Clifford Simak - Out of Their Minds

I started down the hill when a voice spoke my name.

"Horton Smith."

I swung toward the sound and for a moment I failed to see the one who had spoken, and then I did, perched upon the broken wheel of the shell-smashed cannon. I could see just the outline of him, the thatched and pointed head, the juglike ears, and, for once, he was not bouncing in consuming rage; he was simply roosting there.

"So it's you again," I said.

"You had the Devil's help," said the Referee. "You did not do it fair. The encounter with Quixote should not count at all and you must have needed the Devil's help to-live through the cannonade."

"All right. So I had the Devil's help. What do you do about it?"

"You admit it?" he asked, eagerly. "You admit that you had help?"

"Not at all," I said. "You said it and I don't really know. The Devil said nothing to me about giving any help."

He slumped, dejected. "Ah, then there is nothing one can do. Three times is a charm. It is the law and I cannot question it, although," he said, sharply, "I would like to very much. I do not like you, Mr. Smith. I like you not at all."

"It's a feeling," I told him, "that I reciprocate."

"Six times!" he mourned. "It is immoral! It is impossible! There has never been anyone before who even did it three times."

I walked close to the cannon where he perched and took a good hard look at him. "If you can find any comfort in it," I finally told him, "I made no deal with the Devil. I asked him to speak a kind word for me, but he indicated that he couldn't do it. He said a rule was a rule and there was nothing he could do."

"Comfort!" he shrilled, puffing up in rage. "Why should you wish to give me comfort? It's another trick, I tell you. Another dirty human trick!"

I turned abruptly on my heel. "Go chase yourself,"-1 told him. What was the use of trying to be civil with a jerk like that?

"Mr. Smith," he called after me. "Mr. Smith. Please, Mr. Smith."

I paid him no attention and went on, tramping down the hill.

To my left I saw the faint outlines of a white farmhouse, enclosed by a picket fence which was white as well. Some of the fence, I saw, had been torn down. Light shone through the windows and tied horses stamped in the yard outside the house. That would be General Meade's headquarters and the general might be there. If I wanted to walk over, I might get a glimpse of him. But I didn't walk over. I kept on down the hill. For the thing that was Meade would not be really Meade, no more than the house was really a house or the broken cannon a cannon. It was all cruel make-believe, but in a very solid form—a form so solid that for a moment, back there on the hilltop, I'd caught the sense of a substantial and historic battlefield.

Now there were hidden voices all about me and occasionally the sound of footsteps and at times I caught the sight of dim human figures hurrying across the hill, on official business, perhaps, but more than likely on business of their own.

The ground beneath my feet plunged sharply and I saw that it led down into a gulch, with a thicket of small trees at the upper end of it. Beneath the trees was the flare of a campfire light. I tried to veer away, for I had no wish to meet anyone, but I had gone too far to avoid detection. Small stones loosened by my feet went rolling and bouncing down into the gulch and a voice cried out sharply at me.

I stopped and stood stock-still.

"Who's there?" the voice cried again.

"Friend," I said, and it was a silly thing to say, but all that I could think of.

The firelight glinted on a lifted musket barrel.

"There ain't no need, Jed, to be so upset," said a drawling voice. "There ain't no Rebs around and even if there were, they'd be inclined to be plumb peaceful."

"I just wanted to make sure, is all," said Jed. "After today, I ain't taking any chances."

"Take it easy," I said, walking toward the fire. "I'm not any Reb."

I stopped when I was in sight of them and let them look me over. There were three of them, two sitting by the fire, the other on his feet with the musket lifted.

"You ain't one of us, neither," said the standing one, who apparently was Jed. "Just who are you, mister?"

"My name is Horton Smith," I said. "A newspaperman."

"Well, what do you know," said the one who drawled. "Come on in and sit by the fire with us for a spell if you have got the time."

"I have some time," I said.

"We can tell you all about it," said the one who had not spoken before. "We was right up there in the thick of it. Right by the clump of trees."

"Wait a minute," said the drawly one. "We don't need to tell him. I seen this gentleman before. He was up there with us for a while. Maybe all the time. I seen him, then things got hot and I lost track of everything."

I walked toward the blaze. Jed leaned his musket against a small plum tree and resumed his seat beside the fire.

"We was frying up some sow belly," he said, motioning toward the pan set on a bed of coals raked out from the fire. "If you are hungry, we got plenty of it."

"But you got to be hungry," said one of the others, "or you can't nohow stomach it."

"I thing I'm hungry enough," I said. I came into the circle of the firelight and squatted down. Beside the pan of frying pork sat a steaming coffee pot. I sniffed at its aroma. "It seems that I missed lunch," I said, "and breakfast, too."

"Then maybe you can manage it," said Jed. "We got a couple of extra hardtack and I'll make you up a sandwich."

"Be sure," said the drawling one, "to knock them against something to dislodge the crawlers. Someone that ain't use to it might not like fresh meat."

"Say, mister," said the third one, "looks to me as if you picked up a crease."

I put my hand to my head and the fingers came away sticky.

"Knocked out for a while," I said. "Just came to a while ago. Shell fragment, I suppose."

"Mike," Jed said to the drawly one, "why don't you and Asa wash him up a bit and see how bad it is. I'll pour him a cup of coffee. Probably he could use it."

"It's all right," I said. "It is just a scratch."

"Better have a look," said Mike, "then, when you leave, head down to Taneytown Road. Just south on the road a piece you'll find a sawbones. He can slop some junk on it, keep it from mortifying."

Jed handed me a cup of coffee and it was strong and hot. I took a sip of it and burned my tongue. Mike worked on my head, as tenderly as if he'd been a woman, daubing away with a handkerchief soaked in water from his canteen.

"It's just a crease," he said. "Took off some hide, is all. But if I was you, I'd see me a sawbones."

"All right, I will," I said.

And the funny thing about it, I realized, was that these three men around their fire really believed that they were Union soldiers. There was no playacting here. They were what they were supposed to be. Perhaps they could be anything at all, or the force (if it was a force) that could be shaped into form and matter, could be anything at all. But once that form had been taken, they were, to all intents and purposes, the thing that had been formed. In a little time, perhaps, their solid shapes would be transformed back to its elemental form, available then for another form and being, but until that came about they were Union soldiers who had just fought a battle on this shell-scarred hillside.

"It's all that I can do," said Mike, going back and sitting down. "I haven't even got a clean rag I can wrap around your head. But you find the doc and he'll fix you up."

"Here's a sandwich," said Jed, handing it to me. "I tried to knock the skippers out. I think I got the most of them."

It was an unappetizing-looking mess and the hardtack was as hard as I had read it was, but I was hungry and it was food and I put it down. Jed fixed sandwiches for the others and we all sat munching, not talking because it took a man's full concentration to eat that kind of food. The coffee had cooled enough so that I could drink it and it helped to wash the hardtack down.