Alas, Babylon
The Admiral said, “Shall I get rid of this scum?”
Randy said, “Just a minute.” He picked up the bat and forced himself to think ahead. First, Malachai.
Get Malachai home in a hurry so Dan could do something if there was anything to be done. Dan didn’t have his tools, or much eyesight. He might make do with one eye if he had the tools these men had stolen. Randy ran to the Model-A. It was empty. The doctor’s bag wasn’t there.
He walked back to the truck where Sam Hazzard stood over their captive. One side of the man’s face was scraped raw. Malachai’s plunge had carried the long-jawed, twisted-mouth face along the bridge planking. “Where’s the doctor’s bag?”
The man said nothing. Randy saw his right hand moving. He still had a holstered weapon. Randy tapped him on the nose with the bat. “Keep your hand still.” The Admiral leaned over, unbuckled the holster, and took the weapon. A .38 police special. “Talk,” Randy said.
The man said, “I don’t know nuthin’.”
Randy tapped his face with the bat, harder. The man screamed. Randy said, “Where’s the black bag?”
The man said, “She took it. Rumdum took it.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She goofed off with somebody last night—maybe it was this morning—I don’t know—goofed off with some bastard with a bottle.”
Randy called, “Bill! Where’s Bill?”
Bill McGovern was on the other side of the truck. He said, “I’m here, Randy.”
“Bill, go look in that car and see if you can find Dan’s bag. And be sure those two back there are good and dead.”
Malachai choked again. Randy tried to ease him over on his side but he began to bleed more from the stomach wound so he had to let him be.
Sam Hazzard said, “I don’t think this one’s doing us any good. He’s just holding us up. I think we should convoke a military tribunal right now and pass sentence. I vote he be executed.”
“So do I,” Randy said, “but I want him to hang. If he makes any trouble let him have it, Sam, but I’d like to have him alive.”
Bill came back with a cardboard carton. “Nothing in that car, except this. A little food in here. A few cans of sardines and corned beef hash and a box of matches. A couple of boxes of ammunition. That’s all. Not a sign of Dan’s bag. And the sedan is finished. It was in our line of fire and it looks like a sieve with all that buckshot through it. There’s gasoline all over the road.”
Randy started the Model-A and looked at the fuel gauge. It showed almost empty. He backed it away from the bridge entrance, put the key in his pocket, and left it. He said, “We’ll lift Malachai into the truck and get going. First, I’ll collect their weapons and ammo.” He was thinking ahead. There would be other highwaymen and this was armament for his company.
“What about these?” Bill asked, pointing his shotgun at the bodies.
“Leave them.” He looked up. The buzzards already attended. “I’ll come back tomorrow or we’ll send somebody. Whatever they leave—” he watched the black birds wheeling and swooping—“we’ll give to the river.”
One of the highwaymen trailing them had been Leroy Settle, the drugstore cowboy. When Randy examined his two guns he was surprised to find that they were only .22 caliber, lightweight replicas, except in bore, of the big frontier .45’s. His companion’s pistol apparently had gone into the river, for it wasn’t on the bridge although he had a pocketful of ammunition.
Then Randy leaned over the leader. He saw that his shots had all been good, the three in the belly making a neat pattern, diagonal ticktacktoe. When he picked up the Thompson the dead man’s arm astonishingly rose with it, clinging as if his fingers were glued to the stock. Randy jerked it free and saw that it was glue, of a sort. The man’s hands were smeared with honey.
It was after dark when Randy wheeled up to the front steps of the house. As he cut the engine he heard Graf barking. All the downstairs windows showed light. Lib burst out of the door and ran down the steps, saw him at the wheel, and was there with her arms and lips when he got out.
Preacher Henry appeared, and Two-Tone, Florence Wechek and Alice Cooksey, Hannah and Missouri, the children. Dan Gunn came out, robe flapping, carrying a lantern. They had all been waiting.
