idn't think it was
important until all hell broke loose this morning. After he answered and
heard Tupper's voice, he took the phone. He thought that might reverse the
joke, you see. He thought you'd gone to a lot of work...'
     'Yes, I see,' I said. 'But now he thinks that it was really Tupper
calling and that the call actually was for me.'
     'Well, yes, I'd say so. He took the phone home and a couple of times
early that evening he picked up the receiver and the phone was alive, but no
one answered. That business about the phone being alive puzzled him. It
bothered him a lot. It wasn't tied into any line, you see.'
     'And now the two of you want to make some sort of case against me.'
     Hiram's face hardened. 'I know you're up to something,' he said. 'I
know you went out to Stiffy's shack last night. After Doc and I had taken
Stiffy in to Elmore.'
     'Yes, I did,' I said. 'I found his keys where they had fallen out of
his pocket. So I went out to his place to see if it was locked and
everything was all right.'
     'You sneaked in,' Hiram said. 'You turned off your lights to go up
Stiffy's lane.'
     'I didn't turn them off. The electrical circuit shorted. I got them
fixed before I left the shack.'
     It was pretty weak. But it was the best I could think of fast. Hiram
didn't press the point.
     'This morning,' he said, 'me and Tom went out to the shack.'
     'So it was Tom who was spying on me.'
     Hiram grunted. 'He was upset about the phone. He got suspicious of
you.'
     'And you broke into the shack. You must have. I locked it when I left.'
     'Yeah,' said Hiram, 'we broke in. And we found more of them telephones.
A whole box full of them.'
     'You can quit looking at me like that,' I said. 'I saw no telephones. I
didn't snoop around.'
     I could see the two of them, Hiram and Tom, roaring out to the shack in
full cry, convinced that there existed some sinister plot which they could
not understand, but that whatever it might be, both Stiffy and myself were
neck-deep in it.
     And there was some sort of plot, I told myself and Stiffy and myself
were both entangled in it and I hoped that Stiffy knew what it was all
about, for certainly I didn't. The little I knew only made it more confused.
And Gerald Sherwood, unless he'd lied to me (and I was inclined to think he
hadn't) knew little more about it than I did.
     Suddenly I was thankful that Hiram did not know about the phone in
Sherwood's study, or all those other phones which must be in the village, in
the hands of those persons who had been employed as readers by whoever used
the phones for communication.
     Although, I told myself, there was little chance that Hiram would ever
know about those phones, for the people who had them certainly would hide
them most securely and would keep very mum about them once this business of
the phones became public knowledge. And I was certain that within a few
hours' time the story of the mystery phones would be known to everyone.
Neither Hiram nor Tom Preston could keep their big mouths shut.
     Who would these other people be, I wondered, the ones who had the
phones - and all at once I knew. They would be the down-and-outers, the poor
unfortunates, the widows who had been left without savings or insurance, the
aged who had not been able to provide for their later years, the failures
and the no-goods and the hard-of-luck.
     For that was the way it had worked with Sherwood and myself. Sherwood
had not been contacted (if that was the word for it) before he faced
financial ruin and they (whoever they might be) had not been concerned with
me until I was a business failure and willing to admit it. And the man who
seemed to have had the most to do with all of it was the village bum.
     'Well?' asked the constable.
     'You want to know what I know about it?'
     'Yes, I do,' said Hiram, 'and if you know what's good for you...'
     'Hiram,' I told him, 'don't you ever threaten me. Don't you even look
as though you meant to threaten me. Because if you do...'
     Floyd Caldwell stuck his head inside the door.
     'It's moving!' he yelled at us. 'The barrier is moving!'
     Both Hiram and I jumped to our feet and headed for the door. Outside
people were running and yelling and Grandma Jones was standing out in the
middle of the street, jumping up and down, with the sunbonnet flapping on
her head. With every jump she uttered little shrieks.
     I saw Nancy in her car across the street and ran straight for it. She
had the motor going and when she saw me, she moved the car out from the
kerb, rolling slowly down the street. I put my hands on the back door and
vaulted into the back, then clambered up in front. By the time I got there
the car had reached the drugstore corner and was picking up some speed.
There were a couple of other cars heading out toward the highway, but Nancy
cut around them with a burst of speed.
     'Do you know what happened?' she asked.
     I shook my head. 'Just that the barrier is moving.'
