The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 43

  As a matter of fact, he never did tell me who he was or where he came from or why he happened to be in my pasture. And while that may seem rude to the reader of this account, it did not seem rude at the time, for he was such a charming person that one failed to measure him by the same yardstick as one would other people of less accomplishments.

  He seemed well informed on farming, although he looked like no farmer. Come to think of it, I do not remember exactly what he did look like, although I seem to recall that he was dressed in a way which I had never seen before. Not garishly, nor outlandlishly, nor even in such a manner that one would think of him as foreign, but in clothing which had certain subtle differences difficult to pin down.

  He complimented me on the good growth of the pasture grass and asked me how many head of cattle we ran there and how many we were milking and what was the most satisfactory manner we had found to finish off good beef. I answered him as best I could, being very interested in his line of talk, and he kept the conversation going with appropriate comment and questions, some of which I now realize were meant as subtle flattery, although at the time I probably did not think so.

  He had a tool of some sort in his hand and now he waved it at a field of corn across the fence and said it looked like a good stand and asked me if I thought it would be knee-high by the Fourth. I told him that today was the Fourth and that it was a mite better than knee-high and that I was very pleased with it, since it was a new brand of seed that I was trying for the first time. He looked a little taken aback and laughed and said, so it was the Fourth, and that he had been so busy lately he had got his dates mixed. And then, before I could even wonder how a man could get his dates so mixed that he could miss the Fourth of July, he was off again on another track.

  He asked how long I had lived here, and when I told him he asked if the family hadn’t been here a long time; somewhere, he said, he had heard the name before. So I told him that we had, and before I knew it he had me telling all about the family, including some anecdotes which we usually do not tell outside the family circle since they are not exactly the kind of stories that we would care to have known about ourselves. For while our family is conservative and honorable in the main and better in most things than many others, there is no family which does not have a skeleton or two to hide away from view.

  We talked until it was long past the dinner hour, and when I noticed this I asked him if he would not take the meal with us, but he thanked me and said that in just a short while he would have the trouble fixed and would be on his way. He said that he had virtually completed whatever repair was needed when I had appeared. When I expressed fear that I had too long delayed him, he assured me that he did not mind at all, that it had been pleasant to spend the time with me.

  As I left him, I managed to get in one question. I had been intrigued by the tool which he had held in his hand during our conversation and I asked him what it was. He showed it to me and told me it was a wrench and it did look something like a wrench, although not very much so.

  After I had eaten dinner and had a nap, I walked back to the pasture, determined to ask the stranger some of the questions which I had realized by this time he had avoided.

  But the machine was gone and the stranger too, with only a print in the pasture grass to show where the machine had lain. But the wrench was there, and when I bent to pick it up I saw that one end was discolored, and upon investigation I found that the discoloration was blood. I have, many times since, berated myself for not having had an analysis made to determine whether the blood was human or from some animal.

  Likewise, I have wondered many times just what happened there. Who the man was and how come he left the wrench and why the heavier end of the wrench was stained with blood.

  I still make the boulder one of my regular stops and the boulder still is always in the shade and the view still is unobstructed and the air over the river valley still lends to the scene its strangely deep three-dimensional effect. And the sense of tingling expectancy still hangs above the spot, so I know that the place had not been waiting for this one strange happening alone, but that other strange happenings still may occur; that this one happening may have been only one of many happenings, that there may have been uncounted others before it and countless others yet to come. Although I do not hope or expect that I shall see another, for the life of man is but a second in comparison with the time of planets.

  The wrench which I picked up is still with us and it has proved a very useful tool. As a matter of fact, we have dispensed with most of our other tools and use it almost alone, for it will adjust itself to almost any nut or burr or will hold a shaft of almost any size from turning. There is no need for adjustment, nor is there any adjustment device that can be found. One simply applies it to whatever piece of metal one wants to take a grip upon and the tool adjusts itself. No great amount of pressure or of strength is needed to operate the wrench, for it appears to have the tendency to take whatever slight pressure one exerts upon it and multiply that pressure to the exact point needed to turn the nut or hold a shaft from turning. However, we are very careful to use the wrench only when there are no outside eyes to see it, for it smacks too much of magic or of witchcraft to be allowed on public view. The general knowledge that we possessed such a wrench almost certainly would lead to unwholesome speculation among our neighbors. And since we are an honest and respectable family, such a situation is the furthest from our wish.

  None of us ever talk about the man and the machine I found in the bluff pasture, even among ourselves, for we seem tacitly to recognize that it is a subject which does not fit within the frame of our lives as sober, unimaginative farmers.

  But while we do not talk about it, I do know that I, myself, think about it much. I spend more time than usual at the boulder resting place, just why I do not know, unless it is in the feeble hope that there somehow I may find a clue which will either substantiate or disprove the theory I have formed to account for the happening.

