Гарднер Дозуа - The Good Old Stuff

Grimp glanced at the sun and turned anxiously to study the trailer. If she didn’t get rid of Runny soon, they’d be calling him back to the house for supper before he and Grandma got around to having a good talk. And they weren’t letting him out of doors these evenings, while the shining lights were here.

He gave the pony a parting whack, returned quietly to the road and sat down out of sight near the back door of the trailer, where he could hear what was going on.

“... so about the only thing the Guardian could tack on you now,” the policeman was saying, “would be a Public Menace charge. If there’s any trouble about the lights this year, he’s likely to try that. He’s not a bad Guardian, you know, but he’s got himself talked into thinking you’re sort of to blame for the lights showing up here every year.”

Grandma chuckled. “Well, I try to get here in time to see them every summer,” she admitted. “I can see how that might give him the idea.”

“And of course,” said the policeman, “we’re all trying to keep it quiet about them. If the news got out, we’d be having a lot of people coming here from the city, just to look. No one but the Guardian minds you being here, only you don’t want a lot of city people tramping around your farms.”

“Of course not,” agreed Grandma. “And I certainly haven’t told anyone about them myself.”

“Last night,” the policeman added, “everyone was saying there were twice as many lights this year as last summer. That’s what got the Guardian so excited.”

Chafing more every minute, Grimp had to listen then to an extended polite argument about how much Runny wanted to pay Grandma for her hay-fever medicines, while she insisted he didn’t owe her anything at all. In the end, Grandma lost and the policeman paid up—much too much to take from any friend of Grimp’s folks, Grandma protested to the last. And then, finally, that righteous minion of the law came climbing down the trailer steps again, with Grandma following him to the door.

“How do I look, Grimp?” he beamed cheerfully as Grimp stood up. “Like you ought to wash your face sometime,” Grimp said tactlessly, for he was fast losing patience with Runny. But then his eyes widened in surprise.

Under a coating of yellowish grease, Runny’s nose seemed to have returned almost to the shape it had out of hay-fever season, and his eyelids were hardly puffed at all! Instead of flaming red, those features, furthermore, now were only a delicate pink in shade. Runny, in short, was almost handsome again.

“Pretty good, eh?” he said. “Just one shot did it. And I’ve only got to keep the salve on another hour. Isn’t that right, Grandma?”

“That’s right,” smiled Grandma from the door, clinking Runny’s money gently out of one hand into the other. “You’ll be as good as new then.”

“Permanent cure, too,” said Runny. He patted Grimp benevolently on the head. “And next week we go werret-fishing, eh, Grimp?” he added greedily.

“I guess so,” Grimp said, with a trace of coldness. It was his opinion that Runny could have been satisfied with the hay-fever cure and forgotten about the werrets.

“It’s a date!” nodded Runny happily and took his greasy face whistling down the road. Grimp scowled after him, half-minded to reach for the slingshot then and there and let go with a medium stone at the lower rear of the uniform. But probably he’d better not.

“Well, that’s that,” Grandma said softly.

At that moment, up at the farmhouse, a cow horn went “Whoop-whoop!”

across the valley.

“Darn,” said Grimp. “I knew it was getting late, with him doing all that talking! Now they’re calling me to supper.” There were tears of disappointment in his eyes.

“Don’t let it fuss you, Grimp,” Grandma said consolingly. “Just jump up in here a moment and close your eyes.”

Grimp jumped up into the trailer and closed his eyes expectantly. “Put out your hands,” Grandma’s voice told him.

He put out his hands, and she pushed them together to form a cup. Then something small and light and furry dropped into them, caught hold of one of Grimp’s thumbs, with tiny, cool fingers, and chittered.

Grimp’s eyes popped open.

“It’s a lortel!” he whispered, overwhelmed.

“It’s for you!” Grandma beamed.

Grimp couldn’t speak. The lortel looked at him from a tiny, black, human face with large blue eyes set in it, wrapped a long, furry tail twice around his wrist, clung to his thumb with its fingers, and grinned and squeaked.

“It’s wonderful!” gasped Grimp. “Can you really teach them to talk?”

“Hello,” said the lortel.

“That’s all it can say so far,” Grandma said. “But if you’re patient with it, it’ll learn more.”

“I’ll be patient,” Grim promised, dazed. “I saw one at the circus this winter, down the valley at Laggand. They said it could talk, but it never said anything while I was there.”

“Hello!” said the lortel. “Hello!” gulped Grimp.

The cow horn whoop-whooped again.

“I guess you’d better run along to supper, or they might get mad,” said Grandma.

“I know,” said Grimp. “What does it eat?”

“Bugs and flowers and honey and fruit and eggs, when it’s wild. But you just feed it whatever you eat yourself.”

“Well, good-by,” said Grimp. “And golly—thanks, Grandma.”

He jumped out of the trailer. The lortel climbed out of his hand, ran up his arm and sat on his shoulder, wrapping its tail around his neck.

“It knows you already,” Grandma said. “It won’t run away.”

Grimp reached up carefully with his other hand and patted the lortel.

“I’ll be back early tomorrow,” he said. “No school .... They won’t let me out after supper as long as those lights keep coming around.”

The cow horn whooped for the third time, very loudly. This time it meant business.

“Well, good-by,” Grimp repeated hastily. He ran off, the lortel hanging on to his shirt collar and squeaking.

Grandma looked after him and then at the sun, which had just touched the tops of the hills with its lower rim.

“Might as well have some supper myself,” she remarked, apparently to no one in particular. “But after that I’ll have to run out the go-buggy and create a diversion.”

Lying on its armor-plated belly down in the meadow, the pony swung its big head around toward her. Its small yellow eyes blinked questioningly.

“What makes you think a diversion will be required?” Its voice asked into her ear. The ability to produce such ventriloquial effects was one of the talents that made the pony well worth its considerable keep to Grandma.

“Weren’t you listening?” she scolded. “That policeman told me the Guardian’s planning to march the village’s defense unit up to the hollow after supper, and start them shooting at the Halpa detector-globes as soon as they show up.”

The pony swore an oath meaningless to anyone who hadn’t been raised on the planet Treebel. It stood up, braced itself, and began pulling its feet out of the mud in a succession of loud, sucking noises.

“I haven’t had an hour’s straight rest since you talked me into tramping around with you eight years ago!” it complained.

“But you’ve certainly been seeing life, like I promised,” Grandma smiled.

The pony slopped in a last, enormous tongueful of wet weeds. “That I have!” it said, with emphasis.

It came chewing up to the road.

“I’ll keep a watch on things while you’re having your supper,” it told her. As the uniformed twelve-man defense unit marched in good order out of the village, on its way to assume a strategic position around the hollow on Grimp’s father’s farm, there was a sudden, small explosion not very far off.