Simak, Clifford D - All Flesh is grass

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Clifford D.Simak. All flesh is grass

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First published: 1965

Date of e-text: June 26, 1999

Prepared by: Anada Sucka

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All flesh is grass

Clifford D. Simak

When I swung out of the village street onto the main highway, there was

a truck behind me. It was one of those big semi jobs and it was really

rolling. The speed limit was forty-five on that stretch of road, running

through one corner of the village, but at that time in the morning it wasn't

reasonable to expect that anyone would pay attention to a posted speed.

I wasn't too concerned with the truck. I'd be stopping a mile or so up

the road at Johnny's Motor Court to pick up Alf Peterson, who would be

waiting for me, with his fishing tackle ready. And I had other things to

think of, too - principally the phone and wondering who I had talked with on

the phone. There had been three voices and it all was very strange, but I

had the feeling that it may have been one voice, changed most wonderfully to

make three voices, and that I would know that basic voice if I could only

pin it down. And there had been Gerald Sherwood, sitting in his study, with

two walls lined by books, telling me about the blueprints that had formed,

unbidden, in his brain. There had been Stiffy Grant, pleading that I not let

them use the bomb. And there had been, as well, the fifteen hundred dollars.

Just up the road was the Sherwood residence, set atop its hill, with

the house almost blotted out, in the early dawn, by the bulking blackness of

the great oak trees that grew all around the house. Staring at the hill, I

forgot about the phone and Gerald Sherwood in his book-lined study with his

head crammed full of blueprints, and thought instead of Nancy and how I'd

met her once again, after all those years since high school. And I recalled

those days when we had walked hand in hand, with a pride and happiness that

could not come again, that can come but once when the world is young and the

first, fierce love of youth is fresh and wonderful.

The road ahead was clear and wide; the four lanes continued for another

twenty miles or so before they dwindled down to two. There was no one on the

road except myself and the truck, which was coming up behind me and coming

fairly fast.

Watching the headlights in my rear vision mirror, I knew that in just a

little while it would be swinging out to pass me.

I wasn't driving fast and there was a lot of room for the truck to pass

me, and there was not a thing to hit and then I did hit something.

It was like running into a strong elastic band. There was no thump or

crash. The car began slowing down as if I had put on the brakes. There was

nothing I could see and for a moment I thought that something must have

happened to the car - that the motor had gone haywire or the brakes had

locked, or something of the sort. I took my foot off the accelerator and the

car came to a halt, then started to slide back, faster and faster, for all

the world as if I'd run into that rubber band and now it was snapping back.

I flipped the drive to neutral because I could smell the rubber as the tires

screeched on the road, and as soon as I flipped it over, the car snapped

back so fast that I was thrown against the wheel.

Behind me the horn of the truck blared wildly and tires howled on the

pavement as the driver swung his rig to miss me. The truck made a swishing

sound as it went rushing past and beneath the swishing, I could hear the

rubber of the tires sucking at the roadbed, and the whole thing rumbled as

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if it might be angry at me for causing it this trouble. And as it went

rushing past, my car came to a halt, over on the shoulder of the road.

Then the truck hit whatever I had hit. I could hear it when it struck.

It made a little plop. For a single instant, I thought the truck might break

through whatever the barrier might be, for it was heavy and had been going

fast and for a second or so there was no sign that it was slowing down. Then

it began to slow and I could see the wheels of that big job skidding and

humping, so that they seemed to be skipping on the pavement, still moving

forward doggedly, but still not getting through.

It moved ahead for a hundred feet or so beyond the point where I had

stopped. And there the rig came to a halt and began skidding back. It slid

smoothly for a moment, with the tires squealing on the pavement, then it

began to jackknife. The rear end buckled around and came sideways down the

road, heading straight for me.

I had been sitting calmly in the car, not dazed, not even too much

puzzled. It all had happened so fast that there had not been time to work up

much puzzlement. Something strange had happened, certainly, but I think I

had the feeling that in just a little while I'd get it figured out and it

would all come right again.