     We came to the stop sign that guarded the highway, but Nancy didn't
even slow for it. There was no reason that she should, for there was no
traffic on the highway. The highway was cut off.
     She slewed the car out onto the broad slab of pavement and there, up
ahead of us, the eastbound lane was blocked by a mass of jam-packed cars.
And there, as well, was Gabe's truck, its trailer lying in the ditch, with
my car smashed underneath it, and its cab half canted in the air. Beyond the
truck other cars were tangled in the westbound lane, cars which apparently
had crossed the centre strip in an effort to get turned around, in the
process getting caught in another minor traffic jam before the barrier had
moved.
     The barrier was no longer there. You couldn't see, of course, whether
it was there or not, but up the road, a quarter mile or so, there was
evidence of it.
     Up there, a crowd of people was running wildly, fleeing from an
invisible force that advanced upon them. And behind the fleeing people a
long windrow of piled-up vegetation, including, in places, masses of
uprooted trees, marked the edge of the moving barrier. It stretched as far
as the eye could see, on either side of the road, and it seemed to have a
life of its own, rolling and tossing and slowly creeping forward, the masses
of trees tumbling awkwardly on their outstretched, roots and branches.
     The car rolled up to the traffic jam in the westbound lane and stopped.
Nancy turned off the ignition. In the silence one could hear the faint
rustling of that strange windrow that moved along the road, a small whisper
of sound punctuated now and then by the cracking and the popping of the
branches as the uprooted trees toppled in their unseemly tumbling.
     I got out of the car and walked around it and started down the road,
working my way through the tangle of the cars. As I came clear of them the
road stretched out before me and up the road the people still were running -
well, not running exactly, not the way they had been. They would run a ways
and then stand in little groups and look behind them, at the writhing
windrow, then would run a ways and stop to look again. Some of them didn't
run at all, but just kept plodding up the road at a steady walk.
     It was not only people. There was something else, a strange fluttering
in the air, a darting of dark bodies, a cloud of insects and of birds,
retreating before this inexorable force that moved like a wraith across the
surface of the land.
     The land was bare behind the barrier. There was nothing on it except
two leafless trees. And they, I thought - they would be left behind. For
they were lifeless things and for them the barrier had no meaning, for it
was only life that the barrier rejected. Although, if Len Streeter had been
right, then it was not all life, but a certain kind, or a certain size, or a
certain condition of life.
     But aside from the two dead trees, the ground lay bare.
     There was no grass upon it, not a single weed, not a bush or tree. All
that was green was gone.
     I stepped off the roadbed onto the shoulder and knelt down and ran my
fingers along the barren ground. It was not only bare; it was ploughed and
harrowed, as if some giant agricultural rig had gone over it and made it
ready for new seed. The soil, I realized, had been loosened by the uprooting
of its mat of vegetation. In all that ground, I knew, no single root
existed, no fragment of a root, down to the finest rootlet. The land had
been swept clean of everything that grew and all that once had grown here
was now a part of that fantastic windrow that was being swept along before
the barrier.
     Above me a dull rumble of thunder rippled in the sky and rolled along
the air. I glanced backward over my shoulder, and saw that the thunderstorm
which had been threatening all morning now was close upon us, but it was a
ragged storm, with wind-twisted clouds, broken and fragmented, fleeing
through the upper emptiness.
     'Nancy,' I said, but she did not answer.
     I got quickly to my feet and swung around. She had been right behind me
when I'd started through the traffic tangle, but now there was no sign of
her.
     I started back down the road to find her and as I did a blue sedan that
was over on the opposite shoulder rolled off down the shoulder and swung out
on the pavement - and there, behind the wheel, was Nancy. I knew then how
I'd lost her. She had looked among the cars until she had found one that was
not blocked by other cars and with the key still in the lock.
     The car came up beside me, moving slowly, and I trotted along to match
its speed. Through the half-open window came the sound of an excited
commentator on the radio. I got the door open and jumped in and slammed the
door behind me.
     '...called out the national guard and had officially informed
Washington. The first units will move out in another - no, here is word just
now that they have already moved out...'
     'That,' said Nancy, 'is us he's talking about.'
     I reached out and twisted the dial. '... just came in. The barrier is
moving! I repeat, the barrier is moving. There is no information how fast
it's moving or how much distance it has covered. But it is moving outward
from the village. The crowd that had gathered outside of it is fleeing
wildly from it. And here is more - the barrier is moving no faster than a
man may walk. It already has swept almost a mile...'
