Z for Zachariah

Chapter Fifteen

June 22nd

During the week since my birthday he has learned to walk again. But only very weakly, while holding on to something.

The first three days he tried and failed, as he had before. He was secretive about it. I do not know exactly why. Probably because he felt foolish when I saw him after he fell. Or maybe he wanted to surprise me. But I heard him from the kitchen: the thud as his feet reached the floor (but more cautiously now), and the creak of the bed as he pulled himself back. He may also have done this other times when I was outside working; I think what he was actually doing was exercising his legs—putting as much weight on them as he could, a bit more each time.

And on the fourth day he succeeded—again, entirely in private. In the kitchen (getting lunch) I heard the same thud as before, but then, quite unmistakably, the sound of a footstep, then another and a third, very slow and cautious. I felt like running in and applauding! But I thought that if he wanted that he would have called me. He feels that it is his problem and he is going to solve it himself.

However, I did feel like an eavesdropper—apparently he did not realize the sound could be heard in the kitchen—and not wanting to feel sneaky I thought I should let him know. Since he got better I had settled into the custom of eating my meals (except breakfast) on the card table by his bed. So when I brought the tray in I took my own food off, gave him his, and said:

“I thought I heard you walking.”

He was by this time back in the bed, but sitting up and studying a diagram he had drawn on one of his pieces of paper. He had been working on them steadily during the past week: he was designing the water powered generator.

He looked up without expression and said: “It’s something I have to do.”

He did not even seem interested, but looked back at his diagram and added: “I wish I had a book. These magazines don’t explain enough.” He had the copies of The Farm Mechanic beside him on the bed.

“What kind of book?”

“Engineering. Physics. Electricity. I suppose it would be several books. Also a good encyclopaedia. You don’t have one?”

“No. But I know where there is one. In the library in Ogdentown.”

“Ogdentown?”

“You must have passed through it when you came here. The library is the grey stone building on Court Street—"

“I passed through many towns. Hundreds.”

“Well, Ogdentown must have been the last one.”

“How far from here?”

To my joy it sounded as if he was going to suggest what I had been thinking about suggesting.

“Not far,” I said. “Only over the second ridge.”

“How many miles?”

“Well, about twenty. A little over twenty.” (Actually it is closer to twenty-five.)

There was a pause. He ate several bites of his lunch and did not say any more.

So I asked: “If we brought books from there—brought them here—would they be dangerous? Radioactive?”

“Yes.”

“For how long? Permanently?”

“No. They’d cool off eventually. Maybe six months, maybe more—maybe less. It depends partly on size.”

I said: “So long?”

“That wouldn’t matter too much. I could wear the suit, and copy out what I needed—gear ratios, things like that.”

“But I was hoping to read them. Still, I suppose I could wait six months.”

“You wouldn’t enjoy reading technical books.”

“They have other books in the library. They have whole sets of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy. And poetry.”

As I suspected, he was not too interested in that. He ate some more, and then said: “It doesn’t matter anyhow—right now at least. I can’t walk that far. When I can—"

And then, because I had been thinking about it so hard, I said the wrong thing again.

“But I can. If you’d lend me the suit, I could go.”

I could hardly believe how annoyed that made him. I should have known, I suppose, having heard him dreaming when he was sick, and the way he talked to Edward.

“No,” he said, his voice very quiet, but angry and hard. “You could not go. Understand that. Keep away from the suit. Never touch it.”

I started to remind him that I had already touched it. But I caught myself in time. I realized that he probably did not even remember that, since he had been sick and delirious at the time. We ate on in rather tense silence, I wondering why he was so extremely sensitive about it. It occurred to me that maybe he was afraid I would see the bullet holes. Yet that seemed unlikely since I had never talked to him about his dreams—how would I know what the patches were?

His lunch finished (his appetite was not impaired!) he went on, sounding a little less unfriendly. In fact he tried to smile, but still it was rather like a lecture.

“You must understand,” he said, “that except for ourselves, that suit is the most important thing in the world. There is no other, and no way, now, of making another. Except for this valley the rest of the world, as far as we know, is dangerous and uninhabitable. I don’t know how long it’s going to be that way—maybe forever.

“But as long as it is, the suit is the only way to go out there and stay alive. The idea of taking it to get some novels—it’s too foolish to consider. If you took it out, and something went wrong, I could never get it back. I couldn’t go out after it, couldn’t even try. It would be lost forever.”

That is what Edward had been up against—even some of the words were the same. Yet I could not argue. After all, it was his suit. And also, of course, what he said was true. I could survive without novels.

Still it had been a pleasant thing to think about; I had even let my imagination run to the point of making several trips, building up a real home library. But I could see now it was not too practical, especially from Mr Loomis’s point of view. But I will hope even so that when he can walk better, if he goes to get technical books he might slip in at least one or two books for me to read. That might be a less offensive idea.

For the moment I changed the subject to something less controversial. I asked him: “How far did you walk?”

“Four steps, holding on to the bed. This morning, three steps.”

“As soon as you can do a little more, I could put a chair for you outside on the front porch. Then, if you like, you could get out of this room for a while.”

“I had thought of that. And on the back porch, too, where I can see the planting.”

“The corn is beginning to come up,” I said. “In a few more days I’ll have to thin it. The beans are in, but not up yet.”

“How about beets? And wheat?”

“Well, I had not planned—"

“You must plan. Not just for next year, but beyond. Beets make sugar. Wheat makes flour.”

I had started to say that since I could only plant and cultivate so much, I had not included beets—and quite a few other things, like pumpkins, turnips, squash, and so on. There were seeds for all of those in the store. But it was true, when I made those plans I had not counted on the tractor.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “There’s plenty of sugar in the store. I saw that. And it keeps. But when it’s gone—what then? You see, that’s foolish and shortsighted.” His voice had grown edgy again.

He went on: “I’ve been lying in the bed for a long time now, with nothing to do but think. And I realized that we’ve got to plan as if this valley is the whole world, and we are starting a colony, one that will last permanently.”

It was the same thought, or nearly the same, as the feeling I had had when I was ploughing, and felt as if I was helping the world to stay alive. Then I was happy, but his saying it, or the way he said it, made me feel uneasy. I am not sure why.

As I was taking the tray out he said another thing: “When you go to your church, if you want something to pray for, pray for that bull calf.”

I said: “I don’t understand.” The calf seemed perfectly healthy.

He said: “When the petrol is gone, cattle can pull the plough.”

It was true that some of the Amish, being slow to change their ways, used to plough with mules or oxen; I remember seeing them when I was small. There was even an old wood and leather harness hanging on the wall of our own barn, though I had never seen it used.

What he meant was that we needed to breed more cattle, and I had planned that, at least, from the beginning.

He asked me to bring him a new razor and blades from the store. I did, and he has shaved his whiskers off again. It makes him look healthier.