So I had stayed sitting in the car, absorbed in watching what would

happen to the truck. But when it came sliding back down the road,

jackknifing as it slid, I slapped the handle of the door and shoved it with

my shoulder and rolled out of the seat. I hit the pavement and scrambled to

my feet and ran.

Behind me the tires of the truck were screaming and then there was a

crash of metal, and when I heard the crash, I jumped out on the grassy

shoulder of the road and had a look behind me. The rear end of the truck had

slammed into my car and shoved it in the ditch and now was slowly, almost

majestically, toppling into the ditch itself, right atop my car

'Hey, there!' I shouted. It did no good, of course, and I knew it

wouldn't. The words were just jerked out of me.

The cab of the truck had remained upon the road, but it was canted with

one wheel off the ground. The driver was crawling from the cab.

It was a quiet and peaceful morning. Over in the west some heat

lightning was skipping about the dark horizon. There was that freshness in

the air that you never get except on a summer morning before the sun gets up

and the beat closes down on you. To my right, over in the village, the

street lights were still burning, hanging still and bright, unstirred by any

breeze. It was too nice a morning, I thought, for anything to happen.

There were no cars on the road. There were just the two of us, the

trucker and myself, and his truck in the ditch, squashing down my car. He

came down the road toward me.

He came up to me and stopped, peering at me, his arms hanging at his

side. 'What the hell is going on?' he asked. 'What did we run into?'

'I don't know,' I said.

'I'm sorry about your car,' he told me. 'I'll report it to the company.

They'll take care of it.'

He stood, not moving, acting as if he might never move again. 'Just

like running into nothing,' he declared. 'There's nothing there.'

Then slow anger flared in him.

'By God,' he said, 'I'm going to find out...'

He turned abruptly and went stalking up the highway, heading toward

whatever we had hit. I followed along behind him.

He was grunting like an angry hog.

He went straight up the middle of the road and he hit the barrier, but

by this time he was roaring mad and he wasn't going to let it stop him, so

he kept ploughing into it and he got a good deal farther than I had expected

that he would. But finally it stopped him and he stood there for a moment,

with his body braced ridiculously against a nothingness, leaning into it,

and with his legs driving like well-oiled pistons in an attempt to drive

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himself ahead. In the stillness of the morning I could hear his shoes

chuffing on the pavement.

Then the barrier let him have it. It snapped him back. It was as if a

sudden wind had struck him and was blowing him down the road, tumbling as he

rolled. He finally ended up jammed half underneath the front end of the cab.

I ran over and grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him out and stood

him on his feet. He was bleeding a little from where he'd rubbed along the

pavement and his clothes were torn and dirty. But he wasn't angry any more;

he was just plain scared. He was looking down the road as if he'd seen a

ghost and he still was shaking.

'But there's nothing there,' he said.

'There'll be other cars,' I said, 'and you are across the road. Hadn't

we ought to put out some flares or flags or something?'

That seemed to snap him out of it.

'Flags,' he said.

He climbed into the cab and got out some flags.

I walked down the road with him while he set them out.

He put the last one down and squatted down beside it. He took out a

handkerchief and began dabbing at his face.

'Where can I get a phone?' he asked. 'We'll have to get some help.'

'Someone has to figure out a way to clear the barrier off the road,' I

said. 'In a little while there'll be a lot of traffic. It'll be piled up for

miles.'

He dabbed at his face some more. There was a lot of dust and grease.

And a little blood.

'A phone?' he asked.

'Oh, any place,' I told him. 'Just go up to any house. They'll let you

use a phone.'

And here we were, I thought, talking about this thing as if it were an

ordinary road block, as if it were a fallen tree or a washed-out culvert.

'Say, what's the name of this place, anyhow? I got to tell them where I

am calling from.'

'Millville,' I told him.

'You live here?'

I nodded.

He got up and tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket.

'Well,' he said, 'I'll go and find that phone.'

He wanted me to offer to go with him, but I had something else to do. I

had to walk around the road block and get up to Johnny's Motor Court and

explain to Alf what had happened to delay me.

