Clifford D. Simak - Autumn Land

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Title : The Autumn Land

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1971

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.

'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.

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