     And that was wrong, I thought, for it was now less than half a mile
from its starting point.
     '... question, of course, is will it stop? How far will it move? Is
there some way of stopping it? Can it keep on indefinitely; is there any end
to it?'
     'Brad,' Nancy said, 'do you think it will push everyone off the earth?
Everyone but the people here in Millville?'
     'I don't know,' I said, rather stupidly.
     'And if it does, where will it push them'? Where is there to go?'
     '... London and Berlin,' blared the radio speaker. 'Apparently the
Russian people have not as yet been told what is happening. There have been
no official statements. Not from anywhere. Undoubtedly this is something
about which the various governments may have some difficulty deciding if
there should be a statement. It would seem, at first thought, that here is a
situation which came about through no act of any man or any government. But
there is some speculation that this may be a testing of some new kind of
defence. Although it is difficult to imagine why, if it should be such, it
be tested in a place like Millvile. Ordinarily such tests would take place
in a military area and be conducted in the greatest secrecy.'
     The car had been moving slowly down the road all the time we'd been
listening to the radio and now we were no more than a hundred feet or so
behind the barrier. Ahead of us, on either side of the pavement, the great
windrow of vegetation inched itself forward, while further up the road the
people still retreated.
     I twisted around in the seat and glanced through the rear window, back
toward the traffic snarl. A crowd of people stood among the cars and out on
the pavement just beyond the cars. The people from the village had finally
arrived to watch the moving barrier.
     '...sweeping everything before it,' screamed the radio.
     I glanced around and we were almost at the barrier.
     'Careful there,' I warned. 'Don't run into it.'
     'I'll be careful,' said Nancy, just a bit too meekly.
     '... like a wind,' the announcer said, 'blowing a long line of grass
and trees and bushes steadily before it. Like a wind...'
     And there was a wind, first a preliminary gust that raised spinning
dust devils in the stripped and denuded soil behind the barrier, then a
solid wall of wind that slewed the car around and howled against the metal
and glass.
     It was the thunderstorm, I thought, that had stalked the land since
early morning. But there was no lightning and no thunder and when I craned
my neck to look out the windshield at the sky, there still were no more than
ragged clouds, the broken, fleeing tatters of a worn-out storm.
     The wind had swung the car around and now it was skidding down the
road, pushed by the roaring wind, and threatening to tip over. Nancy was
fighting the wheel, trying to bring the car around, to point it into the
direction of the wind.
     'Brad!' she shouted.
     But even as she shouted, the storm hit us with the hard, peppering
sound of raindrops splashing on the car.
     The car began to topple and this time I knew that it was going over,
that there was nothing in the world that could keep it from going over. But
suddenly it slammed into something and swung upright once again and in one
corner of my mind I knew that it had been shoved against the barrier by the
wind and that it was being held there.
     With one corner of my mind, for the greater part of it was filled with
astonishment at the strangest raindrops I had ever seen.
     They weren't raindrops, although they fell like raindrops, in drumming
sheets that filled the inside of the car with the rolling sound of thunder.
     'Hail,' Nancy shouted at me.
     But it wasn't hail.
     Little round, brown pellets hopped and pounded on the car's hood and
danced like crazy buckshot across the hard flatness of the pavement.
     'Seeds!' I shouted back. 'Those things out there are seeds!' It was no
regular storm. It was not the thunderstorm, for there was no thunder and the
storm had lost its punch many miles away. It was a storm of seeds driven by
a mighty wind that blew without regard to any earthly weather;
     There was, I told myself, in a flash of logic that was not, on the face
of it, very logical, no further need for the barrier to move. For it had
ploughed the ground, had ploughed and harrowed it and prepared it for the
seed, and then there'd been the sowing, and everything was over.
     The wind stopped and the last seed fell and we sat in a numbing
silence, with all the sound and fury gone out of the world. In the place of
sound and fury there was a chilling strangeness, as if someone or something
had changed all natural law around, so that seed fell from the sky like rain
and a wind blew out of nowhere.
     'Brad,' said Nancy, 'I think I'm beginning to get scared.'
     She reached out a hand and put it on my arm. Her fingers tightened,
hanging onto me.
     'It makes me mad,' she said, 'I've never been scared, never my life.
