The Scifi & Fantasy Collection

  “Well?” said Billy.

  Wanoa looked uneasy. He cleared his throat and straightened himself until he was as tall as possible. “We come to see how you like new work schedule. We got plenty men now. Nobody sick on whole island. You say work-work and we work. You no make much pay, we not make much pay. You say do, we do. You say want, you get.” It was evidently not the speech which he had rehearsed with flowery gestures and effusive thanks. That speech was in his bearing and his face, but he was entirely too awed to voice it.

  Billy nodded and the group withdrew to silently walk away from the house. But when they got to the beach, they suddenly raised their voices in joyful discourse and capered along as though they had been the children of the village instead of its most sacred elders.

  Billy smiled and found that he felt amazingly good. He had just started to rise when he heard a thump just inside the door. He beheld Christina. She gave her bundle of belongings a further push with her foot, and then glared indignation at the astonished Osea.

  “Go fix the fellah mahstah’s bed before you get what for!” she cried. “And you. What are you doing still up? You need sleep. Much sleep.”

  She walked swiftly through the room and into the kitchen where Billy presently heard her abusing the cook for not having a better breakfast.

  “Bah, you are a fool!” Christina cried at the luckless chef. “You think just because he is a god, he doesn’t have to eat?”

  Billy gazed self-consciously at his worn shoes and then up to find Osea staring at him. Osea grinned suddenly and Billy, stretching comfortably, grinned back.

  The Room

  The Room

  UNCLE TOBY disappeared.

  He had gone into his room one evening and hadn’t been seen after that by anyone, not even Gracie, his horse.

  Aunt Cinthia was bustling about the huge farm kitchen, doing the wrong thing with the wrong pans and pausing every few seconds to wipe “the steam” out of her eyes and vigorously blow her red nose upon her apron. She was a gigantic woman and her heart was huge in proportion, but her feet got in each other’s way and her hands were so strong that they sometimes crumpled up china at a touch. Before Uncle Toby had married her she had been worked like a draft animal on her brother’s farm. Her brother was a first-generation American and saw nothing wrong with making a woman plow if the horses needed saving.

  “It’s not like him!” said Aunt Cinthia, honking vigorously into her apron. “It ain’t right for him to stay away so long. A week or ten days, that’s maybe all right. But it’s sixteen days and four hours! Joe, you don’t . . . don’t suppose something got him, do you? Some varmint, maybe?”

  Joe shifted restively and knocked down his crutch. He was a quiet, usually cheerful boy and to see his “aunt” in such agony of suffering cut his nerves into little slivers. Joe had never seen Aunt Cinthia so upset and it had been brought home to him in the last few days just how deeply this tall, clumsy woman loved Uncle Toby. Ever since he was three Joe had been living with them, himself an orphan after a prairie fire got his parents, and he could not recall either of them ever showing any great affection. They never rowed together and they never said sweet things, either. They were just sort of—well—comfortable.

  Uncle Toby, of course, was a very brainy man. He had studied at the State university, had graduated high as a veterinary and was forever reading books on all sorts of subjects. Naturally, Aunt Cinthia, who couldn’t read, had no truck with books and so had little conversationally in common with Uncle Toby. Uncle Toby had rescued her, he had cared for her, he was her mainstay, her world, her idol. She never said anything about it. Sometimes her eyes had said things when Uncle Toby wasn’t looking. But the way she was broken by this circumstance unnerved Joe.

  Joe, well as he was able, had been out and around looking casually. It was hard for him to cover much territory for there wasn’t much of his right leg and twenty-three years had not hung much fat on him. Pallid to transparency, frail and wistful and quiet, Joe had been too shy to ask the sheriff to let him join in the general hunt. Joe had poked into a few culverts and looked in a few bushes and had ridden Uncle Toby’s mare, Gracie, all the way over to the hill. But he hadn’t found any sign of Uncle Toby.

  The sheriff hadn’t found any sign, either. Neither had the other farmers and villagers. They all had liked Uncle Toby. He had taken care of their stock and, often, their children and wives and it simply wasn’t reasonable that Uncle Toby and Palmerville could run separately.

