«One could have wandered east.»
«I suppose so. If there are any of them out there, that is. I’m not too sure there are.»
«Well, anyhow,» said Hopkins, «I thought I’d let you know. You are kind of isolated here. No telephone or nothing. You never even run in electricity.»
«I don’t need either a telephone or electricity,» said Lambert. «The only thing about electricity that would tempt me would be a refrigerator. And I don’t need that. I got the springhouse over there. It’s as good as any refrigerator. Keeps butter sweet for weeks. And a telephone. I don’t need a telephone. I have no one to talk to.»
«I’ll say this,» said Hopkins. «You get along all right. Even without a telephone or the electric. Better than most folks.»
«I never wanted much,» said Lambert. «That’s the secret of it—I never wanted much.»
«You working on another book?»
«Jake, I’m always working on another book. Writing down the things I see and hear and the way I feel about them. I’d do it even if no one was interested in them. I’d write it down even if there were no books.»
«You read a lot,» said Hopkins. «More than most of us.»
«Yes, I guess I do,» said Lambert. «Reading is a comfort.»
And that was true, he thought. Books lined up on a shelf were a group of friends—not books, but men and women who talked with him across the span of continents and centuries of time. His books, he knew, would not live as some of the others had. They would not long outlast him, but at times he liked to think of the possibility that a hundred years from now someone might find one of his books, in a used bookstore, perhaps, and, picking it up, read a few paragraphs of his, maybe liking it well enough to buy it and take it home, where it would rest on the shelves a while, and might, in time, find itself back in a used bookstore again, waiting for someone else to pick it up and read.
It was strange, he thought, that he had written of things close to home, of those things that most passed by without even seeing, when he could have written of the wonders to be found light-years from earth—the strangenesses that could be found on other planets circling other suns. But of these he had not even thought to write, for they were secret, an inner part of him that was of himself alone, a confidence between himself and Phil that he could not have brought himself to violate.
«We need some rain,» said Hopkins. «The pastures are going. The pastures on the Jones place are almost bare. You don’t see the grass; you see the ground. Caleb has been feeding his cattle hay for the last two weeks, and if we don’t get some rain, I’ll be doing the same in another week or two. I’ve got one patch of corn I’ll get some nubbins worth the picking, but the rest of it is only good for fodder. It does beat hell. A man can work his tail off some years and come to nothing in the end.»
They talked for another hour or so—the comfortable, easy talk of countrymen who were deeply concerned with the little things that loomed so large for them. Then Hopkins said good-by and, kicking his ramshackle car into reluctant life, drove off down the road.
When the sun was just above the western hills, Lambert went inside and put on a pot of coffee to go with a couple of slices of Katie’s bread and a big slice of Katie’s pie. Sitting at the table in the kitchen—a table on which he’d eaten so long as memory served—he listened to the ticking of the ancient family clock. The clock, he realized as he listened to it, was symbolic of the house. When the clock talked to him, the house talked to him as well—the house using the clock as a means of communicating with him. Perhaps not talking to him, really, but keeping close in touch, reminding him that it still was there, that they were together, that they did not stand alone. It had been so through the years; it was more so than ever now, a closer relationship, perhaps arising from the greater need on both their parts.
Although stoutly built by his maternal great-grandfather the house stood in a state of disrepair. There were boards that creaked and buckled when he stepped on them, shingles that leaked in the rainy season. Water streaks ran along the walls, and in the back part of the house, protected by the hill that rose abruptly behind it, where the sun’s rays seldom reached, there was the smell of damp and mold.
But the house would last him out, he thought, and that was all that mattered. Once he was no longer here, there’d be no one for it to shelter. It would outlast both him and Phil, but perhaps there would be no need for it to outlast Phil. Out among the stars, Phil had no need of the house.
Although, he told himself, Phil would be coming home soon. For he was old and so, he supposed, was Phil. They had, between the two of them, not too many years to wait.
Strange, he thought, that they, who were so much alike, should have lived such different lives—Phil, the wanderer, and he, the stay-at-home, and each of them, despite the differences in their lives, finding so much satisfaction in them.
His meal finished, he went out on the patio again. Behind him, back of the house, the wind soughed through the row of mighty evergreens, those alien trees planted so many years ago by that old great-grandfather. What a cross-grained conceit, he thought—to plant pines at the base of a hill that was heavy with an ancient growth of oaks and maples, as if to set off the house from the land on which it was erected.
The last of the fireflies were glimmering in the lilac bushes that flanked the gate, and the first of the whippoorwills were crying mournfully up the hollows. Small, wispy clouds partially obscured the skies, but a few stars could be seen. The moon would not rise for another hour or two.
To the north a brilliant star flared out, but watching it, he knew it was not a star. It was a spaceship coming in to land at the port across the river. The flare died out, then flickered on again, and this time did not die out but kept on flaring until the dark line of the horizon cut it off. A moment later, the muted rumble of the landing came to him, and in time it too died out, and he was left alone with the whippoorwills and fireflies.
Someday, on one of those ships, he told himself, Phil would be coming home. He would come striding down the road as he always had before, unannounced but certain of the welcome that would be waiting for him.
Coming with the fresh scent of space upon him, crammed with wondrous tales, carrying in his pocket some alien trinket as a gift that, when he was gone, would be placed on the shelf of the old breakfront in the living room, to stand there with the other gifts he had brought on other visits.
There had been a time when he had wished it had been he rather than Phil who had left. God knows, he had ached to go. But once one had gone, there had been no question that the other must stay on. One thing he was proud of—he had never hated Phil for going. They had been too close for hate.
There could never be hate between them.
There was something messing around behind him in the pines. For some time now, he had been hearing the rustling but paying no attention to it. It was a coon, most likely, on its way to raid the cornfield that ran along the creek just east of his land. The little animal would find poor pickings there, although there should be enough to satisfy a coon. There seemed to be more rustling than a coon would make. Perhaps it was a family of coons, a mother and her cubs.
Finally, the moon came up, a splendor swimming over the great dark hill behind the house. It was a waning moon that, nevertheless, lightened up the dark. He sat for a while longer and began to feel the chill that every night, even in the summer, came creeping from the creek and flowing up the hollows.
He rubbed an aching knee, then got up slowly and went into the house. He had left a lamp burning on the kitchen table, and now he picked it up, carrying it into the living room and placing it on the table beside an easy chair. He’d read for an hour or so, he told himself, then be off to bed.