Contraption

by Clifford D. Simak

He found the contraption in a blackberry patch when he was hunting cows. Darkness was sifting down through the tall stand of poplar trees and he couldn’t make it out too well and he couldn’t spend much time looking at it because Uncle Eb had been plenty sore about his missing the two heifers and if it took too long to find them Uncle Eb more than likely would take the strap to him again and he’d had about all he could stand for one day. Already he’d had to go without his supper because he’d forgotten to go down to the spring for a bucket of cold water. And Aunt Em had been after him all day because he was so no-good at weeding the garden.

“I never saw such a trifling young’un in all my life,” she’d shrill at him and then she’d go on to say that she’d think he’d have some gratitude for the way she and Uncle Eb had taken him in and saved him from the orphanage, but no, he never felt no gratitude at all, but caused all the trouble that he could and was lazy to boot and she declared to goodness she didn’t know what would become of him.

He found the two heifers down in the corner of the pasture by the grove of walnut trees and drove them home, plodding along behind them, thinking once again about running away, but knowing that he wouldn’t, because he had no place to go. Although, he told himself, most any place would be better than staying here with Aunt Em and Uncle Eb, who really were not his uncle and aunt at all, but just a couple of people who had took him in.

Uncle Eb was just finishing milking when he came into the barn, driving the two heifers before him, and Uncle Eb still was plenty sore about the way he’d missed them when he’d brought in the other cows.

“Here,” said Uncle Eb, “you’ve fixed it so I had to milk my share and yours, too, and all because you didn’t count the cows, the way I always tell you to so you’ll be sure you got them all. Just to teach you, you can finish up by milking them there heifers.”

So Johnny got his three-legged milk stool and a pail and he milked the heifers, and heifers are hard things to milk, and skittish, too, and the red one kicked and knocked Johnny into the gutter, spilling the milk he had in the pail.

Uncle Eb, seeing this, took the strap down from behind the door and let Johnny have a few to teach him to be more careful and that milk represented money and then made him finish with his milking.

They went up to the house after that, Uncle Eb grumbling all the way about kids being more trouble than they’re worth, and Aunt Em met them at the door to tell Johnny to be sure he washed his feet good before he went to bed because she didn’t want him getting her nice clean sheets all dirty.

“Aunt Em,” he said, “I’m awful hungry.”

“Not a bite,” she said, grim-lipped in the lamplight of the kitchen. “Maybe if you get a little hungry you won’t go forgetting all the time.”

“Just a slice of bread,” said Johnny. “Without no butter or nothing. Just a slice of bread.”

“Young man,” said Uncle Eb, “you heard your aunt. Get them feet washed and up to bed.”

“And see you wash them good,” said Aunt Em.

So he washed his feet and went to bed, and, lying there, he remembered what he had seen in the blackberry patch and remembered, too, that he hadn’t said a word about it because he hadn’t had a chance to, what with Uncle Eb and Aunt Em taking on at him all the blessed time.

And he decided right then and there he wouldn’t tell them what he’d found, for if he did they’d take it away from him the way they always did everything he had. And if they didn’t take it away from him, they’d spoil it so there’d be no fun or satisfaction in it.

The only thing he had that was really his was the old pocket knife with the point broken off the little blade. There was nothing in the world he’d rather have than another knife to replace the one he had, but he knew better than to ask for one. Once he had, and Uncle Eb and Aunt Em had carried on for days, saying what an ungrateful, grasping thing he was and here they’d gone and taken him in off the street and he still wasn’t satisfied but wanted them to spend good money for a pocket knife. Johnny worried a good deal about them saying he’d been taken in off the street, because as far as he knew he’d never been on any street.

Lying there, in his bed, looking out the window at the stars, he got to wondering what it was he’d seen in the blackberry patch and he couldn’t remember it very well because he hadn’t seen it too well and there’d been no time to stop and look. But there were some funny things about it and the more he thought about it the more he wanted to have a good look at it.

Tomorrow, he thought, I’ll have a good look at it. Soon as I get a chance, tomorrow. Then he realized there’d be no chance tomorrow, for Aunt Em would have him out, right after morning chores, to weed the garden and she’d keep an eye on him and there’d be no chance to slip away.

He lay in bed and thought about it some more and it became as clear as day that if he wanted a look at it he’d have to go tonight.

He could tell by their snoring that Uncle Eb and Aunt Em were asleep, so he got out of bed and slipped into his shirt and britches and sneaked down the stairs, being careful to miss the squeaky boards. In the kitchen he climbed up on a chair to reach the box of matches atop the warming oven of the old wood-burning stove. He took a fistful of matches, then reconsidered and put back all but half a dozen because he was afraid Aunt Em would notice if he took too many.

Outside, the grass was wet and cold with dew, and he rolled up his britches so the cuffs wouldn’t get all soaked and set off across the pasture.

Going through the woods there were some spooky places, but he wasn’t scared too badly, although no one could go through the woods at night without being scared a little.

