No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories

  I started for the door, and Butch called after me, “Where are you going, Steve?”

  “I’m going to find Nature Boy,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you stay in bed. Your Ma will skin both of us if you don’t.”

  I got out of the house and headed fast for home, and as I ran, I kept on thinking about how the halflings had no life of their own, but had to find another life and pattern themselves on it.

  Sometimes they’d be mighty lucky and fasten onto someone who’d give them a good and exciting life, or maybe a good and contented life, but other times they’d get a mighty poor one. But you had to say this for them—they gave all the help they could to the one they’d picked out as a pattern, and they kept working at it.

  And I wondered how many persons who had been great successes might have been watched over by the halflings. What an awful letdown it would be if they were to learn that they had not become great or rich or famous through any particular effort or brilliance of their own, but by the grace of a bunch of things that helped them from outside.

  I got home and went into the kitchen and over to the sink.

  “Is that you, Steve?” Ma called from the living room.

  “I’m getting a drink,” I told her.

  “Where you been?”

  “Just around.”

  “Now don’t you go running off,” she warned.

  “No, ma’am, I won’t.”

  And all the time I was talking to her, I was climbing on a chair so I could reach those glasses where Pa had put them on the shelf and told me not to touch them again—not ever.

  Then I had them in my pocket and was climbing off the chair.

  I heard Ma heading for the kitchen and I hurried out as quietly as I could.

  I didn’t put the glasses on until I got to where the Carter farm cornered on the road. I went along the road, watching carefully, and finally I found a bunch of halflings down in a fence corner just beyond the orchard. They were standing there and squabbling over something and they didn’t seem to notice me until I got real close.

  Then they all swung around and stood facing me. They seemed to be talking among themselves and pointed at me.

  And there on the head of one of them, pushed up on his forehead, was the live-it set I had lost down the time machine.

  When I saw that, I realized Butch actually had seen the stuff that Fancy Pants’ Pa had put through the time machine.

  At first I don’t think they realized that I could see them, but after I stood there for a while, staring at them, they began to move up closer to me.

  I could feel the hair rearing right up on my head. There was nothing I wanted to do more than turn around and run. But I told myself they couldn’t reach me and there was nothing to be scared of, so I stood on my ground.

  They reminded me of a bunch of crows. They must have seen I didn’t have a gun, or maybe this particular bunch didn’t know about the guns Butch’s people had. And they crowded up real close to me, like a flock of crows is not afraid of an empty-handed man, but will keep their distance when he has a gun.

  I could see their mouths moving at me, but naturally I couldn’t hear a thing, and they kept pointing at the one that had my live-it on his head.

  To tell the honest truth, I didn’t pay too close attention to what they might have been doing at the start of it. I was too busy looking at them and trying to figure out what might have happened to them. There was one thing certain—this either was a different bunch than I had seen down in Andy Carter’s hay field or they had changed a lot. There was still some of Andy in them, although not as much of him as someone else, as if Andy and someone else had gotten sort of scrambled together.

  Finally I made out that they were pointing at the one with the live-it on his head and then tapping their own heads, and I figured out that each of them was asking for a live-it too.

  I didn’t know what I would have said to them or how I would have said it, if I had had the chance, only I never had the chance. They suddenly parted, as if someone from behind had pushed them to one side, and there was Nature Boy, standing face to face with me.

  We stood there and looked at one another for a good long time, not saying anything, not making any motion. Then he stepped forward and I stepped forward until we were almost nose to nose. I was afraid there, for a moment, we’d walk right through each other. What would have happened then? Probably nothing much.

  “You O.K.?” I asked him, thinking maybe he could read my lips even if he couldn’t hear me, but he shook his head. So I asked him once again, talking slowly and forming my words as distinctly as I could. But he shook his head again.

  Then I thought of something else.

  I lifted up my hand and stuck out my finger and pretended I was writing on the imaginary window that separated us.

  “YOU O.K.?” I wrote, taking it slow, because he’d have to read it backwards.

  He didn’t get it right away and I did it once again and this time he understood.

  “O.K.,” he wrote. And then he wrote real slow: “GET ME OUT!”

  I stood there looking at him and it was horrible, for there he was and here I was, as so far as I could see, there was no way to get him out.

  He must have sensed what I was thinking, because all at once his mouth trembled and that was the first time I’d ever seen Nature Boy even close to crying. Not even that time when we were digging out the lizard and a big rock fell on his toe.

  I thought how bad it must have been for him, trapped in that place and able to see out, but knowing that no one could see in. He might even have followed some of the searching parties, hoping that someone might accidentally glimpse him, but knowing they couldn’t. Maybe he had trailed along behind his Pa, as close as he could get to him, and his Pa not knowing it. And maybe he’d gone back home and watched his family and been all the lonelier for their not knowing he was there. And undoubtedly he’d hunted around for Butch, who he knew could see him, only Butch had been sick in bed.

  And while I was thinking all of this, I got a faint idea. I told myself that it probably wouldn’t work, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed it might.

