Clifford Simak: A Heritage of Stars

"We had so hoped that you would stay with us," said Nancy. We had thought it might be only a passing fancy, and that in time you would get over it. But now it is apparent to us that you will not get over it. Monty and I talked it over, not once, but many times. We were convinced finally that for some compelling reason you did wish to go."

"There is one thing that bothers me," said Cushing. "You are right, of course. I've been trying to screw up my courage to tell you. I cringed from it, but each time that I decided not to go, there was something in me that told me I had to go. The thing that bothers me is that I don't know why. I tell myself it's the Place of Going to the Stars and then I wonder if, deep down, it may be something else. Is it, I ask myself, the wolf blood still in me? For three years before I came knocking at the gate of the university, I was a woods runner. I think I told you that."

"Yes," said Monty. "Yes, you told us that."

"But nothing more," said Cushing. "You never asked. Neither of you ever asked. I wonder now why I never told you.

"You need not tell us now," said Nancy, gently. "We have no need to know."

"But now I have a need to tell you," Cushing said. "The story is a short one. There were three of us: my mother and my grandfather—my mother's father—and myself. My father, too, but I don't remember him. Maybe just a little. A big man with black whiskers that tickled when he kissed me."

He'd not thought of it for years, not really thought of it, forcing himself not to think of it, but now, quite suddenly, he saw it clear as day. A little coulee that ran back from the Mississippi, in that land of tangled hills that lay a week's walking to the south. A small sand-bottomed creek ran through the narrow meadowlands that lay between the sharply sloping bluffs, fed by a large spring that gushed out of the sandstone at the coulee's head, where the hills pinched in. Beside the spring was home—a small house gray with the oldness of its wood, a soft gray that blended in with the shadow of the hills and trees so it could not be seen, if one did not know that it was there, until one almost stumbled on it. A short distance off stood two other small gray buildings as difficult to see as was the house—a dilapidated barn that housed two crow bait horses, three cows and a bull, and the chicken house, which was falling down. Below the house lay a garden and potato patch; and up a small side valley that angled out from the coulee, a small patch of corn.

Here he had lived for his first sixteen years, and in all that time, he remembered no more than a dozen people who had come visiting. They had no nearby neighbors and the place was off the path of the wandering tribes that went up and down the river valley. The coulee mouth was only one of many mouths of similar coulees, and a small one at that, and it had no attraction for anyone who might be passing by. It had been a quiet place, drowsing through the years, but colorful, with a flood of crab apple and wild plum and cherry blossoms clothing it in softness every spring. Again in autumn the oaks and maples flamed into raging fires of brilliant red and yellow. At times the hills were covered by hepaticas, violets, trout lilies, sweet william, bloodroot, spring beauty and yellow lady's slipper. There had been fishing in the creek, and also fishing in the river if one wanted to go that far to fish. But mostly fishing in the creek, where there might be caught, without too great an effort, the small, delicious brook trout. There had been squirrels and rabbits for the pot and, if one could move silently enough and shoot an arrow well enough, ruffed grouse and perhaps even quail, although quail were small and quick and tiny targets for a bow. But Thomas Cushing, at times, had brought home quail. He had used a bow and arrow from the time he had been big enough to toddle, having been taught its use by his grandfather, who was a master of it. In the fall the coons had come down from the hills to raid the corn patch, and though they took part of the crop, they paid heavily for it, returning in their meat and hides far more than the value of the corn they took. For there always had been coon dogs at the cabin, sometimes only one or two, sometimes many of them; and when the coons came down to raid, Tom and his grandfather had gone Out with the dogs that trailed the coons and caught them or Cornered them or treed them. When they had been treed, Tom had climbed the tree, with a bow in one hand and two arrows in his teeth, going slowly, searching for the coon, clinging to a limb somewhere above him and silhouetted against the night sky. It had been tricky climbing and tricky shooting, propped against the trunk of the tree to shoot. Sometimes the coon would get away and other times it wouldn't.

It was his grandfather whom it now seemed he could remember best—always an old man with grizzled hair and beard, sharp nose, mean and squinting eyes—for he was a mean man, but never mean with Tom. Old and tough and mean, a man who knew the woods and hills and river. A profane man who swore bitterly at his aching and arthritic joints, who cursed the fate of growing old, who brooked no foolishness and no arrogance except his own foolishness and arrogance. A fanatic when it came to tools and weapons and to domestic animals. Although a horse might be roundly cursed, it was never flogged, never mistreated, well taken care of—for a horse would be hard to replace. One might be bought, of course, if one knew where to go; or stolen, and stealing, as a rule, was easier than buying, but either took a great deal of time and effort and there was a certain danger in either of them. Weapons you must not use lightly. You shot no arrow uselessly. You shot at a mark to improve your skill; the only other time you shot was when you shot to kill. You learned to use a knife the way it should be used and you took care of knives, for knives were hard to obtain. The same thing with tools. When you were through with plowing, you cleaned and polished and greased the plow and stored it in the barn loft, for a plow must be guarded against rust—it must last through many generations. Harness for the horses was oiled and cobbled and kept in good repair. When you were finished with your hoeing, you washed and dried the hoe before putting it away. When haying was done the scythe was cleaned, sharpened, and coated with grease and hung back in its place. There could be no sloppiness, no forgetting. It was a way of life. To make do with what you had, to take care of it, to guard against its loss, to use it correctly, so that no damage would be done to

His father Tom could recall only vaguely. He had always thought of him as having been lost, for that was the story he'd been told when he was old enough to understand. It seemed, however, that no one had actually known what had happened to him. One spring morning, according to the story, he had set out for the river with a fish spear in hand and a bag slung across his shoulder. It was time for the carp to spawn, coming into the shoals of the river valley's sloughs and lakes to lay and fertilize their eggs. In the frenzy of the season they had no fear in them and were easy prey. Each year, as that year, Tom's father had gone to the river when the carp were running, perhaps making several trips, coming home each time bowed down by the bulging sack full of carp slung across his shoulder, using the reversed spear as a walking stick to help himself along. Brought home, the carp were scaled and cleaned, cut into fillets and smoked to provide food throughout a good part of the summer months.

But this time he did not return. By late afternoon, Tom's mother and the old grandfather set out to search for him, Tom riding on his grandfather's shoulder. They came back late at night, having found nothing. The next day the grandfather \vent out again and this time found the spear, abandoned beside a shallow lake in which the carp still rolled, and a short distance off, the sack, but nothing else. There was no sign of Tom's father no indication of what bad happened to him. He bad vanished and there was no trace of him and since that time there had been no word of him.