The Collected Stories

by Earl

  In the “following account, we have made no changes in the author’s original dialect spelling and quaint idiom, except in the case of oral quotation, where, for the sake of clarity, we have substituted correct English.—The Editors; May 15, 2039.

  When I first woke up, I had the peculiar feeling that I was back in the ranchhouse where I was born. But then I remembered that a lot had happened since them days and I jumped up like a scary colt. I recollected so many things that I got dizzy and sat down to figger it out. I was almighty confused. The place I was in looked like a tomb—but what was I doing in a tomb?

  First of all I was Breckenridge Wacker. That was a good start. Let’s see if I could figger the rest out. I was born in the Texas Panhandle and learned to throw a steer before I was old enough to shoot straight. And rope? Say, they was the time I roped a coyote on the dead run, in the dark. But my buddies said I could throw the bull best of all, which they meant I was superior to them.

  In fact, I was so superior to them and the folks down there that I went away seeking my fortune and that’s how come I was here, in the long run. But wait, I axes myself, what come in between? I had to go kind of slow, from leaving home to arriving at this musty old tomb.

  I recollects how I went around the country, doing a rope act in theaters, startling everybody with my skill. So I decided to crash the World’s Fair in New York and taken a train. I didn’t have to pay no fare, on account of who I was but I decided to get off at Passaic, New Jersey, and walk the rest of the way for my health.

  Here’s where he comes in, I says to myself, looking over at the body of the old guy next to me. I could barely make out his face from the moonlight coming through a small, barred window. He had a long bushy beard and looked like dead. Dr. Amos Meade—that was his name! It had come to me.

  Then I recalled how I happened to walk by his place at the outskirts of Passaic and there he was, treed by a mad dog. I reckon he’d be there yet if I hadn’t hauled out my lariat and set that hound down on his haunches so hard it broke his neck.

  Doc Meade come down, shaky and relieved, and invited me in for a handout, which means we dined together. Then he showed me his laboratory in the back room, him being a biologist, and explained he had been trying to inoclerate the dog, which had made it go mad.

  “Say,” he exclaims suddenly, looking me up and down, “you’re a strapping big fellow and healthy-looking—hm-m-m!”

  “Us Wackers all is,” I allowed, “and intelligent.”

  “How would you like,” he says further, squinting his eyes, “to come with me and gain fame and fortune?”

  “I’m going to the Fair already,” I informed him.

  “No, not the Fair,” he says, scowling. “To the fu—somewhere else. I really need a sort of bodyguard. Rex was a good dog, but you’ll be better.”

  WELL, I stayed because he taken a liking to me and I could tolerate him and that’s how come. Now I was pretty well up-to-date in my mind and the rest was easy, unless I was plain loco. A week later Doc Meade made a business trip to New York and came back rubbing his hands like he’d put something over on somebody.

  The next night, when it was plenty dark, we druv away in his car. We came to a old cemetery and he druv past it a ways to a crick, stopping on the high bank. Then I know he’s plumb crazy because after taking a black bag from the car, he released the brakes and let her dump nose down offn the bank. It made a awful splash but they’s no one around to hear anything.

  “Dr. Meade drowned!” he remarks. “That’s what they’ll think. Come!”

  We snuck back to the cemetery and he led the way to a marble tomb—this tomb. He has the keys, so in a jiffy we’re inside and he locks the grating door. I shivered and axes, “Now look here, Doc, what’s this all about? How long we going to be in here and what for anyhow?”

  “Not long,” grins Doc, his face lit by moonlight from the window. He opens his black bag and taken out something. “Only a hundred years!” his grin finishes saying.

  “Ouch!” I exclaimed as he jabs me in the arm. Then he jabs hisself with the hyperdermic and explains some balderdash about “suspenders anermation” which I don’t pay any attention to. I’m only wondering when we get out on account of it was cold and damp in the tomb.

  “We’ll wake up precisely in 2039,” he mumbles on. “I’ve figured out the doses from my guinea pigs. We won’t be disturbed. I had this tomb built, and I have no close relatives to investigate. Breck, if you’re feeling drowsy, fetter lie down.”

  Reckon I was, because a few minutes later I stretched out on the cold concrete floor like it was a bed of thistle. I felt like I wanted to sleep for a hundred years.