I stood in the road and watched him plod along. Then I turned around

and went up the road in the opposite direction, walking toward that

something which would stop a car. I reached it and it stopped me, not

abruptly, nor roughly, but gently, as if it didn't intend to let me through

under any circumstances, but was being polite and reasonable about it.

I put out my hand and I couldn't feel a thing. I tried rubbing my hand

back and forth, as you would to feel a surface, but there was no surface,

there was not a thing to rub; there was absolutely nothing, just that gentle

pressure pushing you away from whatever might be there.

I looked up and down the road and there was still no traffic, but in a

little while, I knew, there would be. Perhaps, I told myself, I should set

out some flags in the east-bound traffic lane to convey at least some

warning that there was something wrong. It would take no more than a minute

or two to set up the flags when I went around the end of the barrier to get

to Johnny's Motor Court.

I went back to the cab and found two flags and climbed down the

shoulder of the road and clambered up the hillside, making a big sweep to

get around the barrier - and even as I made the sweep I ran into the barrier

again. I backed away from it and started to walk alongside it, climbing up

the hill. It was hard to do. If the barrier had been a solid thing, I would

have had no trouble, but since it was invisible, I kept bumping into it.

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That was the way I traced it, bumping into it, then sheering off, then

bumping into it again.

I thought that the barrier would end almost any time, or that it might

get thinner. A couple of times I tried pushing through it, but it still was

as stiff and strong as ever. There was an awful thought growing in my mind.

And the higher up the hill I climbed, the more persistent grew the thought.

It was about this time that I dropped the flags.

Below me I heard the sound of skidding tires and swung around to look.

A car on the east-bound lane had slammed into the barrier, and in sliding

back, had skidded broadside across both lanes. Another car had been

travelling behind the first and was trying to slow down. But either its

brakes were bad or its speed had been too high, for it couldn't stop. As I

watched, its driver swung it out, with the wheels upon the shoulder,

skinning past the broadside car. Then he slapped into the barrier, but his

speed had been reduced, and he didn't go far in. Slowly the barrier pushed

back the car and it slid into the other car and finally came to rest.

The driver had gotten out of the first car and was walking around his

car to reach the second car. I saw his head tilt up and it was clear he saw

me. He waved his arms at me and shouted, but I was too far away to make out

what he said.

The truck and my car, lying crushed beneath it, still were alone on the

west-bound lanes. It was curious, I told myself, that no one else had come

along.

There was a house atop the hill and for some reason I didn't recognize

it. It had to be a house of someone that I knew, for I'd lived all my life

in Millville except for a year at college and I knew everyone. I don't know

how to explain it, but for a moment I was all mixed up. Nothing looked

familiar and I stood confused, trying to get my bearings and figure where I

was.

The east was brightening and in another thirty minutes the sun would be

poking up. In the west a great angry cloud bank loomed, and at its base I

could see the rapier flickering of the lightning that was riding with the

storm.

I stood and stared down at the village and it all came clear to me

exactly where I was. The house up on the hill was Bill Donovan's. Bill was

the village garbage man.

I followed along the barrier, heading for the house and for a moment I

wondered just where the house might be in relation to the barrier. More than

likely, I told myself, it stood just inside of it.

I came to a fence and climbed it and crossed the littered yard to the

rickety back stairs. I climbed them gingerly to gain the stoop and looked

for a bell. There wasn't any bell. I lifted a fist and pounded on the door,

then waited. I heard someone stirring around inside, then the door came open

and Bill stared out at me. He was an unkempt bear of a man and his bushy

hair stood all on end and he looked at me from beneath a pair of belligerent

eyebrows. He had pulled his trousers over his pajama, but he hadn't taken

the time to zip up the fly and a swatch of purple pajama cloth stuck out.

His feet were bare and his toes curled up a bit against the cold of the

kitchen floor.

'What's the matter, Brad?' he asked.

'I don't know,' I told him. 'There is something happening down on the

road.'

'An accident?' he asked.

