THE COUNTRY OF THE STRONG

DENNIS ETCHISON

Following up our discovery of young American writer, Dennis Etchison (he appeared in New Writings In S-F 2) we found that he had had a prize-winning short story published in Seventeen, America’s foremost teenage magazine, and managed to obtain permission to reprint it here.

* * * *

MARBER’S renovated Isetta cut the corner sharply, humming smoothly on its miniature wheels.

Veering right, he bypassed a jagged-lightning crack that split the entire length of what would otherwise have been one of a half-dozen usable streets in town. When would the SS Teams begin suburb reconstruction ?

Marber again scanned the illogical destruction spreading from the sixth or seventh Spanish-American style home down to the end of the block. Spider houses stood between, stick frames that cast long-shadow fingers over charred earth and heaped concrete at each day’s death. A phantasma, he thought, like some desolate surrealist landscape I saw in a painting once —

A white flash bobbing up and down, up and down in front of the second house from the end caught and held his gaze.

But you know what? I’m getting used to it. That’s the grotesque part.

He recognized Darla, an SS man’s four-year-old, if he remembered correctly. The swelling four o’clock sun cast a halo of backlight on the little girl’s hair, spinning her a crown of angel-floss as she faced the car.

She strode into the street, hands curled on hips. Her tiny pale chin thrust out to meet the Isetta.

Marber pulled up. .

“Hi-ya, you!” cried Darla as he swung open the front of the squat vehicle and stood, like some metamorphosed creature emerging from a cocoon.

The woman in blouse and faded pedal-pushers waved from the edge of the house before joining her daughter at the curb.

“I’m so glad you decided to stop by after all,” the woman beamed. “I thought sure you’d forgotten we were still here.”

“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Dayle.” He forced a smile for the SS man’s wife and nodded at the garage. “Generator holding up?”

She nodded appreciatively. “We’re almost as comfortable as—as before. My husband’s been meaning to thank you for rigging it up and all, you know, but it seems he’s always out with the Team…”

“That’s all right.” He was aware of the whirring in the garage. “Glad everything’s in order.”

She laid her hands on her child’s shoulders. “Well, what’s been keeping you so busy?”

He felt the late sun warming the side of his face. “Oh, got to keep my own place from falling apart. And”—he gestured to the Isetta—”keep this baby running.”

She clucked. “You’re just lucky you found one that wasn’t just a pile of nuts and bolts. I can’t imagine where-“

“I had to piece her together from several, of course. Like a jigsaw.”

She shook her head in a semblance of admiration. The child chinned herself on her mother’s hands.

“When ya gonna take me forra ride like ya promised, Jerr-ry?” crooned the little girl coyly.

“Don’t bother Mr. Marber,” corrected her mother.

“I was just heading into San Bernardino to check on some spare parts. See if the supply house has been ransacked there, too.”

“Well, won’t you—please—do come in and have a beer or something. I think we’ve even got some-“

“Did you say beer?” He felt Darla press against his leg. “Oh, yes: your husband.”

“Yes. You—you know how the Teams confiscated everything right afterwards. And it’s still ‘clean’ in glass, you know.” Mrs. Dayle almost flushed. “You won’t—say anything, will you, Mr. Marber.” It was a nearly inaudible affirmation of faith.

He tried a smile. “Of course not, Mrs. Dayle.”

“Jerry, berry, merry,” sang Darla into his trouser leg.

“Well, now, won’t you come in?” smiled Mrs. Dayle. “Why, there might even be—yes, I think there is some gin left.” She folded and refolded her hands, fumbling at her revelation. “I mean you—we—might as well enjoy whatever’s left, don’t you think?” she gleamed, as if to a fellow conspirator. “I mean it’ll just go to waste. My husband’s never home to-“

Marber thought he saw a twitch in her eye.

He recalled the SS vow to redistribute all usable goods among the survivors. And he remembered the teenager shot a week ago for hoarding an armload of magazines from the ruins.

