The Big Front Yard and Other Stories (6 page)

“There you are,” cried Abbie merrily. “We were wondering when you would wake up.”

“You have some coffee cooking, Abbie?”

“Yes, a whole pot full of it. And I'll cook up something else for you.”

“Just some toast,” said Taine. “I haven't got much time. I have to hunt for Towser.”

“Hiram,” said Henry, “this is Colonel Ryan. National Guard. He has his boys outside.”

“Yes, I saw them through the window.”

“Necessary,” said Henry. “Absolutely necessary. The sheriff couldn't handle it. The people came rushing in and they'd have torn the place apart. So I called the governor.”

“Taine,” the colonel said, “sit down. I want to talk with you.”

“Certainly,” said Taine, taking a chair. “Sorry to be in such a rush, but I lost my dog out there.”

“This business,” said the colonel, smugly, “is vastly more important than any dog could be.”

“Well, colonel, that just goes to show that you don't know Towser. He's the best dog I ever had and I've had a lot of them. Raised him from a pup and he's been a good friend all these years –”

“All right,” the colonel said, “so he is a friend. But still I have to talk with you.”

“You just sit and talk,” Abbie said to Taine. “I'll fix up some cakes and Henry brought over some of that sausage that we get out on the farm.”

The back door opened and Beasly staggered in to the accompaniment of a terrific metallic banging. He was carrying three empty five-gallon gas cans in one hand and two in the other hand and they were bumping and banging together as he moved.

“Say,” yelled Taine, “what is going on here?”

“Now, just take it easy,” Henry said. “You have no idea the problems that we have. We wanted to get a big gas tank moved through here, but we couldn't do it. We tried to rip out the back of the kitchen to get it through, but we couldn't –”

“You did what!”

“We tried to rip out the back of the kitchen,” Henry told him calmly. “You can't get one of those big storage tanks through an ordinary door. But when we tried, we found that the entire house is boarded up inside with the same kind of material that you used down in the basement. You hit it with an axe and it blunts the steel –”

“But, Henry, this is my house and there isn't anyone who has the right to start tearing it apart.”

“Fat chance,” the colonel said. “What I would like to know, Taine, what is that stuff that we couldn't break through?”

“Now you take it easy, Hiram,” cautioned Henry. “We have a big new world waiting for us out there –”

“It isn't waiting for you or anyone,” yelled Taine.

“And we have to explore it and to explore it we need a stockpile of gasoline. So since we can't have a storage tank, we're getting together as many gas cans as possible and then we'll run a hose through here –”

“But, Henry –”

“I wish,” said Henry sternly, “that you'd quit interrupting me and let me have my say. You can't even imagine the logistics that we face. We're bottlenecked by the size of a regulation door. We have to get supplies out there and we have to get transport. Cars and trucks won't be so bad. We can disassemble them and lug them through piecemeal, but a plane will be a problem.”

“You listen to me, Henry. There isn't anyone going to haul a plane through here. This house has been in my family for almost a hundred years and I own it and I have a right to it and you can't come in highhanded and start hauling stuff through it.”

“But,” said Henry plaintively, “we need a plane real bad. You can cover so much more ground when you have a plane.”

Beasly went banging through the kitchen with his cans and out into the living room.

The colonel sighed. “I had hoped, Mr. Taine, that you would understand how the matter stood. To me it seems very plain that it's your patriotic duty to co-operate with us in this. The government, of course, could exercise the right of eminent domain and start condemnation action, but it would rather not do that. I'm speaking unofficially, of course, but I think it's safe to say the government would much prefer to arrive at an amicable agreement.”

“I doubt,” Taine said, bluffing, not knowing anything about it, “that the right of eminent domain would be applicable. As I understand it, it applies to buildings and to roads –”

“This is a road,” the colonel told him flatly. “A road right through your house to another world.”

“First,” Taine declared, “the government would have to show it was in the public interest and that refusal of the owner to relinquish title amounted to an interference in government procedure and –”

“I think,” the colonel said, “that the government can prove it is in the public interest.”

“I think,” Taine said angrily, “I better get a lawyer.”

“If you really mean that,” Henry offered, ever helpful, “and you want to get a good one – and I presume you do – I would be pleased to recommend a firm that I am sure would represent your interests most ably and be, at the same time, fairly reasonable in cost.”

The colonel stood up, seething. “You'll have a lot to answer, Taine. There'll be a lot of things the government will want to know. First of all, they'll want to know just how you engineered this. Are you ready to tell that?”

“No,” said Taine, “I don't believe I am.”

And he thought with some alarm: They think that I'm the one who did it and they'll be down on me like a pack of wolves to find out just how I did it. He had visions of the FBI and the state department and the Pentagon and, even sitting down, he felt shaky in the knees.

The colonel turned around and marched stiffly from the kitchen. He went out the back and slammed the door behind him.

Henry looked at Taine speculatively.

“Do you really mean it?” he demanded. “Do you intend to stand up to them?”

“I'm getting sore,” said Taine. “They can't come in here and take over without even asking me. I don't care what anyone may think, this is my house. I was born here and I've lived here all my life and I like the place and –”

“Sure,” said Henry. “I know just how you feel.”

“I suppose it's childish of me, but I wouldn't mind so much if they showed a willingness to sit down and talk about what they meant to do once they'd taken over. But there seems no disposition to even ask me what I think about it. And I tell you, Henry, this is different than it seems. This is not a place where we can walk in and take over, no matter what Washington may think. There is something out there and we better watch our step –”

“I was thinking,” Henry interrupted, “as I was sitting here, that your attitude is most commendable and deserving of support. It has occurred to me that it would be most unneighborly of me to go on sitting here and leave you in the fight alone. We could hire ourselves a fine array of legal talent and we could fight the case and in the meantime we could form a land and development company and that way we could make sure that this new world of yours is used the way it should be used.

