Clifford D. Simak

Ring Around the Sun

For Carson

CHAPTER ONE

VICKERS got up at an hour outrageous for its earliness, because Ann had phoned the night before to tell him about a man in New York she wanted him to meet.

He had tried to argue about it.

"I know it breaks into your schedule, Jay," she said "but I don't think this is something you can pass up."

"I can't do it, Ann," he'd told her. "I've got the writing now and I can't get loose."

"But this is big," Ann had said, "the biggest thing that has ever broken. They picked you to talk to first, ahead of all the other writers. They think you're the man to do it."

"Publicity."

"This is not publicity. This is something else."

"Forget it — I won't meet the guy, whoever he is," he had said, and hung up. But here he was, making himself an early breakfast and getting ready to go into New York.

He was frying eggs and bacon and making toast and trying to keep one eye on the coffee maker, which was temperamental, when the doorbell rang.

He wrapped his robe around him and headed for the door.

It might be the newsboy. He had been out on the regular collection day and the boy probably had seen the light in the kitchen.

Or it might be his neighbor, the strange old man named Horton Flanders, who had moved in a year or so ago and who dropped over to spend an idle hour at the most unexpected and inconvenient times. He was an affable old man and distinguished looking, although slightly motheaten and shabby at the edges, pleasant to talk with and a good companion, even though Vickers might have wished that he were more orthodox in his visiting.

It might be the newsboy or it might be scarcely be anyone else at this early hour.

He opened the door and a little girl stood there, wrapped in a cherry-colored bathrobe and with bunny rabbit slippers on her feet. Her hair was tousled from a night of sleep, but her blue eyes sparkled at him and she smiled a pretty smile.

"Good morning, Mr. Vickers," she said. "I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep and I saw the light burning in your kitchen and I thought maybe you was sick."

"I'm all right, Jane," Vickers told her. "I'm just getting breakfast. Maybe you would like to eat with me."

"Oh, yes," said Jane. "I was hoping maybe if you was eating breakfast you'd ask me to eat with you."

"Your mother doesn't know you're here, does she?"

"Mommy and Daddy are asleep," said Jane. "This is the day that Daddy doesn't work and they was out awful late last night. I heard them when they came in and Mommy was telling Daddy that he drank too much and she said she wouldn't go out with him, never again, if he drank that much, and Daddy…"

"Jane," said Vickers, firmly, "I don't think your mommy and daddy would like you to be telling this."

"Oh, they don't care. Mommy talks about it all the time. I heard her telling Mrs. Traynor she had half a mind to divorce my Daddy. Mr. Vickers, what is divorce?"

"Now, I don't know," said Vickers. "I can't recollect I ever heard the word before. Maybe we oughtn't to talk about what your mommy says. And look, you got your slippers all wet crossing the grass."

"It's kind of wet outside. The dew is awful heavy."

"You come in," said Vickers, "and I'll get a towel and dry your feet and then we'll have some breakfast and call your mommy so she knows where you are."

She came in and he closed the door.

"You sit on that chair," he said, "and I'll get a towel. I'm afraid you might catch cold."

"Mr. Vickers, you aren't married, are you?"

"Why, no. It happens that I'm not."

"Most everyone is married," said Jane. "Most everyone I know. Why aren't you married, Mr. Vickers?"

"Why, I don't rightly know. Never found a girl, I guess."

"There are lots of girls."

"There was a girl," said Vickers. "A long time ago, there was a girl."

It had been years since he had remembered sharply. He had forced the years to obscure the memory, to soften it and hide it away so that he did not think of it, and if he did think of it, to make it so far away and hazy that he could quit thinking of it.

But here it was again.

There had been a girl and an enchanted valley they had walked in, a springtime valley, he remembered, with the pink of wild crab apple blossoms flaming on the hills and the song of bluebird and of lark soaring in the sky, and there had been wild spring breeze that ruffled the water and blew along the grass so that the meadow seemed to flow and become a lake with whitecaps rolling on it.

They had walked in the valley and there was no doubt that it was enchanted, for when he had gone back again the valley wasn't there — or at least not the same valley. It had been, he remembered, a very different valley.

He had walked there twenty years ago and through all of twenty years he had hidden it away, back in the attic of his mind, yet here it was again, as fresh and shining as if it had been only yesterday.

"Mr. Vickers," said Jane, "I think your toast is burning."

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER Jane had gone and he had washed the dishes, he remembered that he had intended for a week or more to phone Joe about the mice.

"I got mice," Vickers told him.

"You got what?"

"Mice," said Vickers. "Little animals. They run around the place."

"Now that's funny," said Joe. "A well-built place like yours. It shouldn't have no mice. You want me to come over and get rid of them?"

"I guess you'll have to. I tried traps but these mice don't go for traps. Got a cat a while back and the cat left. Only stayed a day or two."

"Now, that's a funny thing. Cats like places where they can catch a mouse."

"This cat was crazy," said Vickers. "Acted like it was spooked. Walked around on tiptoe."

"Cats is funny animals," Joe confided.

"I'm going down to the city today. Figure you could do it while I'm gone?"

"Sure thing," said Joe. "The exterminating business is kind of slack right now. I'll come over ten o'clock or so."

"I'll leave the front door unlocked," said Vickers.

He hung up the phone and got the paper off the stoop. At his desk, he laid down the paper and picked up the sheaf of manuscript, holding it in his hand, feeling the thickness of it and the weight of it, as if by its thickness and its weight he might reassure himself that what it held was good, that it was not labor wasted, that it said the many things he wished to say and said them well enough that other men and women might read the words and know the naked thought that lay behind the coldness of the print.

He should not waste the day, he told himself. He should stay here and work. He should not go traipsing off to meet this man his agent wanted him to meet. But Ann had been insistent and had said that it was important and even when he had told her about the car being in the garage for repairs she still had insisted that he come. That story about the car had been untrue, of course, for he knew even as he told her that Eb would have it ready for him to make the trip.

He looked at his watch and saw he had no more than half an hour until Eb's garage would open and half an hour was not worth his while to spend in writing.

He picked up the paper and went out on the porch to read the morning's news.

He thought about little Jane and what a sweet child she was and how she'd praised his cooking and had chattered on and on.

You aren't married, Jane had said. Why aren't you married, Mr. Vickers?

And he had said: once there was a girl. I remember now. Once there was a girl.