The Admiral and Bill were in back with the prisoner and Malachai. Bill stepped out, holding a pistol, and then the man with the bat, called Casey, prodded by Sam Hazzard’s shotgun. Sam climbed down and that left Malachai. Malachai had been unconscious after the first mile. Until they reached Fort Repose, the road had been very bad.
Randy said, “Killed three, grabbed this one. They got Malachai through the middle. Look at him, Dan. Is he still with us, Sam?”
The Admiral said, “He was a minute ago. Barely.”
Randy said, “Ben Franklin, get some clothesline.”
“We going to hang him right now?” Ben asked, not casually but still as if he expected it.
“No. We’ll tie him.”
Dan crawled into the truck. He held up the lantern, shook his head in exasperation, and then tore the patch away from his right eye. The eye was still swollen but not entirely shut and any assistance to his left eye was helpful. He crawled out and said, “He’s in shock and shouldn’t be moved and ought to have a transfusion. But we have to move him if I’m to do anything at all. On what?”
There was a discarded door in the toolhouse. They moved him on that.
They laid Malachai on the billiard table in the gameroom and then massed lamps and candles so that Dan would have light.
Dan said, “I have to go into him. Massive internal hemorrhage. I’ve got to tie it off or there’s no chance at all. How? With what?” He leaped on the edge of the table, swaying not in fatigue or weakness but in agony of frustration. He cried, “Oh, God!”
Dan stopped swaying. “A knife, Randy?”
“My hunting knife, the one I shave with? It’s sharp as a razor, almost.”
“No, Too big, too thick. How about steak knives?”
“Sure, steak knives.”
The short bladed steak knives even looked like lancets. The Judge and Randy’s mother had bought the set in Denmark on their summer in Europe in ‘fifty-four. They were the finest and sharpest steak knives Randy had ever used. He found them in the silver chest and called, “How many?”
“Two will do.”
From the dining room Helen called, “I’ve put on water to boil—a big pot.” The dinner fire had been going and Helen had piled on fat wood so it roared and Dan would soon have the means of sterilizing his instruments.
Randy put them into the pot to boil. After that, at Dan’s direction he put in his fine-nosed fishing pliers. Florence Wechek ran across the road for darning needles. Lib found metal hair clips that would clamp an artery. Randy’s six-pound nylon line off the spinning reel would have to do for sutures. There was enough soap to cleanse Dan’s hands.
Dan went into the dining room, fretting, waiting for the pot and his instruments to boil. It was hopeless, he knew. In spite of everything they might do sepsis was almost inevitable, but now it was the shock and the hemorrhage he couldn’t lick. He wondered whether it would be possible to rig up a saline solution transfusion. They had the ingredients, salt and water and fire; and somewhere, certainly, rubber tubing. He would not give up Malachai. He wanted to save Malachai, capable, quiet, and strong, more than he had ever wanted to save anybody in his years as a physician. So many people died for nothing.
Malachai was dying for something.
In the gameroom Helen was at work, quick and competent. She had found their last bottle of Scotch, except what might remain in Randy’s decanter upstairs, and was cleansing the wound with it.
Randy and Lib stood beside her. The pool of blood in the round hole ebbed and did not rise again.
The water was boiling in the big iron pot when Randy walked into the dining room and touched Dan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s all over.”
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In a dark corner of the room where she thought she would be out of the way and not a bother, Hannah Henry had been sitting in an old scarred maple rocker. The rocker began to move in slow cadence, and she moaned in this cadence for the dead, arms folded over her empty breasts as if holding a baby except that where the baby had been there was nothing.
Dan Gunn went into the gameroom and saw that Randy was correct, that Malachai was gone. His shoulders felt heavy. He was aware that his head throbbed and eyes burned. There was nothing more to do except empty the makeshift sterilizer with its ridiculous makeshift tools. He did this in the kitchen sink. Yet when he saw the knives and the pliers and the hair clips steaming he realized they were not really so ridiculous. If he was very careful and skillful, he could make do with such tools. They had not and probably could not have saved Malachai. They might save someone else. A century ago the tools had been no better and the knowledge infinitely less. Out of death, life; an immutable truth. Helen was at his side. He said, “Thanks, Helen, for the try. You’re the best unregistered nurse in the world.”
