange expression on her face, now and again, and I'd wonder.. She looked just like old Rock, my dad's setter, who would never dream of killing a chicken–as long as we were watching.

She healed quickly, though her arm would never be exactly straight, and she had lost some motion in it. The ribs gave her trouble for a long time, probably as a result of her struggle when they were first broken. But her leg mended without trouble, and she was able to walk fairly soon, for Skinny and Josh built her a walker out of old pipe.

We were all, understand, busy as ticks in a tar bucket, all the time. Our efforts on her behalf were matters of a few minutes here and there, taken from our scanty leisure. And while she had ceased her demands, I never had the feeling that she truly understood her situation. Mom Allie's three dressings-down, delivered to Cheri in no uncertain terms, were enough, I felt, to keep her in line for a long time to come. But she didn't really understand. You could see it in her face.

They must have been a strange household, the
Londowns
'. Curt sure that he was God's anointed, and Cheri certain that she was the exact center of the universe. How the three young ones could have come out of it as nearly sensible as they had done was a wonder.

As Cheri became well, our problems increased. It wasn't that she refused to work. She just didn't. A pan of potatoes left for her to peel would sit there until someone else grabbed it up and tended to it. She hated to wear her clothes more than once. We had come to terms with the matter–we could either be immaculate or get the important work done, not both. For her there was no question. She must have clean clothes, and the fact that the clothes were
Suzi's
made no difference.

At last, I reversed Annie's journey and took my problem to her. She listened to my tale with a grave face. "Whatever we do with her, Luce, we mustn't put her back with her kids," she said when I had finished. "The one thing in the world they were scared to death of was their mother. Not their dad. I've sat and rocked little Cookie more nights than one when she got to thinking about her dad being gone. Carl and Carol loved him. Really loved him. But you want to see faces go pale as ghosts, just ask them if they want to go visit their mom."