“A fifth of Scotch-twelve years old-the best.”
Garcia whistled. “You must be hard up. What’re you askin’?” “Two pounds of coffee.”
Several of the men on the platform shifted their position. One snickered. None spoke. Randy realized that these men had no coffee, either for trading or drinking. No matter how well stocked their kitchens might once have been, or what they had purchased or pillaged on The Day and in the chaotic period immediately after, four months had exhausted everything. Randy’s community was far more fortunate with the bearing groves, fish loyally taking bait, the industrious Henrys and their barnyard, and some small game-squirrels, rabbits, and an occasional possum.
John Garcia was trading two strings of fish, a four-pound catfish and small bass on one, warmouth perch and bream on the other. Garcia’s brown and weathered skin had shriveled on his slight frame until he seemed only bones loosely wrapped in dried leather. The sun was getting warm. With his toe Garcia nudged his fish into the shadow. “Wouldn’t trade for fish, would you, Randy?” he asked, smiling.
“Fish we’ve got,” Randy said.
“You River Road people do all right by yourselves, don’t you?” a stranger said. “If you got Scotch likker, you got everythin’. Us, we ain’t got nuthin’.” The stranger was trading a saw, two chisels, and a bag of nails. Randy guessed he was an itinerant carpenter settled in Pistolville.
Randy ignored him and asked Marines Park’s inevitable second question, “What do you hear?”
Old Man Hockstatler, who was trading small tins of aspirins and tranquilizers, salvage from his looted pharmacy, said, “I hear the Russians are asking that we surrender.”
“No, no, you got that all wrong,” said Eli Blaustein. “Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown demanded that the Russians surrender. They said no and then they said we should be the ones to surrender.” “Where did you hear that?” Randy asked.
“My wife got it from a woman whose husband’s battery set still works,” Blaustein said. Blaustein was trading work pants and a pair of white oxfords and he was asking canned corn beef or cheese. Randy knew that as the sun got higher John Garcia’s asking price for his fish would drop lower. At the same time Blaustein’s hunger would grow, or he would be thinking of his protein-starved family. Before the fish were tainted, there would be a meeting of minds. John Garcia would have a new pair of work pants and Blaustein would have food.
“What I would like to know,” said Old Man Hockstatler, “is who won the war? Nobody ever tells you. This war I don’t understand at all. It isn’t like World Wars One or Two or any other wars I ever heard of. Sometimes I think the Russians must’ve won. Otherwise things would be getting back to normal. Then I think no, we won. If we hadn’t won the Russians would still be bombing us, or they would invade. But since The Day I’ve never seen any planes at all.”
“I have,” said Garcia. “I’ve seen ‘em while I was fishing for cats at night. No, that ain’t exactly right. I’ve heard ‘em. I heard one two nights ago.”
“Whose?” Blaustein asked. Garcia shrugged. “Beats me.”
This discussion, Randy knew, would continue through the day. The question of who won the war, or if the war still continued, who was winning, had replaced the weather as an inexhaustible subject for speculation. Each day you could hear new rumors, usually baseless and always garbled. You could hear that Russian landing craft were lined up on Daytona Beach or that Martian saucers were unloading relief supplies in Pensacola. Randy believed nothing except what he himself heard or saw, or those sparse hard grains of fact sifted from the air waves by Sam Hazzard. Randy had been leaning on the bandstand railing. He straightened, stretched, and said, “Guess I’ll circulate around and look for somebody who’s holding coffee.”
John Garcia said, “You coming to the Easter service, Randy?”
“Hope so. Hope to come and bring the family.” As he stepped from the bandstand he looked again at the two useless drinking fountains. There was something important about them that he could not recall. This was irritating, as when the name of an old friend capriciously vanishes from memory. The drinking fountains made his mind itch.
He saw Jim Hickey, the beekeeper, a picnic basket under his long, outstretched legs, relaxed on a bench. Before The Day Jim had rented his hives to grove owners pollinating young trees. Before The Day, Jim’s honey was a secondary source of income; “gravy,” he called it. Now, honey was liquid gold, and beeswax, with which candles could be dipped, another valuable item of barter. Jim Hickey, who was Mark’s age, had learned beekeeping at the College of Agriculture in Gainesville. It would never make him rich, he had been warned, and until The Day it hadn’t. Now he was regarded as a fortunate man, rich in highly desirable commodities endlessly produced by tens of thousands of happy and willing slaves. “What are you trading?” he greeted Randy.
“A bottle of Scotch. Are you holding coffee?”
“No. I’ve been trying to trade for coffee myself. Can’t find any. All I hold is honey.” He lifted the lid of the picnic basket. “Lovely stuff, isn’t it?”
It was lovely. Randy thought of Ben Franklin and Peyton, whose need and desire for sweets could not be wholly supplied by the sugar content of citrus. It would be weeks before Two Tone’s cane crop matured. Randy wondered whether he was being selfish, trading for coffee. It was true that he would share the coffee with the other adults on River Road, but the children didn’t drink it. There were no calories or vitamins in coffee and it was of no use to them. He forced himself to be judicial. When you examined the facts judicially, and asked which would provide the greatest good for the greatest number, there could be only one answer. Coffee would furnish only temporary and personal gratification. He said, “Jim, maybe I could be persuaded to trade for honey.”
“I’m sorry, Randy. We’re Adventists. We don’t drink whiskey or trade in it.”
This contingency Randy had never imagined. Half-aloud he said, “Well, I tried.”
“I suppose you wanted the honey for Mark’s children,” Hickey said. “Yes. I did.”
Hickey reached into the basket and brought out two square, honey-packed combs. “I wouldn’t like to see Mark’s kids go without,” he said. “Here. I’d give you more except my supply is ‘way down. There’s something wrong with my bees this spring. Half my broods are foul, full of dead pupae and larvae. At first I thought it was what we call sacbrood, or queen failure. I’ve been to the library, reading up on it, and now I wonder whether it couldn’t be radiation. We must’ve had fallout on The Day-after all, the whole state is a contaminated zone-and maybe it affected some of my queens and drones. I don’t know what to do about it. It isn’t something they taught us at the University.”
Randy removed the bottle from his paper bag, locked it under his arm, and replaced it with the honeycombs. He was overwhelmed. He knew that Mark and Hickey had been in the same grade in primary school, but they had never been close friends. Hickey was no more than an acquaintance. He lived in a neat, sea-green, five-room concrete block house far out on the road to Pasco Creek. Randy, before The Day, rarely saw him, and then only to wave a greeting. Randy said, “Jim, this is the nicest, most generous thing I can remember. I just hope I can repay you some way, some day.”