"You don't act much like yourself, Gander Eye," Slowly was telling him.
"I don't know who else I'm acting like," he replied. "I'll be seeing you round."
He watched her turn and walk with dignity across the old schoolyard. On he trudged to his own house. Entering, he went to the kitchen and started to open the can of salmon for his supper. Never before had he felt lonely in his home, not as far back as he could remember, but that was how he felt now.
He opened his pocketknife and pried the cork out of a half-empty bottle of wine. Crispin had given him that wine; Gander Eye had enjoyed it. Turning up the bottle, he took a big drink. Then he tightened his lips as though the wine had gone sour. He sat down on the kitchen chair, found a slab of corn bread, and dug a fork into the salmon. He ate, without any particular appetite. His eyes wandered to the rear window and out across his back yard.
Suddenly the fork fell from his hand. Out there, on the other side of Bull Creek, a murky shadow stirred among laurels.
Gander Eye was out of his chair and all the way to the back door without thinking. He stopped only when his hand clutched the knob, stopped to realize that if he went out there, the dark shape would only fade away into the woods, out of his sight and reach.
Carefully he stole back to a point from which he could peer through the window. He crouched low to the floor, a hand on it, and gazed from a lower corner of the bottom pane. It was still there, the dark thing. It had come to scout his home. It knew he lived there; it must be certain that he was someone to scout, to speculate on, to learn about. Probably it had been there already, there in those laurels, when he had come home; perhaps it had been waiting to see him come in.
He stooped motionless, probing for that black silhouette tucked among the rich greenery. It moved again, and he had a sense that it flashed with that upper lump of a head. Another flash, in the bright evening sunlight. Did it wear glasses of some kind, perhaps something to help it see more clearly, closely, toward the house?
Another long moment of intense study, then he drew cautiously away from the window, left the kitchen, and went to his front door and out. He looked up and down Main Street. Nobody moved or showed in his sight. He flung himself prone to earth and crept around to the side of the house, among a scramble of weeds there. He moved as he had moved when a boy, first beginning to hunt, trying to sneak up on a rabbit so that it wouldn't catch sight of him until he was within shooting distance of it. He reached the rear corner and pulled stems of coarse grass aside with delicate care so that he could see through them to the creek and the laurels.
The stranger-thing still hung where it watched from among the leafy branches. If he had thought to bring a rifle, he could have fired, could have hit it. He felt glad that he did not have any weapon and the temptation it would beget within him. He studied the ground so close in front of his face, slid away from the clump of grass and took advantage of some juniper scrub to crawl into the back yard and across it.
The Beyonders, Struve had called them, Gander Eye had heard Ballinger call them. Over there across Bull Creek, that must be a Beyonder spying. Gander Eye crept among the junipers to where he could see the next stretch. Only a straggle of weeds, but if he could go forward among them without giving himself away, he would come to a big lump of rock at the creek's edge, a lump long ago dropped there in a flood to jam at the side next to his yard. It was the right size to be up yonder above the Kimber road across Dogged Mountain, where a destroying avalanche poised itself ready to be set free. Gander Eye lay as flat as a snake and dragged himself with his elbows, keeping his head down among the weeds, pointing for where he had seen the rock.
It took minutes to accomplish it, three or four minutes. If he stirred the low cover, it would look like a touch of breeze and no more. He wanted to get close in, damned close in, within short yards of the creature that had come here to spy on him. He congratulated himself on how well, how silently and skillfully he moved. Up ahead, the piece of rock became visible. It stood high above him as he lay; it would hide him until he decided to do whatever he was going to do. Gratefully he drew himself close to it, lifted himself behind it, and squatted on his heels.
He timed himself by drawing three long breaths and then he stood up, a pulse beating in the roof of his mouth.