  So I reached up with my finger and I wrote: “MEET ME AT FANCY PANTS.”

  I pocketed my glasses and hurried along home. I circled around the house because I didn’t want to take the chance of Ma seeing me and not letting me go. I went into the machine shed and found a length of rope and hunted up a hacksaw.

  Lugging these, I made my way back to Fancy Pants’ place. The machine shed was back of the barn, so no one from the house could see me, and anyhow no one seemed to be around. I knew that Fancy Pants’ Pa, and maybe Fancy Pants himself, would be out with the searchers, floating around over places where it would be impossible for the men on foot to go.

  I laid down the rope and hacksaw and put on my glasses and Nature Boy was there, right beside the machine shed door. He had some of the halflings with him, including the one who still had the live-it perched up on his forehead. And scattered all around the place, just like Butch had said, were tea cups and pie plates and children’s blocks and a lot of other junk—the stuff that Fancy Pants’ Pa had fed into the time machine.

  I looked at the halflings again and all at once I knew what was different about them. They were still some of Andy, but they were Nature Boy as well. And then I knew why Andy’s barn had burned. These halflings of his had been so busy tagging around Nature Boy that they had not been able to give Andy their attention.

  It seemed only natural, of course. A halfling would get a lot more good out of a real live human inside that world of theirs than they would someone they could only see from behind a plate-glass window.

  I took the glasses off and put them in my pocket and got to work. It was no easy job to saw through that padlock. The steel was awfully hard
and the blade was dull and I was afraid it might break before I got through the steel. I cussed myself for not thinking to bring along an extra blade or two.

  The sawing made an awful racket because I had forgotten to bring along some oil to squirt into the cut. But nobody heard the sawing.

  Finally I got through.

  I opened the door and stepped into the shed and the time machine was there, just the way I remembered it. I laid down the rope and went over to the control board and studied it, but it wasn’t very complicated.

  I got it turned on and the creamy whirlpool was sliding in the hopper’s throat.

  I picked up the rope and put my glasses on and got an awful fright. The machine shed was built on a gentle slope and the floor I was standing on was four or five feet above the ground and there I was, standing in the air, or so it seemed to me.

  I had a sense, not of falling, but that by rights I should be falling, that any minute now I would begin to fall. I knew I wouldn’t, naturally—I was standing on a transparent but solid floor. But knowing that didn’t help much. That horrible, dreamlike feeling that I was about to tumble to the ground still kept hold of me.

  And to make it even worse, there was Nature Boy, standing underneath me, with his head about level with my feet, looking up at me. His face was hopeful and he was motioning me to get busy with the rope.

  Moving cautiously, even if there was no need of caution, I took one end of the rope and tossed it down the hopper and felt the suck and tug of the creamy whirlpool pulling down the rope. Down underneath the hopper, I could see the rope coming out, dangling into that place where Nature Boy was trapped. He moved over quickly and grabbed hold of the rope and I could feel the weight of the pull he put on it.

  Nature Boy was about my size, perhaps a little smaller, and I knew I’d have to pull as hard as ever I could to get him out of there. I even wound a hitch around my hand to make sure it wouldn’t slip. I pulled with all my might. And that rope didn’t budge. It felt as if I were pulling against a house. I couldn’t gain an inch.

  So I quit pulling and knelt down, still hanging to the rope, peering at the base of the time machine.

  It was a funny thing. The rope went to the bottom of the hopper’s throat and then it skipped a foot or two. There was a foot or so of sidewise space where there wasn’t any rope, and then the rope took up again, dangling down into that other place where Nature Boy had hold of it.

  It didn’t make sense. That rope should have gone into that other world in a straight and simple line. But the fact was that it didn’t. It went off somewhere else before it fell into the other world.

  And that, I figured, was the reason I couldn’t pull it out.

  You could put a thing through the time machine, but you couldn’t pull it back.

  I looked down at Nature Boy and he looked back at me. I knew he’d seen it and knew as well as I did exactly what it meant. He looked pretty pitiful and I don’t suppose I looked any better.

  Just then the machine shed door screeched open.

  I jumped up, still hanging to the rope, and there was Fancy Pants’ Pa.

  He was all burned up and I couldn’t blame him. Not after seeing how I had sawed the padlock to break into the place.

  “Steve,” he said, and you could hear him fighting to keep his voice level, “I thought I told you to keep out of here.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “but Nature Boy’s in there.”

  “Nature Boy!” he shouted. Then his voice dropped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. How could he get in?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, though I could have told him.

  “Those glasses you are wearing,” asked Fancy Pants’ Pa. “Are those the ones that were made for you by Butch’s father?”

  I nodded.

  “Then you can see?”

  “I can see Nature Boy,” I said. “Just as plain as day.”

  I let go of the rope to take my glasses off and the rope slid down that hopper slicker than a whistle.

  “It’s all right, I guess,” I said. “I couldn’t pull him out.”

  “Steve,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “I want you to tell me the truth. You’re not just thinking up a story? You are not pretending?”