Mrs. Dayle moved towards the house.

Marber cleared his throat. “Ah, thanks, but no thanks. It’s past four and I’ve got to make it back before sundown curfew. But … well, perhaps some other time, Mrs. –-“

“Winona,” she corrected, meeting his eyes. “Why, of course.” Her lids lowered almost imperceptibly. “I’ll—keep one in the refrigerator for you. Perhaps when you get back, if it’s not too–-“

“Perhaps.” He understood.

“Jerr—rry,” protested Darla, offering her upturned face as argument. “Take me forra ride like you said.”

“We mustn’t keep Mr. Marber—Jerry—any longer, dear.”

He was aware of the long line of charred rubble darkening the ground where Saturday mowings had once sent showers of ripe grass into the air. Abruptly he realized that the child had been born since there were no lawns. Or trees.

“There is one place,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Mrs. Dayle.

“I wanna go witch you,” reminded Darla.

Somehow, the idea pleased him. “She … she can ride with me. I wouldn’t mind at all.” He meant it.

“Oh no, just because she’s-“

“Really. It isn’t such a long way. And coming back, we can stop at the park.”

Mrs. Dayle’s face was peculiarly expressionless.

“It’s the only place within miles that gets water enough.”

“Yeahhh, wanna see the park!”

“Well…” Mrs. Dayle visibly hesitated. “I don’t really kno-ow.”

“She could see what growing things look like. Indian summer won’t be with us much longer. And … well, you know I lost mine when it happened. It would be my pleasure.”

She said casually, “I suppose you’d be back before— before the Daily?”

“Certainly, if you like. I don’t think it’s anything she needs to see, myself.”

Mrs. Dayle moistened her lips. She searched Marber’s face, squinted her eyes shut and decided.

“Here. You—you’d better know.” She tossed a wary glance down the empty block.

She led her daughter by the hand to the protective wing of the front-opening Isetta’s door. Then she lifted the child’s leg until it touched the seat.

“Now. Show Mr. Marber.”

The little girl hid her face. “I don’t wanna,” she whimpered, withdrawing her foot.

“Now just hold still.” Again Mrs. Dayle raised the child’s leg. In one quick motion the sneaker and stocking were gone. “There.”

Darla wept down into herself. “Mommy,” she pleaded, helpless.

Her foot was slightly—but unmistakably—clubbed.

“We’ve always kept it hidden,” whispered Mrs. Dayle, leaning close. “Or she would have been —” Marber smelled the mint of her breath and saw the phoney chestnut highlights in her mousy hair. “—You know.”

“I’ve never understood why it had to be us. Is it a punishment of some kind?” She leaned closer. “But we know it’s our fault, I guess. It’s hereditary, there’s no denying that. Certainly not like the others, because of what happened. Not a—what do they call it?—mutation.” She searched his face for confirmation. “Is it?”

Semi-consciously he watched a greasy, three-legged dog rooting in the debris a few yards away. Trying to mount a chunk of concrete, it slipped and fell on its snout in a cloud of ashes.

“I … I don’t know.” He had read of such things, but he couldn’t be sure.

Mrs. Dayle tried to relax, standing on one foot. “Certainly the Team would recognize the difference, wouldn’t they?”

“I… I guess I never noticed her limping.” Marber was at a loss. “But she doesn’t, does she?”

“Oh, we’ve been careful.” She showed him the padded and blocked interior of the shoe. “It took a long time to teach her to walk properly.”

“Are you sure you want me to—I mean, I didn’t know or I wouldn’t have —” He faltered, brought a hand up to shield his eyes.

Compulsively, Mrs. Dayle hugged her daughter and thrust her into the car. “No, I do want her to see the park while it’s still green. There’s so little green anywhere, with the water rationed.”

“Then I’ll make it a point to have her back here before they begin.”