  WELL, PARDNER, them was my reminiscences when I woke up, like I explained. So now I wonders how long been here. Being night again, we must have slept through the whole next day, in the tomb! Dawn came along right then, while I’m pondering, and lights up the tomb.

  The most I was ever startled before in my life was when I stepped into a rattlesnake nest. But now I was plumb flabbergasted, which is a expression of my time which means eggzackly what it says. There was Doc Meade lying with spider webs onto him. Dead flies and moths and things hung all over him. A ornery-looking little spider crawls out of his beard and looks around.

  Which reminds me that something’s been crawling over me in places so I bresh it off with a yelp—I don’t like vermin—and discover I’m naked. Stark, shameful naked. My boots, corduroy pants, striped, shirt, hat—the whole works is gone. I looks to where I been lying and see a pile of dust. A pair of rusty things there might be my spurs, I tolerate.

  “Hm-m-m!” I says, very thoughtful-like but not jumping to no conclusions. I reach up my hand to scratch my chin and meet up with half a mattress of hair hanging from it.

  “Hm-m-m!” I says again, doing some powerful straining not to think.

  Doc Meade began breathing slowly, just like that, while I “hm-m-med” a few more times. Pretty soon his eyes open up and stare around like two glass marbles. Then the glaze goes out and he reckernizes me.

  “Hi, Doc!” I greets him, feeling kind of glad he’s awake.

  He bounces up like a rubber ball and spang!—he’s as naked as the day he was born. All his clothes change to dust and shreds, and dribble down to his toes. A lot of it stuck to the spider webs that he pushed his way out of, like coming out of a cocoon.

  “Good morning, Breck!” is the first he says, grinning like a pie-eyed Piute. “Did you have anough sleep—in the last hundred years?”

  “Listen, you old bald-headed goat,” I retorted, not feeling so amiable. “I ain’t believing that! Maybe a month or two, however you done it, but no hundred years.”

  But my toe is pushing in the heap of dust that used to be my boots. Them boots was good leather. I’d seen good leather turn rotten in maybe ten—fifteen years. But when it turns to dust—

  “You’ll soon find out,” promises Doc Meade. He seems as chipper as a rabbit in a lettuce patch. “Let’s go out. No, wait—we’ll have to trim our beards somewhat. You look like a wild mustang with that mane of hair you have.”

  “You don’t look like a movie actor yoreself,” I gives back.

  He picks up one of my rusted spurs. The rowel wa’n’t very sharp so he might jest as well have grabbed my hair with his hands and ripped it out. About a hour later we both looked halfway civilized. Getting the rusty old grate door open almost stumped him till I grabbed the bars with my hands and yanked it right offn its hinges. We went out.

  The sun felt powerful good on our hides. The cemetery looked neglected, with weeds growing all over. Doc led the way and pretty soon we crawled over a wire fence into a newer section of the grounds, with lots of nice fresh tombstones spread around.

  Suddenly Doc says to me, he says, “There you are!” and points at a new grave. The headstone read: “Joshua Rhodes. Born 1988; Died Anno Domini 2039. Requiescat.”

  FOLKS, they ain’t no other feeling like the one I had, looking at that evidenc
e. I’m a calm steady man and I don’t get upset easy. Like they was the time Jed Sharpe blew bird-shot past my head accidental, nipping my ear. I only beat his head agin’ a hollow log, or the other way around, for a while, calm and dispassionatelike, to teach him a lesson. Doc Meade backed away from me, though, not knowing my peaceful nature.

  “Now don’t get . . . uh . . . violent!” he chatters, scaredlike. “It’s too late to do anything about it now, Breck. I tricked you into this, more or less, but you’ll thank me later. What were you in those former times? Nothing but a hick rope twirler in cheap theaters, without a future. Here you’ll be a sensation as a man from the past. Both of us. And think of the thrill, Breck, of being in the world of the future, a hundred years ahead of our times!”

  “I wa’n’t no hick rope twirler,” I growls, not liking them personal remarks. “And I was plumb satisfied with them times, too!”

  “All right, you were an expert rope artist,” returned Doc Meade quickly. “But just think, Breck, what a century of advancement over our times means. This will be a wonder-age! Just as our century was an age of marvels compared to the previous one.”