Finally he got to the blackberry patch and stood there wondering how he could get through the patch in the dark without ripping his clothes and getting his bare feet full of thorns. And, standing there, he wondered if what he’d seen was still there and all at once he knew it was, for he felt a friendliness come from it, as if it might be telling him that it still was there and not to be afraid.

He was just a little unnerved, for he was not used to friendliness. The only friend he had was Benny Smith, who was about his age, and he only saw Benny during school and then not all the time, for Benny was sick a lot and had to stay home for days on end, and since Benny lived way over on the other side of the school district he never saw him during vacation time at all.

By now his eyes were getting a little used to the darkness of the blackberry patch and he thought that he could see the darker outline of the thing that lay in there and he tried to understand how it could feel friendly, for he was pretty sure that it was just a thing, like a wagon or a silo-filler, and nothing alive at all. If he’d thought that it was alive, he’d have been really scared.

The thing kept right on feeling friendly toward him.

So he put out his hands and tried to push the bushes apart so he could squeeze in and see what it was. If he could get close to it, he thought, he could strike the matches in his pocket and get a better look at it.

“Stop,” said the friendliness, and at the word he stopped, although he wasn’t sure at all that he had heard the word.

“Don’t look too closely at us,” said the friendliness, and Johnny was just a little flustered at that, for he hadn’t been looking at anything at all-not too closely, that is.

“All right,” he said. “I won’t look at you.” And he wondered if it was some sort of a game, like hide-and-seek that he played at school.

“After we get to be good friends,” said the thing to Johnny, “we can look at one another and it won’t matter then, for we’ll know what we are like inside and not pay attention to how we look outside.”

And Johnny, standing there, thought how they must look awful, not to want him to see them, and the thing said to him, “We would look awful to you. You look awful to us.”

“Maybe, then,” said Johnny, “it’s a good thing I can’t see in the dark.”

“You can’t see in the dark?” it asked, and Johnny said he couldn’t and there was silence for a while, although Johnny could hear it puzzling over how come he couldn’t see when it was dark.

Then it asked if he could do something else and he couldn’t even understand what it tried to say and finally it seemed to figure out that he couldn’t do whatever it had asked about.

“You are afraid,” said the thing. “There is no need to fear us.”

And Johnny explained that he wasn’t afraid of them, whatever they might be, because they were friendly, but that he was afraid of what might happen if Uncle Eb and Aunt Em should find he had sneaked out. So they asked him a lot about Uncle Eb and Aunt Em, and he tried to explain, but they didn’t seem to understand but seemed to think he was talking about government. He tried to explain how it really was, but he was pretty sure they didn’t understand at all.

Finally, being polite about it so he wouldn’t hurt their feelings, he said he had to leave, and since he’d stayed much longer than he’d planned, he ran all the way home.

He got into the house and up to bed all right and everything was fine, but the next morning Aunt Em found the matches in his pocket and gave him a lecture about the danger of burning down the barn. To reinforce the lecture she used a switch on his legs, and, try as hard as he could to be a man about it, she laid it on so hard that he jumped up and down and screamed.

He worked through the day weeding the garden and just before dark went to get the cows.

He didn’t have to go out of his way to go past the blackberry patch, for the cows were in that direction, but he knew well enough that if they hadn’t been, he’d have gone out of his way, for he’d been remembering all day the friendliness he’d found there.

It was still daylight this time, just shading into night, and he could see that the thing, whatever it might be, was not alive, but simply a hunk of metal, like two sauce dishes stuck together, with a rim running around its middle just like there’d be a rim if you stuck two dishes together. It looked like old metal that had been laying around for a long time and you could see where it was pitted like a piece of machinery will get when it stands out in the weather.

It had crushed a path for quite a ways through the blackberry thicket and had plowed up the ground for twenty feet or so, and, sighting back along the way it had come, Johnny could see where it had hit and smashed the top of a tall poplar.

It spoke to him, without words, the way it had the night before, with friendliness and fellowship, although Johnny wouldn’t know that last word, never having run across it in his schoolbooks.

It said, “You may look at us a little now. Look at us quick and then away. Don’t look at us steadily. Just a quick look and then away. That way you get used to us. A little at a time.”

“Where are you?” Johnny asked.

“Right here,” they said.

“Inside of there?” asked Johnny.

“Inside of here,” they said.

“I can’t see you, then,” said Johnny. “I can’t see through metal.” “He can’t see through metal,” said one of them.

“He can’t see when the star is gone,” said the other. “He can’t see us, then,” they said, the both of them. “You might come out,” said Johnny.

“We can’t come out,” they said. “We’d die if we came out.” “I can’t ever see you, then.”

“You can’t ever see us, Johnny.”

And he stood there, feeling terribly lonely because he could never see these friends of his.

“We don’t understand who you are,” they said. “Tell us who you are.