Never scared like this.'
      'It's all over now,' I said. 'The storm is ended and the barrier has
stopped moving. Everything's all right.'
     'It's not like that at all,' she told me. 'It's only just beginning.'
     A man was running up the road toward us, but he was the only one in
sight. All the other people who had been around the parked cars were no
longer there. They had run for cover, back to the village, probably, when
the blast of wind had come and the seeds had fallen.
     The running man, I saw, was Ed Adler, and he was shouting something at
us as he run.
     We got out of the car and walked around in front of it and stood there,
waiting for him.
     He came up to us, panting with his running.
     'Brad,' he gasped, 'maybe you don't know this, but Hiram and Tom
Preston are stirring up the people. They think you have something to do with
what's happening. Some talk about a phone or something.'
     'Why, that's crazy!' Nancy cried.
     'Sure it is,' said Ed, 'but the village is on edge. It wouldn't take
too much to get them thinking it. They're ready to think almost anything.
They need an explanation; they'll grab at anything. They won't stop to think
if it's right or wrong.'
     I asked him: 'What do you have in mind?'
     'You better hide out, Brad, until it all blows over. In another day or
two . . .'
     I shook my head. 'I have too many things to do.'
     'But, Brad...'
     'I didn't do it, Ed. I don't know what happened, but I didn't have a
thing to do with it.'
     'That don't make no difference.'
     'Yes, it does,' I said.
     'Hiram and Tom are saying they found these funny phones...'
     Nancy started to say something, but I jumped in ahead of her and cut
her off, so she didn't have a chance to say it. '
     'I know about those phones,' I said. 'Hiram told me all about them. Ed,
take my word for it. The phones are out of it. They are something else
entirely.'
     Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nancy staring at me.
     'Forget about the phones,' I said.
     I hoped she'd understand and apparently she did, for she didn't say a
thing about the phones. I wasn't actually sure that she'd intended to, for I
had no idea if she knew about the phone in her father's study. But I
couldn't take a chance.
     'Brad,' warned Ed, 'you're walking into it.'
     'I can't run away,' I told him. 'I can't run somewhere and hide. Not
from anyone, especially not from a pair like Tom and Hiram.'
     He looked me up and down.
     'No, I guess you can't,' he said. 'Is there anything I can do?'
     'Maybe,' I said. 'You can see that Nancy gets home safely. I've got a
thing or two to do.'
     I looked at Nancy. She nodded at me. 'It's all right, Brad, but the
car's just down the road. I could drive you home.'
     'I'd better take a short cut. If Ed is right, there's less chance of
being seen.'
     'I'll stay with her,' said Ed, 'until she's inside the house.'
     Already, in two hour's time, I thought, it had come to this - to a
state of mind where one questioned the safety of a girl alone upon the
street.

        10

     Now, finally, I had to do a thing I had intended to do ever since this
morning - a thing I probably should have done last night - get in touch with
Alf. It was more important now than ever that I get in touch with him, for
in the back of my mind was a growing conviction that there must be some
connection between what was happening here in Millville and that strange
research project down in Mississippi.
     I reached a dead-end street and started walking down it. There was not
a soul in sight. Everyone who could either walk or ride would be down in the
business section.
     I got to worrying that maybe I'd not be able to locate Alf, that he
might have checked out of the motel when I failed to get there, or that he
might be out gawping at the barrier with a lot of other people.
     But there was no need to worry, for when I reached my house the phone
was ringing and Alf was on the line.
     'I've been trying for an hour to get you,' he said. 'I wondered how you
were.'
     'You know what happened, Alf?'
     He told me that he did. 'Some of it,' he said.
     'Minutes earlier,' I said, 'and I would have been with you instead of
penned up in the village. I must have hit the barrier when it first
appeared.'
     I went ahead and told him what had happened after I had hit the
barrier. Then I told him about the phones.
     'They told me they had a lot of readers. People who read books to
them...'
     'A way of getting information.'
     'I gathered that was it.'
     'Brad,' he said, 'I've got a terrible hunch.'
     'So have I,' I said.
     'Do you think this Greenbriar project...?'
     'That's what I was thinking, too.'
     I heard him drawing a deep breath, the air whistling in his teeth.'
     'It's not just Millville, then.'
     'Maybe a whole lot more than Millville.'
     'What are you going to do now, Brad?'