  He was trying to mollify me, you see, thinking that, because I picked up a dead tree branch, I was mad. Well, I only wanted to whack it against a headstone for a little exercise.

  “O. K., Doc,” I grunts, sticking out my hand. “We’re still pards.” I squoze his hand without thinking, though, till his knees bent. “I’m here, so I’m here. But I reckon I’ll never figger out how we could sleep a hundred years without dying of starvation.”

  “It’s a great scientific achievement, of course,” says Doc proudly. “You see—” He went off into that suspenders anermation business again till I run out of patience and told him to shut up. If any of you folks who is reading this wants to know the details of that part of it, you’ll have to read Doc Meade’s writings. I could never make heads nor tails of it myself. All I know is we fell asleep in 1939 and woke up in 2039, Anny Dominoes.

  “What’s the plans, Doc?” I axes. “I sure didn’t leave my appertite behind. Let’s get away from this boneyard and find us some vittles.”

  “We’ll go to the city—New York—and make ourselves known. If the State highway is still where it used to be, we can get a ride perhaps.”

  WE STRUCK OUT through the woods back of the cemetery toward the highway. Along about a mile the trees thinned and we could see something broad and white ahead. It was the highway, all right. There was some slight changes in it, from what we knowed. It was now ten lanes wide and the cars that druv along it was speeding pretty fast, maybe 150 miles an hour. Doc Meade was kind of gasping. You see, in my time we went a little slower and the highway wa’n’t quite so wide. But I think we had better concrete. Yores looks kind of whitish, I dunno.

  “Look at that!” cries Doc Meade. “A hundred years of advancement in highway travel right before our eyes. These are the superhighways they vaguely planned in 1939. And those cars are tremendously superior to ours. Isn’t it marvelous, Breck?”

  Doc always likes to eggzaggerate, so I didn’t pay any attention. I just stepped to the outer lane and wiggled my thumb. About ten cars whizzed past before I had wiggled twice. Doc was shouting something but it was drowned out by brakes squealing something fierce. Yore 2039 brakes has a lot more ornery squeal than than they did in my time.

  A car stops a hundred feet ahead, while other cars zip around it. It’s a long low thing like a bullet, with clear glass all the way around at the driver’s head. I see the driver is a young woman. Then I suddenly ketches on to what Doc is yelling from the trees: “Breck, you’re naked!”

  I’d plumb forgot that, being so used to it in the past couple hours. You know how a deer can jump?—or maybe deer is extinct today, like wolves and moose. Anyway, I jumped back to the trees, and fast. We hightailed it back deeper in the woods.

  “That’s out, gitting a lift,” I states. “We got to have clothes first. Whyn’t you think of that in the first place?”

  “We’ll go west, toward the farming section,” decides Doc. “Maybe we can get some clothes from a farmer.”

  “What’ll you use for wampum?”

  Doc opened his right fist. He had a twenty-dollar gold piece there. “I had it in my clothes and took it along in case we needed it for a starter. Although I think as soon as we tell people we’re from the twentieth century, they’ll be only too thrilled to give us anything we want.”

  Doc would of liked to take back them words later.

  PRETTY soon we come to the edge of the woods and see a farmhouse ahead about a half mile. The farmer is pumping water at the well. We cross a cornfield and stop at the edge, not daring to step out in the clear in case a woman comes out of the house.

  “Hey, pardner, come here a minute,” I calls to the hombre at the pump. “Please!” I adds, remembering my manners. But he don’t pay any attention.

  “Stand back,” I warns Doc. Then I really lets out a beller, and folks, when I open up thataway, leaves fall offn the trees. Still he don’t turn. “Consarn him, he’s deef!” I says to Doc.

  Doc is staring bug-eyed. “No, not that, Breck,” he says excited. “He’s—”

  Jest then another man steps out of the barn, looking up in the sky, like he thought he’d heard thunder. Then he comes up to us, but kind of slowlike.

  “Whirr ya?” he axes, standing like a idjit ten feet away and surveying our nakftness.

  “We’re from the twentieth century,” Doc Meade blats right out, eagerly. “We’ve been asleep, in suspended animation, for a hundred years. Can you give us some clothing, as we’d like to go to the city and make ourselves known?”

