Clifford Simak - The Ghost of a Model T - And Other Stories

Now it was Kitty, lying there and moaning through clenched teeth—an old and useless woman as he was an old and useless man. Kitty, with her lined face and her straggly hair and the terrible gauntness of her, but still possessed of that haunting sense of eternal youth somehow trapped tight inside her body.

He should go, he thought, and get some water. Bathe her face and arms with it, force some down her throat. But the water was scarcely fit to drink. It was old and stagnant and it stank of rotted vegetation and it had the taste of ancient dead things one tried hard not to visualize.

He went over to the small pack that belonged to Kitty and from it he took the battered and fire-blackened sauce pan that was the one utensil they had brought along.

Picking his way carefully down the tiny island on which they’d spent the night, he approached the water’s edge and scouted watchfully along it, seeking for a place where the water might appear a bit less poisonous. Although that, he knew, was foolishness; the water was the same no matter where one looked.

It was bitter water in a bitter swamp that had fought them for seven days, that had sought to trap them and had tried to hold them back, that had bit and stung them and tried to drive them crazy, that had waited, knowing there would come a slip or some misstep or fall that would put them at its mercy.

He shivered, thinking of it. This was the first time, he realized, that he had thought of it. He had never thought of it before; he had merely fought it. All his energy had been directed toward getting over that yard of ground ahead, and after that, another yard of ground.

Time had lost its meaning, measured only in a man’s endurance. Distance had come to have no significance, for it stretched on every side. There would always be that distance; there would be no end to it.

It had been a murderous seven days and the first two of them he had known he could not make it, that there was not another day left in him. But each day there had been another day left in him and he’d made each day to its bitter end.

Of the three of them, he thought, he was the only one who still was on his feet. And another funny thing: He knew now that he had another day left in him, that he had many other days left in him. He could keep on forever, if it took forever. Now the swamp could never stop him. Somewhere in that terrible, tangled greenness he had found a hidden strength and had gotten second wind.

Why should this be, he wondered. What was that inner strength? From what source had it come?

Was it, perhaps, because his purpose had been strong?

And once again he stood at the window, wondering if there’d be a butterfly this time or if the butterfly were only a certain part of childhood. But never questioning for a moment that the magic still was there, that it had been so strong and shining that thirty years could not have tarnished it.

So he had gone outside and had sat beneath the tree as he had sat that day when he was a child, with his hands held out, palms up, and the strange card laid across one palm. He could feel the edge of magic and could smell the new freshness of the air, but it was not right, for there were no yellow leaves falling down the sky.

He had waited for the frost and when it came had gone out again and sat beneath the tree with the leaves falling through the air like slow-paced drops of rain. He had closed his eyes and had smelled the autumn air tainted with the faintest touch of smoke, and had felt the sunlight falling warm about him and it was exactly as it had been that day so long ago. The autumn day of boyhood had not been lost; it was with him still.

He had sat there with his hands held out and with the card across one palm and nothing happened. Then, as it had failed to do that day of long ago, a leaf came fluttering down and fell atop the card. It lay there for an instant, a perfect goldenness.

Then suddenly it was gone and in its place atop the card was the object that had been printed on the card—a ball of some sort, three inches in diameter, and with prickly spikes sticking out over it, like an outsize gooseberry. Then it buzzed at him and he could feel the buzzing spreading through his body.

It seemed in that instant that there was something with him, or that he was part of something—some thinking, living, (perhaps even loving) thing that quivered somewhere very close to him and yet very far away. As if this thing, whatever it might be, had reached out a finger and had touched him, for no other purpose than to let him know that it was there.

He crouched down to dip the water with the battered, blackened pan from a pool that appeared to be just a little cleaner and a little clearer than it had seemed elsewhere.

And there had been something there, he thought. Something that through the years he had become acquainted with, but never truly known. A gentle thing, for it had dealt with him gently. And a thing that had a purpose and had driven him toward that purpose, but kindly, as a kindly teacher drives a student toward a purpose that in the end turns out to be the student’s own.

The little buzzing gooseberry was the gateway to it, so long as the gooseberry had been needed. Although, he thought, such a word as gateway was entirely wrong, for there had been no gateway in the sense that he had ever seen this thing, or come close to it or had a chance to find out what it was. Only that it was, that it lived and that it had a mind and could communicate.

Not talk—communicate. And toward the end, he recalled, the communication had been excellent, although the understanding that should have gone with communication had never quite come clear.

Given time, he thought. But there had been an interruption and that was why he must get back, as quickly as he could. For it would not know why he had left it. It would not understand. It might think that he had died, if it had a concept that would encompass a condition such as death. Or that he had deserted it. Or that somehow it had failed.

He dipped the sauce pan full of water and straightened, standing in the great hush of the morning.

He remembered now. But why had he not remembered sooner? Why had it escaped him? How had he forgotten?

From far away he heard it and, hearing it, felt the hope leap in him. He waited tensely to hear it once again, needing to hear it that second time to know that it was true.

It came again, faint, but carrying unmistakably in the morning air—the crowing of a rooster.

He swung around and ran back to the camping site.

Running, he stumbled, and the pan flew from his hand. He scrabbled to his feet and left the pan where it had fallen.

He rushed to Kitty and fell on his knees beside her.

“Just a few more miles!” he shouted. “I heard a rooster crowing. The edge of the swamp can’t be far away.”

He reached down and slid his hands beneath her, lifted her, cradling her, holding her tightly against him.

She moaned and tossed.

“Easy, girl,” he said. “We’re almost out of it.”

He struggled from his knees and stood erect. He shifted her body so that it rode the easier in his arms.

“I’ll carry you,” he said. “I can carry you all the way.”

It was farther than he’d thought. And the swamp was worse than it had ever been—as if, sensing that this stumbling, stubborn creature might slip out of its grasp, it had redoubled its trickery and its viciousness in a last attempt to seize and swallow him.

He had left the little food they’d had behind. He’d left everything behind. He had taken only Kitty.

When she achieved a sort of half consciousness and cried for water, he stopped beside a pool, carried water to her in his cupped hands, bathed her face and helped her drink, then went on again.