Clifford Simak: Out of Their Minds

"You'd be wrong," I told him. "I have eaten them, many years ago." To tell the truth, I was hungry and hog jowls sounded fine.

"Go ahead," he said, "and finish up the glass. It will curl your toes."

I finished up the drink and he reached up on the shelf and took down a cup and plate and got a knife and fork and spoon out of a drawer in the table and set a place for me. The woman brought the food and put it on the table.

"Now, mister," she said, "you just draw up a chair to the place that's set for you. And, Paw, you take that pipe out of your mouth." She said to me, "It's bad enough he wears that hat all the time—he even sleeps in it—but I will not stand him sitting at the table and trying to fork his victuals in around that pipe."

She settled down into her chair. "You just pitch in and help yourself," she told me. "It ain't no fancy eating, but it's clean and there is plenty of it and I hope you like it."

It was very tasty and satisfactorily filling and there did seem plenty of it; almost as if, I thought, they had expected, all along, that an extra person would drop in for supper.

Halfway through the meal the rain started coming down, solid sheets of rain that hammered at the shaky house, making such an uproar that we had to raise our voices to be heard above it.

"There ain't nothing," said the man, once he had begun to slow his shoveling in of food, "that is better than hog jowls, barring mayhaps a possum. Now, you take a possum and you fixed him up with sweet pertaters and there ain't a thing that goes down as smooth. Used to have a lot of possum, but we ain't had one of them for a coon's age now. To collect a possum a man must have a dog and after old Preacher up and died, I didn't have the heart to get another dog. I purely loved that pup and I couldn't bring myself to get another dog to take his place."

The woman wiped a tear away. "He was the finest dog we ever had," she said. "Just like family. He slept underneath the stove and it got so hot at times that his fur would sort of sizzle, but he never seemed to mind. I guess he liked it hot. Maybe you think Preacher is a funny name to call a dog, but he looked just like a preacher. Acted like one, too, solemn, and sort of dignified and sad…"

"Except when he was hunting possum," Paw said. "He was a ring-tailed terror when he was after possum."

"We never did mean to be irreligious," said the woman. "You just couldn't call him by any other name even if you tried. He looked just like a preacher."

We finished eating and Paw put the pipe back into his mouth and reached for the jug.

"Thanks," I said, "but no more for me. I must be getting on. If you'd let me take a few sticks from the woodpile, I might be able to wedge them underneath the wheels…"

"I wouldn't think on it," said Paw. "Not in this storm, I wouldn't. It'd be a scandal to the jaybirds to let you go out in it. You stay here snug and dry and we'll do some drinking and you can start tomorrow. We ain't got a second bed, but we have a couch you can stretch out on. It's real comfortable and you won't have no trouble sleeping. The horses will come down early in the morning and we can catch them up and drag you out of there."

"I couldn't think of it," I said. "I've imposed on you enough."

"It's a plumb pleasure to have you," he said. "A new face to talk with ain't something that comes along too often. Me and Maw, we just sit and look at one another. We ain't got a thing to say. We've jawed at one another so long we have said it all."

He filled my glass and shoved it across the table. "Wrap yourself around that," he told me, "and be thankful you got shelter on a night like this and I don't want to hear no more about leaving here until morning comes."

I picked up the glass and had a good long drink and I must admit that the idea of not going out into the storm had some attraction for me.

"There is some advantage, after all," said Paw, "to not having a dog to go out after possum, although I must admit I sorrily miss old Preacher. But not having any dog gives you a lot more sitting time and I don't suppose a young sprout like you appreciates it, but sitting time is the most valuable there is. You do a lot of thinking and you do a lot of dreaming and you're a better man for it. Most of the skunks you run across get that way because they don't take no sitting time. They're everlastingly on the push and they are running all the time and they think they're running after something, but mostly they are running from themselves."

"I think you're right," I said, thinking of myself. "I think you're entirely right."

I had another drink and it felt so good I had another one.

"Here, young fellow," said Paw, "hold out that glass of yours. You're running kind of low."

I held out the glass and the jug gurgled and the glass was full again.

"Here we sit," said Paw, "as snug as bugs and ain't a tarnation thing to do except to sit here and do some friendly drinking and a little talking and pay time no heed. Time," he said, "is a man's best friend if he makes good use of it and a man's worst enemy if he lets it run him. Most people who live by the clock are miserable sorts of critters. But living by the sun, that is something different."

There was something wrong, I knew. I could feel the edge of wrongness. Something about these two, as if I should have known them, as if I'd met them somewhere many years ago and suddenly would know them and remember who they were and where I'd met them and what kind of folks they were. But reach for the memory of them as best I could, it all eluded me.

The man was talking again and I realized I was only hearing part of what he said. I knew he was talking about coon hunting and the best bait to use for catfish and a lot of other very friendly things, but I had missed, I knew, a great amount of detail.

I finished off the glass and held it out again without any invitation from him and he filled it up again and it all was comfortable and fine—the wood fire murmuring hi the stove and the clock upon the mantle shelf beside the pan- try door ticking loudly and companionably in the close confines of the room. In the morning life would take up again and I'd drive to Pilot Knob, taking the fork I'd missed. But this, I told myself, was a piece of sitting time, a piece of resting time, a time to sit and let the clock tick on and not think of anything, or not much of anything. I was building up quite a glow from the moonshine I was drinking and I knew I was, but I didn't seem to mind. I went right on drinking and listening and not thinking of tomorrow.

"By the way," I asked, "how are the dinosaurs this year?"

"Why, there are a few of them about," he said, unconcernedly, "but it seems to me they're a mite smaller than they used to be."

And then he went on telling about a bee tree he had cut and about the year when the rabbits, eating loco weed, got so pugnacious packs of them were hazing grizzly bear all about the landscape. But that must have happened somewhere else, for here in this country, I knew, there were ho loco weeds and no grizzlies, either.

And, finally, I remember going off to bed on the couch in the living room while Paw stood by with the lantern in his hand. I took off my jacket and hung it on a chair back and then took off my shoes and put them on the floor, squared and neatly placed. Then, loosening my tie, I lay down upon the couch and, as he'd said, it was comfortable.

"You'll get a good night's sleep," said Paw. "Barney always slept here when he came to visit us. Barney in here and Sparky out there in the kitchen."

And suddenly, as those names soaked into my mind, I, had it! I struggled to arise and I did get part way up. "I know who you are now," I shouted at him. "You are Snuffy Smith, the one that was with Barney Google and Sparkplug and Sunshine and all the rest of them in the comic strip."