  The circumstances had been mysterious. About nine, sixteen days before, with the summer twilight fading out, Uncle Toby had come in the house. He had refused a cup of coffee and had gone straight to his room. He had shut the door as he always did. The next morning the door to the room was still shut. But Uncle Toby had not been in there. However, Joe and Aunt Cinthia had not found out about that for three days.

  This room of Uncle Toby’s was an inviolable sanctuary. The bushy-headed old man would often stay in there reading for two days at a stretch, living either on nothing or on some of the canned goods he always kept in a cupboard. That was a clear and usual thing in this old farmhouse and nobody thought there was anything strange in it, it had been going on for so long.

  Once Aunt Cinthia had thought she had heard some loud voices in that room, but just Uncle Toby came out and she forgot about it, not being a curious sort of person.

  The room opened off the parlor. The old house had grown up from a sod hut and had been added to as the years had gone along until it was a pile of rooms. No architect could have mapped from the outside just how Uncle Toby’s room fitted into the scheme. But it was there, in defiance of architecture.

  It was never cleaned. When she had first come to this place, Aunt Cinthia had started to clean it and in a very quiet voice Uncle Toby had told her not to touch it again ever. And so she had never touched it again ever. There was a potbellied stove in the middle of it, a sandbox muchly missed beside the stove. There was a long rack full of medical books and another case full of other kinds of books. There was a big roll-top desk, but the cover had not been down for years, because there were too many papers on it to let the cover close. There were some pictures on the walls too thickly cased in dust to be recognized and there were some knick-knacks sitting on a side table and in a cabinet. There was a case of instruments and a mysterious black box which contained something electrical to accomplish something medical. The carpet was either red or green; the fact was uncertain.

  Uncle Toby had not been seen coming out of his room. Gracie, the mare, was still in her stall. Nobody had phoned. And the fairs wouldn’t begin for another month. Uncle Toby had just plain disappeared.

  Sometimes he had taken trips which had begun with a call. He would go doctor somebody’s pigs and the somebody would be going over to see somebody else and Uncle Toby would go along and spend the night and then go see somebody else and after having toured the whole country and having seen nearly everyone in it he would come home, ten days late, hang up his hat, put away his instrument case and wash his hands for supper just as though he had left that morning.

  But Uncle Toby hadn’t taken Gracie and Uncle Toby hated to walk. Nobody had been visited by him. He had simply vanished, leaving a hole in Palmerville which nobody else could ever begin to fill. Uncle Toby’s white, bushy head and his warm, blue eyes didn’t turn up this time.

  Jeb, the hired man, came in to supper and the three sat down in the kitchen and ate. There were towers of food. There was little eaten. Jeb didn’t even clean his plate.

  “What do you think, Jeb?” pleaded Aunt Cinthia.

  Jeb judicially picked his teeth and gazed with washed-out eyes at the beam ceiling. He shook his head.

  “Do you think he drowned, maybe?” said Aunt Cinthia.

  Jeb shook his head again. He started to say something, then paused. He picked at a s
crap of meat that was wedged in his spraddled teeth. He recrossed his legs. He shook his head again. After a little the strain got too great and he leaped up, jammed on his hat and stomped outside. There was a clang as he kicked a milk bucket off the back porch.

  “I looked all over—far as I could,” said Joe.

  “Yes, Joe. I know you did,” said Aunt Cinthia.

  “I would have looked a lot farther only . . .” He glanced at his crutch with a scowl.

  “You did all right, Joe.”

  “I . . . I didn’t do enough,” said Joe.

  “There, there, Joe. Now don’t you go breaking down. I’m a woman. I got a right to. But don’t you. Joe . . .”

  “Yes, Aunt Cinthia?”

  “Joe, we got to admit it. I had a horrible dream. I am ashamed to think it, but I had a terrible nightmare. I got to admit it, Joe. We . . . we won’t see Uncle Toby again.”

  Joe sat quietly, looking at his untouched plate. He shifted his gaze to his pale hands and then under the table to his twisted leg. He sat still for a long time.