Over across there, no more than the width of his back yard away, it stood all among the laurels. It was man-sized but not man-shaped, not really. Maybe more like a big lizard risen up on its tail. Its body looked like scorched metal, was studded with what might be rivets, and the head-lump had something bright and glossy in front. Where it ought to have shoulders lifted two black lengths of something like chunks of thick cable, and at the free ends of them stirred spidery tangles like shoelaces. He'd been right, it had no legs or feet. It tapered down to the ground and seemed to balance there. Wisps of steam came away from it.
It couldn't be a man dressed up to play jokes; no man could have quite fitted into that rig. It was more like somebody's half-done effort to make a manshape out of iron or black tin or something, an effort begun and then given up.
It stood there, and Gander Eye stood there.
"So you came here to see me," called out Gander Eye. "All right, here I am."
The creature seemed to stir and quiver, the way a fence post looks to be dancing on a hot, hot day. Steam curled around it.
"Are you one of what they call the Beyonders?" Gander Eye asked of it.
One of the cablelike limbs made a motion toward him, and Gander Eye hopped quickly to one side. It was throwing something across Bull Creek. Then it slid backwards, seemed to glide in retreat, deep out of sight into the heart of the laurel thicket.
Gander Eye looked at what it had thrown. The object lay there, seven or eight feet away from where he stood. Hurriedly he ducked back behind the big knob of rock. If that was a bomb . . .
But there was no explosion, no shaking of the earth. Gander Eye waited under his cover, counting. He counted slowly up to twenty. Then he stepped in to view again.
It was as though he had seen that object before, the one tossed at him. It was an oblong, the size of a cake of soap again, tawny yellow and bright in a ray of evening sun. Gold as before. Another offer of gold, to buy whatever they wanted from him.
He took two strides and poised a foot to kick it into the creek. It would splash in and be gone. But he did not kick.
"Nothing doing, friend," he called into the thicket across from him. "Nothin' I got's for sale to you. Leave it lay there. Let somebody else pick it up. Why don't all you Beyonders just go back beyond one time and stay?"
Not a sound. No flicker of anything to see. But he felt sure that it was waiting in there, that it had watched his act of disdain and refusal. He tightened his muscles in a moment of impulse to go sloshing and charging across the creek, to get to closer quarters. He put down that impulse, too.
"I'm a-going back to my house now," he announced. "I'm a-turning to go. You got anything with you to shoot me in the back with?"
He swivelled on his heel and walked through his yard, making himself move deliberately, making himself hold his shoulders straight without tightening them, without making himself look as if he was about to flinch. He pulled the kitchen door open and went in. Another look through the window. No motion in the laurels. Stooping, he picked up the fork he had dropped. He dug out more salmon from the can and ate it. It tasted good.
He kept watching through the window to see if his visitor would emerge, trying to recover the gold ingot he had so gruffly disdained to pick up. But there was no sign anywhere on either side of Bull Creek. Might that creature be just a trifle afraid of Gander Eye? More likely it was only carrying out orders from somebody, or something. It might not even have understood any of the things Gander Eye had shouted at it.
He sat and wondered if this was how old Robinson Crusoe felt when he saw that footprint on his sandy shore. What had Crusoe done then? As Gander Eye remembered, Crusoe had made ready to defend himself against anyt
hing that came attacking. The best thing to do was follow Crusoe's example, follow it right now.
He washed the fork and threw the salmon can in his trash bucket. Then he went to the rack of guns in his front room. He fed a clip of cartridges into the Springfield, loaded the little twenty-two, and slid shells, one by one, into the tubular magazine of the automatic shotgun. Finally he took his rifle for hunting deer, the one with the telescopic sight, of which he was so proud.
He had bought it years ago from a gun collector in Asheville and had had Bo Fletcher make a special stock for it. It was a Mauser 98. That meant it was the model of 1898 rifle the German army had carried through two wars, wars those armies had lost. You had to buy special ammunition for it. He drew back the bolt, opened a box of the special cartridges, and took one out. It had a lean copper-coated bullet, almost like a dagger, set in the hull. He pushed it down against the floor plate until it went into the magazine, fed another in, another and another and another until the magazine was full and one was in the chamber. He pushed the floor plate down with his thumb, slid the bolt back into place, and flicked on the safety catch.
