Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

He added, a little lamely, “Liquor seemed to be the first thing everybody was tearing places apart for when things started to go to pieces.”

Paul climbed down from the wagon with the bottle and began to mix drinks in the glasses, roughly half whiskey and half water, from the evaporation-cooled water bag hanging to one side of the front seat.

“I’ve got homemade stuff back there, if you’d like it better,” he said. “I just figured since this was a special occasion, it needed something special in the way of a drink.”

Jeebee had not known that Paul drank alcohol. But it turned out that he did, with moderation. Jeebee and Nick took a couple of glasses. Merry took a small one.

Jeebee had never thought of alcohol in the past unless he suddenly found himself in a situation where he was expected to drink it, and had never really enjoyed the taste of it. But for some reason, now it tasted good to him. Somehow, standing out by the side of the road in the late-afternoon sun, with the ruined freeway stretching in both directions and at the end of a day in the open, the combination of whiskey and the evaporation-cooled water from the bag combined in a sensation that was pleasant and memorable in his mouth.

Nick came out of the wagon, evidently having decided to do his cooking inside. He was carrying the usual four metal folding chairs, and he set them up on the shoulder of the road. The four of them sat there, enjoying their drinks and watching the afternoon wane, like four people in a backyard before civilization had vanished as the Roman Empire and others like it had done.

Every so often Nick would get up and leave them, to go back inside the wagon to his cooking. But he was never gone long.

It was a curious, almost golden time. Jeebee found himself thinking that if Wolf had been there and lying silent close by, then everything that was worthwhile in his present existence would be caught in this one temporary but timeless moment. He smiled a little ruefully at his own perfect fantasy of a scene. If Wolf had indeed been there, he would not have been lying quietly—not with all the new and uninvestigated things around. He would have been shredding the folding chairs, leaving irreparable tooth scars on Jeebee’s new possessions, and generally disrupting the serenity of the evening. Sometimes the best thing about companioning with Wolf was his absence.

But Wolf had left again during the night just past, and not come back yet. Eventually, the sun set, and they started their evening fire close to the wagon, but safely enough away so that there was no danger of setting anything on fire. Nick brought out the dinner.

It was a remarkable surprise. Nick had made a soup, followed by a small roasted chicken and skinned roast potatoes.

“Where did the chicken come from?” Jeebee asked when they were all at the table beginning to eat it.

“Came from a can,” said Nick, smiling. The smile was a sly one. “Not many of them got sealed up whole like that, in cans. I mean, sealed up, cooked whole, and after you get them out, you can recook them. They were restaurant goods, mostly. I’ve had this one tucked away for a while, now. I had some wine, too, but it went sour. You can’t keep wine in a wagon that jolts around like this.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Jeebee. They were all drinking plain water now, one after another having ceased to add the whiskey to their glasses. “It couldn’t be better than this.”

“He’s right, Nick,” Merry said to the older man.

Nick’s V-shaped face creased in an even deeper smile.

“Special occasion,” he said again. “There’s dessert, too.”

The dessert turned out to be a sort of rich pudding, very black and crumbly, with a thick, buttery-tasting white sauce or icing on it—it was impossible to say which class the topping fell into. At any rate it was very sweet and filling. To Jeebee, who weeks before had lived with hunger, it seemed to be the best dessert he had ever tasted.

After dinner Nick cleared the dinner trays without handing them to Jeebee to wash.

They sat at the table by the fire, drinking coffee, with Paul, in addition, puffing on his pipe. On the open air the smell of the tobacco was fragrant in Jeebee’s nostrils. It was only after a while longer than Jeebee would have thought it necessary for Nick to wash and store the dinner dishes that the smaller man appeared back out at the fire, carrying something wrapped in cloth and looking a little like a board close to two feet long and four or five inches wide.

He sat down and laid it on Jeebee’s knees. Paul produced a small similarly cloth-wrapped package from his pocket and Merry produced apparently from nowhere a fairly bulky object about eight to ten inches by six, also cloth-wrapped and neatly tied with ribbon.

“Gift time,” said Merry.

Jeebee stared at the three packages.

“ Little gifts?” he said.

“A bit larger maybe than little,” said Paul, complacently puffing smoke.

The three packages had been laid out, apparently for him to pick up himself. Now it became a question of who he might offend if he picked them up in the wrong order.

After a moment’s thought he came to the conclusion that the only safe thing was to open Merry’s package first.

“Merry,” he said as he started to carefully try to untie the ribbon, “I don’t know what I can say—”

He interrupted himself. The ribbon that he had tried to untie had slid itself down into a knot.

“Oh, just break it,” said Merry.

It seemed like a brutal way to handle a package so carefully wrapped, but he pulled on the ribbon and it snapped. After that, the cloth came off, revealing a pair of Bausch and Lomb Elite eight-by-forty binoculars, under an inner wrapping of cardboard that had disguised their shape. The packaging had been deliberately deceptive.

Paul frowned a little.

“Those are your binoculars, Merry,” he said. She looked at him.

“And I’m giving them to Jeebee,” she replied evenly.

Paul puffed on his pipe and said nothing.

Wonderingly, Jeebee picked up the binoculars and put them to his eyes, looking off at the horizon where the moon had just risen. They were, indeed, a perfect match for the binoculars Paul had lent him and taken back again. A magnificent gift.

“You shouldn’t give me these,” he said to Merry.

“Well, I have,” Merry said. “Open the other gifts.”

Jeebee reached for the small package that Paul had laid on the table. In this case the cloth wrapping had not disguised it and merely snapping the string about it and unfolding the cloth revealed to Jeebee what his finger had told him he might—which was a very small revolver.

“It’s a Smith and Wesson .38 Bodyguard Airweight,” said Paul. “I’ll fit you out with ammunition for it before you leave.”

It was a revolver that would fit into the palm of his hand. Jeebee had heard of very small automatics, but never of revolvers, this size. It had a shroud over the hammer to keep it from catching on clothing. It looked, in fact, almost like a toy. But very plainly, it was not.

“It’s a boot gun. Stick it down inside the top of your boot and it ought to be out of sight, as well as easy to get at,” Paul said around his pipe stem. “It’s good for up to about twenty feet. You’d better practice a bit with it—as I say, I’ll give you the shells—so that you can get some idea of how it throws. We can do that tomorrow morning before you leave.”

Jeebee had been trying not to think that it was tomorrow Paul turned the wagon southward. It was as if a corner of emptiness entered him. As if the wagon was taking everything he knew away from him. He had never thought he would feel like this when the time came.

“And now,” said Merry, “Nick’s going to pop if you don’t get around to opening his gift.” Jeebee came to with a start.