Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

The stay in Seattle was short, though, and they returned to Minnesota before the end of 1942 – the newspaper was eager to have Cliff back.

That began a period during which Cliff churned out short stories in a number of genres, all the while working full time at the paper. In 1947 the Simak family had a son, Richard Scott, and in 1951 a daughter, Shelley Ellen.

In the fifties, Cliff began moving into the writing of novels – although he would always keep his hand in the short story field. And it was during this period too that he began to win awards for his fiction – awards that had not even existed in his first two decades in the field.

Clifford D. Simak retired from the Minneapolis Tribune (the Star ’s successor) in 1976. He would continue writing, publishing his last novel, Highway to Eternity , in 1986. Predeceased by his beloved Kay, he died in Minneapolis in 1988.

“The Big Front Yard,” which started out identified in Cliff’s notes as “Rats in the House,” then “Errand Boy,” and then “A Mouse in the House,” before reaching its final name, may be the most lauded of the author’s short fiction, even beyond the fact that it won the Hugo Award. I say this because it’s a story that people often mention when speaking of Clifford D. Simak. And few stories have a submission history like this one: the story was sent to Galaxy Magazine on April 2, 1958, only to be rejected and returned on the fourteenth; it was sent to Astounding on the following day and accepted there on the twenty-eighth – all this action, including two submissions, occurred in less than a month.

The exotic and unusual is most effectively seen when positioned next to the commonplace.

Hiram Taine came awake and sat up in his bed.

Towser was barking and scratching at the floor.

“Shut up,” Taine told the dog.

Towser cocked quizzical ears at him and then resumed the barking and scratching at the floor.

Taine rubbed his eyes. He ran a hand through his rat’s-nest head of hair. He considered lying down again and pulling up the covers.

But not with Towser barking.

“What’s the matter with you, anyhow?” he asked of Towser, with not a little wrath.

“ Whuff,” said Towser, industriously proceeding with his scratching at the floor.

“If you want out,” said Taine, “all you got to do is open the screen door. You know how it is done. You do it all the time.”

Towser quit his barking and sat down heavily, watching his master getting out of bed.

Taine put on his shirt and pulled on his trousers, but didn’t bother with his shoes.

Towser ambled over to a corner, put his nose down to the baseboard and snuffled moistly.

“You got a mouse?” asked Taine.

“ Whuff,” said Towser, most emphatically.

“I can’t ever remember you making such a row about a mouse,” Taine said, slightly puzzled. “You must be off your rocker.”

It was a beautiful summer morning. Sunlight was pouring through the open window.

Good day for fishing, Taine told himself, then remembered that there’d be no fishing, for he had to go out and look up that old four-poster maple bed that he had heard about up Woodman way. More than likely, he thought, they’d want twice as much as it was worth. It was getting so, he told himself, that a man couldn’t make an honest dollar. Everyone was getting smart about antiques.

He got up off the bed and headed for the living room.

“Come on,” he said to Towser.

Towser came along, pausing now and then to snuffle into corners and to whuffle at the floor.

“You got it bad,” said Taine.

Maybe it’s a rat, he thought. The house was getting old.

He opened the screen door and Towser went outside.

“Leave that woodchuck be today,” Taine advised him. “It’s a losing battle. You’ll never dig him out.”

Towser went around the corner of the house.

Taine noticed that something had happened to the sign that hung on the post beside the driveway. One of the chains had become unhooked and the sign was dangling.

He padded out across the driveway slab and the grass, still wet with dew, to fix the sign. There was nothing wrong with it – just the unhooked chain. Might have been the wind, he thought, or some passing urchin. Although probably not an urchin. He got along with kids. They never bothered him, like they did some others in the village. Banker Stevens, for example. They were always pestering Stevens.

He stood back a ways to be sure the sign was straight.

It read, in big letters:

HANDY MAN

And under that, in smaller lettering:

I fix anything

And under that:

ANTIQUES FOR SALE

What have you got to trade?

Maybe, he told himself, he’d ought to have two signs, one for his fix-it shop and one for antiques and trading. Some day, when he had the time, he thought, he’d paint a couple of new ones. One for each side of the driveway. It would look neat that way.

He turned around and looked across the road at Turner’s Woods. It was a pretty sight, he thought. A sizable piece of woods like that right at the edge of town. It was a place for birds and rabbits and woodchucks and squirrels and it was full of forts built through generations by the boys of Willow Bend.

Some day, of course, some smart operator would buy it up and start a housing development or something equally objectionable and when that happened a big slice of his own boyhood would be cut out of his life.

Towser came around the corner of the house. He was sidling along, sniffing at the lowest row of siding and his ears were cocked with interest.

“That dog is nuts,” said Taine, and went inside.

He went into the kitchen, his bare feet slapping on the floor.

He filled the tea kettle, set it on the stove and turned the burner on underneath the kettle.

He turned on the radio, forgetting that it was out of kilter.

When it didn’t make a sound, he remembered and, disgusted, snapped it off. That was the way it went, he thought. He fixed other people’s stuff, but never got around to fixing any of his own.

He went into the bedroom and put on his shoes. He threw the bed together.

Back in the kitchen the stove had failed to work again. The burner beneath the kettle still was cold.

Taine hauled off and kicked the stove. He lifted the kettle and held his palm above the burner. In a few seconds he could detect some heat.

“Worked again,” he told himself.

Some day, he knew, kicking the stove would fail to work. When that happened, he’d have to get to work on it. Probably wasn’t more than a loose connection.

He put the kettle back onto the stove.

There was a clatter out in front and Taine went out to see what was going on.

Beasly, the Horton’s yardboy-chauffeur-gardener-et cetera was backing a rickety old truck up the driveway. Beside him sat Abbie Horton, the wife of H. Henry Horton, the village’s most important citizen. In the back of the truck, lashed on with ropes and half-protected by a garish red and purple quilt, stood a mammoth television set. Taine recognized it from of old. It was a good ten years out of date and still, by any standard, it was the most expensive set ever to grace any home in Willow Bend.

Abbie hopped out of the truck. She was an energetic, bustling, bossy woman.

“Good morning, Hiram,” she said. “Can you fix this set again?”

“Never saw anything that I couldn’t fix,” said Taine, but nevertheless he eyed the set with something like dismay. It was not the first time he had tangled with it and he knew what was ahead.