  “Hunt yiz?” repeated the farmer dumbly. “Doan blieve such Ripley. Watcha think I am, a fool? Now gudoff my fom. Stoke ya rockets. Gwan!”

  For a spell I thought he was talking some foreign langwidge, or had forgot to swallow a mouthful of pertatoes. Let me say right here that you people of 2039 has a awful bad accent. It’s sloppy. Whyn’t you get better teachers who can teach yore kids to speak right? They ain’t nothing riles me more than hearing the English langwidge spoke bad.

  “But you don’t understand!” bleats Doc Meade. “We’re from the year 1939. We were in a tomb in that cemetery—” He went on for a while, but the more he’s tryen to explain, the more fishy-eyed the farmer looked. Doc give up finally and played his ace, holding out the twenty-dollar gold piece.

  “It’s hard to believe, I know, my good man,” he sighs. “But at least you’ll sell us some clothes, eh? You can have ten out of this twenty dollars.”

  The farmer taken the gold piece, turned it over, and snorted. Moreover, he laughs. “Gold!” he says scoffingly. He points to some kind of farming machine next the barn, and Doc and me staggers, seeing it’s plated with gold all over.

  The farmer says, still laughing, he says, “Ocean gold’s cheapern dirt, ya know that. Ja gotny money?”

  They wa’n’t any use keeping this up, thinks I at this point, him talking in riddles. “Ever see one of these?” I threatens, stepping forard and planting my fist under his nose. “Oncst I hit a feller so hard it taken him a week to get back, on crutches. Do we get them there duds or air your calkalating to be stubborn?”

  I’m a modest man, but I ain’t ever yet seen anybody look at my fist, and what it’s attached to, without turning pale. This farmer’s no exception, 2039 or no 2039. We follers him into the barn, which is shining with gold fittings all over, and comes out in overalls, blue shirts and halfboots. They wa’n’t no fit, being like a sack on Doc and tight as yore own hide on me, but they covered our nudity.

  Just in time, too, on account of the farmer’s wife and about eight kids arriv to see what all the excitement’s about. She looks a little scared, since we must have looked like Russians, only half shaved. I bows perlitely and introduces Doc and me.

  “Maam,” I says, bashfullike, “they ain’t nothing to worry about. Yore husband and us was jest concluding some important b
usiness.” I sniffs. “Do I smell cooking? Now I was jest thinking—”

  “Have suthing tweat with us,” invites the farmer promptly, still looking at my fist. “Oh, scuze me, while I rheostat Oscar.” He taken a gadget out his pocket with dials and twiddles them. The pump stops squeaking and I see the guy there turn around and walk toward us.

  Only it ain’t a guy, it’s a robot! No wonder he couldn’t hear me before, being made to do things by the gadget control. He stumps up, clanking like a old Ford. For a minute I reckon the farmer was fixing to sick him onto me, so I put a hand on his shoulder, gentlelike. He winced and turned his dials again. Oscar walks past, kind of glaring at me out of his shiny glass eyes. I glares back. He climbs onto a machine with a plow back of it and soon he’s chugging away, out to the fields.

  Doc Meade is clapping his hands like a little child. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “What mechanical advancement! There’s proof, Breck, of this age’s superiority—mechanical men for heavy labor.”

  “I still like 1939 better,” I mutters. “When men was men. Robot-things jest ain’t right, nohow. I’m hungry,” I adds, setting the lead to the house.

  ABOUT A HOUR later I pushed the table away from me. sighing heartily. The rest was all done eating and the farmer folks was staring at me like I was a freak.

  “You gets pretty hungry after a hundred years,” I apolergizes.

  Doc hadn’t et much. He was too excited. “What a wonderful age!” he says for the umpty-umpth time. “Robots to ease mankind’s physical burden! Gold-plating, beautiful and lasting, over all metals. Feel how cool it is in here, Breck? That’s an air conditioner there in the corner. People must be so happy in these times—”

  Jest then the farmer, who had opened some mail, let’s out a groan. “The finance compnee again!” he bleats to his wife. “Notlier payment due on Oscar. Oh, such hard times—”

  “What did you say?” I grins at Doc. “Peers to me I’ve heard them kind of sentiments before. What a wonderful age, eh?”