  “Aunt Cinthia—”

  “Yes, Joe?”

  “I been studying with Uncle Toby a long time. I know a lot of things now. I’m going to take his place as well as I can.”

  “No! You aren’t strong!”

  “Maybe I can make up with this what I lack there.” And he touched his head and indicated his leg. “We’ve got to keep eating, Aunt Cinthia.”

  “The farm—”

  “Never brings in any cash. I’ll figure out . . .” He lifted his head and listened to a rig roll up. He gathered his crutch under his armpit and went to the door.

  A big man, plump and friendly, shook Joe’s hand and came in. “Howdy, Mrs. Cinthia.”

  “Mr. Dawson!” said Aunt Cinthia. She was a little overcome because Mr. Dawson was the biggest lawyer in the county and had once been a representative in the State legislature. “Sit down!”

  Mr. Dawson bowed and sat down. “You are looking prettier than ever these days, Mrs. Cinthia,” said Mr. Dawson.

  Aunt Cinthia blushed and got Mr. Dawson some coffee.

  “You look right well, Joe,” said Mr. Dawson.

  “Thank you,” said Joe. “I’m going to give this crutch to Jeb for toothpicks one of these days. You’ll see.”

  “Good spirit,” said Mr. Dawson. He drank his coffee and gradually became forlorn of countenance to prepare them for his business. After a long time he looked fixedly at Aunt Cinthia.

  “I came here to do some business for Toby,” said Mr. Dawson. He was sure of their attention and went on. “A long time ago, Toby came to me and told me that he wanted to leave his will with me.”

  Aunt Cinthia blew her nose on her apron and managed to stifle the sobs which welled up in her. “Uncle Toby was a good man, Mr. Dawson.”

  “The whole country around and about couldn’t have been wrong,” said Mr. Dawson. “He was a very fine man. He told me that one of these days he might not turn up alive in the morning, and so he thought I had better take care of things for him. Of course, he isn’t legally dead. Won’t be for years. But that was his wish that the will would be read if he was gone as long as fifteen days. It is, I believe, sixteen since last he was seen.”

  Aunt Cinthia swallowed hard. Joe rattled his crutch and cleared his throat.

  “So he gave me this will of his. I’m not going to pester you with legal terms. I’m going to tell you what it says. He leaves to you, Mrs. Cinthia, as his wife, the whole farm and all and any of his property. He didn’t have any money to leave. All his property except one thing and that he leaves to Joe.”

  Joe looked wonderingly at Mr. Dawson. Uncle Toby didn’t have any property except the farm and a few clothes and his instruments.

  “To you,” said Mr. Dawson, “Toby leaves his room.”

  “What?” said Joe.

  “He leaves his room and everything in it,” said Mr. Dawson, “to you on the condition that you keep it more or less as it is, that you allow no one else in it for any length of time and that you absolutely forbid and enforce the law that it is not to be cleaned. He said a man needs a place to crawl off. And be all by himself and think things out. And so he leaves you his room. That’s all there is in the will.”

  Aunt Cinthia began to weep and kept on weeping even after Mr. Dawson had gone. Joe sat in front of the stove until nearly midnight. Until that will had been read he had had some faint hope. But now it became a certain fact that he would never again see Uncle Toby, never again hear him chuckle, never again be given a new book with heavily underscored lines.

  The next afternoon Joe limped into the house, more weary and discouraged than ever before in his life. He did not feel like hitching himself any farther than the kitchen, but he could not endure, he realized suddenly, the inquiring and sad eyes of Aunt Cinthia. Joe bethought himself of the room, and, saying nothing, dragged himself through the parlor, thrust the door shut and sank down in Uncle Toby’s—now Joe’s—chair.

  For a little while he didn’t look at anything. But as the gloom rested his eyes and the coolness caressed his brow he pulled papers out of his pocket and threw them on the desk.

