But now he was alone. Alone with his farm and his stubbornness and his silver dollars. The doctor thought, like all the rest of them, that the only silver Mose had was in the cigar box in the cupboard. There wasn't one of them who knew about the old iron kettle piled plumb full of them, hidden underneath the floor boards of the living room. He chuckled at the thought of how he had them fooled. He'd give a lot to see his neighbors' faces if they could only know, but he was not the one to tell them. If they were to find out, they'd have to find it out themselves.
He nodded in the chair and finally slept, sitting upright, with his chin resting on his chest and his crossed arms wrapped around himself as if to keep him warm.
When he woke, in the dark before the dawn, with the lamp flickering on the table and the fire in the stove burned low, the alien had died.
There was no doubt of death. The thing was cold and rigid and the husk that was its body was rough and drying out — as a corn stalk in the field dries out, whipping in the wind once the growing had been ended.
Mose pulled the blanket up to cover it, and although this was early to do the chores, he went out by lantern light and got them done.
After breakfast, he heated water and washed his face and shaved, and it was the first time in years he'd shaved any day but Sunday. Then he put on his one good suit and slicked down his hair and got the old jalopy out of the machine shed and drove into town.
He hunted up Eb Dennison, the town clerk, who also was the secretary of the cemetery association.
'Eb, he said, 'I want to buy a lot.
'But you've got a lot, protested Eb.
'That plot, said Mose, 'is a family plot. There's just room for me and Molly.
'Well, then, asked Eb, 'why another one? You have no other members of the family.
'I found someone in the woods, said Mose. 'I took him home and he died last night. I plan to bury him.
'If you found a dead man in the woods, Eb warned him, 'you better notify the coroner and sheriff,
'In time I may, said Mose, not intending to. 'Now how about that plot?
Washing his hands of the affair entirely, Eb sold him the plot.
Having bought his plot, Mose went to the undertaking establishment run by Albert Jones.
'Al, he said, 'there's been a death out at the house. A stranger I found out in the woods. He doesn't seem to have anyone and I aim to take care of it.
'You got a death certificate? asked Al, who subscribed to none of the niceties affected by most funeral parlor operators.
'Well, no, I haven't.
'Was there a doctor in attendance?
'Doc Benson came out last night.
'He should have made you out one. I'll give him a ring.
He phoned Doctor Benson and talked with him a while and got red around the gills. He finally slammed down the phone and turned on Mose.
'I don't know what you're trying to pull off, he fumed, but Doc tells me this thing of yours isn't even human. I don't take care of dogs or cats or-
'This ain't no dog or cat.
'I don't care what it is. It's got to be human for me to handle it. And don't go trying to bury it in the cemetery, because it's against the law.
Considerably discouraged, Mose left the undertaking parlor and trudged slowly up the hill toward the town's one and only church.
He found the minister in his study working on a sermon. Mose sat down in a chair and fumbled his battered hat around and around in his work-scarred hands.
'Parson, he said, 'I'll tell you the story from first to last, and he did. He added, 'I don't know what it is. I guess no one else does, either. But it's dead and in need of decent burial and that's the least that I can do. I can't bury it m the cemetery, so I suppose I'll have to find a place for it on the farm. I wonder if you could bring yourself to come out and say a word or two.
The minister gave the matter some deep consideration.
'I'm sorry, Mose, he said at last. 'I don't believe I can. I am not sure at all the church would approve of it.
'This thing may not be human, said Old Mose, 'but it is one of God's critters.
The minister thought some more, and did some wondering out loud, but made up his mind finally that he couldn't do it.
So Mose went down the Street to where his car was waiting and drove home, thinking about what heels some humans are.
Back at the farm again, he got a pick and shovel and went into the garden, and there, in one corner of it, he dug a grave. He went out to the machine shed to hunt up some boards to make the thing a casket, but it turned out that he had used the last of the lumber to patch up the hog pen.
Mose went to the house and dug around in a chest in one of the back rooms which had not been used for years, hunting for a sheet to use as a winding shroud, since there would be no casket. He couldn't find a sheet, but he did unearth an old white linen table cloth. He figured that would do, so he took it to the kitchen.
He pulled back the blanket and looked at the critter lying there in death and a sort of lump came into his throat at the thought of it — how it had died so lonely and so far from home without a creature of its own to spend its final hours with. And naked, too, without a stitch of clothing and with no possession, with not a thing to leave behind as a remembrance of itself.
He spread the table cloth out on the floor beside the bed and lifted the thing and laid it on the table cloth. As he laid it down, he saw the pocket in it — if it was a pocket — a sort of slitted flap in the center of what could be its chest. He ran his hand across the pocket area. There was a lump inside it. He crouched for a long moment beside the body, wondering what to do.
Finally he reached his fingers into the flap and took out the thing that bulged. It was a ball, a little bigger than a tennis ball, made of cloudy glass — or, at least, it looked like glass. He squatted there, staring at it, then took it to the window for a better look.
There was nothing strange at all about the ball. It was just a cloudy ball of glass and it had a rough, dead feel about it, just as the body had.
He shook his head and took it back and put it where he'd found it and wrapped the body securely in the cloth. He carried it to the garden and put it in the grave. Standing solemnly at the head of the grave, he said a few short words and then shoveled in the dirt.