And because they were so kind and friendly, he told them who he was and how he was an orphan and had been taken in by his Uncle Eb and Aunt Em, who really weren’t his aunt and uncle. He didn’t tell them how Uncle Eb and Aunt Em treated him, whipping him and scolding him and sending him to bed without his supper, but this, too, as well as the things he told them, was there for them to sense and now there was more than friendliness, more than fellowship. Now there was compassion and something that was their equivalent of mother love.

“He’s just a little one,” they said, talking to one another.

They reached out to him and seemed to take him in their arms and hold him tight against them and Johnny went down on his knees without knowing it and held out his arms to the things that lay there among the broken bushes and cried out to them, as if there was something there that he might grasp and hold-some comfort that he had always missed and longed for and now finally had found. His heart cried out the thing that lie could not say, the pleading that would not pass his lips, and they answered him.

“No, we’ll not leave you, Johnny. We can’t leave you, Johnny.”

“You promise?” Johnny asked.

Their voices were a little grim. “We do not need to promise, Johnny. Our machine is broken and we cannot fix it. One of us is dying and the other soon will die.”

Johnny knelt there, with the words sinking into him, with the realization sinking into him, and it seemed more than he could bear that, having found two friends, they were about to die.

“Johnny,” they said to him.

“Yes,” said Johnny, trying not to cry.

“You will trade with us?”

“Trade?”

“A way of friendship with us. You give us something and we give you something.”

“But,” said Johnny. “But I haven’t…

Then he knew he had. He had the pocket knife. It wasn’t much, with its broken blade, but it was all he had.

“That is fine,” they said. “That is exactly right. Lay it on the ground, close to the machine.”

He took the knife out of his pocket and laid it against the machine and even as he watched something happened, but it happened so fast he couldn’t see how it worked, but, anyhow, the knife was gone and there was something in its place.

“Thank you, Johnny,” they said. “It was nice of you to trade with us.”

He reached out his hand and took the thing they’d traded him, and even in the darkness it flashed with hidden fire. He turned it in the paten of his hand and saw that it was some sort of jewel, many faceted, and that the glow came from inside of it and that it burned with many different colors.

It wasn’t until he saw how much light came from it that he realized how long he’d stayed and how dark it was and when he saw that he jumped to his feet and ran, without waiting to say goodbye.

It was too dark now to look for the cows and he hoped they had started home alone and that he could catch up with them and bring them in. He’d tell Uncle Eb that he’d had a hard time rounding them up. He’d tell Uncle Eb that the two heifers had broken out of the fence and he had to get them back. He’d tell Uncle Eb… he’d tell… he’d tell…

His breath gasped with his running and his heart was thumping so it seemed to shake him and fear rode on his shoulders-fear of the awful thing he’d done-of this final unforgivable thing after all the others, after not going to the spring to get the water, after missing the two heifers the night before, after the matches in his pocket.

He did not find the cows going home alone-he found them in the barnyard and he knew that they’d been milked and he knew he’d stayed much longer and that it was far worse than he had imagined.

He walked up the rise to the house, shaking now with fear. There was a light in the kitchen and he knew that they were waiting.

He came into the kitchen and they sat at the table, facing him, waiting for him, with the lamplight on their faces, and their faces were so hard that they looked like graven stone.

Uncle Eb stood up, towering toward the ceiling, and you could see the muscles stand out on his arms, with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He reached for Johnny and Johnny ducked away, but the hand closed on the back of his neck and the fingers wrapped around his throat and lifted him and shook him with a silent savagery.

“I’ll teach you,” Uncle Eb was saying through clenched teeth. “I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you…

Something fell upon the floor and rolled toward the corner, leaving a trail of fire as it rolled along the floor.

Uncle Eb stopped shaking him and just stood there holding him for an instant, then dropped him to the floor.

“That fell out of your pocket,” said Uncle Eb. “What is it?” Johnny backed away, shaking his head.

He wouldn’t tell what it was. He’d never tell. No matter what Uncle Eb might do to him, he’d never tell. Not even if he killed him.

Uncle Eli stalked the jewel, bent swiftly and picked it up. He carried it back to the table and dropped it there and bent over, looking at it as it sparkled in the light.

Aunt Em leaned forward in her chair to look at it. “What in the world!” she said.

They bent there for a moment, staring at the jewel, their eyes bright and shining, their bodies tense, their breath rasping in the silence. The world could have come to an end right then and there and they’d never have noticed.

Then they straightened up and turned to look at Johnny, turning away from the jewel as if it didn’t interest them any longer, as if it had had a job to do and had done that job and no longer was important. There was something wrong with them-no, not wrong, but different.

“You must be starved,” Aunt Em said to Johnny. “I’ll warm you up some supper. Would you like some eggs?”

Johnny gulped and nodded.

Uncle Eb sat down, not paying any attention to the jewel at all. “You know,” he said, “I saw a jackknife uptown the other day. Just the kind you want…”

Johnny scarcely heard him. He just stood there, listening to the friendliness and love that hummed through all the house.

Content

Contraption
by Clifford D. Simak