  For I believe, without proof of any sort, that the man was a man who came from time and that the machine was a time machine and the wrench is a tool which will not be discovered or manufactured for more years to come than I care to think about.

  I believe that somewhere in the future man has discovered a method by which he moves through time and that undoubtedly he has involved a very rigid code of ethics and of practices in order to prevent the paradoxes which would result from indiscriminate time traveling or meddling in the affairs of other times. I believe that the leaving of the wrench in my time provides one of those paradoxes which in itself is simple, but which under certain circumstances might lead to many complications. For that reason, I have impressed upon the family the strict necessity of continuing our present attitude of keeping its possession secret.

  Likewise, I have come to the conclusion, also unsupported, that the cleft at the head of which the boulder is located may be a road through time, or at least part of a road, a single point where our present time coincides very closely through the operation of some as yet unknown principle with another time far removed from us. It may be a place in the space-time continuum where less resistance is encountered in traveling through time than in other places and, having been discovered, is used quite frequently. Or it may simply be that it is a time road more deeply rutted, more frequently used than many other time roads, with the result that whatever medium separates one time from another time had been worn thin or had been bulged a bit or whatever would happen under such a circumstance.

  That reasoning might explain the strange eerie tingling of the place, might account for the sense of expectancy.

  The reader must bear in mind, of course, that I am an old, old man, that I have outlived the ordinary span of human life and that I continue to exist through some vagary of human destiny. While it does not seem so to myself, it may well be that my mind is not as sharp or keen nor as analytical as it may once have been, and that as a result I am susceptible to the entertainment of
ideas which would be summarily rejected by a normal human being.

  The one bit of proof, if one may call it proof, that I have to support my theories, is that the man I met could well have been a future man, might well have sprung from some civilization further advanced than ours. For it must be apparent to whoever reads this letter that in my talk with him he used me for his own purpose, that he pulled the wool over my eyes as easily as a man of my day might pull it over the eyes of a Homeric Greek or some member of Attila’s tribe. He was, I am sure, a man well versed in semantics and in psychology. Looking back, I know that he always was one long jump ahead of me.

  I write this not only so that any theories which I may have, and which I shrink from telling in my lifetime, may not be wholly lost, but may be available at some future time when a more enlightened knowledge than we have today may be able to make something out of them. And I hope that reading them, one will not laugh since I am dead. For if one did laugh, I am afraid that, dead as I might be, I would surely know it.

  That is the failing of us Suttons—we cannot bear to be made the butt of laughter.

  And in case that one may believe that my mind is twisted, I herewith enclose a physician’s certificate, signed just three days ago, asserting that upon examination he found me of sound body and sane mind.

  But the story I have to tell is not yet entirely done. These additional events should have been included in earlier sequence, but I found no place in which they logically would fit.

  They concern the strange incident of the stolen clothing and the advent of William Jones.

  The clothing was stolen a few days after the incident in the bluff pasture. Martha had done the washing early in the day, before the heat of the summer sun set in, and hung it on the line. When she went to take in the clothes, she found that an old pair of overalls of mine, a shirt belonging to Roland and a couple pairs of socks, the ownership of which I fear I have forgotten, had disappeared.

  The theft made quite a stir among us, for thievery is a thing which does not often happen in our community. We checked through our list of neighbors with a somewhat guilty feeling, for while we spoke no word aloud that anyone could hear, we knew in our hearts that even thinking of any of our near-by folks in connection with the theft was a rank injustice.

  We talked about it off and on for several days, and finally agreed that the theft must have been the work of some passing tramp, although even that explanation was scarcely satisfactory, for we are off the beaten way and tramps do not often pass and that year as I remember it was a year of great prosperity and there were few tramps.

  It was two weeks or so after the theft of the clothing that William Jones came to the house and asked if we might need a hand to help with the harvest. We were glad to take him on, for we were short of help and the wages that he asked were far below the going pay. We took him on for the harvest only, but he proved so capable that we have kept him all these years. Even as I write this, he is out in the barnyard readying the binder for the small grain cutting.

  There is a funny thing about William Jones. In this country a man soon acquires a nickname or at least a diminutive of his own. But William Jones always has been William. He never has been Will or Bill or Willy. Nor has he been Spike or Bud or Kid. There is a quiet dignity about him that makes everyone respect him, and his love of work and his quiet, intelligent interest in farming have won him a place in the community far above the usual status of a hired hand.

  He is completely sober and he never drinks, a thing for which I am thankful, although at one time I had my misgivings. For when he came to us, he had a bandage on his head and he explained to me, shamefacedly, that he had been hurt in a tavern brawl across the river somewhere in Crawford County.

  I don’t know when it was that I began to wonder about William Jones. Certainly it was not at first, for I accepted him for what he pretended to be, a man looking for work. If there was any resemblance to the man I had talked with down in the pasture, I did not notice it then. And, now, having noticed it at this late date, I wonder if my mind may not be playing tricks, if my imagination, running riot with my theories of time travel, may not have conditioned me to a point where I see a mystery crouching back of every tree.