“It stands to reason, Hiram, that I am the one to stand beside you, shoulder to shoulder, in this business since we're already partners in this TV deal.”

“What's this about TV?” shrilled Abbie, slapping a plate of cakes down in front of Taine.

“Now, Abbie,” Henry said patiently, “I have explained to you already that your TV set is back of that partition down in the basement and there isn't any telling when we can get it out.”

“Yes, I know,” said Abbie, bringing a platter of sausages and pouring a cup of coffee.

Beasly came in from the living room and went bumbling out the back.

“After all,” said Henry, pressing his advantage, “I would suppose I had some hand in it. I doubt you could have done much without the computer I sent over.”

And there it was again, thought Taine. Even Henry thought he'd been the one who did it.

“But didn't Beasly tell you?”

“Beasly said a lot, but you know how Beasly is.”

And that was it, of course. To the villagers it would be no more than another Beasly story – another whopper that Beasly had dreamed up. There was no one who believed a word that Beasly said.

Taine picked up the cup and drank his coffee, gaining time to shape an answer and there wasn't any answer. If he told the truth, it would sound far less believable than any lie he'd tell.

“You can tell me, Hiram. After all, we're partners.”

He's playing me for a fool, thought Taine. Henry thinks he can play anyone he wants for a fool and sucker.

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you, Henry.”

“Well,” Henry said, resignedly, getting to his feet, “I guess that part of it can wait.”

Beasly came tramping and banging through the kitchen with another load of cans.

“I'll have to have some gasoline,” said Taine, “if I'm going out for Towser.”

“I'll take care of that right away,” Henry promised smoothly. “I'll send Ernie over with his tank wagon and we can run a hose through here and fill up those cans. And I'll see if I can find someone who'll go along with you.”

“That's not necessary. I can go alone.”

“If we had a radio transmitter. Then you could keep in touch.”

“But we haven't any. And, Henry, I can't wait. Towser's out there somewhere –”

“Sure, I know how much you thought of him. You go out and look for him if you think you have to and I'll get started on this other business. I'll get some lawyers lined up and we'll draw up some sort of corporate papers for our land development –”

“And, Hiram,” Abbie said, “will you do something for me, please?”

“Why, certainly,” said Taine.

“Would you speak to Beasly. It's senseless the way he's acting. There wasn't any call for him to up and leave us. I might have been a little sharp with him, but he's so simple-minded he's infuriating. He ran off and spent half a day helping Towser at digging out that woodchuck and –”

“I'll speak to him,” said Taine.

“Thanks, Hiram. He'll listen to you. You're the only one he'll listen to. And I wish you could have fixed my TV set before all this came about. I'm just lost without it. It leaves a hole in the living room. It matched my other furniture, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Taine.

“Coming, Abbie?” Henry asked, standing at the door.

He lifted a hand in a confidential farewell to Taine. “I'll see you later, Hiram. I'll get it all fixed up.”

I just bet you will, thought Taine.

He went back to the table, after they were gone, and sat down heavily in a chair.

The front door slammed and Beasly came panting in, excited.

“Towser's back!” he yelled. “He's coming back and he's driving in the biggest woodchuck you ever clapped your eyes on.”

Taine leaped to his feet.

“Woodchuck! That's an alien planet. It hasn't any woodchucks.”

“You come and see,” yelled Beasly.

He turned and raced back out again, with Taine following close behind.

It certainly looked considerably like a woodchuck – a sort of man-size woodchuck. More like a woodchuck out of a children's book, perhaps, for it was walking on its hind legs and trying to look dignified even while it kept a weather eye on Towser.

Towser was back a hundred feet or so, keeping a wary distance from the massive chuck. He had the pose of a good sheep-herding dog, walking in a crouch, alert to head off any break that the chuck might make.

The chuck came up close to the house and stopped. Then it did an about-face so that it looked back across the desert and it hunkered down.

It swung its massive head to gaze at Beasly and Taine and in the limpid brown eyes Taine saw more than the eyes of an animal.

Taine walked swiftly out and picked up the dog in his arms and hugged him tight against him. Towser twisted his head around and slapped a sloppy tongue across his master's face.

Taine stood with the dog in his arms and looked at the man-size chuck and felt a great relief and an utter thankfulness.

Everything was all right now, he thought. Towser had come back.

He headed for the house and out into the kitchen.

He put Towser down and got a dish and filled it at the tap. He placed it on the floor and Towser lapped at it thirstily, slopping water all over the linoleum.

“Take it easy, there,” warned Taine. “You don't want to overdo it.”

He hunted in the refrigerator and found some scraps and put them in Towser's dish. Towser wagged his tail with doggish happiness.

“By rights,” said Taine, “I ought to take a rope to you, running off like that.”

Beasly came ambling in.

“That chuck is a friendly cuss,” he announced. “He is waiting for someone.”

“That's nice,” said Taine, paying no attention.

He glanced at the clock.

“It's seven thirty,” he said. “We can catch the news. You want to get it, Beasly?”

“Sure. I know right where to get it. That fellow from New York.”

“That's the one,” said Taine.

He walked into the living room and looked out the window. The man-size chuck had not moved. He was sitting with his back to the house, looking back the way he'd come.

Waiting for someone, Beasly had said, and it looked as if he might be, but probably it was all just in Beasly's head.

And if he were waiting for someone, Taine wondered, who might that someone be?
What
might that someone be? Certainly by now the word had spread out there that there was a door into another world. And how many doors, he wondered, had been opened through the ages?

Henry had said that there was a big new world out there waiting for Earthmen to move in. And that wasn't it at all. It was the other way around.