They dumped us back at the Receiving Station and a second group of parties got ready to leave. I looked for a quiet spot to try to get some sleep.
I was just dozing off, it seemed to me, when somebody shook me. It was Dad. “Are you all right, Bill?”
I rubbed my eyes. “I’m okay. Have you seen Molly and Peggy?”
“Just left them. I’m off duty for a few hours. Bill, have you seen anything of the Schultzes?”
I sat up, wide awake. “No. Have you?”
“No.”
I told him what I had been doing and he nodded. “Go back to sleep, Bill. I’ll see if there has been a report on them.”
I didn’t go to sleep. He was back after a bit to say that he hadn’t been able to find out anything one way or another. “I’m worried, Bill.”
“So am I.”
“I’m going out and check up.”
“Let’s go.”
Dad shook his head. “No need for us both. You get some sleep.” I went along, just the same.
We were lucky. A disaster party was just heading down our road and we hitched a ride. Our own farm and the Schultz’s place were among those to be covered on this trip; Dad told the driver that we would check both places and report when we got back to town. That was all right with him.
They dropped us at the turn off and we trudged up toward the Schultz’s house. I began to get the horrors as we went. It’s one thing to pile snow over comparative strangers; it’s another thing entirely to expect to find Mama Schultz or Gretchen with their faces blue and stiff.
I didn’t visualize Papa as dead; people like Papa Schultz don’t die–they just go on forever. Or it feels like that.
But I still wasn’t prepared for what we did find.
We had just come around a little hummock that conceals their house from the road. George stopped and said, “Well, the house is still standing. His quake-proofing held.”
I looked at it, then I stared—and then I yelled. “Hey, George! The Tree is gone!”
The house was there, but the apple tree—”the most beautiful tree on Ganymede”—was missing. Just gone. I began to run.
We were almost to the house when the door opened. There stood Papa Schultz.
They were all safe, every one of them. What remained of the tree was ashes in the fireplace. Papa had cut it down as soon as the power went off and the temperature started to drop—and then had fed it, little by little, into the flames.
Papa, telling us about it, gestured at the blackened firebox. “Johann’s folly, they called it. I guess they will not think old Appleseed Johnny quite so foolish now, eh?” He roared and slapped Dad on the shoulders.
“But your tree,” I said stupidly.
“I will plant another, many others.” He stopped and was suddenly serious. “But your trees, William, your brave little baby trees—they are dead, not?”
I said I hadn’t seen them yet. He nodded solemnly. “They are dead of the cold. Hugo!”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Fetch me an apple.” Hugo did so and Papa presented it to me. “You will plant again.” I nodded and stuck it in my pocket.
They were glad to hear that we were all right, though Mama clucked over Molly’s broken arm. Yo had fought his way over to our place during the first part of the storm, found that we were gone and returned, two frost bitten ears for his efforts. He was in town now to look for us.
But they were all right, every one of them. Even their livestock they had saved—cows, pigs, chickens, people, all huddled together throughout the cold and kept from freezing by the fire from their tree.
The animals were back in the barn, now that power was on again, but the place still showed that they had been there—and smelled of it, too. I think Mama was more upset by the shambles of her immaculate living room than she was by the magnitude of the disaster. I don’t think she realized that most of her neighbors were dead. It hadn’t hit her yet.