Over the River and Through the Woods Read online

  All night long the house was lonely.

  The next afternoon, as he was plowing corn, a reporter came and walked up the row with him and talked with him when he came to the end of the row. Mose didn’t like this reporter much. He was too flip and he asked some funny questions, so Mose clammed up and didn’t tell him much.

  A few days later, a man showed up from the university and showed him the story the reporter had gone back and written. The story made fun of Mose.

  “I’m sorry,” the professor said. “These newspapermen are unaccountable. I wouldn’t worry too much about anything they write.”

  “I don’t,” Mose told him.

  The man from the university asked a lot of questions and made quite a point about how important it was that he should see the body.

  But Mose only shook his head. “It’s at peace,” he said. “I aim to leave it that way.”

  The man went away disgusted, but still quite dignified.

  For several days there were people driving by and dropping in, the idly curious, and there were some neighbors Mose hadn’t seen for months. But he gave them all short shrift and in a little while they left him alone and he went on with his farming and the house stayed lonely.

  He thought again that maybe he should get a dog, but he thought of Towser and he couldn’t do it.

  One day, working in the garden, he found the plant that grew out of the grave. It was a funny-looking plant and his first impulse was to root it out.

  But he didn’t do it, for the plant intrigued him. It was a kind he’d never seen before and he decided he would let it grow, for a while at least, to see what kind it was. It was a bulky, fleshy plant, with heavy, dark-green, curling leaves, and it reminded him in some ways of the skunk cabbage that burgeoned in the woods come spring.

  There was another visitor, the queerest of the lot. He was a dark and intense man who said he was the president of a flying saucer club. He wanted to know if Mose had talked with the thing he’d found out in the woods and seemed terribly disappointed when Mose told him he hadn’t. He wanted to know if Mose had found a vehicle the creature might have traveled in and Mose lied to him about it. He was afraid, the wild way the man was acting, that he might demand to search the place, and if he had, he’d likely have found the birdcage hidden in the machine shed back in the corner by the forge. But the man got to lecturing Mose about withholding vital information.

  Finally Mose had taken all he could of it, so he stepped into the house and picked up the shotgun from behind the door. The president of the flying saucer club said good-by rather hastily and got out of there.

  Farm life went on as usual, with the corn laid by and the haying started and out in the garden the strange plant kept on growing and now was taking shape. Old Mose couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the sort of shape it took and he spent long evening hours just standing in the garden, watching it and wondering if his loneliness were playing tricks on him.

  The morning came when he found the plant standing at the door and waiting for him. He should have been surprised, of course, but he really wasn’t, for he had lived with it, watching it of eventide, and although he had not dared admit it even to himself, he had known what it was.

  For here was the creature he’d found in the woods, no longer sick and keening, no longer close to death, but full of life and youth.

  It was not the same entirely, though. He stood and looked at it and could see the differences—the little differences that might have been those between youth and age, or between a father and a son, or again the differences expressed in an evolutionary pattern.

  “Good morning,” said Mose, not feeling strange at all to be talking to the thing. “It’s good to have you back.”

  The thing standing in the yard did not answer him. But that was not important; he had not expected that it would. The one important point was that he had something he could talk to.

  “I’m going out to do the chores,” said Mose. “You want to tag along?”

  It tagged along with him and it watched him as he did the chores and he talked to it, which was a vast improvement over talking to himself.

  At breakfast, he laid an extra plate for it and pulled up an extra chair, but it turned out the critter was not equipped to use a chair, for it wasn’t hinged to sit.

  Nor did it eat. That bothered Mose at first, for he was hospitable, but he told himself that a big, strong, strapping youngster like this one knew enough to take care of itself, and he probably didn’t need to worry too much about how it got along.

  After breakfast, he went out to the garden, with the critter accompanying him, and sure enough, the plant was gone. There was a collapsed husk lying on the ground, the outer covering that had been the cradle of the creature at his side.

  Then he went to the machine shed and the creature saw the birdcage and rushed over to it and looked it over minutely. Then it turned around to Mose and made a sort of pleading gesture.

  Mose went over to it and laid his hands on one of the twisted bars and the critter stood beside him and laid its hands on, too, and they pulled together. It was no use. They could move the metal some, but not enough to pull it back in shape again.

  They stood and looked at one another, although looking may not be the word, for the critter had no eyes to look with. It made some funny motions with its hands, but Mose couldn’t understand. Then it lay down on the floor and showed him how the birdcage ribs were fastened to the base.

  It took a while for Mose to understand how the fastening worked and he never did know exactly why it did. There wasn’t, actually, any reason that it should work that way.

  First you applied some pressure, just the right amount at the exact and correct angle, and the bar would move a little. Then you applied some more pressure, again the exact amount and at the proper angle, and the bar would move some more. You did this three times and the bar came loose, although there was, God knows, no reason why it should.

