Simak, Clifford D - The Autumn Land

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Title : The Autumn Land

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1971

Genre : science fiction

Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book

Source : scanned and OCR-read from a hardback edition with Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0,

proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text : February 17, 2000

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

======================================================================

The Autumn Land

Clifford D. Simak

He sat on the porch in the rocking chair, with the loose board creaking as he rocked. Across

the street the old white-haired lady cut a bouquet of chrysanthemums in the never-ending autumn.

Where he could see between the ancient houses to the distant woods and wastelands, a soft Indian-

summer blue lay upon the land. The entire village was soft and quiet, as old things often are - a

place constructed for a dreaming mind rather than a living being. It was an hour too early for his

other old and shaky neighbor to come fumbling down the grass-grown sidewalk, tapping the bricks

with his seeking cane. And he would not hear the distant children at their play until dusk had

fallen - if he heard them then. He did not always hear them.

There were books to read, but he did not want to read them. He could go into the backyard and

spade and rake the garden once again, reducing the soil to a finer texture to receive the seed

when it could be planted - if it ever could be planted - but there was slight incentive in the

further preparation of a seed bed against a spring that never came. Earlier, much earlier, before

he knew about the autumn and the spring, he had mentioned garden seeds to the Milkman, who had

been very much embarrassed.

He had walked the magic miles and left the world behind in bitterness and when he first had

come here had been content to live in utter idleness, to be supremely idle and to feel no guilt or

shame at doing absolutely nothing or as close to absolutely nothing as a man was able. He had come

walking down the autumn street in the quietness and the golden sunshine, and the first person that

he saw was the old lady who lived across the street. She had been waiting at the gate of her

picket fence as if she had known he would be coming, and she had said to him, 'You're a new one

come to live with us. There are not many come these days. That is your house across the street

from me, and I know we'll be good neighbors.' He had reached up his hand to doff his hat to her,

forgetting that he had no hat. 'My name is Nelson Rand,' he'd told her. 'I am an engineer. I will

try to be a decent neighbor.' He had the impression that she stood taller and straighter than she

did, but old and bent as she might be there was a comforting graciousness about her. 'You will

please come in,' she said. 'I have lemonade and cookies. There are other people there, but I shall

not introduce them to you.' He waited for her to explain why she would not introduce him, but

there was no explanation, and he followed her down the time-mellowed walk of bricks with great

beds of asters and chrysanthemums, a mass of color on either side of it.

In the large, high-ceilinged living room, with its bay windows forming window seats, filled

with massive furniture from another time and with a small blaze burning in the fireplace, she had

shown him to a seat before a small table to one side of the fire and had sat down opposite him and

poured the lemonade and passed the plate of cookies.

'You must pay no attention to them,' she had told him. 'They are all dying to meet you, but I

shall not humor them.'

It was easy to pay no attention to them, for there was no one there.

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'The Major, standing over there by the fireplace,' said his hostess, 'with his elbow on the

mantel, a most ungainly pose if you should ask me, is not happy with my lemonade. He would prefer

a stronger drink. Please, Mr. Rand, will you not taste my lemonade? I assure you it is good. I

made it myself. I have no maid, you see, and no one in the kitchen. I live quite by myself and

satisfactorily, although my friends keep dropping in, sometimes more often than I like.'

He tasted the lemonade, not without misgivings, and to his surprise it was lemonade and was

really good, like the lemonade he had drunk when a boy at Fourth of July celebrations and at grade

school picnics, and had never tasted since.

'It is excellent,' he said.

'The lady in blue,' his hostess said, 'sitting in the chair by the window, lived here many

years ago. She and I were friends, although she moved away some time ago and I am surprised that

she comes back, which she often does. The infuriating thing is that I cannot remember her name, if

I ever knew it. You don't know it, do you?'

'I am afraid I don't.'

'Oh, of course, you wouldn't. I had forgotten. I forget so easily these days. You are a new

arrival.'

He had sat through the afternoon and drank her lemonade and eaten her cookies, while she

chattered on about her nonexistent guests. It was only when he had crossed the street to the house

she had pointed out as his, with her standing on the stoop and waving her farewell, that he

realized she had not told him her name. He did not know it even now.

How long had it been? He wondered, and realized he didn't know. It was this autumn business.

How could a man keep track of time when it was always autumn?

It all had started on that day when he'd been driving across Iowa, heading for Chicago. No, he

reminded himself, it had started with the thinnesses, although he had paid little attention to the

thinnesses to begin with. Just been aware of them, perhaps as a strange condition of the mind, or

perhaps an unusual quality to the atmosphere and light. As if the world lacked a certain solidity

that one had come to expect, as if one were running along a mystic borderline between here and

somewhere else.

He had lost his West Coast job when a government contract had failed to materialize. His

company had not been the only one; there were many other companies that were losing contracts and

there were a lot of engineers who walked the streets bewildered. There was a bare possibility of a

job in Chicago, although he was well aware that by now it might be filled. Even if there were no

job, he reminded himself, he was in better shape than a lot of other men. He was young and single,

he had a few dollars in the bank, he had no house mortgage, no car payments, no kids to put

through school. He had only himself to support - no family of any sort at all. The old, hard-

fisted bachelor uncle who had taken him to raise when his parents had died in a car crash and had

worked him hard on that stony hilly Wisconsin farm, had receded deep into the past becoming a dim,

far figure that was hard to recognize. He had not liked his uncle, Rand remembered - had not hated

him, simply had not liked him. He had shed no tears, he recalled, when the old man had been caught

out in a pasture by a bull and gored to death. So now Rand was quite alone, not even holding the

memories of a family.

He had been hoarding the little money that he had, for with a limited work record, with other

men better qualified looking for the jobs, he realized that it might be some time before he could

connect with anything. The beat-up wagon that he drove had space for sleeping, and he stopped at

the little wayside parks along the way to cook his meals.

He had almost crossed the state, and the road had started its long winding through the bluffs

that rimmed the Mississippi. Ahead he caught a glimpse, at several turnings of the road, of

smokestacks and tall structures that marked the city just ahead.

He emerged from the bluffs, and the city before him, a small industrial center that lay on

either side the river. It was then that he felt and saw (if one could call it seeing) the thinness

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Simak, Clifford D - The Autumn Land

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