  He was awful pale and I saw what he was thinking—if Nature Boy had gone down that hopper, the entire neighborhood would be down on him like a ton of bricks.

  I crossed my heart. “And hope to die,” I added.

  That seemed good enough for him.

  He shut off the time machine, then went outdoors. I followed him.

  “Now,” he said, “you stay right here. I’ll be back immediately.”

  He floated off in somewhat of a hurry, zooming away above the pasture woods. He was out of sight in no time.

  I sat down with my back against the machine shed and I was feeling pretty low. I knew I should put on my glasses, but I kept them in my pocket. I couldn’t have stood the sight of Nature Boy looking out at me.

  It was done and over with, I knew. There was no way in the world for me or anyone to rescue Nature Boy. He was gone for good and all. He was worse than gone.

  And sitting there, I thought up some pretty dreadful things to do to Fancy Pants. For there was no doubt in my mind that Fancy Pants had got into the shed and had grabbed Nature Boy, just like he did the cat, and dumped him down the hopper.

  He was pretty sore, I knew, about the trick that Nature Boy had played on him with that skunk disguised as a cat. There was nothing he would have stopped at to get even.

  I was sitting there and thinking when Fancy Pants’ Pa came floating up the road, and panting along behind him were Pa and the sheriff and Butch’s Pa and Nature Boy’s Pa and some other neighbors.

  The sheriff came straight for me and he grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a good, sharp shake.

  “Now,” he bellowed, “what is this foolishness? I warn you, boy, it will go hard with you if you’ve been pulling our leg.”

  I tried to break away from him, but he wouldn’t let me go. Then Pa stepped up and flung out his arm so that it caught the sheriff straight across the chest and sent him staggering back.

  “You keep your hands off him,” Pa said to the sheriff.

  “But that story,” blustered the sheriff. “You surely don’t believe—”

  “I do,” said Pa. “I believe every word of it. My boy doesn’t lie.”

  I’ll say this for Pa: He may storm around and yell and he may take the strap to you for a lot of trifling things, but when it comes down to the pinch, he’s standing there beside you.

  “I’ll remind you, Henry,” said the sheriff, bristling, “that you’re not entirely in the clear yourself. There’s that business of the breach of peace I talked Andy Carter out of.”

  “Andy Carter,” said Pa, speaking more slowly than one would expect him to. “He’s the man who lives just down the road, if I recall correctly. Has there been any of you who have seen him lately?”

  He looked around the crowd and it seemed that no one had.

  “Last time I talked to Andy,” said Pa, “was when I called him on the phone and told him we needed help. He said he was too busy to go hunting any alien whelp. He said it would be good riddance if all of them got lost.”

  He looked around the crowd and no one spoke a word. I don’t suppose it was quite polite of Pa to say what he had, with Nature Boy’s Pa and Butch’s Pa and all the rest of those alien people standing there before us. But it sure-God was the truth, and they needed it right then, and Pa was the one who was not afraid to give it to them right between the eyes.

  Then someone spoke up from the crowd and there were so many of them I couldn’t be sure exactly who it was. But whoever it was said: “I tell you, folks, it was nothing but plain justice when Andy’s barn burned down.”

  The sheriff bristled up. “
If I thought one of you had a hand in that, I would—”

  “You wouldn’t do a thing,” said Pa. He turned to me. “All right, Steve, tell us what you have to tell. I promise you that everyone will listen and there won’t be any interruptions.”

  He looked straight at the sheriff when he was saying it.

  “Just a second, sir,” said Butch’s Pa. “I want to voice one important point. I know this boy can see the halflings, for I myself am the one who made the glasses for him. I know it is immodest of me to say a thing like this, but if I am nothing else, I am one fine optician.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Pa said. “And now, Steve, go ahead.”

  But I never got a chance to say a single word, for Butch came stumbling around the barn and he had the gun with him. Or at least I took it for the gun, although it didn’t look like one. It was a sticklike thing and it glittered in the sunlight from all sorts of prisms and mirrors set into it at all kinds of crazy angles.

  “Pa,” yelled Butch, “I heard about it and I brought the gun. I hope I’m not too late.”

  He ran up to his Pa and his Pa took the gun away from him and held it with everyone looking at him.

  “Thank you, son,” said Butch’s Pa. “It was good of you, but we won’t need a gun. We aren’t shooting anything today.”

  Then Butch cried out: “There he is, Pa! There’s Nature Boy!”

  I am not too sure that all of them believed I had found Nature Boy. Some might have had their reservations, and kept quiet about it because they didn’t want to tangle with my Pa. But Butch was a different matter. He could see these things without any silly glasses. And he was an alien, and everyone expected aliens to do these sort of crazy things.

  “All right,” admitted the sheriff, “so I guess he must be there. Now what do we do?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much to go on,” said Pa, “but we can’t leave the boy in there.” He looked at Nature Boy’s Pa. “Don’t you worry. We’ll figure a way to get him out.”