Far From This Earth

by Chad Oliver

  “That’s—semantics.”

  “Maybe. Do you know what my idea of hell is?”

  “Trying to communicate with me.” She was relaxed enough to attempt a joke. That was progress of a sort.

  “Hell is a place where everyone is the same. Hell is a place where there can be no surprises. Hell is a place where there is just one idea. Sound familiar?”

  “You can’t possibly know what it is like out there.”

  “I’ve seen a few hells. I think you lived your life in one.”

  “That’s crazy. Better hell with a purpose than anarchy. I can’t stay here, Greer.”

  “You don’t have to stay. Nobody has to stay. We’ve kicked a few people out. We’ve never forced anyone in.”

  She was tiring visibly. It had been a long, strange day for her. “I don’t want to argue with you. I hate the way I sound. It’s just—I’m so disappointed. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes.” Greer started to reach for his pipe but rejected the idea. One more shock might do her in. I need some understanding too, he thought. I’m human. I have doubts. It’s no good just preaching to the converted. I need to reach this woman. For both of us.

  “Can you understand this, Ellyn? It’s about freedom. It’s about diversity. It’s about survival.”

  “This? Survival?”

  He tried. “Think of all the Earth as a Colony. It is, you know. We are in space too. We orbit the sun. There are more people here than in all the rest of the solar system put together. This is where it has to happen. We’ve got an enormous opportunity here—an entire planet made to order for us. We’ve licked the energy problem, thanks to you. We’ve moved out the factory complexes, most of them. We can afford to experiment. We can try new things. If we can’t do it here, we can’t do it. Period. Not in a plastic can. Not in a bottle. Not in a hollow asteroid. Not in a hole in the Moon. Not in a starship. Nowhere.”

  She looked at him as though he had just told her that air could not be recycled.

  “The future is out there,” she said vehemently. “Everybody knows that. By leaving Earth we ensure our survival as a species. If we stay here we are putting all of our eggs in the same basket. You see how well I speak the language? There is a universe waiting for us. A new frontier. Earth is where we began. That’s all it is.”

  “Ah, yes. The abandoned cradle. The forgotten incubator. You’ve memorized your lessons well.”

  “They are true.”

  “Almost, Ellyn. Almost. They are half-truths. Is that good enough for you?”

  “Show me the flaw. I challenge you.”

  “It’s simple. You just have to learn to take the blindfold off and see. They are all the same. All the Colonies, all the bases, all the space stations. The same technology, the same organization, the same values. Yes, the same engineers!”

  “That’s what we need.”

  “That’s part of what we need. You spoke of a universe out there waiting for us. Let me tell you something about the universe. You’ve only touched the edge of it. It is vast, Ellyn, huge beyond our comprehension. We don’t know and can’t know what we will find out there—or what will find us. We can’t say what we will need when the chips are down. What kinds of thinking, what sorts of skills? What colors should our dreams be? What people will have the answers when the questions get tough?”

  “Your people, Greer?” There was more weariness than sarcasm in her voice.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But try it this way, Ellyn. You are proud of your command of the local dialect. Fine. You correctly pointed out the danger of putting all of our eggs in the same basket. Push that one a little harder. Think, dammit! What if you put the same egg in a bunch of baskets? What if it turns out to be the wrong egg? What if you need a new egg? Where are you going to get that different egg?”

  She was too exhausted to argue further and night had fallen.

  Greer carried her outside and they sat quietly on two canvas-backed chairs beneath the branches of a gnarled old oak tree. The lung booster hissed softly. A cool evening breeze whispered through the oak leaves. It was an ancient tree and an ancient rite. The wind had been talking to that tree for centuries now.

  Somewhere along the river a small band was playing. It was not close, but Greer could pick out the bite of the cornet, the slur of the trombone, the liquid dartings of the clarinet. There was a beat that did not need to be amplified. The band was romping through what Louis had called some of the good old good ones: “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” “Ole Miss,” “Beale Street Blues.”

