Ring Around the Sun

by Clifford D. Simak

  Fifteen years ago be had sat and wondered why and there had been no answer.

  And here it was again.

  Was he somehow, in some strange way, _different_? Or was it merely some lack in him, some quirk in his personality that denied him the vital spark, the ready glow of comradeship?

  It had not only been the matter of no one riding with him, no groups gathering at his desk. There had been more than that — certain more elusive things that could not be put on paper. The feeling of loneliness which he had always had — not the occasional twinges that everyone must feel, but a continual sense of «differentness» that had forced him to stand apart from his fellow humans, and they from him. His inability to initiate friendships, his out-size sense of dignity, his reluctance to conform to certain social standards.

  It had been these characteristics, he was certain — although until now he had never thought of it in exactly that way — that had led him to take up residence in this isolated village, that had confined him to a small circle of acquaintances, that had turned him to the solitary trade of writing, pouring out on paper and pent-up emotions and the lonely thoughts that must find some release.

  Out of his differentness he had built his life; perhaps out of that very differentness had sprung what small measure of success he had achieved.

  He had settled into a rut of his own devising, a polished and well-loved rut, and then something had come along to jolt him out of it. It had started with the little girl coming to the door, and after that Eb talking about the Forever car — and there had been Crawford, and Flanders' strange words on the porch and, finally, the notebook remembered after many years and found in an attic box.

  Forever cars and synthetic carbohydrates, Crawford talking about a world with its back against the wall — somehow he knew that all these things were connected, and that he was tied up in some way with all of it.

  It was maddening, to be convinced of this without a scrap of evidence, without a shred of reason, without a single clue as to what his part might be.

  It had always been like that, he realized, even in little things — the frightening feeling that he had but to stretch out his hand to touch certain truth, but never being able to reach quite far enough to grasp it.

  It was absurd to know that a thing was right without knowing why: to know that it had been right to refuse Crawford's offer, when every factor urged its acceptance; to have known from the very start that Horton Flanders could not be found, when there was no reason to suspect he might not be.

  Fifteen years ago he had faced a certain problem and after a time, in his own way, had solved it, without realizing he had solved it, by retreat from the human race. He had retreated until his back was against the wall and there, for a while, he had found peace. Now, in some strange way, his sense of "hunch," this undefined feeling that was almost prescience, seemed to be telling him that the world and the affairs of men had sought him out again. But now he could retreat no further, even if he wanted to. Curiously, he did not seem to want to, and that was just as well, for there was no place to go. He had shrunk back from humanity and he could shrink no farther.

  He sat alone in the attic, listening to the wind that whispered in the eaves.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SOMEONE was hammering on the door down stairs and shouting his name, but it was a moment or two before he realized what was happening.

  He rose from the box and the notebook fell from his fingers and fell rumpled on the floor, face downward, with its open pages caught and crumpled.

  "Who is it?" he asked. "What's the matter down there?" But his voice was no more than a croaking whisper.

  "Jay," the voice shouted. "Jay, are you here?"

  He stumbled down the stairs and into the living room. Eb stood just inside the door.

  "What's the matter, Eb?"

  "Listen, Jay," Eb told him, "you got to get out of here."

  "What for?"

  "They think you did away with Flanders."

  Vickers reached out a hand and caught the back of a chair and hung on to it.

  "I won't even ask you if you did," said Eb. "I'm pretty sure you didn't. That's why I'm giving you a chance."

  "A chance?" asked Vickers. "What are you talking about?"

  "They're down at the tavern now," said Eb, "talking themselves into a lynching party."

  "They?"

  "All your friends," Eb said, bitterly. "Someone got them all stirred up. I don't know who it was. I didn't wait to find out who. I came straight up here."

  "But I liked Flanders. I was the only one who liked him. I was the only friend he had."

  "You haven't any time," Eb told him. "You've got to get away."

  "I can't go anywhere. I haven't got my car."

  "I brought up one of the Forever cars," said Eb. "No one knows I brought it. No one will know you have it."

  "I can't run away. They've got to listen to me. They've got to."

  "You damn fool. This isn't the sheriff with a warrant. This is a mob and they won't listen to you."

  Eb strode across the room and grabbed Vickers roughly by the arm. "Get going, damn you," he said. "I risked my neck to come up here and warn you. After I've done that, you can't throw the chance away."

  Vickers shook his arm free. "All right," he said, "I'll go." "Money?" asked Eb. "I have some."

  "Here's some more." Ed reached into his pocket and held out a thin sheaf of bills.

  Vickers took it and stuck it in his pocket.

  "The car is full of gas," said Eb. "The shift is automatic. It drives like any other car. I left the motor running."

  "I hate to do this, Eb."

  "I know just how you hate to," said Eb, "but if you save this town a killing there's nothing else to do."

  He gave Vickers a shove.

  "Come on," he said. "Get going."

