What if he had a telephone? Supposing that by some strange means he had a phone and he could casually pick up the receiver and put through a call to the radio station. To ask for a song, say. People did that all the time.
“What?” the surprised announcer would ask.
“I said,” Gary would have to repeat, “that I'm calling from something-or-other Wisconsin, and I want you to play a number.”
“But you can't be!” that disbelieving man would answer him. “There's no life in Wisconsin.”
“There is, and don't believe everything you hear. How about playing Clementine for me? Or maybe, Cruising Down the River? That's a good one these days.”
“I can't, do you hear? I refuse. You're dead, Judson May said you were dead.”
“Upstick Judson May! You going to play me a song or not?”
“This is a trick! There's no one alive on the other side of the river. You're attempting to hoax me!” And he would hang up in anger. Or sudden fear.
And when the security office heard that they would immediately get the station on the line, or perhaps send around an officious major. It had been a despicable occurrence and they would caution the announcer to say no more about it. Might upset the citizens. There are some things they could not be trusted to know. Under cover of darkness a wily enemy agent had surreptitiously crossed the river and made his way to a telephone. It was to be regretted of course and it would not happen again. Alert sentries had cut the man down before be could climb out of the water. All quiet. All safe and snug west of the line of quarantine.
He stood with his chilled back against the barn, looking down across the sloping pasture toward the distant creek. The ancient pipe given him by the farmer was unlit but he continued to hold it in his mouth, savoring the stale taste of it.
The approaching dawn was bitterly cold and sulking behind the heavy cloud blanket, revealing itself only as a faint brightening close to the eastern horizon, a gradual increase in the visibility over the frozen fields. He saw the telltale marks of the night just past, the slow and crawling path the stranger had made coming up the slope, the infinite twists and turns to avoid the trip wires. The trail led up to the side of the barn, up to the corner where he had waited for the man. Before he had covered it with a shuffling foot there had been a frozen splotch of blood, black in the faint light of the new day. He saw his deeply indented footsteps where he had carried the heavy body back down the slope to the frozen creek, and returning, the light and wide-spaced marks he had left on the run.
But the first girl had been gone, the girl he wanted.
A short while ago that last station had left the air, left him scrabbling frantically over an empty dial searching for another voice, another bar of music. There were no more. The loneliness descended twofold then, and the hurt deepened. The airwaves were as empty as the land around him. He shut off the radio and was depressed by the silence of the room, by the emptiness of it after his new-found companions had left. Pulling on the borrowed overcoat he wore and taking up his gun, he had quit the house to make another patrol of the buildings, striding in a great circle through the nearer fields alert for fresh footprints leading toward the house. Eventually he had come upon the slurred trail made by last night's visitor, and followed it up to the barn.
He stood there, cold and forlorn.
Someday — out there, across those snowy wastes — would come the conquering army from across the Mississippi, mopping up the stragglers and paving the way for the reconstruction of a half-wrecked nation. Hoffman and his wife, the younger boy and Sandy — all stragglers, blocking their path. The four of them, four “enemy agents” rushing out to greet returning troops with heartfelt cries of welcome. What a shock they would receive.
Oliver's speculative medical aid was pretty much of a lost dream… what was it he had said? “It all depends on the prevailing mood of high brass and the state of medicine on the day bridges are reopened. If the stragglers can be cleansed and cured by some revolutionary medical means — well then, welcome back to the United States!” And “The patrols would gather up residue and test it for contamination; when the tested matter no longer revealed a danger, the crisis would be over except for mopping up the stragglers.”
A lost dream with a brutal awakening for many people; people like the Hoffmans who clung to their farm and what few possessions that remained to them, awaiting the day of deliverance. He didn't want to be here when that day came. He didn't want to see the terrified expression on Sandy's face again. And now he was convinced that day was coming, that kind of day… Judson May glibly spouting his lines had all but said it. Judson May was parroting the words and schemes placed in his mouth by high brass. High brass and the lamentable state of medicine had left no room in their blueprints of reconstruction for surviving stragglers, and a good many “enemy agents” would need be eliminated before Akron, Ohio, could be rebuilt again.
He wanted to be a thousand miles from Sandy when that day arrived. Sandy wouldn't be nineteen for seven more years.
With a start he came to, saw that snow was falling. The eastern glow was gone, diffused by the clouds, but day had arrived over the fields. He stepped to the corner of the barn and looked back toward the house, looked up at the patched chimney where a thin curl of smoke drifted upward. Hoffman's wife was cooking breakfast before damping the fires for the day. She needn't worry now, not with the snow. A fairly heavy snow would conceal the smoke a reasonable distance away.
He was hungry and turned his steps toward the house, casting one last glance behind him to see if the marauder's trail was disappearing. Sandy poked about the barn occasionally and he didn't want her to see that.
Come spring, he promised himself aloud, the first sign of spring, and he was going to have a look at the heroes hiding in the Washington cellar. To hell with this weather.
10
BLUE-SKY summer. Warm, mellow, peaceful and relaxing, summer in Ohio. He supposed he was in Ohio — someone had chopped down the highway markers and probably used them for firewood the previous winter. He made it a habit to avoid the cities. It didn't matter; if he wanted to think he was in Ohio, then he was there. He lay flat on his back in the tall uncut grass watching the shapeless clouds drift along. A wandering ant explored the skin of his hand but he was too content to brush it away. The sky, the rolling clouds and the smell of the grass.
He had really intended to be here sooner, had wanted to be nearer Washington by this time. Taking leave of Sandy and her parents had been a difficult thing; they had kept him long past his decided departure date, long past the day his eyes began searching the far horizon in eager yearning. He had finally got away from them only by promising that he would return in the early autumn.
Gary watched the slothful clouds in the blue and doubted very much that he would keep that promise.
He would like to go back in perhaps eight or ten years — if he were able — to see Sandy. That would be worth going back to; but to return sooner than that, as early as next winter, no. Next winter he intended to exercise common sense and head back to the Gulf coast, perhaps back to that fisherman's shack on the water where an invitation awaited him. And after that, as deep into Florida as he could go. There he would not freeze unless the weather tricked him, would not starve as long as fish swam in the sea.