A few days later, a man turned up from the university and showed him the story the reporter had gone back and written. The story made fun of Mose.
'I'm sorry. the professor said. 'These newspapermen arc unaccountable. I wouldn't worry too much about anything they write.
'I don't, Mose told him.
The man from the university asked a lot of questions and made quite a point about how important it was that he should see the body.
But Mose only shook his head. 'It's at peace, he said. 'I aim to leave it that way.
The man went away disgusted, but still quite dignified.
For several days there were people driving by and dropping in, the idly curious, and there were some neighbors Mose hadn't seen for months. But he gave them all short shrift and in a little while they left him alone and he went on with his farming and the house stayed lonely.
He thought again that maybe he should get a dog, but he thought of Towser and he couldn't do it.
One day, working in the garden, he found the plant that grew out of the grave. It was a funny-looking plant and his first impulse was to root it out.
But he didn't do it, for the plant intrigued him. It was a kind he'd never seen before and he decided he would let it grow, for a while at least, to see what kind it was. It was a bulky, fleshy plant, with heavy, dark-green, curling leaves, and it reminded him in some ways of the skunk cabbage that burgeoned in the woods come spring.
There was another visitor, the queerest of the lot. He was a dark and intense man who said he was the president of a flying saucer club. He wanted to know if Mose had talked with the thing he'd found out in the woods and seemed terribly disappointed when Mose told him he hadn't. He wanted to know if Mose had found a vehicle the creature might have traveled in and Mose lied to him about it. He was afraid, the wild way the man was acting, that he might demand to search the place, and if he had, he'd likely have found the birdcage hidden in the machine shed back in the corner by the forge. But the man got to lecturing Mose about withholding vital information.
Finally Mose had taken all he could of it, so he stepped into the house and picked up the shotgun from behind the door. The president of the flying saucer club said good-by rather hastily and got out of there.
Farm life went on as usual, with the corn laid by and the haying started and out in the garden the strange plant kept on growing and now was taking shape. Old Mose couldn't believe his eyes when he saw the sort of shape it took and he spent long evening hours just standing in the garden, watching it and wondering if his loneliness were playing tricks on him.
The morning came when he found the plant standing at the door and waiting for him. He should have been surprised, of course, but he really wasn't, for he had lived with it, watching it of eventide, and although he had not dared admit it even to himself, he had known what it was.
For here was the creature he'd found in the woods, no longer sick and keening, no longer close to death, but full of life and youth.
It was not the same entirely, though. He stood and looked at it and could see the differences — the little differences that might have been those between youth and age, or between a father and a son, or again the differences expressed in an evolutionary pattern.
'Good morning, said Mose, not feeling strange at all to be talking to the thing. 'It's good to have you back.
The thing standing in the yard did not answer him. But that was not important; he had not expected that it would. The one important point was that he had something he could talk to.
'I'm going out to do the chores, said Mose. 'You want to tag along?
It tagged along with him and it watched him as he did the chores and he talked to it, which was a vast improvement over talking to himself.
At breakfast, he laid an extra plate for it and pulled up an extra chair, but it turned out the critter was not equipped to use a chair, for it wasn't hinged to sit.
Nor did it eat. That bothered Mose at first, for he was hospitable, but he told himself that a big, strong, strapping youngster like this one knew enough to take care of itself, and he probably didn't need to worry too much about how it got along.
After breakfast, he went out to the garden, with the critter accompanying him, and sure enough, the plant was gone. There was a collapsed husk lying on the ground, the outer covering that had been the cradle of the creature at his side.
Then he went to the machine shed and the creature saw the birdcage and rushed over to it and looked it over minutely. Then it turned around to Mose and made a sort of pleading gesture.
Mose went over to it and laid his hands on one of the twisted bars and the critter stood beside him and laid its hands on, too, and they pulled together. It was no use. They could move the metal some, but not enough to pull it back in shape again.
They stood and looked at one another, although looking may not be the word, for the critter had no eyes to look with. It made some funny motions with its hands, but Mose couldn't understand. Then it lay down on the floor and showed him how the birdcage ribs were fastened to the base.
It took a while for Mose to understand how the fastening worked and he never did know exactly why it did. There wasn't actually, any reason that it should work that way.
First you applied some pressure, just the right amount at the exact and correct angle, and the bar would move a little. Then you applied some more pressure, again the exact amount and at the proper angle, and the bar would move some more. You did this three times and the bar came loose, although there was, God knows, no reason why it should.
Mose started a fire in the forge and shoveled in some coal and worked the bellows while the critter watched. But when he picked up the bar to put it in the fire, the critter got between him and the forge, and wouldn't let him near. Mose realized then he couldn't — or wasn't supposed to — heat the bar to straighten it and he never questioned the entire rightness of it. For, he told himself, this thing must surely know the proper way to do it.
So he took the bar over to the anvil and started hammering it back into shape again, cold, without the use of fire, while the critter tried to show him the shape that it should be. It took quite a while, but finally it was straightened out to the critter's satisfaction.
Mose figured they'd have themselves a time getting the bar back in place again, but it slipped on as slick as could be.
Then they took off another bar and this one went faster, now that Mose had the hang of it.
But it was hard and grueling labor. They worked all day and only straightened out five bars.
It took four solid days to get the bars on the birdcage hammered into shape and all the time the hay was waiting to be cut.
But it was all right with Mose. He had someone to talk to and the house had lost its loneliness.
When they got the bars back in place, the critter slipped into the cage and starting fooling with a dingus on the roof of it that looked like a complicated basket. Mose, watching, figured that the basket was some sort of control.
The critter was discouraged. It walked around the shed looking for something and seemed unable to find it. It came back to Mose and made its despairing, pleading gesture. Mose showed it iron and steel; he dug into a carton where he kept bolts and clamps and bushings and scraps of metal and other odds and ends, finding brass and copper and even some aluminium, but it wasn't any of these.
And Mose was glad — a bit ashamed for feeling glad, but glad all the same,
For it had been clear to him that when the birdcage was all ready, the critter would be leaving him. It had been impossible for Mose to stand in the way of the repair of the cage, or to refuse to help. But now that it apparently couldn't be, he found himself well pleased.