Out of Their Minds

4

The large manila envelope had Philip Freeman's return address written in a scrawling hand across its upper left-hand corner. I sat in the chair by the open window, turning it slowly in my hand, wondering why Philip should be writing or sending anything to me. I knew the man, of course, and liked him, but we never had been close. The only link between us was our mutual affection and respect for the grand old man who had died some weeks before in an auto accident.

Through the window came the talking of the river, the muttered conversation it held with the countryside as it went sliding through the land. The sound of its talk, as I sat there listening, brought back in memory the times when my father and I had sat on its bank and fished—always with my father, but never by myself. For the river potentially was too dangerous for a boy of ten. The creek, of course, was all right if I promised to be careful.

The creek had been a friend, a shining summer friend, but the river had been magic. And it was magic still, I thought, a magic compounded of boyhood dreams and time. And finally here I was again beside it; here I would live beside it for a time and now I realized that I was afraid, deep inside myself, that living close beside it I would get to know it so well that the magic would be lost and it would become just another river running down another land.

Here were quiet and peace, I thought—the kind of quiet and peace that could be found in only a few other backwater corners of the earth. Here a man might find the time and space to think, undisturbed by the intrusion of the static that was given off by the rumblings of world

commerce and.- global politics. Here was a country that the rush of progress had swept past, barely touching it.

Barely touching it, and thus leaving it with some of its old ideas. This place did not know that God was dead; in the little church at the upper end of the village the minister still might preach of fire and brimstone and his congregation would give him rapt attention. This place felt no overwhelming social guilt; it still believed that it was meet and proper that a man should work to earn a living. This place did not subscribe to deficit spending; it tried to get along with what it had and thus hold down the taxes. Once good and sterling virtues, but no longer so if measured against modern attitudes. And yet, I thought, not buried in the trivia of the outside world—escaping not only the physical trivia, but the intellectual and the moral and the aesthetic trivia as well. Still able to believe, in a world that had stopped believing. Still holding fast to certain values, even if mistaken values, in a world that had few values left. Still fiercely concerned about the fundamentals of life and living while much of the world long since had escaped into cynicism.

I glanced about the room, a simple place—small and bright and clean, with a minimum of furniture, with paneling on the wall and no carpet on the floor. A monk's cell, I thought, and that was the way it should be, for a man could do little work smothered in an overburden of conveniences.

Peace and quiet, I thought, and what about the rattlesnakes? Could this peace and quiet be no more than a tricky surface, the millpond water that masked a whirlpool's violence? I saw it all again—the cruel, skull-like head hanging over me—and as I remembered it my body ached with a recall of the tension that had frozen it into immobility.

Why should anyone have planned and executed such a bizarre attempt at murder? Who had done it and how had it been carried out and why should it be me? Why had there been two farmhouses so alike that one could scarcely be differentiated from the other? And what about Snuffy Smith and the stuck car that wasn't really stuck and the Triceratops that after a little time wasn't there at all?

I gave up. There were no answers. The only possible answer seemed to be that it had never happened and I was sure- k had. A man could imagine any one of all these things, perhaps; he could not, certainly, imagine all of them. There must, I knew, be an explanation somewhere, but I didn't have it.

I laid the manila envelope aside and looked at the other mail and there was little of importance. There were several notes from friends wishing me well in my new place of residence, but most of the notes had a trace of false joviality about them I was not sure I liked. Everyone, it seemed, thought that I was slightly crazy to bury myself in what to them was wilderness to write what probably would turn out to be a very lousy book. There were a couple of bills I had forgotten to pay and there were a magazine or two and some advertising.

I picked up the manila envelope again and ripped it open. Out of it came a sheaf of Xeroxed pages with a handwritten note clipped to them.

The note said:

Dear Horton: When I went through the papers in Uncle's desk, I ran across the enclosed and, knowing you were one of his closest and most valued friends, I ran off a copy for you. Frankly, I don't know what to make of it. With some other man I might think it was nothing more than a fantasy that, for some whimsical, personal reason, he had written down—perhaps to clear it from his mind. But Uncle was not whimsical, as I think you will agree. I am wondering if he might at some time have mentioned this to you. If such should be the case, you may have a better understanding of it than I seem able to muster—Philip.

I pulled the note clear from the stapled Xeroxed sheets and there, in the crabbed, miserly handwriting of my friend (a handwriting so unlike the man himself), was the document.

There was no heading on the sheet. Nothing to tell what he had intended it to be.

I settled down into the chair and began to read.