  Vickers trotted down the path and heard Eb pounding along behind him. The car stood at the gate. Eb had left the door wide open.

  "In you go. Cut straight over to the main highway."

  "Thanks, Eb."

  "Get out of here," said Eb.

  Vickers pulled the shift to the drive position and stepped on the gas. The car floated away and swiftly gathered speed. He reached the main highway and swung in toward the west.

  He drove for miles, fleeing down the cone of brightness thrown by the headlights. He drove with a benumbed bewilderment that he should be doing this — that he, Jay Vickers, should be fleeing from a lynching party made up of his neighbors.

  Someone, Eb had said, had got them all stirred up. And who would it have been who would have stirred them up?

  Someone, perhaps, who hated him.

  Even as he thought that, he knew who it was. He felt again the threat and the fear that he had felt when he had sat face to face with Crawford — the then-unrealized threat and fear that had made him refuse the offer to write Crawford's book.

  There's something going on, Horton Flanders had standing with him in front of the gadget shop.

  And there was something going on.

  There were everlasting gadgets being made by non-existent firms. There was an organization of world businessmen, backed into a corner by a foe at whom they could not strike back. There was Horton Flanders talking of some new, strange factors which kept the world from war. There were Pretentionists, hiding from the actuality of today, playing dollhouse with the past.

  And, finally, here was Jay Vickers fleeing to the west.

  By midnight, he knew what he was doing and where he was going.

  He was going where Horton Flanders had said that he should go, doing what he had said he would never do.

  He was going back to his own childhood.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THEY were exactly the way he had expected them to be.

  They sat out in front of the general store, on the bench and the upturned boxes, and turned sly eyes up toward him and they said: "Too bad about your Pa, Jay. He was a damn good man."

&nb
sp; They said: "So you write books, do you. Have to read one of your books someday. Never heard of them."

  They said: "You going out to the old place?"

  "This afternoon," said Vickers.

  "It's changed," they warned. "It's changed a whole lot. There ain't no one living there."

  "No one?"

  "Farming's gone to hell," they told him. "Can't make no money at it. This carbohydrates business. Lots of folk can't keep their places. Banks take them away from them, or they have to sell out cheap. Lots of farms around here being bought up for grazing purposes — just fix the fences and turn some cattle in. Don't even try to farm. Buy feeder stuff out in the west and turn it loose the summer, then fatten it for fall."

  "That's what happened to the old place?"

  They nodded solemnly at him. "That's what happened, son. Feller that bought it after your Pa, he couldn't make the riffle. Your Pa's place ain't the only one. There's been lots of others, too. You remember the old Preston place, don't you?"

  Vickers nodded.

  "Well, it happened to it, too. And that was a good place. One of the best there was."

  "No one living there?"

  "No one. Somebody boarded up the doors and windows. Now, why do you figure anyone would go to all the work of boarding up the place?"

  "I wouldn't know," said Vickers.

  The storekeeper came out and sat down on the steps.

  "Where you hanging out now, Jay?" he asked.

  "In the East," said Vickers.

  "Doing right well, I expect."

  "I'm eating every day."

  "Well," the storekeeper said, "you ain't so bad off, then. Anyone that can eat regular is doing downright well."

  "What kind of car is that you got?" another of them asked.

  "It's a new kind of car," said Vickers. "Just got it the other day. Called the Forever car."

  They said: "Now ain't that a hell of a name to call a car."

  They said: "I imagine it cost you a pile of jack."

  They said: "How many miles to a gallon do you get on it?"

  He got into the car and drove away, out through the dusty, straggling village, with its tired old cars parked along the streets, with the Methodist church standing dowdy on the hill, with old people walking along the Street with canes and dogs asleep in dust wallows under lilac bushes.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE gate to the farm was chained and the chain locked with a heavy padlock, so he parked the car beside the highway and walked the quarter mile down to the buildings.

  The farm road was overgrown with grass in places and knee-high with weeds in others and only here and there could you find the sign of wheel-ruts. The fields lay unplowed, with brush springing up along the fences and weed patches flourishing in the poorer spots, where years of cultivation had sapped the ground of strength.

  From the highway, the buildings had looked about the same as he remembered them, cozily grouped together and strong with the feel of home, but as he drew nearer the signs of neglect became apparent, striking him like a hand across the face. The yard around the house was thick with grass and weeds and the flower beds were all gone and the rosebush at the corner of the porch was dying, a scraggly thing with only one or two roses where in other years it had been heavy with its bloom. The plum thicket in the corner of the fence had run riot, and the fence itself was rickety and in places had disappeared entirely. Some windows in the house were broken, probably by kids heaving idle stones, and the door to the back porch had become unlocked and was swinging in the wind.