'No, not an accident. I tell you I don't know. There's something across

the road. You can't see it, but it's there. You run into it and it stops you

cold. It's like a wall, but you can't touch or feel it.'

'Come on in,' said Bill. 'You could do with a cup of coffee. I'll put

on the pot. It's time for breakfast anyhow. The wife is getting up.'

He reached behind him and snapped on the kitchen light, then stood to

one side so that I could enter.

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Bill walked over to the sink. He picked a glass off the counter top and

turned on the water, then stood waiting.

'Have to let it run a while until it gets cold,' he told me. He filled

the glass and held it out to me. 'Want a drink?' he asked.

'No, thanks,' I told him.

He put the glass to his mouth and drank in great slobbering gulps.

Somewhere in the house a woman screamed. If I live to be a hundred,

I'll not forget what that scream was like. Donovan dropped the glass on the

floor and it broke, spraying jagged glass and water.

'Liz!' he cried. 'Liz, what's wrong?'

He charged out of the room and I stood there, frozen, looking at the

blood on the floor, where Donovan's bare feet had been gashed by the broken

glass.

The woman screamed again, but this time the scream was muffled, as if

she might be screaming with her mouth pressed against a pillow or a wall.

I blundered out of the kitchen into the dining-room, stumbling on

something in my path - a toy, a stool, I don't know what it was and lunging

halfway across the room to try to catch my balance, afraid of falling and

hitting my head against a chair or table.

And I hit it again, that same resistant wall that I'd walked into down

on the road. I braced myself against it and pushed, getting upright on my

feet, standing in the dimness of the dining-room with the horror of that

wall rasping at my soul.

I could sense it right in front of me, although I no longer touched it.

And whereas before, out in the open, on the road, it had been no more than a

wonder too big to comprehend, here beneath this roof, inside this family

home, it became an alien blasphemy that set one's teeth on edge.

'My babies!' screamed the woman. 'I can't reach my babies!'

Now I began to get my bearings in the curtained room. I saw the table

and the buffet and the door that led into the bedroom hallway.

Donovan was coming through the doorway. He was half leading, half

carrying the woman.

'I tried to get to them,' she cried. 'There's something there -

something that stopped me. I can't get to my babies!'

He let her down on the floor and propped her against the wall and knelt

gently beside her. He looked up at me and there was a baffled, angry terror

in his eyes.

'It's the barrier,' I told him. 'The one down on the road. It runs

straight through the house.'

'I don't see no barrier,' he said.

'Damn it, man, you don't see it. It just is there, is all.'

'What can we do?' he asked.

'The children are OK,' I assured him, hoping I was right. 'They're just

on the other side of the barrier. We can't get to them and they can't get to

us, but everything's all right.'

'I just got up to look in on them,' the woman said. 'I just got up to

look at them and there was something in the hall...'

'How many?' I asked.

'Two,' said Donovan. 'One is six, the other eight.'

'Is there someone you can phone? Someone outside the village. They

could come and take them in and take care of them until we get this thing

figured out. There must be an end to this wall somewhere. I was looking for

it . . .'

'She's got a sister,' said Donovan, 'up the road a ways. Four or five

miles.'

'Maybe you should call her.'

And as I said it, another thought hit me straight between the eyes. The

phone might not be working. The barrier might have cut the phone lines.

'You be all right, Liz?' he asked.

She nodded dumbly, still sitting on the floor, not trying to get up.

'I'll go call Myrt,' he said.

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I followed him into the kitchen and stood beside him as he lifted the

receiver of the wall phone, holding my breath in a fierce hope that the

phone would work. And for once my hoping must have done some good, for when

the receiver came off the hook I could hear the faint buzz of an operating

line.

Out in the dining-room, Mrs Donovan was sobbing very quietly.

Donovan dialled, his big, blunt, grease-grimed fingers seemingly

awkward and unfamiliar at the task. He finally got it done.

He waited with the receiver at his ear. I could hear the signal ringing

in the quietness of the kitchen.