     'Go down into my garden and have a hard look at some flowers.'
     'Flowers?'
     'Alf,' I told him, 'it's a long, long story. I'll tell you later. Are
you staying on?'
     'Of course I am,' said All 'The greatest show on earth and me with a
ringside seat.'
     'I'll call you back in an hour or so.'
     'I'll stay close,' he promised. 'I'll be waiting for your call.'
     I put down the phone and stood there, trying to make some head or tail
of it. The flowers, somehow, were important, and so was Tupper Tyler, but
they were all mixed up together and there was no place one could start.
     I went out of the house and down into the garden by the greenhouse. The
trail that Tupper had left was still plain and I was considerably relieved,
for I had been afraid that the wind that brought the seeds might have blown
it away, that the flowers might have been so beaten and so twisted that the
trail could well be lost.
     I stood at the edge of the garden and looked around, as if I were
seeing the place for the first time in my life. It wasn't really a garden.
At one time it had been land on which we'd grown the stuff we sold, but when
I quit the greenhouse business I'd simply let it go wild and the flowers had
taken over. To one side stood the greenhouse, with its door hanging on the
broken hinges and most of the panes gone from the windows. And at one corner
of it stood the elm tree that had grown from seed - the one I'd been about
to pull up when my father stopped me.
     Tupper had talked wildly about flowers growing by the acre. All of
them, he said, had been purple flowers and he had been most emphatic that my
father should be told of them. The mystery voice, or one of the mystery
voices on the phone had been well informed about my father's greenhouse and
had asked if I still ran it. And there had been, less than an hour ago, a
perfect storm of seeds.
     All the little purple flower-heads with their monkey faces seemed to be
nodding at me as if at a secret joke and I jerked my gaze away from them to
stare up at the sky. Broken clouds still streamed across it, shutting out
the sun. Although, once the clouds were gone, the day would be a scorcher.
One could smell the heat in the very air.
     I moved out into the garden, following Tupper's trail. At the end of
the trail I stopped and told myself that it had been a witless thing - this
belief of mine that I would find something in this flower patch that would
make some sense.
     Tupper Tyler had disappeared ten years ago and he'd disappeared today
and how he'd managed it no man might ever know.
     And yet the idea still went on banging in my skull that Tupper was the
key to all this screwy business.
     Yet I couldn't, for the life of me, explain the logic of my thinking.
For Tupper wasn't the only one involved - if he was, in fact, involved.
There was Stiffy Grant as well. And I realized, with a start, that I had not
asked anyone how Stiffy might be doing.
     Doc Fabian's house was on the hill just above the greenhouse and I
could go up there and ask. Doc might not be home, of course, but I could
wait around a while and eventually he'd show up. At the moment there was
nothing else to do. And with Hiram and Tom Preston shooting off their
mouths, it might be a good idea not to be found at home.
     I had been standing at the end of Tupper's trail and now I took a step
beyond it, setting out for Doc's. But I never got to Doc's. I took that
single step and the sun came out and the houses went away. Doc's house and
all the other houses, and the trees as well, and the bushes and the grass.
Everything disappeared and there was nothing left but the purple flowers,
which covered everything, and a sun that was blazing out of a cloudless sky.

        11

     I had taken that one step and everything had happened. So now I took
another one to bring my feet together and I stood there, stiff and scared,
afraid to turn around afraid, perhaps, of what I'd see behind me. Although I
think I knew what I would see behind me. Just more purple flowers.
     For this, I knew, in one dim corner of my curdled mind, was the place
that Tupper had been telling me about.
     Tupper had come out of this place and he'd gone back to this place and
now I'd followed him.
     Nothing happened.
     And that was right, of course. For it seemed to me, somehow, that this
would be the sort of place where nothing ever happened.
     There were just the flowers and the sun blazing in the sky and there
was nothing else. There wasn't a breath of wind and there was no sound. But
there was a fragrance, the almost overpowering, cloying fragrance of all
those little blossoms with their monkey faces.
     At last I dared to move and I slowly turned around. And there was
nothing but the flowers.
     Millville had gone away somewhere, into some other world.
     Although that was wrong, I told myself. For somewhere, in its same old
world, there yet must be a Millville. It had not been Millville, but myself,
that had gone away. I had taken just one step and had walked clear out of
Millville into another place.