  He waded through the sea of grass, walking around the house, astonished at how tenaciously the marks of living still clung about the place. There, on the chimney, running up the outside wall, were the prints of his ten-year-old hands, impressed into wet mortar, and the splintered piece of siding still remained above the basement window, broken by poorly aimed chunks of wood chucked through the open window into the basement to feed the old, wood-eating furnace. At the corner of the house he found the old wash-tub where his mother each spring had planted the nasturtiums, but the tub itself was almost gone, its metal turned to rust, and all that remained was a mound of earth. The mountain ash still stood in the front yard and he walked into its shade and looked up into its canopy of leaves and put out his hand and stroked the smoothness of its trunk, remembering how he had planted it as a boy, proud that they should have a tree like no one else in the neighborhood.

  He did not try the door, for the outside of the house was all he wished to see. There would be too much to see inside the house — the nail holes on the wall where the pictures had been hung and the marks upon the floor where the stove had stood and the stairway with the treads worn smooth by beloved footsteps. If he went in, the house would cry out to him from the silences of its closets and the emptiness of its rooms.

  He walked down to the other buildings and they, he found, for all their silence and their emptiness, were not so memory-haunted as the house. The henhouse was falling in upon itself and the hoghouse was a place for the winter winds to whistle through and he found an old worn-out binder stored in the back of the cavernous machine shed.

  The barn was cool and shadowed, and of all the buildings it seemed the most like home. The stalls were empty, but the hay still hung in cobwebby wisps from the cracks in the floor of the mow and the place still smelled the way he had remembered it, the half-musty, half-acid smell of living, friendly beasts.

  He climbed the incline to the granary and sliding back the wooden latch, went in. Mice ran squeaking across the floor and up the walls and beams. A pile of grain sacks were draped across the partition that held the grain back from the alley way and a broken harness hung from a peg upon the wall and there, at the end of the alley lay something that stopped him in his tracks.

  It was a child's top, battered now and with all its color gone, but once it had been bright and colorful and when you pumped it on the floor it had spun and whistled. He had gotten it for Christmas, he remembered, and it had been a favorite toy.

  He picked it up and held its battered metal with a sudden tenderness and wondered how it had gotten there. It was a part of his past catching up with him — a dead and useless thing to everyone in all the world except the boy to whom it had once belonged.

  It had been a striped top and the colors had run in spiraling streaks when you spun it and there had been a point, he remembered, where each streak ran and disappeared, and another streak came up and it disappeared, and then another.

  You could sit for hours watching the streaks come up and disappear, trying to make out where they went. For they must go somewhere, a boyish mind would figure. They couldn't be there one second and be gone the next. There must be somewhere for them to go.

  _And there had been somewhere for them to go!_

  He remembered now.

  It all came back to him, with the top clutched in his hands and the years peeling off and falling away to take him back to one day in his childhood.

  You could go with the streaks, go where they went, into the land they fled to, if you were very young and could wonder hard enough.

  It was a sort of fairyland, although it seemed more real than a fairyland should be. There was a walk that looked as if it were made of glass and there were birds and flowers and trees and some butterflies and he picked one of the flowers and carried it in his hand as he walked along the path. He had seen a little house hidden in a grove and when he saw it, he became a little frightened and walked back along the path and suddenly he was home, with the top dead on the floor in front of him and the flower clutched in his hand.

  He had gone and told his mother and she had snatched away the flower, as if she might be afraid of it. And well she might have been, for it was winter.

  That evening Pa had questioned him and found out about the top and the next day, he remembered, when he'd looked for the top he couldn't find it anywhere. He had cried off and on for days, secretly of course.

  And here it was again,
an old and battered top, with no hint of the original color, but the same one, he was sure.

  He left the granary, carrying the battered top along with him, away from the unloved insecurity in which it had rested for so long.

  Forgetfulness, he told himself, but it was more than that — a mental block of some sort that had made him forget about the top and the trip to fairyland. Through all the years he had not remembered it, had not even suspected that there was an incident such as this hidden in his mind. But now the top was with him once again and the day was with him, too — the day he'd followed the swirling streaks and walked into fairyland.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HE told himself he would not stop at the Preston house. He would drive by, not too fast, of course, and would have a look at it, but he would not stop. For he was fleeing now, as he had known that he would flee. He had looked upon the empty shell of childhood and had found an artifact of childhood and he would not look once again upon the bare bones of his youth.

  He wouldn't stop at the Preston house. He'd just slow up and look, then speed up the car and put the miles behind him.

  He wouldn't stop, he said.

  But, of course, he did.

  He sat in the car and looked at the house and remembered how it once had been a proud house and had sheltered a family that had been proud as well — too proud to let a member of its family marry a country lad from a farm of sickly corn and yellow clay.

  But the house was proud no longer. The shutters were closed and someone had nailed long planks across them, taping shut the eyes of the once-proud house, and the paint was scaling and peeling from the stately columns that ran across its front and someone had thrown a rock to break one of the fanlights above the carved front door. The fence sagged and the yard had grown to weeds and the brick walk that ran from gate to porch had disappeared beneath the running grass.