  Those bills were worthless. In two places Joe had brought himself to ask for money only to find the subject slid away unremarked and some ailing pigs substituted. Joe had not collected any money. But he had treated the pigs. This mass of paper represented a lifetime of unpaid work. Lunches, seed, harness buckles, night lodgings, a few fresh vegetables and odds and ends had been the only pay Uncle Toby had ever collected so far as Joe could see.

  He sat there and looked at his twisted leg. Uncle Toby had kept the farmers of this county in solvency by keeping their stock in good condition and the farmers of this county had never done anything tangible for Uncle Toby. That had become very plain.

  Joe wondered if he would feel such a responsibility to the community that he would keep on as Uncle Toby had. But Uncle Toby had never mentioned money to Joe and evidently had never asked anyone for money and yet Uncle Toby had been contented and cheerful. There was a puzzle here.

  Was service to the community enough recompense?

  Joe absently took a pipe out of his pocket and spent some time fumbling for his tobacco before he remembered that he had, that day, run out. On the chance that there was some in the room he looked about, got up and approached the cabinet.

  He had never been in here more than twice and then he had not seen anything strange. But these little boxes and vials, all so artfully done, carved and molded were far from usual. They seemed to be empty, most of them, and their shapes and purposes defied speculation. They were pretty. That was all. One jar was heavy and Joe lifted the lid to find his tobacco. The aroma was pleasantly fresh, a little sweet and recalled nostalgically, Uncle Toby. Joe spilled a few crumbs filling his pipe and these mingled with what had been spilled when he had lifted off the lid. The container was heavy pottery and the lid was the cap of a clown.

  Joe sat down and picked up a big match. He dodged back, startled, for the thing had lighted as soon as he brought it near his pipe. He picked it up from where he had dropped it and shakily applied the flame. It was a most curious circumstance. There were many other matches, similar to it, in the alabaster hand which served as a holder and Joe picked up another one. As he brought it near his pipe it did not light. Nor would it light when he scratched it under the desk. The stove door was open to furnish a draft of cool air and Joe threw the match into it. As soon as it struck the grate it lighted.

  But Joe was too weary to speculate much. He was tired. Terribly, sickeningly tired. The hot sun, the smell of the sties, the long ride in the jolting buggy had been more exertion than he had had in many months. Such activity was strictly against Uncle Toby’s orders.

  There was a tall
bottle, glitteringly cut with faces, standing on the top of the roll-top desk. The amber in it looked as though it would pick a man out of his blues and Joe poured a liberal potion into a matching glass. The bottle had been full to the cork and for a little while, as he sipped his drink, he did not notice that the bottle was still full. When he did notice he put down the glass as though it had scorched him. He sat for a short time and then poured another potion. The bottle was still full.

  He corked it tightly and turned it around and around in his hands while the little glass faces seemed to smile companionably at him. This was very excellent, but very ordinary bourbon, and this seemed to be a wholly sane bottle. Joe put it back. He felt a little tingle at the back of his neck.

  Not so tired now, he began to sense this room. Once before he had noticed that a deep and quiet peace filled the place, that no harsh sounds came here, that it was cool when the day was hot and warm when the wintery blasts chilled the plains. And now he felt that abiding sense of safety and well-being once more.

  Maybe it was because Uncle Toby had been so calm, so cheerful. Maybe he had left that impression in this place.

  Cautiously, Joe resumed his drink and, as the languorous minutes went by, emptied it.

  He was startled into chattering terror when the bottle swooped down and filled the glass again of its own accord. But plucking up courage he took the bottle in hand, found no strings or mechanisms and felt the tingle on the back of his neck grow. Still he could not be wholly afraid.

  This time a tiny inscription caught his attention. Graven upon the glowing bottom of the bottle were the words:

  To Uncle Toby

  With blessings

  From Princess Dundein

  Joe read it over and over and set the bottle down to think, for he had never heard Uncle Toby mention anyone by the name of Princess Dundein. And the only princesses in Laudon County were show horses.

  With no new thought after much effort, Joe got up and filled his pipe at the cabinet. Then he frowned and removed the clown’s cap a second time. Yes, he was right! The tobacco jar was full again. He had used two pipes from it now and yet when the cap was pulled off the tobacco always spilled!