Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

Johnny knelt there, with the words sinking into him, with the realization sinking into him and it seemed more than he could bear that, having found two friends, they were about to die.

“Johnny,” they said to him.

“Yes,” said Johnny, trying not to cry.

“You will trade with us?”

“Trade?”

“A way of friendship with us. You give us something and we give you something.”

“But,” said Johnny. “But I haven’t …”

Then he knew he had. He had the pocket knife. It wasn’t much, with its broken blade, but it was all he had.

“That is fine,” they said. “That is exactly right. Lay it on the ground, close to the machine.”

He took the knife out of his pocket and laid it against the machine and even as he watched something happened, but it happened so fast he couldn’t see how it worked, but, anyhow, the knife was gone and there was something in its place.

“Thank you, Johnny,” they said. “It was nice of you to trade with us.”

He reached out his hand and took the thing they’d traded him and even in the darkness it flashed with hidden fire. He turned it in the palm of his hand and saw that it was some sort of jewel, many-faceted, and that the glow came from inside of it and that it burned with many different colors.

It wasn’t until he saw how much light came from it that he realized how long he’d stayed and how dark it was and when he saw that he jumped to his feet and ran, without waiting to say goodbye.

It was too dark now to look for the cows and he hoped they had started home alone and that he could catch up with them and bring them in. He’d tell Uncle Eb that he’d had a hard time rounding them up. He’d tell Uncle Eb that the two heifers had broken out of the fence and he had to get them back. He’d tell Uncle Eb—he’d tell—he’d tell—

His breath gasped with his running and his heart was thumping so it seemed to shake him and fear rode on his shoulders—fear of the awful thing he’d done—of this final unforgivable thing after all the others, after not going to the spring to get the water, after missing the two heifers the night before, after the matches in his pocket.

He did not find the cows going home alone—he found them in the barnyard and he knew that they’d been milked and he knew he’d stayed much longer and that it was far worse than he had imagined.

He walked up the rise to the house, shaking now with fear. There was a light in the kitchen and he knew that they were waiting.

He came into the kitchen and they sat at the table, facing him, waiting for him, with the lamplight on their faces and their faces were so hard that they looked like graven stone.

Uncle Eb stood up, towering toward the ceiling, and you could see the muscles stand out on his arms, with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He reached for Johnny and Johnny ducked away, but the hand closed on the back of his neck and the fingers wrapped around his throat and lifted him and shook him with a silent savagery.

“I’ll teach you,” Uncle Eb was saying through clenched teeth. “I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you …”

Something fell upon the floor and rolled toward the corner, leaving a trail of fire as it rolled along the floor.

Uncle Eb stopped shaking him and just stood there holding him for an instant, then dropped him to the floor.

“That fell out of your pocket,” said Uncle Eb. “What is it?”

Johnny backed away, shaking his head.

He wouldn’t tell what it was. He’d never tell. No matter what Uncle Eb might do to him, he’d never tell. Not even if he killed him.

Uncle Eb stalked the jewel, bent swiftly and picked it up. He carried it back to the table and dropped it there and bent over, looking at it, sparkling in the light.

Aunt Em leaned forward in her chair to look at it.

“What in the world!” she said.

They bent there for a moment, staring at the jewel, their eyes bright and shining, their bodies tense, their breath rasping in the silence. The world could have come to an end right then and there and they’d never noticed.

Then they straightened up and turned to look at Johnny, turning away from the jewel as if it didn’t interest them any longer, as if it had had a job to do and had done that job and no longer was important. There was something wrong with them—no, not wrong, but different.

“You must be starved,” Aunt Em said to Johnny. “I’ll warm you up some supper. Would you like some eggs?”

Johnny gulped and nodded.

Uncle Eb sat down, not paying any attention to the jewel at all.

“You know,” he said, “I saw a jackknife uptown the other day. Just the kind you want …”

Johnny scarcely heard him.

He just stood there, listening to the friendliness and love that hummed through all the house.

First published in 1980 in the original anthology Dark Forces , edited by Kirby McCauley, who at the time was Clifford Simak’s agent, this story is one that relies heavily on its author’s boyhood. I suspect that as an intelligent and imaginative boy living in a countryside filled with mysterious hollows, cliffs, and caves, with extensive reaches of dark forest, and vistas from which one could see the Wisconsin River flowing from its deep-cut valley to the even larger Mississippi, Cliff developed the habit of looking at his own life, and at the people and places around him, and saying—as adventurous children do—“This is boring, but what if …” I think he wandered the forests and ridges and peopled them, in his mind, with Native Americans and goblins and soldiers and, as his world expanded, with aliens and, yes, dinosaurs.

There actually was a whistling well on Cliff’s grandfather’s farm.

He walked the ridge, so high against the sky, so windswept, so clean, so open, so far-seeing. As if the very land itself, the soil, the stone, were reaching up, standing on tiptoe, to lift itself, stretching toward the sky. So high that one, looking down, could see the backs of hawks that swung in steady hunting circles above the river valley.

The highness was not all. There was, as well, the sense of ancientness and the smell of time. And the intimacy, as if this great high ridge might be transferring to him its personality. A personality, he admitted to himself, for which he had a liking, a thing that he could wrap, as a cloak, around himself.

And through it all, he heard the creaking of the rocker as it went back and forth, with the hunched and shriveled, but still energetic, old lady crouched upon it, rocking back and forth, so small, so dried up, so emaciated that she seemed to have shrunken into the very structure of the chair, her feet dangling, not reaching the floor. Like a child in a great-grandfather chair. Her feet not touching, not even reaching out a toe to make the rocker go. And, yet, the rocker kept on rocking, never stopping. How the hell, Thomas Parker asked himself, had she made the rocker go?

He had reached the ultimate point of the ridge where steep, high limestone cliffs plunged down toward the river. Cliffs that swung east and from this point continued along the river valley, a stony rampart that fenced in the ridge against the deepness of the valley.

He turned and looked back along the ridge and there, a mile or so away, stood the spidery structure of the windmill, the great wheel facing west, toward him, its blades a whir of silver movement in the light of the setting sun.

The windmill, he knew, was clattering and clanking, but from this distance, he could hear no sound of it, for the strong wind blowing from the west so filled his ears that he could pick up no sound but the blowing of the wind. The wind whipped at his loose jacket and made his pants legs ripple and he could feel its steady pressure at his back.