     Yet, while it was a different place, the terrain seemed to be identical
with the old terrain. I still was standing in the dip of ground that lay
behind my house and back of me the hill rose steeply to the now non-existent
street where Doc's house had stood and a half a mile away loomed the hill
where the Sherwood house should be.
     This, then, was Tupper's world. It was the world into which he had gone
ten years ago and again this morning. Which meant that, at this very moment,
he must still be here.
     And that meant, I told myself with a sudden rush of hope, that there
was a chance of getting out, of getting back to Millvile. For Tupper had
gotten back again and thus must know the way. Although, I realized, one
never could be sure. You never could be sure of anything with a dope like
Tupper Tyler.
     The first thing to do, of course, was find him. He could not be far
off. It might take a while, but I was fairly confident that I could track
him down.
     I walked slowly up the hill that, back in my home village, would have
taken me to Doc Fabian's place.
     I reached the top of the hill and stopped and there, below me, lay the
far sweep of land clothed by the purple flowers.
     The land looked strange, robbed of all its landmarks, naked of its
trees and roads and houses. But it lay, I saw, as it had lain. If there were
any differences, they were minor ones.
     There, to the east, was the wet and swampy land below the little knoll
where Stiffy's shack had stood - where Stiffy's shack still stood in another
time or place.
     What strange circumstances, or what odd combination of many circumstances, must occur, I wondered, to make it possible for a man to step
from one world to another.
     I stood, a stranger in an unknown land, with the perfume of the flowers
dogging not my nostrils only, but every pore of me, pressing in upon me, as
if the flowers themselves were rolling in great purple waves to bear me down
and bury me for all eternity. The world was quiet; it was the quietest place
I had ever been. There was no sound at all. And I realized that perhaps at
no time in my life had I ever known silence. Always there had been something
that had made some sort of noise - the chirring of a lone insect in the
quiet of a summer noon, or the rustle of a leaf. Even in the dead of night
there would have been the creaking of the timbers in the house, the murmur
of the furnace, the slight keening of a wind that ran along the eaves.
     But there was silence here. There was no sound at all. There was no
sound, I knew, because there was nothing that could make a sound. There were
no trees or bushes; there were no birds or insects. There was nothing here
but the flowers and the soil in which they grew.
     A silence and the emptiness that held the silence in its hand, and the
purpleness that ran to the far horizon to meet the burnished, pale-blue
brightness of a summer sky.
     Now, for the first time, I felt panic stalking me - not a big and burly
panic that would send one fleeing, howling as he fled, but a little, sneaky
panic that circled all about me, like a pesky, yapping dog, bouncing on its
pipestem legs, waiting for a chance to sink its needle teeth in me. Nothing
one could fight, nothing one could stand against - a little yapping panic
that set the nerves on edge.
     There was no fear of danger, for there was no danger. One could see
with half an eye that there was no danger. But there was, perhaps worse than
any danger, the silence and the loneliness and the sameness and the not
knowing where you were.
     Down the slope was the wet and swampy area where Stiffy's shack should
be, and there, a little farther off, the silver track of river that ran at
the edge of town. And at the place where the river bent toward the south, a
plume of smoke rose daintily against the blue wash of the sky - so faint and
far a trickle that one could barely make it out.
     'Tupper!' I shouted, running down the slope, glad of a chance to run,
of some reason I should run, for I had been standing, determined not to run,
determined not to allow the little yapping panic to force me into running,
and all the time I'd stood there I had ached to run.
     I crossed the little ridge that hid the river and the camp lay there
before me - a tiny hut of crudely woven branches, a garden full of growing
things, and all along the river bank little straggling, dying trees, with
most of their branches dead and bearing only a few tassels of green leaves
at their very tops.
     A small campfire burned in front of the hut and squatting by the fire
was Tupper. He wore the shirt and trousers I had given him and he still had
the outrageous hat perched on his head.
     'Tupper!' I shouted and he rose and came gravely up the slope to meet
me. He wiped off his chin and held out his hand in greeting. It still was
wet with slobber, but I didn't mind.
     Tupper wasn't much, but he was another human.
     'Glad you could make it, Brad,' he said. 'Glad you could drop over.'
     As if I'd been dropping over every day, for years.
     'Nice place you have,' I said.
     'They did it all for me,' he said, with a show of pride. 'The Flowers
fixed it up for me. It wasn't like this to start with, but they fixed it up
for me. They have been good to me.'
