«I have no explanation,» Lambert said. «People get some strange ideas. A thoughtless rumor starts—perhaps no more than a question: ‘About this brother of his? Does he really have a brother? Was there ever any brother?’ And others pick it up and build it up and it goes on from there. Out in these hills there’s not much to talk about. They grab at anything there is. It would be an intriguing thing to talk about—that old fool down in the valley who thinks he has a brother that he never had, bragging about this nonexistent brother out among the stars. Although it seems to me that I never really bragged. I never traded on him.»
«And the records? Or the absence of the records?»
«I just don’t know,» said Lambert. «I didn’t know about the records. I’ve never checked. There was never any reason to. You see, I know I have a brother.»
«Do you think that you may be getting up to Madison?»
«I know I won’t,» said Lambert. «I seldom leave this place. I no longer have a car. I catch a ride with a neighbor when I can to go to the store and get the few things that I need. I’m satisfied right here. There’s no need to go anywhere.»
«You’ve lived here alone since your parents died?»
«That is right,» said Lambert. «And I think this has gone far enough. I’m not sure I like you, Mr. Anderson. Or should that be Dr. Anderson? I suspect it should. I’m not going to the university to answer questions that you want me to or to submit to tests in this study of yours. I’m not sure what your interest is and I’m not even faintly interested. I have other, more important things to do.»
Anderson rose from the chair. «I am sorry,» he said. «I had not meant …»
«Don’t apologize,» said Lambert.
«I wish we could part on a happier note,» said Anderson.
«Don’t let it bother you,» said Lambert. «Just forget about it. That’s what I plan to do.»
He continued sitting in the chair long after the visitor had left. A few cars went past, not many, for this was a lightly traveled road, one that really went nowhere, just an access for the few families that lived along the valley and back in the hills.
The gall of the man, he thought, the arrogance of him, to come storming in and asking all those questions. That study of his—perhaps a survey of the fantasies engaged in by an aged population. Although it need not be that; it might be any one of a number of other things.
There was, he cautioned himself, no reason to get upset by it. It was not important; bad manners never were important to anyone but those who practiced them.
He rocked gently back and forth, the rockers complaining on the stones, and gazed across the road and valley to the place along the opposite hill where the creek ran, its waters gurgling over stony shallows and swirling in deep pools. The creek held many memories. There, in long, hot summer days, he and Phil had fished for chubs, using crooked willow branches for rods because there was no money to buy regular fishing gear—not that they would have wanted it even if there had been. In the spring great shoals of suckers had come surging up the creek from the Wisconsin River to reach their spawning areas. He and Phil would go out and seine them, with a seine rigged from a gunny sack, its open end held open by a barrel hoop.
The creek held many memories for him and so did all the land, the towering hills, the little hidden valleys, the heavy hardwood forest that covered all except those few level areas that had been cleared for farming.
He knew every path and byway of it. He knew what grew on and lived there and where it grew or lived. He knew of the secrets of the few surrounding square miles of countryside, but not all the secrets; no man was born who could know all the secrets.
He had, he told himself, the best of two worlds. Of two worlds, for he had not told Anderson, he had not told anyone, of that secret link that tied him to Phil. It was a link that never had seemed strange because it was something they had known from the time when they were small. Even apart, they had known what the other might be doing. It was no wondrous thing to them; it was something they had taken very much for granted.
Years later, he had read in learned journals the studies that had been made of identical twins, with the academic speculation that in some strange manner they seemed to hold telepathic powers which operated only between the two of them—as if they were, in fact, one person in two different bodies.
That was the way of it, most certainly, with him and Phil, although whether it might be telepathy, he had never even wondered until he stumbled on the journals. It did not seem, he thought, rocking in the chair, much like telepathy, for telepathy, as he understood it, was the deliberate sending and receiving of mental messages; it had simply been a knowing, of where the other was and what he might be doing. It had been that way when they were youngsters and that way ever since. Not a continued knowing, not continued contact, if it was contact. Through the years, however, it happened fairly often. He had known through all the years since Phil had gone walking down the road the many planets that Phil had visited, the ships he’d traveled on—had seen it all with Phil’s eyes, had understood it with Phil’s brain, had known the names of the places Phil had seen and understood, as Phil had understood, what had happened in each place. It had not been a conversation; they had not talked with one another; there had been no need to talk. And although Phil had never told him, he was certain Phil had known what he was doing and where he was and what he might be seeing. Even on the few occasions that Phil had come to visit, they had not talked about it; it was no subject for discussion since both accepted it.
In the middle of the afternoon, a beat-up car pulled up before the gate, the motor coughing to a stuttering halt. Jake Hopkins, one of his neighbors up the creek, climbed out, carrying a small basket. He came up on the patio and, setting the basket down, sat down in the other chair.
«Katie sent along a loaf of bread and a blackberry pie,» he said. «This is about the last of the blackberries. Poor crop this year. The summer was too dry.»
«Didn’t do much blackberrying myself this year,» said Lambert. «Just out a time or two. The best ones are on that ridge over yonder, and I swear that hill gets steeper year by year.»
«It gets steeper for all of us,» said Hopkins. «You and I, we’ve been here a long time, Ed.»
«Tell Katie thanks,» said Lambert. «There ain’t no one can make a better pie than she. Pies, I never bother with them, although I purely love them. I do some cooking, of course, but pies take too much time and fuss.»
«Hear anything about this new critter in the hills?» asked Hopkins.
Lambert chuckled. «Another one of those wild talks, Jake. Every so often, a couple of times a year, someone starts a story. Remember that one about the swamp beast down at Millville? Papers over in Milwaukee got hold of it, and a sportsman down in Texas read about it and came up with a pack of dogs. He spent three days at Millville, floundering around in the swamps, lost one dog to a rattler, and, so I was told, you never saw a madder white man in your life. He felt that he had been took, and I suppose he was, for there was never any beast. We get bear and panther stories, and there hasn’t been a bear or panther in these parts for more than forty years. Once, some years ago some damn fool started a story about a big snake. Big around as a nail keg and thirty feet long. Half the county was out hunting it.»
«Yes, I know,» said Hopkins. «There’s nothing to most of the stories, but Caleb Jones told me one of his boys saw this thing, whatever it may be. Like an ape, or a bear that isn’t quite a bear. All over furry, naked. A snowman, Caleb thinks.»
«Well, at least,» said Lambert, «that is something new. There hasn’t been anyone, to my knowledge, claimed to see a snowman here. There have been a lot of reports, however, from the West Coast. It just took a little time to transfer a snowman here.»