The next morning the Prof felt strong enough to get up, and he led the boys on a more detailed inspection tour. The solar panels were caked with dirt and leaves, but otherwise unhurt. The boys set to cleaning them while the Prof mended the broken water pipe.
By nightfall the damage had been repaired and the house was back to normal. But not the Prof. He moved slowly, painfully, his breathing was labored. He was sick, even Tim could see that.
«Back in the old days,» he said in a rasping whisper over the dinner table, «I’d go to the local clinic and get some pills to lower my blood pressure. Or an EGF injection to grow new arteries.» He shook his head sadly. «Now I can only sit around like an old man waiting to die.»
The boys couldn’t leave him, not in his weakened condition. Besides, the Prof said they’d be better off waiting until the spring tornado season was over.
«No guarantee you won’t run into a twister during the summer, of course,» he told them. «But it’s safer if you wait a bit.»
He taught them as much as he could about his computers and the electrical systems he’d rigged to power the house. Tim knew how to read some, so the Prof gave him books while he began to teach Hawk about reading and writing.
«The memory of the human race is in these books,» he said, almost every day. «What’s left of it, that is.»
The boys worked his little vegetable patch and picked berries and hunted down game while the Prof stayed at home, too weak to exert himself. He showed the boys how to use his high-powered bow and Tim bagged a young boar all by himself.
One morning well into the summertime, the Prof couldn’t get out of his bed. Tim saw that his face was gray and soaked in sweat, his breathing rapid and shallow. He seemed to be in great pain.
He looked up at the boys and tried to smile. «I guess I’m … going to become immortal … the old-fashioned way.»
Hawk swallowed hard and Tim could see he was fighting to hold back tears.
«Nothing you can do … for me,» the Prof said, his voice so weak that Tim had to bend over him to hear it.
«Just rest,» Tim said. «You rest up and you’ll get better.»
«Not likely.»
Neither boy knew what else to say, what else to do.
«I bequeath my island to you two,» the Prof whispered. «It’s all yours, boys.»
Hawk nodded.
«But you … you really ought to warn … your people,» he gasped, «about the ice …»
He closed his eyes. His labored breathing stopped.
That evening, after they had buried the Prof, Tim asked Hawk, «Do you think we oughtta go back and tell our folks?»
Hawk snapped, «No.»
«But the Prof said—»
«He was a crazy old man. We go back home and all we’ll get is a whippin’ for runnin’ away.»
«But we oughtta tell them,» Tim insisted. «Warn them.»
«About something that ain’t gonna happen until we’re grandfathers? Something that probably won’t happen at all?»
«But—»
«We got a good place here. The crazy old coot left it to us and we’d be fools to leave it.»
«What about Colorado?»
«We’ll get there next year. Or maybe the year after. And if we don’t like it there we can always come back here.»
For the first time in his life, Tim not only felt that Hawk was wrong, but he decided to do something about it.
«Okay,» he said. «You stay. I’m goin’ back.»
«You’re as crazy as he was!»
«I’ll come back here. I’m just goin’ to warn them and then I’ll come back.»
Hawk made a snorting noise. «If they leave any skin on your hide.»
For a week Tim patched up their boat and its ragged sail and filled it with provisions. The morning he was set to cast off, Hawk came to the pebbly beach with him.
«I guess this is good-bye for a while,» Tim said.
«Don’t be a dumbbell,» Hawk groused. «I’m goin’ with you.»
Tim felt a rush of joy. «You are?»
«You’d get yourself lost out there. Some sea monster would have you for lunch.»
«We can always come back here again,» Tim said, grunting, as they pushed the boat into the water.
«Yeah, sure.»
«We hafta warn them, Hawk. We just hafta.»
«Shut up and haul out the sail.»
For several days they sailed north and east, back along the way they had come. The weather was sultry, the sun blazing like molten iron out of a cloudless sky.
«Ice age,» Hawk grumbled. «Craziest thing I ever heard.»
«I saw pictures of it in the books the Prof had,» said Tim. «Big sheets of ice covering everything.»
Hawk just shook his head and spit over the side.
«It really happened, Hawk.»
«The weather don’t change,» Hawk snapped. «It’s the same every year. Hot in the summer, cool in the winter. You ever known anything else?»
«No,» Tim admitted.
«You ever seen ice, except in the Prof’s pictures?»
«No.»
«Or that stuff he called snow?»
«Never.»
«We oughtta turn this boat around and head back to the island.»
Tim almost agreed. But he saw that Hawk made no motion to change their course. He was talking one way but acting the other.
They fell silent. Tim understood Hawk’s resentment. Probably nobody would listen to them when they got home. The elders would be pretty mad about the two of them running off and they wouldn’t listen to a word the boys had to say.
For hours they skimmed along, the only sound the gusting of the hot southerly wind and the hiss of the boat cutting through the placid water.
«It’s all fairy tales,» Hawk grumbled, as much to himself as to Tim. «Stories they make up to scare the kids. What do they call ’em?»
«Myths,» said Tim.
«Myths, that’s right. Myths.» But suddenly he jerked to attention. «Hey, what’s that?»
Tim saw he was looking down into the water. He came over to Hawk’s side of the boat.
Something was glittering down below the surface. Something big.
Tim’s heart started racing. «A sea monster?»
Hawk shook his head impatiently. «I don’t think it’s moving. Leastways it’s not following after us. Look, it’s falling behind.»
They lapsed into silence again. Tim felt uncomfortable. He didn’t like it when Hawk was sore at him.
Apologetically, he said, «Maybe you’re right. The old man was most likely a little crazy.»
«A lot crazy,» Hawk said. «And we’re just as crazy as he was. The weather don’t change like that. It’s just not possible. There never was a Flood. The world’s always been like this. Always.»
Tim was shocked. «No Flood?»
«It’s one of them myths,» Hawk insisted. «Like sea monsters. Ain’t no such thing.»
«Then what did we see back there?»
«I dunno. But it wasn’t no sea monster. And the weather don’t change the way the Prof said it’s goin’ to. There wasn’t any Flood and there sure ain’t goin’ to be any ice age.»
Tim wondered if Hawk was right, as their boat sailed on and the glittering stainless steel stump of the St. Louis Gateway Arch fell farther and farther behind them.
BROTHERS
Over my desk is a page from a collection of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. The page contains a brief sketch, set in a town in Spain in the 1920s. Two old bullfighters are watching the young matador who is supposed to be the star of that afternoon’s corrida de toros. But the young star is drunk, dancing in the street with gypsies, staggeringly drunk, in no condition to face the bulls.