     'Yes, they have,' I said.
     I didn't know what it was all about, but I went along. I had to go
along. There was just a chance that Tupper could get me back to Millville.
     'They're the best friends I have,' said Tupper, slobbering in his
happiness. 'That is, except for you and your papa. Until I found the
Flowers, you and your papa were the only friends I had. All the rest of them
just made fun of me. I let on I didn't know that they were making fun, but I
knew they were and I didn't like it.'
     'They weren't really unkind,' I assured him. 'They really didn't mean
what they said or did. They were only being thoughtless.'
     'They shouldn't have done it,' Tupper insisted. 'You never made any fun
of me. I like you because you never made any fun of me.'
     And he was right, of course. I'd not made fun of him. But not because I
hadn't wanted to at times; there were times when I could have killed him.
But my father had taken me off to the side one day and warned me that if he
ever caught me making fun of Tupper, like the other kids, he would warm my
bottom.'
     'This is the place you were telling me about,' I said. 'The place with
all the flowers.'
     He grinned delightedly, drooling from both corners of his mouth 'Ain't
it nice?' he said.
     We had been walking down the slope together and now we reached the
fire. A crude clay pot was standing in the ashes and there was something
bubbling in it.
     'You'll stay and eat with me,' invited Tupper. 'Please, Brad, say
you'll stay and eat with me. It's been so long since I've had anyone who
would eat with me.'
     Weak tears were running down his cheeks at the thought of how long it
had been since he'd had someone who would stay and eat with him.
     'I got corn and potatoes roasting in the coals,' he said, 'and I got
peas and beans and carrots all cooked up together. That's them in the pot.
There isn't any meat. You don't mind, do you, if there isn't any meat?'
     'Not at all,' I told him.
     'I miss meat something dreadful,' he confided. 'But they can't do
anything about it. They can't turn themselves into animals.'
     'They?' I asked.
     'The Flowers,' he said, and the way he said it, he made them a proper
noun. 'They can turn themselves into anything at all - plant things, that
is. But they can't make themselves into things like pigs or rabbits. I never
asked them to. That is, I mean I never asked them twice. I asked them once
and they explained to me. I never asked again, for they've done a lot of
things for me and I am grateful to them.'
     'They explained to you? You mean you talk with them.'
     'All the time,' said Tupper.
     He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the hut, scrabbling
around for something, with his back end sticking out, like a busy dog
digging out a woodchuck.
     He backed out and he brought with him a couple of crude pottery plates,
lopsided and uneven. He put them down upon the ground and laid on each of
them a spoon carved out of wood.
     'Made them myself,' he told me. 'Found some clay down in the river bank
and at first I couldn't seem to do it, but then they found out for me
and...'
     'The Flowers found out for you?'
     'Sure, the Flowers. They do everything for me.'
     'And the spoons?'
     'Used a piece of stone. Flint, I guess. Had a sharp edge on it. Nothing
like a knife, but it did the job. Took a long time, though.'
     I nodded.
     'But that's all right,' he said. 'I had a lot of time.'
     He did a mopping job and wiped his hands meticulously on his trouser
seat.
     'They grew flax for me,' he said, 'so I could make some clothes. But I
couldn't get the hang of it. They told me and they told me, but I couldn't
do it. So they finally quit. I went around without no clothes for quite a
spell. Except for this hat,' he said. 'I did that myself, without no help at
all. They didn't even tell me, I figured it all out and did it by myself.
Afterwards they told me that I'd done real good.'
     'They were right,' I said. 'It's magnificent.' 'You really think so,
Brad?'
     'Of course I do,' I said.
     'I'm glad to hear you say so, Brad. I'm kind of proud of it. It's the
first thing in my life I ever did alone, without no one telling me.'
     'These flowers of yours...'
     'They ain't my flowers,' said Tupper, sharply.
     'You say these flowers can turn themselves into anything they want to.
You mean they turned themselves into garden stuff for you.'
     'They can turn themselves into any kind of plants. All I do is ask
them.'
     'Then, if they can be anything they want to be, why are they all
flowers?'
     'They have to be something, don't they?' Tupper demanded, rather
heatedly. 'They might as well be flowers.'
     'Well, yes,' I said. 'I suppose they might.'