'That you, Myrt? said Donovan. 'Yeah, this is Bill. We run into a

little trouble. I wonder could you and Jake come over.... No, Myrt, just

something wrong. I can't explain it to you. Could you come over and pick up

the kids? You'll have to come the front way; you can't get in the back....

Yeah, Myrt, I know it sounds crazy. There's some sort of wall. Liz and me,

we're in the back part of the house and we can't get up to the front. The

kids are in the front.... No, Myrt, I don't know what it is. But you do like

I say. Them kids are up there all alone and we can't get to them.... Yes,

Myrt, right through the house. Tell Jake to bring along an axe. This thing

runs right straight through the house. The front door is locked and Jake

will have to chop it down. Or bust a window, if that's easier.... Sure,

sure, I know what I'm saying. You just go ahead and do it. Anything to get

them kids. I'm not crazy. Something's wrong, I tell you. Something's gone

way wrong. You do what I say, Myrt.... Don't mind about the door, just chop

the damn thing down. You just get the kids any way you can and keep them

safe for us.'

He hung up the receiver and turned from the phone. He used his forearm

to wipe the sweat off his face.

'Damn woman,' he said. 'She just stood there and argued. She's a

flighty bitch.'

He looked at me. 'Now, what do we do next?'

'Trace the barrier,' I said. 'See where it goes. See if we can get

around it. If we can find a way around it, we can get your kids.'

'I'll go with you.'

I gestured toward the dining-room. 'And leave her here alone?'

'No,' he said. 'No, I can't do that. You go ahead. Myrt and Jake,

they'll come and get the kids. Some of the neighbours will take Liz in. I'll

try to catch up with you. Thing like this, you might need some help.'

'Thanks,' I said.

Outside the house, the paleness of the dawn was beginning to flow

across the land. Everything was painted that ghostly brightness, not

quite-white, not quite any other colour either, that marks the beginning of

an August day.

On the road below, a couple of dozen cars were jammed up in front of

the barrier on the east-bound lane and there were groups of people standing

around. I could hear one loud voice that kept booming out in excited talk -

one of those aggressive loudmouths you find in any kind of crowd. Someone

had built a small campfire out on the boulevard between the lanes - God

knows why, the morning was surely warm enough and the day would be a

scorcher.

And now I remembered that I had meant to get hold of Alf and tell him

that I wasn't coming. I could have used the phone in the Donovan kitchen,

but I'd forgotten all about it. I stood undecided, debating whether to go

back in again and ask to use the phone. That had been the main reason, I

realized, that I'd stopped at Donovan's.

There was this pile of cars on the east-bound lane and only the truck

and my battered car on the west-bound lane and that must mean, I told

myself, that the west-bound lane was closed, as well, somewhere to the east.

And could that mean, I wondered, that the village was enclosed, was

encircled by the wall?

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I decided against going back to make the phone call, and moved on

around the house. I picked up the wall again and began to follow it. I was

getting the hang of it by now. It was like feeling this thing alongside me,

and following the feeling, keeping just a ways away from it, bumping into it

only now and then.

The wall roughly skirted the edge of the village, with a few outlying

houses on the other side of it. I followed along it and I crossed some paths

and a couple of bob-tailed, dead-end streets, and finally came to the

secondary road that ran in from Coon Valley, ten miles or so away.

The road slanted on a gentle grade in its approach into the village and

on the slant, just on the other side of the wall, stood an older model car,

somewhat the worse for wear. Its motor was still running and the door on the

driver's side was open, but there was no one in it and no one was around. It

looked as if the driver, once he'd struck the barrier, might have fled in

panic.

As I stood looking at the car, the brakes began to slip and the car

inched forward, slowly at first, then faster, and finally the brakes gave

out entirely and the car plunged down the hill, through the barrier wall,

and crashed into a tree. It slowly toppled over on its side and a thin

trickle of smoke began to seep from underneath the hood.

But I didn't pay much attention to the car, for there was something

more important. I broke into a run, heading up the road.

The car had passed the barrier and had gone down the road to crash and

that meant there was no bather. I had reached the end of it!