  Well, jazz had been born along the banks of a river.

  It was not out of place here.

  Greer knew that Ellyn was stimulated in spite of the strain she felt. There was a crazy kind of hope in him that he recognized as irrational.

  If there could be just one chance in a million—He did not try to push her. This was not the time.

  He gestured toward the blaze of the stars.

  “They are just as close to us here as where you have been,” he said. “Not poetry. Physics.”

  Gently, then, he carried her back into the house.

  She was gone.

  When she had asked, Senator Garcia had sent a whirly for her. She had returned to Austin. Back to a safe series of antiseptic chambers. Back to a controlled universe. At least she had been spared the dubious pleasures of a second ride in Greer’s car.

  He had not really expected her to stay. Returning to Earth had been traumatic enough for her. Coming here was more than she could handle.

  He was not surprised at his sense of loss. That did not make it easier to bear.

  Ellyn, yes. But it was more than that. It was what Ellyn represented. There could not forever be two human races, one bound to the Earth and the other riding mechanical toys through the deeps of space.

  That was not the way to go.

  Greer did the things he had to do, the things he had always done. He mended the political fences, he ironed out the disputes, he kept the lines open to Austin and beyond. He encouraged the personalities that buzzed around him. He planted the cultural seeds that sometimes flowered and sometimes died.

  It took all kinds.

  Some of the zest had vanished from his life, and some of the certainty. He had come very close to that other dream.

  Ellyn, yes. He missed those hurt, skeptical, red-flecked eyes. He missed the challenge of her. It was possible that the hatred that had sustained him had come a shade too easily. It was possible that his kinship with those who had gone went deeper than he knew.

  Ellyn could be useful here. That was important to her.

  “Hell,” he said.

  He understood the problem. It was an old friend. There was an emptiness in his busy world.

  A type of sameness, even.

  They needed each other. He hoped that one day Ellyn might see that.

  One day, she might be ready.

  There was so much to do.

  It was hard to be alone.

  A LAKE OF SUMMER

  There is a lake of summer that is just small enough for a boy of twelve to swim across in an emergency. When the wind blows and the whitecaps foam, it is big enough for the waves to touch strange shores.

  There is a young time when all things are possible. Not all of them are good things. But some of them are better than anything that comes later.

  A lake of summer when you are twelve holds more than sunfish and crawdads and painted turtles and flat green lilypads with sweet white flowers. It contains miracles if you can find them. It holds deep wavering shadows that are far older than the years of a boy’s life.

  It was that kind of summer for Douglas.

  It was a summer when anything might happen.

  It began when they told him about Larson.

  “It was a winter fire,” the people said. They were the ones who always knew everything. They lived near the lake the whole year round. “Wiped out the farm and Old Larson both. Ain’t nothing there now, just charred junk
.” They said it almost with pleasure, as though Larson had been asking for trouble.

  “The fire got it all?” Douglas could not talk above a whisper. The world he knew had shaken under him.

  “Everything,” the people said.

  “Even the cats?”

  “Don’t rightly know.” Who cared about half-wild cats that had lived in a sagging barn?

  “Even the mules?”

  “I think one lived through it,” somebody said. Mules were worth more than cats. They were noticed.

  “You stay away from Larson’s place,” Mom said. “I don’t want you going there, not ever again.”

  That seemed odd. She had never said that to Douglas before. All the kids went to Larson’s farm, always had. If it had burned, if it was all gone, what was the danger?

  Douglas did not lie to his mother about important things. Not unless he absolutely had to. His way was to say nothing at all.

  The very first chance he had, two days after arriving at the lake of summer—its name was Sky Lake, but not to Douglas—he went to Larson’s.

  He had to walk, of course. His feet had not hardened yet from a summer without shoes. He hated walking to Larson’s in his sneakers. It felt all wrong.