“I’m sorry it was for nothing.”
“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing. I’ll just keep these and try to add to them. I wonder if we could find a small bag somewhere? Any little traveling bag would do.”
“I have one. A train case.”
“We’ll start here, then, and build another kit.” His eyes hurt. Who in Fort Repose could build him another pair of glasses, or give him new eyes?
At nine o’clock that night Randy’s knees began to quiver and his brain refused further work and begged to quit, a reaction, he knew, to the fight on the bridge and what had gone before and after, and lack of sleep. It was his wedding night. He had been married at noon that same day, which seemed incredible. Noon was a life ago.
But now that he was married, he thought it only right that he and Lib have a room to themselves and the privacy accorded a married couple. All the bedroom space was taken and he hated to evict anyone.
After all, they were all his guests. Yet since it was inevitable that beds and rooms be shifted around, the victim would have to be Ben Franklin, since Ben was the junior male. Ben would have to give up his room and take the couch in Randy’s apartment and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Bragg would move into Ben’s room.
He was sitting on his couch, trying to still his quivering legs, face in his hands, thinking of this. Lib sat behind the bar drinking a warm limeade. She was thinking of the problem also but was reluctant to mention it, feeling that it was the husband’s duty and she should allow him to bring it up.
Her father came in, a thin and wan Caesar in his sandals and white robe. Bill McGovern had been standing guard over the trussed prisoner, wondering the while that he had killed a man that day and felt no guilt at the time or after. It was like stepping on a roach. He had just been relieved by Two-Tone Henry, who had left his house of mourning to assume the duty. Bill asked for Dan. Randy lifted his head and told him that Dan, exhausted by being too long on his feet, slept. “Well, I’ll tell you, then, but I don’t suppose it will do any good tonight.”
He spoke directly to his daughter. “I didn’t know what to give you for a wedding present, Elizabeth. There’s a good deal of real estate in Cleveland but I don’t suppose it’ll ever be worth much now. There are bonds and stock certificates in our safe deposit vault right here in Fort Repose, and the cash—well, the Confederate money in Randy’s chest is just as good. You can have the house and property down the road, if you want it, but I don’t think anybody can ever live there unless electricity comes back. So I thought, what can I give Lib and Randy? I talked it over this morning with Dan. He made a suggestion and we decided to give you a present jointly, from the best man and the father of the bride.”
Bill looked from one to the other and saw they were interested. “We are jointly making you a present of this whole apartment. Dan is going to move in with me.”
Lib said, “That’s perfectly wonderful, Father!”
Bill said, hesitantly; “Only, if Dan’s asleep I don’t think we ought to disturb him, do you?”
“No, not tonight,” Lib said. She kissed her father, and she kissed her husband, and she went across the hall to her old room. Randy fell across the couch and slept. Presently Graf jumped up beside him and snuggled under his arm.
At noon Monday the man with the bat was hung from a girder supporting the bandstand roof in Marines Park. All the regular traders and a number of strangers were in the park. Randy ordered that the corpse not be cut down until sunset. He wanted the strangers to be impressed and spread the word beyond Fort Repose.
While he had not planned it, on this day he accepted the first enlistments in what came to be known as Bragg’s Troop, although in orders he called it the Fort Repose Provisional Company. Seven men volunteered that day, including Fletcher Kennedy, who had been an Air Force fighter pilot, and Link Haslip, a West Point cadet who had been home on Christmas leave on The Day. He created them provisional lieutenants of infantry. The other five were even younger boys who had finished six months of Reserve training after high school or had been in the National Guard.
After the execution, Randy posted the notices he had typed earlier and brought to the park in his uniform pocket. The first read:
On 17 April the following highwaymen were killed on the covered bridge: Mickey Cahane, of Las Vegas and Boca Raton, a gambler and racketeer; Arch Fleggert, Miami, occupation unknown; Leroy Settle, Fort Repose.