He racked the Mauser up with the other rifles and the shotgun. Then he took his pistol from its drawer and put it in his hip pocket. He'd better not be going out any more without some sort of weapon.
For, he told himself, he'd been left all alone in this matter. No, not all alone. Others seemed to know a thing or two. He just couldn't talk to others.
On his table he found a pad of yellow paper and a pencil. Very carefully he began to write down a series of things to think about:
Mayor B. know Stroove knows about what he calls Beyonders
Stroove is up to somethin or other he trains with Beyonders says they will hep him
Jim Crispin knows about em but he says he doesnt
Gander Eye crossed that line out:
Jim Crispin wouldnt say one way the other if he knows em when 1 asked him but Stroove said he knowed Jim Are they friends
What does Slowly know She was adopted Kimber She likely knows things I dont know
Cant talk to nobody here bout all this they think Im foolin
What are the Beyonders sure enough up to What is Jim and Stroove a doin here
He finished and sat with the pencil in his hand. Then he carefully wrote the date beneath the series of sentences and signed his name. He did not know why he did that, but somehow it made his written words seem official.
It was getting dark outside. They would be starting the music up at Longcohr's store. He wouldn't be there picking banjo, but after a time he went outside. He stood still and looked, but nothing stirred in the gloom. He locked his door, for the first time in many months, and headed up Main Street.
It was a clear, starry sky. The moon, wasted down since the night when the Kimbers had baptized, hovered like a gaunt, curved slip of light. Stars sprawled everywhere, in patterns. Gander Eye made out the Dipper, the W of Cassiopeia's Chair, other constellations. He thought of Doc and Crispin talking about space travel; he remembered stories he had read, moving pictures he had seen, about things invading from other worlds, other stars. Like Doc, he had always been skeptical of such tales. Up until now.
Nobody was walking on Main Street as he headed up. Folks must be already gathered up yonder at the store. As he approached, he saw lights through the big front windows and heard the music flowing out like a bright flood of sound. They were playing "Cabin in the Pine," and a banjo was in there. Who? If he, Gander Eye Gentry, were to walk in all of a sudden, whatever banjo-picker was trying to take his place would just stop between picks and hold the banjo out to him. But he wasn't going to walk in. He'd told Mayor Ballinger that he had business to attend to tonight. Let Mayor Ballinger wonder what that business might be.
He trod along the far edge of the pavement and stopped next to Duffy's gas pumps. From there he could see into the store as well as hear the music. Sure enough, they'd pulled back all the counters and were dancing. He moved to where he could make out the musicians. Doc with his fiddle, Slowly with her guitar. Yes, and there was the banjo man.
He sat between Doc and Slowly, squat and dark. It was Struve. He was picking all right on the banjo, too, by God. Nowhere near as well as Gander Eye could pick, but mighty well at that, mighty well. Gander Eye strained his gaze to make out the banjo. He knew it, an old one that Bo Fletcher had found somewhere and fitted with a new neck. It had a good tone.
Gander Eye wasn't anywhere in that store making music, but nobody seemed to be missing him. They clapped loudly for the music when it was through, and Struve got up from his chair and smiled and bowed, like somebody in a show. His teeth shone in the light. He said something to Doc, who handed over his fiddle. Standing erect beside his chair, Struve set the fiddle to his chin, laid the bow across, and began playing all by himself.
The dancers had come back on the floor, but they stopped and listened. Gander Eye saw Duffy and Peggy holding hands close together, scarcely breathing. The fiddle's notes slid out into the night. The piece Struve played was the Kimber song about "Ring Them Chimin' Bells." He made it sob and sigh. Struve might not be able to pick the banjo as well as Gander Eye, but he could play that fiddle even better than Doc.
Gander Eye stood motionless to listen. All of them in the store were motionless as they listened to the last breathing note. Struve lifted his bow clear of the fiddle. Then, before anybody could start clapping, he quickly played the first bars of "The Devil's Dream," grinning and grinning above the swift-flying bow. He stopped again, handed the fiddle back to Doc, snatched up the banjo, and started picking "The Devil's Dream."