  But the conviction has grown upon me through the years as I have associated with him. For all that he tries to keep his place, attempts to adopt his idiom to match our idiom, there are times that his speech hints at an education and an understanding one would not expect to find in a man who works on the farm for seventy-five dollars a month and board.

  There is, too, his natural shyness, which is a thing one would expect to find if a man were deliberately attempting to adapt himself to a society that was not his own.

  And there is the matter of clothes. Thinking back, I can’t be sure about the overalls, for all overalls look very much alike. But the shirt was exactly like the shirt that had been stolen from the line, although I tell myself that it would not be improbable for two men to own the same kind of shirt. And he was barefooted, which seemed a funny thing even at the time, but he explained it by saying that he had been down on his luck and I remember I advanced him enough money to buy some shoes and socks. But it turned out that he didn’t need the socks, for he had two pairs in his pocket.

  A few years ago I decided several times that I would speak to him about the matter, but each time my resolution failed and now I know I never will. For I like William Jones and William Jones likes me and I would not for the world destroy that mutual liking by a question that might send him fleeing from the farm.

  There is yet one other thing which goes to make William Jones unlike most farm hands. With his first money from his work here, he bought a typewriter, and during the first two or three years that he was with us he spent long hours of his evenings in his room using the typewriter and tramping about the room, as a man who is thinking is apt to walk.

  And then one day, in the early morning, before the rest of us had gotten from our beds, he took a great sheaf of paper, apparently the result of those long hours of work, and burned it. Watching from my bedroom window, I watched him do it and he stayed until he was sure that the last scrap of paper had been burned. Then he turned around and walked back slowly to the house.

  I never mentioned to him the burning of the paper, for I felt, somehow, that it was something he did not wish another man to know.

  I might go on for many pages and write down many other inconsequential, trivial things which rattle in my skull, but they would not add one iota to the telling of the thing I’ve told and might, in fact, convince the reader that I am in my dotage.

  To whoever may peruse this, I wish to make one last assurance. While my theory may be wrong, I would have him or her believe that the facts I have told are true. I would have him or her know that I did see a strange machine in the bluff pasture and that I did talk with a strange man, that I picked up a wrench with blood upon it, that clothes were stolen from the wash line and that even now a man named William Jones is pumping himself a drink of water at the well, for the day is very hot.

  Sincerely,

  John H. Sutton

  XXII

  Sutton folded the letter and the crackling of the old paper rippled across the quietness of the room like a spiteful snarl of thunder.

  Then he recalled something and unfolded the sheaf of leaves again and found the thing that had been mentioned. It was yellow and old … not as good a quality of paper as the letter had been written on. The writing was by hand, with ink, and the lines were faded so they hardly could be read. The date was unclear, except for the final 7.

  Sutton puzzled it out:

  John H. Sutton today has been examined by me and I find him sound of mind and body.

  The signature was a scrawl that probably could not have been read when the ink was scarcely dry, but there were two letters that stood put fairly clearly at the very end.

  The letters were M.D.

  Sutton stared across the room and saw in his mind the
scene of that long-gone day.

  “Doctor, I’ve a mind to make a will. Wonder if you could …”

  For John H. Sutton never would have told the doctor the real reason for that slip of paper … the real reason why he wanted it established that he was not insane.

  Sutton could imagine him. Ponderous in his walk, slow, deliberate, taking plenty of time to think things over, placing vast values on qualities and fictions which even in that day were shopworn and losing caste from centuries of overglorification.

  An old tyrant to his family, more than likely. A fuddy-duddy among his neighbors, who laughed behind his back. A man lacking in humor and crinkling his brow over fine matters of etiquette and ethics.

  He had been trained for the law and he had a lawyer’s mind, that much at least the letter told with clarity. A lawyer’s mind for detail and a landed man’s quality of slowness and an old man’s garrulity.

  But there was no mistaking the man’s sincerity. He believed he had seen a strange machine and had talked with a strange man and had picked up a wrench stained with …

  A wrench!

  Sutton sat bolt upright on the bed.

  The wrench had been in the trunk. He, Asher Sutton, had held it in his hand. He had picked it up and tossed it on the pile of junk along with the dog-gnawed bone and the college notebooks.

  Sutton’s hand trembled as he slid the letter back into its envelope. First it had been the stamp that had intrigued him, a stamp that was worth Lord knows how many thousand dollars … then it was the letter itself and the mystery of its being sealed … and now there was the wrench. And the wrench clinched everything.

  For the wrench meant that there actually had been a strange machine and a stranger man … a man who knew enough semantics and psychology to speak a talkative, self-centered oldster off his mental feet. Fast enough on the uptake to keep this inspection-tripping farmer from asking him the very questions the man was bubbling to ask.