On 18 April Thomas “Casey” Killinger, also of Las Vegas, and the fourth member of the band which murdered Mr. and Mrs. James Hickey and robbed and assaulted Dr. Daniel Gunn, was hung on this spot.
The second notice was shorter:
On 17 April Technical Sergeant Malachai Henry (USAF, reserve) died of a wound received on the covered bridge while defending Fort Repose.
12
EARLY in May a tube in the Admiral’s radio flared and died, cutting off the voice of the world outside.
While these communications had always been sketchy, and the information meager and confusing, the fact that they were gone entirely was a blow to everyone. The Admiral’s shortwave receiver had been their only reliable source of news. It was also a fount of hope. Each night that reception was good some of them had gathered in the Admiral’s den and listened while he conned the waive lengths, hoping for news of peace, victory, succor, reconstruction. While they never heard such news, they could always wait for the next night with hope.
After consulting with the Admiral and the Henrys, Randy posted a notice on his official bulletin board in Marines Park. He asked a replacement for the tube and offered handsome payment—a pig and two chickens or a five-year file of old magazines. A proper tube never came in. Before The Day the Admiral had been forced to order replacement tubes directly from the factory in New Jersey, so he had not been optimistic.
Even had they been able to acquire a new tube, the radio could not have operated long, for the automobile batteries were depleted and it was in May that gasoline vanished entirely.
In June Preacher Henry’s corn crop ripened, the sweet yams swelled in the ground, and the first stalks of Two-Tone’s sugar cane fell to the machete. June was the month of plenty, the month in which they ate corn pone , and hoe cake with molasses. In June they all fleshed out.
It was in June, also, that they ran their first batch of mash through the still built by Bill McGovern and Two-Tone. It was an event. After pine knots blazed for three hours under a fifty-gallon drum, liquid began to drip from the spout terminating an intricate arrangement of copper tubing, coils, and condensers.
Two-Tone caught these first drops in a cup and handed it to Randy. Randy sniffed the colorless stuff. It smelled horrible. When it had cooled a bit he tasted it. His eyes watered and his stomach begged him not to swallow. He managed to get a little down. It was horrid. “It’s wonderful!” he gasped, and quickly passed the cup on.
After all the men had taken a swallow, and properly praised Two
-Tone’s inventive initiative and Bill’s mechanical acumen, Randy said, “Of course it’s still a little raw. With aging, it’ll be smoother.”
“It ought to be aged in the wood,” Bill said. “Where will we get a keg?”
“It’ll be a cinch,” Randy said. “Anybody who has a keg will trade it for a couple of quarts after it’s aged.” But for Dan Gunn, the corn whiskey was immediately useful. While he would not dare use it for anesthesia, he estimated its alcohol content as high. It would be an excellent bug repellent, liniment, and pre-operative skin antiseptic.
One day in July, Alice Cooksey brought home four books on hypnotism; and presented them to Dan Gunn. “If you can learn hypnotism,” she suggested, “you might use it as anesthesia.”
Dan knew a number of doctors, and dentists too, who commonly practiced hypnotism. It had always seemed to him an inefficient and time-consuming substitute for ether and morphine but now he grasped at the idea as if Alice had offered him a specific for cancer.
Every night Helen read to him. She insisted on doing his reading, thus saving his eyes. They no longer had candles or kerosene but their lamps and lanterns burned furnace oil extracted from the underground tanks with a bilge pump. It was true that furnace oil smoked, and stank, and produced yellow and inefficient light. But it was light.
Soon. Dan hypnotized Helen. He then hypnotized or attempted hypnosis on everyone in River Road.
He couldn’t hypnotize the Admiral at all. He succeeded in partially hypnotizing Randy, with poor results, including grogginess and a headache. Randy attempted to cooperate but he could not erase everything else from his mind.
The children were excellent subjects. Dan hypnotized them again and again until he had only to speak a few sentences, in the jargon of the hypnotist, snap his fingers, and they would fall into malleable trance.