  Mose started a fire in the forge and shoveled in some coal and worked the bellows while the critter watched. But when he picked up the bar to put it in the fire, the critter got between him and the forge and wouldn’t let him near. Mose realized then he couldn’t—or wasn’t supposed to—heat the bar to straighten it and he never questioned the entire rightness of it. For, he told himself, this thing must surely know the proper way to do it.

  So he took the bar over to the anvil and started hammering it back into shape again, cold, without the use of fire, while the critter tried to show him the shape that it should be. It took quite a while, but finally it was straightened out to the critter’s satisfaction.

  Mose figured they’d have themselves a time getting the bar back in place again, but it slipped on as slick as could be.

  Then they took off another bar and this one went faster now that Mose had the hang of it.

  But it was hard and grueling labor. They worked all day and only straightened out five bars.

  It took four solid days to get the bars on the birdcage hammered into shape and all the time the hay was waiting to be cut.

  But it was all right with Mose. He had someone to talk to and the house had lost its loneliness.

  When they got the bars back in place, the critter slipped into the cage and started fooling with a dingus on the roof of it that looked like a complicated basket. Mose, watching, figured that the basket was some sort of control.

  The critter was discouraged. It walked around the shed looking for something and seemed unable to find it. It came back to Mose and made its despairing, pleading gesture. Mose showed it iron and steel; he dug into a carton where he kept bolts and clamps and bushings and scraps of metal and other odds and ends, finding brass and copper and even some aluminum, but it wasn’t any of these.

  And Mose was glad—a bit ashamed for feeling glad, but glad all the same.

  For it had been clear to him that when the birdcage was all ready, the critter would be leaving him. It had been impossible for Mose to stand in
the way of the repair of the cage, or to refuse to help. But now that it apparently couldn’t be, he found himself well pleased.

  Now the critter would have to stay with him and he’d have someone to talk to and the house would not be lonely. It would be welcome, he told himself, to have folks again. The critter was almost as good a companion as Towser.

  Next morning, while Mose was fixing breakfast, he reached up in the cupboard to get the box of oatmeal and his hand struck the cigar box and it came crashing to the floor. It fell over on its side and the lid came open and the dollars went free-wheeling all around the kitchen.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mose saw the critter leaping quickly in pursuit of one of them. It snatched it up and turned to Mose, with the coin held between its fingers, and a sort of thrumming noise was coming out of the nest of worms on top of it.

  It bent and scooped up more of them and cuddled them and danced a sort of jig, and Mose knew, with a sinking heart, that it had been silver the critter had been hunting.

  So Mose got down on his hands and knees and helped the critter gather up all the dollars. They put them back into the cigar box and Mose picked up the box and gave it to the critter.

  The critter took it and hefted it and had a disappointed look. Taking the box over to the table, it took the dollars out and stacked them in neat piles and Mose could see it was very disappointed.

  Perhaps, after all, Mose thought, it had not been silver the thing had been hunting for. Maybe it had made a mistake in thinking that the silver was some other kind of metal.

  Mose got down the oatmeal and poured it into some water and put it on the stove. When it was cooked and the coffee was ready, he carried his breakfast to the table and sat down to eat.

  The critter still was standing across the table from him, stacking and restacking the piles of silver dollars. And now it showed him with a hand held above the stacks, that it needed more of them. This many stacks, it showed him, and each stack so high.

  Mose sat stricken, with a spoon full of oatmeal halfway to his mouth. He thought of all those other dollars, the iron kettle packed with them, underneath the floorboards in the living room. And he couldn’t do it; they were the only thing he had—except the critter now. And he could not give them up so the critter could go and leave him too.

  He ate his bowl of oatmeal without tasting it and drank two cups of coffee. And all the time the critter stood there and showed him how much more it needed.

  “I can’t do it for you,” Old Mose said. “I’ve done all you can expect of any living being. I found you in the woods and I gave you warmth and shelter. I tried to help you, and when I couldn’t, at least I gave you a place to die in. I buried you and protected you from all those other people and I did not pull you up when you started growing once again. Surely you can’t expect me to keep on giving endlessly.”

  But it was no good. The critter could not hear him and he did not convince himself.

  He got up from the table and walked into the living room with the critter trailing him. He loosened the floorboards and took out the kettle, and the critter, when it saw what was in the kettle, put its arms around itself and hugged in happiness.

  They lugged the money out to the machine shed and Mose built a fire in the forge and put the kettle in the fire and started melting down that hard-saved money.

  There were times he thought he couldn’t finish the job, but he did.

  The critter got the basket out of the birdcage and put it down beside the forge and dipped out the molten silver with an iron ladle and poured it here and there into the basket, shaping it in place with careful hammer taps.

  It took a long time, for it was exacting work, but finally it was done and the silver almost gone. The critter lugged the basket back into the birdcage and fastened it in place.

  It was almost evening now and Mose had to go and do the chores. He half expected the thing might haul out the birdcage and be gone when he came back to the house. And he tried to be sore at it for its selfishness—it had taken from him and had not tried to pay him back—it had not, so far as he could tell, even tried to thank him. But he made a poor job of being sore at it.