I ran up the road, exultant and relieved, for I'd been fighting down

the feeling, and having a hard time to fight it down entirely, that the

barrier might run all around the village. And in the midst of all my

exultation and relief, I hit the wall again.

I hit it fairly hard, for I was running hard, sure that it wasn't

there, but in a terrible hurry to make sure it wasn't there. I went into it

for three running strides before it tossed me back. I hit the roadbed flat

on my back and my head banged upon the pavement. There were a million stars.

I rolled over and got on my hands and knees and stayed there for a

moment, like a gutted hound, with my head hanging limp between my shoulders,

and I shook it now and then to shake the stars away.

I heard the crackle and the roar of flames and that jerked me to my

feet. I still was fairly wobbly, but wobbly or not, I got away from there.

The car was burning briskly and at any moment the flames would reach the gas

tank and the car would go sky high.

But the explosion, when it came, was not too spectacular -just an

angry, muffled whuff and a great gout of flame flaring up into the sky. But

it was loud enough to bring some people out to see what was going on. Doe

Fabian and lawyer Nichols were running up the road, and behind them came a

bunch of yelling kids and a pack of barking dogs.

I didn't wait for them although I had half a mind to, for I had a lot

to tell and here was an audience. But there was something else that stopped

me from turning back - I had to go on tracking down the barrier and try to

find its end, if it had an end.

My head had begun to clear and all the stars were gone and I could

think a little better.

There was one thing that stood out plain and clear: a car could go

through the barrier when there was no one in it, but when it was occupied,

the barrier stopped it dead. A man could not go through the barrier, but he

could pick up a phone and talk to anyone he wanted. And I remembered that I

had heard the voices of the men shouting in the road, had heard them very

clearly even when they were on the other side. I picked up some sticks and

stones and tossed them at the barrier. They went sailing through as if

nothing had been there.

There was only one thing that the barrier would stop and that single

thing was life. And why in the world should there be a barrier to shut out,

or shut in, life?

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The village was beginning to stir to life.

I watched Floyd Caldwell come out on his back porch, dressed in his

undershirt and a pair of pants with the suspenders hanging. Except for old

Doc Fabian, Floyd was the only man in Millville who ever wore suspenders.

But while old Doc wore sedate and narrow black ones, Floyd wore a pair that

was broad and red. Floyd was the barber and he took a lot of kidding about

his red suspenders, but Floyd didn't mind. He was the village smart guy and

he worked at it all the time and it probably was all right, for it brought

him a lot of trade from out in the farming country. People who might just as

well have gone to Coon Valley for their haircuts came, instead, to Millville

to listen to Floyd's jokes and to see him clown.

Floyd stood out on the back porch and stretched his arms and yawned.

Then he took a close look at the weather and he scratched his ribs. Down the

street a woman called the family dog and in a little while I heard the flat

snap of a screen door shutting and I knew the dog was in.

It was strange, I thought, that there'd been no alarm. Perhaps it was

because few people as yet knew about the barrier.

Perhaps the few who had found out about it were still a little numb.

Perhaps most of them couldn't quite believe it. Maybe they were afraid, as I

was, to make too much fuss about it until they knew something more about it.

But it couldn't last for long, this morning calm. Before too long,

Millville would be seething.

Now, as I followed it, the barrier cut through the back yard of one of

the older houses in the village. In its day it had been a place of elegance,

but years of poverty and neglect had left it tumbledown.

An old lady was coming down the steps from the shaky back porch,

balancing her frail body with a steadying cane.

Her hair was thin and white and even with no breeze to stir the air,

ragged ends of it floated like a fuzzy halo all around her head.

She started down the path to the little garden, but when she saw me she

stopped and peered at me, with her head tilted just a little in a bird-like

fashion. Her pale blue eyes glittered at me through the thickness of her

glasses.

'Brad Carter, isn't it?' she asked.

'Yes, Mrs Tyler,' I said. 'How are you this morning?'

'Oh, just tolerable,' she told me. 'I'm never more than that. I thought

that it was you, but my eyes have failed me and I never can be sure.'

