Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

“All right, then,” said Doyle, “we’ll put him in the trunk. We’ll fix him up with some blankets, so he’ll be comfortable. He can’t get at you there. And it might be better to have him under lock and key.”

Mabel shook her head. “I hope that you are doing right, Chuck. I hope we don’t get into trouble.”

“Put that stuff away,” said Doyle, “and let us get a move on. We got to get out of here before that jerk down the hall decides to phone the cops.”

The rolla showed up in the doorway, patting at his belly.

JERKS? he asked. WHATS THEM?

“Oh, my aching back,” said Doyle, “now I got to explain to him.”

JERKS LIKE HEELS?

“Sure, that’s it,” said Doyle. “A jerk is like a heel.”

METCALFE SAY

ALL OTHER

HUMANS HEELS

“Now, I tell you, Metcalfe might have something there,” said Doyle, judicially.

HEEL MEAN

HUMAN WITH

NO MONEY

“I’ve never heard it put quite that way,” said Doyle, “but if that should be the case, you can count me as a heel.”

METCALFE SAY

THAT WHAT IS

WRONG WITH PLANET.

THERE IS TOO

LITTLE MONEY

“Now, that is something that I’ll go along with him.”

SO I NOT

ANGRY WITH

YOU ANY MORE.

Mabel said: “My, but he’s turned out to be a chatterbox.”

MY JOB TO

CARE AND

GUARD TREE.

I ANGRY AT

THE START.

BUT FINALLY

I THINK

POOR HEEL

NEED SOME MONEY

CANNOT BLAME

FOR TAKING.

“That’s decent of you,” Doyle told him. “I wish you’d thought of that before you chewed me up. If I could have had just a full five minutes—”’

“I am ready,” Mabel said. “If we have to leave, let’s go.”

Doyle went softly up the walk that led to the front of the Metcalfe house. The place was dark and the moon was riding homeward in the western sky, just above the tip of a row of pines that grew in the grounds across the street.

He mounted the steps of mellowed brick and stood before the door. He reached out and rang the bell and waited.

Nothing happened.

He rang again and yet again and there was no answer.

He tried the door and it was locked.

“They flown the coop,” said Doyle, talking to himself.

He went around the house into the alley and climbed the tree again.

The garden back of the house was dark and silent. He crouched for a long time atop the wall and the place was empty.

He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and played it downward. It cut a circle of uncertain light and he moved it slowly back and forth until it caught the maw of tortured earth.

His breath rasped in his throat at the sight of it and he worked the light around to make sure there was no mistake.

There was no mistake at all. The money tree was gone. Someone had dug it up and taken it away.

Doyle snapped off the light and slid it back into his pocket. He slid down the tree and trotted down the alley.

Two blocks away he came up to the car. Mabel had kept the motor idling. She moved from behind the wheel and he slid under it and shoved the car in gear.

“They took it on the lam,” he said. “There ain’t nobody there. They dug up the tree and took it on the lam.”

“Well, I’m glad of it,” Mabel said defiantly. “Now you won’t be getting into trouble—not with money trees at least.”

“I got a hunch,” said Doyle.

“So have I,” said Mabel. “Both of us is going home and getting us some sleep.”

“Maybe you,” said Doyle. “You can curl up in the seat. Me, I got some driving to do.”

“There ain’t no place to drive.”

“Metcalfe told me when I was taking his picture this afternoon about a farm he had. Bragging about all the things he has, you know. Out west some place, near a town called Millville.”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Well, if you had a lot of money trees…”

“But he had only one tree. In the backyard of his house.”

“Maybe he has lots of them. Maybe he had this one here just to keep him in pocket money when he was in town.”

“You mean you’re driving out to this place where he has a farm?”

“I have to find an all-night station first. I need some gas and I need a road map to find out where is this Millville place. I bet you Metcalfe’s got an orchard on that farm of his. Can’t you see it, Mabel? Row after row of trees, all loaded down with money!”

The old proprietor of the only store in Millville—part hardware, part grocery, part drugstore, with the post office in one corner—rubbed his silvery mustache.

“Yeah,” he said. “Man by the name of Metcalfe does have a farm—over in the hills across the river. He’s got it named and everything. He calls it Merry Hill. Now, can you tell me, stranger, why anyone should name a farm like that?”

“People do some funny things,” said Doyle. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

“You asked?”

“Sure I asked. I asked you just now …”

The old man shook his head. “You been invited there? Metcalfe expecting you?”

“No, I don’t suppose he is.”

“You’ll never get in then. He’s got it solid-fenced. And he’s got a guard at the gate—even got a little house for the guard to stay in. ‘Less Metcalfe wants you in, you don’t get in.”

“I’ll have a try at it.”

“I wish you well, stranger, but I don’t think you’ll make it. Now, why in the world should Metcalfe act like that? This is friendly country. No one else has got their farms fenced with eight-foot wire and barbs on top of that. No one else could afford to do it even if they wanted to. He must be powerful scared of someone.”

“Wouldn’t know,” said Doyle. “Tell me how to get there.”

The old man found a paper sack underneath the counter, fished a stub pencil out of his vest pocket and wet it carefully with his tongue. He smoothed out the sack with a liver-spotted hand and began drawing painfully.

“You cross the bridge and take this road—don’t take that one to the left, it just wanders up the river—and you go up this hollow and you reach a steep hill and at the top of it you turn left and it’s just a mile to Metcalfe’s place.”

He wet the pencil again and drew a rough rectangle.

“The place lies right in there,” he said. “A sizeable piece of property. Metcalfe bought four farms and threw them all together.”

Back at the car Mabel was waiting irritably.

“So you was wrong all the time,” she greeted Doyle. “He hasn’t got a farm.”

“Just a few miles from here,” said Doyle. “How is the rolla doing?”

“He must be hungry again. He’s banging on the trunk.”

“How can he be hungry? I bought him all of them bananas just a couple hours ago.”

“Maybe he wants company. He might be getting lonesome.”

“I got too much to do,” said Doyle, “to be holding any rolla’s hand.”

He climbed into the car and got it started and pulled away into the dusty street. He clattered across the bridge and instead of keeping up the hollow, as the storekeeper had directed, turned left on the road that paralleled the river.

If the map the old man had drawn on the sack was right, he figured, he should come upon the Metcalfe farm from the rear by following the river road.

Gentle hills turned into steep bluffs, covered with heavy woods and underbrush. The crooked road grew rougher. He came to a deep hollow that ran between two bluffs. A faint trail, a wagon-road more than likely, unused for many years, angled up the hollow.

Doyle pulled the car into the old wagon road and stopped. He got out and stood for a moment, staring up the hollow.