  It was waiting for him when he came from the barn carrying two pails full of milk. It followed him inside the house and stood around and he tried to talk to it. But he didn’t have the heart to do much talking. He could not forget that it would be leaving, and the pleasure of its present company was lost in his terror of the loneliness to come.

  For now he didn’t even have his money to help ward off the loneliness.

  As he lay in bed that night, strange thoughts came creeping in upon him—the thought of an even greater loneliness than he had ever known upon this runty farm, the terrible, devastating loneliness of the empty wastes that lay between the stars, a driven loneliness while one hunted for a place or person that remained a misty thought one could not define, but which it was most important one should find.

  It was a strange thing for him to be thinking, and quite suddenly he knew it was no thought of his, but of this other that was in the room with him.

  He tried to raise himself, he fought to raise himself, but he couldn’t do it. He held his head up a moment, then fell back upon the pillow and went sound asleep.

  Next morning, after Mose had eaten breakfast, the two of them went to the machine shed and dragged the birdcage out. It stood there, a weird alien thing, in the chill brightness of the dawn.

  The critter walked up to it and started to slide between two of the bars, but when it was halfway through, it stepped out again and moved over to confront Old Mose.

  “Good-by, friend,” said Mose. “I’ll miss you.”

  There was a strange stinging in his eyes.

  The other held out its hand in farewell, and Mose took it and there was something in the hand he grasped, something round and smooth that was transferred from its hand to his.

  The thing took its hand away and stepped quickly to the birdcage and slid between the bars. The hands reached for the basket and there was a sudden flicker and the birdcage was no longer there.

  Mose stood lonely in the barnyard, looking at the place where there was no birdcage and remembering what he had felt or thought—or been told?—the night before as he lay in bed.

  Already the critter would be there, out between the stars, in that black and utter loneliness, hunting for a place or thing or person that no human mind could grasp.

  Slowly Mose turned around to go back to the house, to get the pails and go down to the barn to get the milking done.

  He remembered the object in his hand and lifted his still-clenched fist in front of him. He opened his fingers and the little crystal ball lay there in his palm—and it was exactly like the one he’d found in the slitted flap in the body he had buried in the garden. Except that one had been dead and cloudy and this one had the living glow of a distant-burning fire.

  Looking at it, he had the strange feeling of a happiness and comfort such as he had seldom known before, as if there were many people with him and all of them were friends.

  He closed his hand upon it and the happiness stayed on—and it was all wrong, for there was not a single reason that he should be happy. The critter finally had left him and his money was all gone and he had no friends, but still he kept on feeling good.

  He put the ball into his pocket and stepped spryly for the house to get the milking pails. He pursed up his whiskered lips and began to whistle and it had been a long, long time since he had even thought to whistle.

  Maybe he was happy, he told himself, because the critter had not left without stopping to take his hand and try to say good-by.

  And a gift, no matter how worthless it might be, how cheap a trinket, still had a basic value in simple sentiment. It had been many years since anyone had bothered to give him a gift.

  It was dark and lonely and unending in the depths of space with no Companion. It might be long before another was obtainable.

  It perhaps was a
foolish thing to do, but the old creature had been such a kind savage, so fumbling and so pitiful and eager to help. And one who travels far and fast must likewise travel light. There had been nothing else to give.

  The Big Front Yard

  Hiram Taine came awake and sat up in his bed.

  Towser was barking and scratching at the floor.

  “Shut up,” Taine told the dog.

  Towser cocked quizzical ears at him and then resumed the barking and scratching at the floor.

  Taine rubbed his eyes. He ran a hand through his rat’s-nest head of hair. He considered lying down again and pulling up the covers.

  But not with Towser barking.

  “What’s the matter with you, anyhow?” he asked Towser, with not a little wrath.

  “Whuff,” said Towser, industriously proceeding with his scratching at the floor.

  “If you want out,” said Taine, “all you got to do is open the screen door. You know how it is done. You do it all the time.”

  Towser quieted his barking and sat down heavily, watching his master getting out of bed.

  Taine put on his shirt and pulled on his trousers, but didn’t bother with his shoes.

  Towser ambled over to a corner, put his nose down to the baseboard and snuffled moistly.

  “You got a mouse?” asked Taine.

  “Whuff,” said Towser, most emphatically.

  “I can’t ever remember you making such a row about a mouse,” Taine said, slightly puzzled. “You must be off your rocker.”

  It was a beautiful summer morning. Sunlight was pouring through the open window.

  Good day for fishing, Taine told himself, then remembered that there’d be no fishing, for he had to go out and look up that old four-poster maple bed that he had heard about up Woodman way. More than likely, he thought, they’d want twice as much as it was worth. It was getting so, he told himself, that a man couldn’t make an honest dollar. Everyone was getting smart about antiques. He got up off the bed and headed for the living room.