'It's a nice morning, Mrs Tyler. This is good weather we are having.'

'Yes,' she said, 'it is. I was looking for Tupper. He seems to have

wandered off again. You haven't seen him, have you?'

I shook my head. It had been ten years since anyone had seen Tupper

Tyler.

'He is such a restless boy,' she said. 'Always wandering off I declare,

I don't know what to do with him.'

'Don't you worry,' I told her. 'He'll show up again.'

'Yes,' she said, 'I suppose he will. He always does, you know.' She

prodded with her cane at the bed of purple flowers that grew along the walk.

'They're very good this year,' she said. 'The best I've ever seen them. I

got them from your father twenty years ago. Mr Tyler and your father were

such good friends. You remember that, of course.'

'Yes,' I said. 'I remember very well.'

'And your mother? Tell me how she is. We used to see a good deal of one

another.'

'You forget, Mrs Tyler,' I told her, gently. 'Mother died almost two

years ago.'

'Oh, so she did,' she said. 'It's true, I am forgetful. Old age does it

to one. No one should grow old.'

'I must be getting on,' I said. 'It was good to see you.'

'It was kind of you to call,' she said. 'If you have the time, you

might step in and we could have some tea. It is so seldom now that anyone

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ever comes for tea. I suppose it's because the times have changed. No one,

any more, has the time for tea.'

'I'm sorry that I can't,' I said. 'I just stopped by for a moment.'

'Well,' she said, 'it was very nice of you. If you happen to see Tupper

would you mind, I wonder, to tell him to come home.'

'Of course I will,' I promised.

I was glad to get away from her. She was nice enough, of course, but

just a little mad. In all the years since Tupper's disappearance, she had

gone on looking for him, and always as if he'd just stepped out the door,

always very calm and confident in the thought that he'd be coming home in

just a little while. Quite reasonable about it and very, very sweet, no more

than mildly worried about the idiot son who had vanished without trace.

Tupper, I recalled, had been something of a pest. He'd been a pest with

everyone, of course, but especially with me. He loved flowers and he'd hung

around the greenhouse that my father had, and my father, who was

constitutionally unable to be unkind to anyone, had put up with him and his

continual jabber. Tupper had attached himself to me and no matter what I did

or said, he'd tag along behind me. The fact that he was a good ten years

older than I was made no difference at all; in his own mind Tupper never had

outgrown childhood. In the back of my mind I still could hear his jaunty

voice, mindlessly happy over anything at all, cooing over flowers or asking

endless, senseless questions. I had hated him, of course, but there was

really nothing one could pin a good hate on.

Tupper was just something that one had to tolerate. But I knew that I

never would forget that jaunty, happy voice, or his drooling as he talked,

or the habit that he had of counting on his fingers - God knows why he did

it as if he were in continual fear that he might have lost one of them in

the last few minutes.

The sun had come up by now and the world was flooded with a brilliant

light, and I was becoming more certain by the minute that the village was

encircled and cut off, that someone or something, for no apparent reason,

had dropped a cage around us. Looking back along the way that I had come, I

could see that I'd been travelling on the inside of a curve.

Looking ahead, the curve wasn't difficult to plot.

And why should it be us, I wondered. Why a little town like ours? A

town that was no different from ten thousand other towns.

Although, I told myself; that might not be entirely true. It was

exactly what I would have said and perhaps everybody else. Everyone, that

is, except for Nancy Sherwood - Nancy, who only the night before had told me

her strange theory that this town of ours was something very special. And

could she be right, I wondered? Was our little town of Millville somehow set

apart from all other little towns?

Just ahead was my home street and my calculations told me that it was

located just inside the encircling barricade.

There was, I told myself, no sense in going farther. It would be a

waste of time. I did not need to complete the circle to convince myself that

we were hemmed in.

I cut across the backyard of the Presbyterian parsonage and there, just

across the street, was my house, set within its wilderness of flowers and

shrubs, with the abandoned greenhouse standing in the back and the old

garden around it, a field of purple flowers, those same purple flowers that

Mrs Tyler had poked at with her cane and said were doing well this season.