Slowly picked up the tune on her guitar and joined in. Doc, too, played. Everybody laughed happily and came back on the floor to form sets. Bo Fletcher moved out and started calling the figures.
Gander Eye shrugged, all to himself in the night, as though he admitted defeat. He turned slowly around and headed back toward his home. His feet fell heavier, wearier, than when he had come up Main Street.
He would be everlastingly dogged if anybody around Sky Notch would be sorry if Gander Eye Gentry was dead. Nobody would much miss him. They'd still have Struve, moved into town with them to pick banjo and make everybody happy, as he'd promised. He was moving into Sky Notch, just the way Crispin had moved in. If Gander Eye didn't like him, nobody else seemed to mind having him be there, with his slaty-shaved face and his big, hay-bale body. Coming to live in Sky Notch? Hell's gates of brass, Struve was already in Sky Notch. And those Beyonder things, they would be coming along, too. Probably folks would decide to welcome them, the way they'd welcomed Struve.
But Gander Eye didn't like Struve a bit, and he didn't like the Beyonders. He wondered if he was out of step, if he mightn't do well to become a wanderer on the face of the earth.
Thinking such things, he walked past the schoolyard where Slowly's little shed stood dark and alone. On he went to the empty end of Main Street and into his own front yard.
They were in that front yard, three of them in what little light the moon shed.
Three of them, drawn together to make a shadow except for the blink of light on the front of their headpieces. Three dark outlines with lumpy heads and no legs and steam around them.
"God damn you all to hell!" roared Gander Eye. "When did I tell you to come back visit me? What are you, a bunch of hants?"
He fairly charged into his yard, tugging the pistol from his pocket. The three fell swiftly away from him, gliding backward in three directions like cautious reptiles. They drew themselves out of sight as he came to his door. He snatched out his key and turned it in the lock.
"Whatever you think you're up to, I don't like it no way," he said into the night. "Whatever it is you want out of me, you ain't about to get it. There's something all wrong about this here business, and you know what it is and you know I know that. Now, God damn it, you get off my place and stay off it."
In he went and locked the door behind him. The house was as still as a gra
ve. Without turning on a light, he went straight to where he knew waited a fruit jar of blockade whiskey. He poured a glass full, almost to the brim, and drank it in two big gulps. The fierce, strong liquor didn't seem even to catch hold of him.
Tomorrow morning, he'd be in Crispin's cabin with his shirt off, to pose for that baptizing picture. Also to ask Crispin what was what.
And why.
XII
When Gander Eye woke, he wondered if he had been asleep at all. He slid his sinewy, naked body out of his cot and crouched down at a window to look out. Nothing strange in his front yard. He looked from the side windows and went into the kitchen to peer across the back yard toward Bull Creek. Nothing anywhere.
He washed but did not shave. He put on a pot of water to heat for coffee while he got into pants, socks, boots, and shirts. Pouring a cupful, he stepped out at his front door.
The scorches were there, plain to see on coarse grass beside his path on a sprawling clump of bushy juniper, at the edge of the flat-hewn top of the length of oak that served as door lock. Once again he bent close to examine those traces.
No, they weren't burns, not chars of black, not cinders. These were toasty brown clues of heat. That had been enough heat to parch and sear but not to send things afire. If it had been just a little hotter, hot enough to kindle fire, perhaps his house would have burned down around him last night.
"They can all go back to hell where they belong," he said aloud, and then wondered if he might be going crazy, talking with nobody in sight to listen.
Sipping coffee, he paced around the house, studying the yard. It was harder to find any clue in the side stretch, but he traced a thin streak of brown dryness in the grass. That would be where one of them had gone, moving along on the tip of his tail, the way they said a seahorse moved on his tail under water. In the back yard were stronger traces. They ran all the way down to the creek. He followed them there, and stood looking.
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