  The way was as known to him as the rhythms of his heart. The winding narrow road, more sand than dirt, bending to the left, curving around the lake toward the far side. The woods crowded the road. It was never called a forest. It was always the woods, pure and simple.

  Douglas skirted the prickly brush, alive with wax-red berries. He breathed the dry scent of old pines and the smell of summer sunlight.

  It didn’t take him long. Perhaps an hour. There was nothing on the road. No cars; they were very rare in these parts. No wagons. No men or women or children. It was almost always that way. The rutted road to Larson’s was forever the same, if forever meant six years in the life of a boy.

  Not this time.

  The people with the eager mouths had told the truth, or what they believed to be the truth.

  Something in Douglas knotted and came close to death. It was the first enormous loss he had ever known. It hurt.

  The small unpainted wooden farmhouse where Larson had lived alone for God only knew how many years had vanished. There were some black charred beams and a dark square outline in the dirt. No grass grew there. Two of the corner posts on the weathered barn were still in place, though blackened by fire. The roof had collapsed, the plank-board walls had caved in. The hay bales were long ashes, mostly blown away by the wind. There was no sign of the cats. They had loved that barn. It was close to heaven for a mouser.

  The slat-fenced corral was more or less intact, but the kid-tolerant old mules were gone. There was no tractor, of course. Douglas looked at the rusting harrow and cultivator and plow, and his heart sank. Larson had never been much for spit-and-polish, but his farm equipment—the tools of his life—was always in operating condition.

  The rickety grape arbor seemed okay, but the fruit trees had an oddly wild look to them and weeds were choking Larson’s small fields and gardens.

  Douglas listened for the clucking hen who had needed no rooster to protect her chicks from the cats. The rooster had strutted around as though he were lord of the earth, but that fearless hen ran the barnyard. There was no chicken, hen, or rooster.

  The sun-splashed silence was deafening.

  “Larson!” Douglas called. “Larson!”

  It was never “Mr. Larson,” and never “sir,” although Douglas had been taught his manners. He didn’t even know whether Larson was the old man’s first name or his last. Larson was always just called Larson, though sometimes letters came that spelled his name with an “e” rather than an “o,” and that was the way of it.

  “Larson!”

  There was no answer. Douglas had not expected one.

  “Larson,” he said more quietly.

  Then he turned and started back toward the cabin on the lake. His shoe-heavy steps were slow in the afternoon sun.

  Larson was a part of the magic of Sky Lake. There could be no lake of summer without him.

  All winter Douglas dreamed about that lake. It was in Michigan, not far from the Illinois border, but it was also in another world, a world as remote from Douglas’ hometown as the planet Mars.

  Douglas dreamed of specific things.

  First, always, there was the frogsound. At night, with his window open on the lake side, he could sometimes hear lapping waves when the wind was right. He could always hear the frogs. Their wonderful croak-singing was loud and continuous. It circled the lake with a protective enchantment. The friendly music of the frogs was very important. It prevented the terrible swamp dreams from coming. There was no greater pleasure in Douglas’ life than drifting off to sleep with the soothing frog songs in his ears.

  Then there was running barefoot through the clean white sand to the clear lake waters with the sun turning your still-thin body brown. The slope of the lake was gentle. You could run until the water—cool, but not cold—was up to your waist, and then launch yourself like a torpedo. Douglas had a rowboat. The paint was flaking and there was enough of a leak so that he carried a coffee can for a bailer. No matter. He liked to row the boat backwards so that he could see where he was going. He would surprise the small sunning turtles on the lilypads and rocks near the shore. When they scuttled into the water, Douglas would ship his oars and dive over the stern of the rowboat.

  Magic! Open your eyes underwater. A translucent world, the sunlight filtered by water, stalks undulating in the currents, fish sometimes, big old sunfish twisting out of your way, their orange and blue bodies glistening. And the turtles! How frantically they swam, diving down, always down, but they were not fast. Douglas could catch them easily unless he lost sight of them in the murky depths. Catch them from behind and they can’t bite you….