I heard the steady squeaking as I reached the street and I knew that

some kids had sneaked into the yard and were playing in the old lawn swing

that stood beside the porch.

I hurried up the street, a little wrathful at the squeaking. I had told

those kids, time and time again, to leave that swing alone. It was old and

rickety and one of these days one of the uprights or something else would

break, and one of the kids might be badly hurt. I could have taken it down,

of course, but I was reluctant to, for it was Mother's swing. She had spent

many hours out in the yard, swinging gently and sedately, looking at the

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flowers.

The yard was closed in by the old-time lilac hedge and I couldn't see

the swing until I reached the gate.

I hurried for the gate and jerked it open savagely and took two quick

steps through it, then stopped in my tracks.

There were no kids in the swing. There was a man, and except for a

battered hat of straw set squarely atop his head, he was as naked as a

jaybird.

He saw me and grinned a foolish grin. 'Hi, there,' he said, with jaunty

happiness. And even as he said it, he began a counting of his fingers,

drooling as he counted.

And at the sight of him, at the sound of that remembered but long

forgotten voice, my mind went thudding back to the afternoon before.

Ed Adler had come that afternoon to take out the phone and he had been

embarrassed. 'I'm sorry, Brad,' he said. 'I don't want to do this, but I

guess I have to. I have an order from Tom Preston.'

Ed was a friend of mine. We had been good pals in high school and good

friends ever since. Tom Preston had been in school with us, of course, but

he'd been no friend of mine or of anybody else's. He'd been a snotty kid and

he had grown up into a snotty man.

That was the way it went, I thought. The heels always were the ones who

seemed to get ahead. Tom Preston was the manager of the telephone office and

Ed Adler worked for him as a phone installer and a troubleshooter, and I was

a realtor and insurance agent who was going out of business. Not because I

wanted to, but because I had to, because I was delinquent in my office phone

bill and way behind in rent.

Tom Preston was successful and I was a business failure and Ed Adler

was earning a living for his family, but not getting anywhere. And the rest

of them, I wondered. The rest of the high school gang - how were they

getting on? And I couldn't answer, for I didn't know. They all had drifted

off. There wasn't much in a little town like Millville to keep a man around.

I probably wouldn't have stayed myself if it hadn't been for Mother. I'd

come home from school after Dad had died and had helped out with the

greenhouse until Mother bad joined Dad. And by that time I had been so long

in Millville that it was hard to leave.

'Ed,' I had asked, 'do you ever hear from any of the fellows?

'No, I don't,' said Ed. 'I don't know where any of them are.'

I said: 'There was Skinny Austin and Charley Thompson, and Marty Hall

and Alf. I can't remember Alf's last name.'

'Peterson,' said Ed.

'Yes, that's it,' I said. 'It's a funny thing I should forget his name.

Old Alf and me had a lot of fun together.'

Ed got the cord unfastened and stood up, with the phone dangling from

his hand.

'What are you going to do now?' he asked me.

'Lock the door, I guess,' I said. 'It's not just the phone. It's

everything. I'm behind in rent as well. Dan Willoughby, down at the bank, is

very sad about it.'

'You could run the business from the house.'

'Ed,' I told him shortly, 'there isn't any business. I just never had a

business. I couldn't make a start. I lost money from the first.'

I got up and put on my hat and walked out of the place. The street was

almost empty. There were a few cars at the kerb and a dog was smelling of a

lamp post and old Stiffy Grant was propped up in front of the Happy Hollow

tavern, hoping that someone might come along and offer him a drink.

I was feeling pretty low. Small thing as it had been, the phone had

spelled the end. It was the thing that finally signified for me what a

failure I had been. You can go along for months and kid yourself that

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file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/All%20Flesh%20Is%20Grass.txtCliffordD.Simak.Allfleshisgrass------------------------------------------------------------------------Firstpublished:1965Dateofe-text:June26,1999Preparedby:AnadaSucka----------------------------------------------------------------------...

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Simak, Clifford D - All Flesh is grass

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