Clifford D. Simak - Aliens for Neighbors 08 - Neighbor

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Neighbour

Clifford D Simak

Coon Valley is a pleasant place, but there's no denying it's sort of off the beaten track and it's not a

place where you can count on getting rich because the farms are small and a lot of the ground is rough.

You can farm the bottom lands, but the hill- sides are only good for pasture and the roads are just dirt

roads, impassable at certain times of year.

The old-timers, like Bert Smith and Jingo Harris and myself, are well satisfied to stay here, for we

grew up with the country and we haven't any illusions about getting rich and we'd feel strange and

out-of-place anywhere but in the valley. But there are others, newcomers, who move in and get

discouraged after a while and up and move away, so there usually is a farm or two, standing idle, waiting

to be sold.

We are just plain dirt farmers, with emphasis on the dirt, for we can't afford a lot of fancy machinery

and we don't go in for blooded stock--but there's nothing wrong with us; we're just everyday, the kind of

people you meet all over these United

States. Because we're out of the way and some of the families have lived here for so long, I suppose

you could say that we have gotten clannish. But that doesn't mean we don't like outside folks; it just

means we've lived so long together that we've got to know and like one another and are satisfied with

things just as they are.

We have radios, of course, and we listen to the programmes and the news, and some of us take daily

papers, but I'm afraid that we may be a bit provincial, for it's fairly hard to get us stirred up much about

world happenings. There's so much o interest right here in the valley we haven't got the time to worr.

about all those outside things. I imagine you'd call us conser~ ative, for most of us vote Republican

without even wonderin why and there's none of us who has much time for all thi government interference

in the farming business.

The valley has always been a pleasant place--not only th land, but the people in it, and we've always

been fortunate i the new neighbours that we' get. Despite new ones coming i every year or so, we've

never had a really bad one and th~ means a lot to us.

But we always worry a little when one of the new ones up an, moves away and we speculate among

ourselves, wonderin what kind of people will buy or rent the vacant farm.

The old Lewis farm had been abandoned for a long time, th buildings all run down and gone to ruin

and the fields gor back to grass. A dentist over at Hopkins Corners had rented for several years and run

some cattle in it, driving out on weel ends to see how they were doing. We used to wonder every no' and

then if anyone would ever farm the place again, but final] we quit wondering, for the buildings had fallen

into such di: repair that we figured no one ever would. I went in one day an talked to the banker at

Hopkins Corners, who had the rentin of the place, and told him I'd like to take it over if the denti~ ever

gave it up. But he told me the owners, who lived i

Chicago then, were anxious to sell rather than to rent i although he didn't seem too optimistic that

anyonewould buy i

Then one spring a new family moved onto the farm and :' time we learned it had been sold and that the

new family's nan was Heath--Reginald Heath. And Bert Smith said to m

"Reginald! That's a hell of a name for a farmer !" But that w; all he said.

Jingo Harris stopped by one day, coming home from tow: when he saw Heath out in the yard, to pass

the time of day. was a neighbourly thing to do, of course, and Heath seem glad to have him stop,

although Jingo said he seemed to be a

funny kind of man to be a farmer.

"He's a foreigner," Jingo told me. "Sort of dark. Like he might be a Spaniard or from one of those

other countries. I don't know how he got that Reginald. Reginald is English and Heath's no Englishman."

Later on we heard that the Heaths weren't really Spanish, but were Rumanians or Bulgarians and that

they were refugees from the Iron Curtain.

But Spanish, or Rumanian, or Bulgarian, the Heaths were workers. There was Heath and his wife and

a half-grown girl and all three of them worked all the blessed time. They paid attention to their business

and didn't bother anyone and because of this we liked them, although we didn't have much to do with

them. Not that we didn't want to or that they didn't want us to; it's just that in a community like ours new

folks sort of have to grow in instead of being taken in.

Heath had an old beaten-up, wired-together tractor that made a lot of noise, and as soon as the soil

was dry enough to plough he started out to turn over the fields that through the years had grown up to

grass. I used to wonder if he worked all night long, for many times when I went to bed I heard the tractor

running. Although that may not be as late as it sounds to city dwellers, for here in the valley we go to bed

early--and get up early, too.

One night after dark I set out to hunt some cows, a couple of fence-jumping heifers that gave me lots

of trouble. Just let a man come in late from work and tired and maybe it's raining a little and dark as the

inside of a cat and those two heifers would turn up missing and I'd have to go and hunt them. I tried all

the different kinds of pokes and none of them did any good. When a heifer gets to fence-jumping there

isn't much that can be done with her.

So I lit a lantern and set out to hunt for them, but I hunted for two hours and didn't find a trace of

them. I had just about decided to give up and go back home when I heard the soun~ a tractor running

and realized that I was just above the field of the old Lewis place. To get home I'd have to go ri past the

field and I figured it might be as well to wait whe reached the field until the tractor came around and ask

He if he had seen the heifers.

It was a dark night, with thin clouds hiding the stars an~ wind blowing high in the treetops and there

was a smell of n in the air. Heath, I figured, probably was staying out extra 1~ to finish up the field ahead

of the coming rain, althougt remember that I thought he was pushing things just a lit hard. Already he was

far ahead of all the others in the vall with his ploughing.

So I made my way down the steep hillside and waded 1 creek at a shallow place I knew and while I

was doing thi heard the tractor make a complete round of the field. I look for the headlight, but I didn't

see it and I thought probably 1 trees had hidden it from me.

I reached the edge of the field and climbed through the fen walking out across the furrows to intercept

the tractor. I he~ it make the turn to the east of me and start down the fi~ toward me and although I

could hear the noise of it, the wasn't any light.

I found the last furrow and stood there waiting, sort wondering, not too alarmed as yet, how Heath

managed drive the rig without any light. I thought that maybe he had c eyes and could see in the dark and

although it seemed fun] later when I remembered it, the idea that a man might have › eyes did not seem

funny then.

The noise kept getting louder and it seemed to be comi: pretty close, when all at once the tractor

rushed out of the da and seemed to leap at me. I guess I must have been afraid th it would run over me,

for I jumped back a yard or two, with r heart up in my neck. But I needn't have bothered, for I was o of

the way to start with.

The tractor went on past me and I waved the lantern and yelled for Heath to stop and as I waved the

lantern the light was thrown onto the rear of the tractor and I saw that there was no one on it.

A hundred things went through my mind, but the one idea that stuck was that Heath had fallen off the

tractor and might be lying injured, somewhere in the field.

I ran after the tractor, thinking to shut it down before it got loose and ran into a tree or something, but

by the time I reached it, it had reached a turn and it was making that turn as neatly as if it had been broad

daylight and someone had been driving it.

I jumped up on the drawbar and grabbed the seat, hauling myself, up. I reached out a hand, grabbing

for the throttle, but with my hand upon the metal I didn't pull it back. The tractor had completed the turn

now and was going down the furrowm and there was something else.

Take an old tractor, now--one that wheezed and coughed and hammered and kept threatening to fall

apart, like this one did--and you are bound to get a lot of engine vibration. But in this tractor there was

no vibration. It ran along as smooth as a high-priced car and the only jolts you got were when the wheels

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Clifford D. Simak - Aliens for Neighbors 08 - Neighbor

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