     He raked two ears of corn out of the coals and a couple of potatoes. He
used a pot-lifter that looked as if it were fashioned out of bark to get the
pot off the fire. He dumped the cooked vegetables that were in it out onto
the plates.
     'And the trees?' I asked.
     'Oh, them are things they changed themselves into. I needed them for
wood. There wasn't any wood to start with and I couldn't do no cooking and I
told them how it was. So they made the trees and they made them special for
me. They grow fast and die so that I can break branches off and have dry
wood for fire. Slow burning, though, not like ordinary dry wood. And that's
good, for I have to keep a fire burning all the time. I had a pocket full of
matches when I came here, but I haven't had any for a long, long time.'
     I remembered when he spoke about the pocket full of matches how
entranced he had always been with fire. He always carried matches with him
and he'd sit quietly by himself and light match after match, letting each
burn down until it scorched his fingers, happy with the sight of flame. A
lot of people had been afraid that he might bunt some building down, but he
never did. He was just a little jerk who liked the sight of fire.
     'I haven't any salt; said Tupper. 'The stuff may taste funny to you.
I've got used to it.'
     'But you eat vegetables all the time. You need salt for that kind of
stuff'
     'The Flowers say I don't. They say they put things into the vegetables
that takes the place of salt. Not that you can taste it, but it gives you
the things you need just the same as salt. They studied me to find out what
my body needed and they put in a lot of stuff they said I needed. And just
down the river I have an orchard full of fruit. And I have raspberries and
strawberries that bear almost all the time.'
     I couldn't rightly understand what fruit had to do with the problem of
nutrition if the Flowers could do all he said they could, but I let the
matter stand. One never got anywhere trying to get Tupper straightened out.
If you tried to reason with him, you just made matters worse.
     'We might as well sit down,' said Tupper, 'and get started on this.'
     I sat down on the ground and he handed me a plate, then sat down
opposite me and took the other plate.
     I was hungry and the saltless food didn't go so badly. Flat, of course,
and tasting just a little strange, but it was all right. It took away the
hunger.
     'You like it here? I asked.
     'It is home to me,' said Tupper, solemnly. 'It is where my friends
are.'
     'You don't have anything,' I said. 'You don't have an axe or knife. You
don't have a pot or pan. And there is no one you can turn to. What if you
got sick?'
     Tupper quit wolfing down his food and stared at me, as if I were the
crazy one.
     'I don't need any of those things,' he said. 'I make my dishes out of
clay. I can break off the branches with my hands and I don't need an axe. I
don't need to hoe the garden. There aren't ever any weeds. I don't even need
to plant it. It's always there. While I use up one row of stuff, another row
is growing. And if I got sick, the Flowers would take care of me. They told
me they would.'
     'OK,' I said. 'OK.'
     He went back to his eating. It was a terrible sight to watch. But he
was right about the garden. Now that he had mentioned it, I could see that
it wasn't cultivated. There were rows of growing vegetables - long, neat
rows without the sign of ever being hoed and without a single weed. And
that, of course, was the way it would be, for no weed would dare to grow
here. There was nothing that could grow here except the Flowers themselves,
or the things into which the Flowers had turned themselves, like the
vegetables and trees.
     The garden was a perfect garden. There were no stunted plants and no
disease or blight. The tomatoes, hanging on the vines, were an even red and
all were perfect globes. The corn stood straight and tall.
     'You cooked enough for two,' I said. 'Did you know that I was coming?'
     For I was fast reaching the point where I'd have believed almost
anything. It was just possible, I told myself that he (or the Flowers) had
known that I was coming.
     'I always cook enough for two,' he told me. 'There never is no telling
when someone might drop in.'
     'But no one ever has?'
     'You're the first,' he said. 'I'm glad that you could come.'
      I wondered if time had any meaning for him. Sometimes it seemed it
didn't. And yet he had wept weak tears because it had been so long since
anyone had broken bread with him.
     We ate in silence for a while and then I took a chance. I'd humoured
him long enough and it was time to ask some questions.
     'Where is this place?' I asked. 'What kind of place is it? And if you
want to get out of it, to get back home, how do you go about it?
     I didn't mention the fact that he had gotten out of it and returned to
Millville. I sensed it might be something he would resent, for he'd been in
a hurry to get back again - as if he'd broken some sort of rule or
regulation and was anxious to return before anyone found out.
     Carefully Tupper laid his plate on the ground a