The Big Front Yard and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

clay, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.
    â€œHe says that it’s about time that we showed up,” said Beasly.
    Taine walked around the hole and knelt down. He reached down a hand to brush the dirt off the projecting edge of Beasly’s tank. The clay was stubborn and hard to wipe away, but from the feel of it the tank was heavy metal.
    Taine picked up a shovel and rapped it against the tank. The tank gave out a clang.
    They got to work, shoveling away a foot or so of topsoil that lay above the object. It was hard work and the thing was bigger than they had thought and it took some time to get it uncovered, even roughly.
    â€œI’m hungry,” Beasly complained.
    Taine glanced at his watch. It was almost one o’clock.
    â€œRun on back to the house,” he said to Beasly. “You’ll find something in the refrigerator and there is milk to drink.”
    â€œHow about you, Hiram? Ain’t you ever hungry?”
    â€œYou could bring me back a sandwich and see if you can find a trowel.”
    â€œWhat you want a trowel for?”
    â€œI want to scrape the dirt off this thing and see what it is.”
    He squatted down beside the thing they had unearthed and watched Beasly disappear into the woods.
    â€œTowser,” he said, “this is the strangest animal you ever put to ground.”
    A man, he told himself, might better joke about it – if to do no more than keep his fear away.
    Beasly wasn’t scared, of course. Beasly didn’t have the sense to be scared of a thing like this.
    Twelve feet wide by twenty long and oval shaped. About the size, he thought, of a good-size living room. And there never had been a tank of that shape or size in all of Willow Bend.
    He fished his jackknife out of his pocket and started to scratch away the dirt at one point on the surface of the thing. He got a square inch free of dirt and it was no metal such as he had ever seen. It looked for all the world like glass.
    He kept on scraping at the dirt until he had a clean place as big as an outstretched hand.
    It wasn’t any metal. He’d almost swear to that. It looked like cloudy glass – like the milk-glass goblets and bowls he was always on the lookout for. There were a lot of people who were plain nuts about it and they’d pay fancy prices for it.
    He closed the knife and put it back into his pocket and squatted, looking at the oval shape that Towser had discovered.
    And the conviction grew: Whatever it was that had come to live with him undoubtedly had arrived in this same contraption. From space or time, he thought, and was astonished that he thought it, for he’d never thought such a thing before.
    He picked up his shovel and began to dig again, digging down this time, following the curving side of this alien thing that lay within the earth.
    And as he dug, he wondered. What should he say about this – or should he say anything? Maybe the smartest course would be to cover it again and never breathe a word about it to a living soul.
    Beasly would talk about it, naturally. But no one in the village would pay attention to anything that Beasly said. Everyone in Willow Bend knew Beasly was cracked.
    Beasly finally came back. He carried three inexpertly made sandwiches wrapped in an old newspaper and a quart bottle almost full of milk.
    â€œYou certainly took your time,” said Taine, slightly irritated.
    â€œI got interested,” Beasly explained.
    â€œInterested in what?”
    â€œWell, there were three big trucks and they were lugging a lot of heavy stuff down into the basement. Two or three big cabinets and a lot of other junk. And you know Abbie’s television set? Well, they took the set away. I told them that they shouldn’t, but they took it anyway.”
    â€œI forgot,” said Taine. “Henry said he’d send the computer over and I plumb forgot.”
    Taine ate the sandwiches, sharing them with Towser, who was very