  He didn’t hurt the turtles, just kept them for a time and fed them bits of fish and dead flies, then let them go. Once, he had taken a washtub filled with turtles back to his house in Illinois. Mom hadn’t been very happy, and Dad had made him keep the washtub in the basement. Douglas had been very careful with his little turtles; the largest was no bigger than his hand. He cleaned the water every day and gave them plenty of food. Nobody told him that turtles had to have sunlight. All of them died. They stank. He buried the peeling shells and the dead eyes and all the oozing stuff in his backyard. He did not cry, but he was sorry.

  There was a hammock on the screened porch of the cabin. The porch faced Sky Lake, as did the porches of all the other cabins. The lake of summer was the focal point of this universe. Besides, that was where the breeze came from.

  For a dime, Douglas could get a dripping cold RC Cola and a Milky Way from the general store. He could climb into the hammock with one of his old G-8 and His Battle Aces pulps carried in the car with him from Illinois. It did not matter to him how many times he had read the stories. He loved the way the magazines smelled. Think of it! A sip of RC, a chewy chunk off the Milky Way bar to mix it with, the lazy murmur of a summer afternoon, and there you were with G-8 and Nippy Weston (“the terrier ace”), Bull Martin (“former All-American halfback”), and the faithful manservant, Battle. (What was a manservant, anyway?) You were in the cozy apartment in the end hangar at Le Bourget with the Spads roaring through the gray skies of France and the Germans cooking up some new devilment to obliterate the Allies in the trenches….

  Larson was in those dreams, as constant and eternal as the frogsounds and G-8 and the ever-unwary turtles.

  There he was. A tall man, gangly, an old beaked cap covering his thin, whitening hair. Patched bib overalls and clodhopper shoes that were as hard as rocks. Larson had only one eye, which was a pale blue, and his lined and leathery face was crooked and askew in a pleasant sort of way. Larson was still strong enough to jerk a mule to its knees. He was the kind of man who can fix anything in his world with baling wire—a broken harness, a wood-burning cookstove, a wagon with a dragging spoked whee
l.

  He would have been called Popeye, whom he somewhat resembled, but Larson did not like the name. Generally, people avoided Larson, except for the kids, and nobody wanted to offend him. Larson was not a weak man, and when he got annoyed he had been known to teach some hard lessons with his anchor-rope fists. He would certainly have been called Swede, except that the Swedish population in the Sky Lake area was so thick that if you hollered “Swede!” half the county converged on your door.

  So Larson he was.

  Remember the pies? Larson had no children of his own; at any rate, he never spoke of them. Douglas had no idea of whether he had ever been married or not. He thought not. Larson was born to be an eccentric old bachelor. He loved kids as only a childless man can, had a way with them, and somehow when you walked up to Larson’s farm there was often a fresh-from-the-oven pie waiting. Apple sometimes, but usually one of those sweet black cherry pies with just a touch of cinnamon on the flaky crust.

  Grown-ups didn’t quite know what to make of Larson. He was different, that was for sure. He was a loner, and therefore he was suspect. With kids, it was simple. You went up to see Larson because he treated you like you counted for something, and you had fun. He would let you go in his old barn and lie on the hay bales. His cats would spit at an adult, but with Douglas they came and curled up and purred in the hay. You were always welcome, always free to come and go as you pleased. When Larson was busy with his chores, he might ignore you except for a wink from that one good eye. When he had the time, he would show you the marvels of a farm. Douglas came from a small town, but he was no farmer’s son. Larson could tell you stories about animals and plants that became a part of you forever. And, sometimes, there was the pie.

  Now, sitting restlessly in his hard wooden chair in the cabin while Mom listened to the Kraft Music Hall on the battery-powered Philco, Douglas felt that something precious had been stolen from him. Bing Crosby was nothing to him, just background noise, and Bob Burns and his buzz-burp bazooka failed to amuse him.