“Actually, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, after all. You know how mothers are. It’s not like Darla is—is like those others. It was just the thought of her anywhere near that—that pool and those pitiful creatures. But then she wouldn’t have anything to worry about, would she?” she added in mock cheerfulness, searching his face. “Would she?”

“Of course not, Mrs.—Winona.”

Sniffling, the little girl laced up her shoe.

* * * *

Lying prone, face nearly at ground level, Marber let his eyes sweep out with the greensward in a wide arc that terminated in a far away row of sycamores. No, he mused, perhaps the park did not end there, but sloped on down beyond the trees in a gentle golf-course-like hill. He could not be sure. It had been so long since he had lain like this, feeling the motion of the earth beneath him, chlorophyll rich in his nostrils.

A susurrus in the grass behind him.

“Look,” breathed Darla, dropping to her knees beside him. “Oh, look!”

He raised to his elbows. In her cupped hands nestled a tiny bluebird, beak throbbing for nourishment.

“I bet he fell out of his nest,” she sighed, gazing at it sadly. She turned her hands to reveal the other side. Drawn snug against its crumpled new feathers lay a sleeping second head.

“Why?” she whispered.

My God, he cried silently, my dear God! He had almost forgotten that the “hot” rain had fallen here, too. Almost.

“What’s wrong with it ?”

A boy’s voice. Marber rolled onto his back.

It was a young boy with unkept hair that fell in a sun-bleached swatch across his forehead. Beyond, two tiny girls with straight dishwater hair came running.

“Come with us,” the boy invited Darla. “We’ll build him a nest!”

For the first time Marber noticed a picnic spread off to his right. A man and a woman lounged on a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, among a kaleidoscope of coloured jars and bottles and plastic plates spilled from an old-fashioned picnic basket.

Marber approached, following the children who cast long, moving shadows around him on the grass. The man, balding slightly, smiled up with rows of too-white teeth past a lengthy aromatic cigar.

Marber automatically extended his hand.

“Hey there! Won’t you join us?” offered the man, gesturing to the melange around him. His bushy eyebrows moved like jovial charcoal caterpillars above his eyes.

Awkwardly Marber withdrew his hand. “Thank you,” he managed, taken aback.

“Your daughter is sure a charmer,” grinned the man. “I’ve been watching her.”

“Oh, she’s not mine. A neighbour child—”

“I just love this time of year,” sighed the woman to a watercolour sunset beyond the silhouette of the crudely repaired water tower on the horizon. Her teeth, also, seemed too white to Marber, and her blouse and shorts were somehow too bright and new. He wondered how they managed in these times.

He saw the children fashioning a nest of twigs by the nearest tree.

“There’s potato salad and sweet pickles, some preserves, homemade bread-“

“Hold on.” Marber scratched his forehead. “How did you manage it? The flour, where —”

“We manage,” winked the man. “Like most folks nowadays, I suppose. Have to, you know.”

“And there’s even some meat,” added the woman in a gay, nasal voice. “Well, it’s only soyameat, but it’s the best we can get.”

Marber laughed, incredulous at her apology. “Why, I haven’t eaten real meat in years! Who has?”

“Well,” she said, “some of our friends …”

So it’s started all over again, thought Marber, kneeling and picking a blade of grass. The new Joneses. Will they ever —

One of the tiny girls ran up and tumbled onto the grass, laying her head in the man’s lap.

For a second Marber wished that he had taught his own daughter to do that, while there had still been time. He found that he was unable to recall her face. The late summer breeze ruffled his eyelashes.

“Better go play now before it gets dark,” the man was saying. “Go on, now.” He pulled her from his lap.

“Do you come here often?”

“Oh, as often as we can, I guess,” said the man.

“It’s good for the kids,” Marber observed.

“You don’t know how great it feels to get away from that damned house,” sighed the woman.

“Oh,” said Marber.

“Dad,” called the boy. “Dad, can we go down to the pool today?” He ran up, breathing heavily, hands hooked in his pockets. Pink-cheeked, he glanced impatiently back towards the row of sycamores.

“My boy, Robby,” the man told Marber, holding his cigar like a prize. “Healthy as they come.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” groaned the woman, “do we have to go down there today?”

“Aw, c’mon now, honey. Can’t let the kids miss the Daily. Good for ‘em to learn how lucky they are—it’s the meat-eaters that run the world! Tell the truth, I wouldn’t want to miss it today, myself.” He rose. “C’mon son, I’ll race ya there!”

“I wanna see too!” shrilled Darla.

“Come on!” urged the boy, lining up with his sisters for the race. “I bet they’re starting already!”

Darla was a doe ready to bolt. Marber cleared his throat. The man and his wife, brushing themselves off in the dusk, were looking at him now.

He had to say something. “I’ll… take her.” He stood.

* * * *

Once, part of a time long gone, it had been a wading pool, a summer place where children splashed crystal water in the sun.

Now a concrete wall rose around the perimeter, adding tank-like depth. Now the wooden lid to the drain controls gaped open against the rusted and sagging chain-link fence like a mouth. Now the sign on the gate no longer listed rules of conduct (“No child under six admitted,” recalled Marber, as if from a dream); the Team motto hung in its place: within a circle, the letters SS superimposed over Selectival Survival—Key to Tomorrow.

The first, a two- or three-month-old baby, struggled for mere seconds before giving up to float face down like a pale fish in the twilight. This time the white body weights stood unneeded against the pool.

A woman, whimpering, was led away through the vaguely resentful crowd. Marber heard her sob over and over, “It was just a little finger, he couldn’t even use it!” He dug his fingers into Darla’s shoulders and watched the Team men, spectral in their white robes, conducting the daily ritual with apparent disinterest.

The next was an older child, a scarecrow of a girl. As she was swept to the fore of the crowd, those nearest the pool grew increasingly abusive. They began to give catcalls. They pushed and flung her within the human ring with mounting roughness.

The boy Robby stood with his family, dirty fingers hooked into the link fence. “See?” Marber heard him explain to his sisters. “That’s what happens t’ the freaks. That way just strong kids can grow up. An’ have more kids. Get it?” The smaller girl drew her fingers into her thin, streaked mouth and began to cry.

A Team man near the fence noticed and muttered to his partner, who nodded at the three children. “Hallendorfs— checked in …” Marber caught.

Darla squirmed suddenly. “Wanna go home!”

The Team men spotted Darla. One shook his head. The crowd was closing in on its poolside victim. “Ta wretch!” shrieked a woman’s voice. “Ya cripple!”

Marber’s breath stopped, like summer air at high noon.

“Daughter checked in, mister?”

I’llrun, he thought, I’ll give the first one three fingers in the gut and then I’ll sweep her up under one arm and make it back up the hill, I used to be a pretty good 100-yard man in school —

The first man in white came through the gate.

—and if the other one catches up I’ll turn and slug him hard in the throat and keep moving —

He turned. A man in white was opening the gate at the other end.

—or maybe, no, maybe I’ll just stand here relaxed, I’ll let go of her and they’ll take one look and smile and say There’s nothing wrong here and we’ll all have a good laugh —

And they were upon him. Darla was a doll lifted screaming from him. They peeled back her doll’s clothing.

It happened so fast he didn’t have time to—to —

It was like a time when as a small boy he was playing softball in the street and heard the crack of the bat and looked up to be blinded by the sun and someone yelled LOOK OUT! but he was unable to move and just waited there until the ball reached his fated forehead —For a crazy, timeless moment he had swayed there, suspended, unbelieving, seeing the laces staring at him, waiting for the merciful arms of unconsciousness to enfold him-

In the bluing twilight, in that protracted moment before night descends in. its fullness, Marber, swaying slightly, gagged and was sick.