The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (95 page)

Here was the American peasant, Smeg realized—tall, lean, dressed in wash-faded blue bib overalls, a dirty tan shirt and tennis shoes. The shoes were coming apart to reveal bare toes. A ground green painter's hat with green plastic visor did an ineffective job of covering his yellow hair. The visor's rim was cracked. It dripped a fringe of ragged binding that swayed when the man moved his head.

Smeg leaned out his window, smiled: “Howdy.”

“How do.”

Smeg's sense of hearing, trained in a history of billions of such encounters, detected the xenophobia and reluctant bowing to convention at war in the man's voice.

“Town's pretty quiet,” Smeg said.

“Yep.”

Purely human accents, Smeg decided. He permitted himself to relax somewhat, asked: “Anything unusual ever happen around here?”

“You fum the gov'ment?”

“That's right.” Smeg tapped the motor-pool insignia on his door. “Department of Agriculture.”

“Then you ain't part of the gov'ment conspiracy?”

“Conspiracy?” Smeg studied the man for a clue to hidden meanings. Was this one of those southern towns where anything from the government just had to be communist?

“Guess you ain't,” the man said.

“Of course not.”

“That there was a serious question you asked, then … about unusual thing happening?”

“I … yes.”

“Depends on what you call unusual.”

“What … do
you
call unusual?” Smeg ventured.

“Can't rightly say. And you?”

Smeg frowned, leaned out his window, looked up and down the street, studied each detail: the dog sniffing under the porch of a building labeled “General Store,” the watchful blankness of windows with here and there a twitching curtain to betray someone peering out, the missing boards on the side of a gas station beyond the store—one rusty pump there with its glass chamber empty. Every aspect of the town spoke of heat-addled somnolence … yet it was wrong. Smeg could feel tensions, transient emotional eddies that irritated his highly tuned senses. He hoped Rick already had a hiding place and was listening.

“This is Wadeville, isn't it?” Smeg asked.

“Yep. Used to be county seat 'fore the war.”

He meant the War Between The States, Smeg realized, recalling his studies of regional history. As always, the Slorin were using every spare moment to absorb history, mythology, arts, literature, science—You never knew which might be the valuable piece of information.

“Ever hear about someone could get right into your mind?” the man asked.

Smeg overcame a shock reaction, groped for the proper response. Amused disbelief, he decided, and managed a small chuckle. “That the unusual thing you have around here?”

“Didn't say yes; didn't say no.”

“Why'd you ask then?” Smeg knew his voice sounded like crinkling bread wrapper. He pulled his head back into the car's shadows.

“I jes' wondered if you might be hunting fer a teleepath?”

The man turned, hawked a cud of tobacco toward the dirt at his left. A vagrant breeze caught the spittle, draped it across the side of Smeg's car.

“Oh, dang!” the man said. He produced a dirty yellow bandanna, knelt and scrubbed with it at the side of the car.

Smeg leaned out, studied this performance with an air of puzzlement. The man's responses, the vague hints at mental powers—they were confusing, fitted no pattern in Slorin experience.

“You got somebody around here claiming to be a telepath?” Smeg asked.

“Can't say.” The man stood up, peered in at Smeg. “Sorry about that there. Wind, y'know. Accident. Didn't mean no harm.”

“Certainly.”

“Hope you won't say nothing to the sheriff. Got 'er all cleaned off your car now. Can't tell where I hit 'er.”

The man's voice carried a definite tone of fear, Smeg realized. He stared at this American peasant with a narrow, searching gaze.
Sheriff,
he'd said. Was it going to be this easy? Smeg wondered how to capitalize on that opening. Sheriff. Here was an element of the mystery they'd come to investigate.

As the silence drew out, the man said: “Got 'er all clean. You can get out and look for yourself.”

“I'm sure you did, Mr.… ahhh…”

“Painter, Josh'a Painter. Most folks call me Josh on account of my first name there, Josh'a Painter.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Painter. My name's Smeg, Henry Smeg.”

“Smeg,” Painter said with a musing tone. “Don't rightly believe I ever heard that name before.”

“It used to be much longer,” Smeg said. “Hungarian.”

“Oh.”

“I'm curious, Mr. Painter, why you'd be afraid I might tell the sheriff because the wind blew a little tobacco juice on my car?”

“Never can tell how some folks'll take things,” Painter said. He looked from one end of Smeg's car to the other, back to Smeg. “You a gov'ment man, this car an' all, reckoned I'd best be sure, one sensible man to another.”

“You've been having trouble with the government around here, is that it?”

“Don't take kindly to most gov'ment men hereabouts, we don't. But the sheriff, he don't allow us to do anything about that. Sheriff is a mean man, a certain mean man sometimes, and he's got my Barton.”

“Your barton,” Smeg said, drawing back into the car to conceal his puzzlement.
Barton?
This was an entirely new term. Strange that none of them had encountered it before. The study of languages and dialects had been most thorough. Smeg began to feel uneasy about his entire conversation with this Painter. The conversation had never really been under control. He wondered how much of it he'd actually understood. There was in Smeg a longing to venture a mindcloud probe, to nudge the man's motives, make him
want
to explain.

“You one of them survey fellows like we been getting?” Painter asked.

“You might say that,” Smeg said. He straightened his shoulders. “I'd like to walk around and look at your town, Mr. Painter. May I leave my car here?”

“'Tain't in the way that I can see,” Painter said. He managed to appear both interested and disinterested in Smeg's question. His glance flicked sideways, all around—at the car, the road, at a house behind a privet hedge across the way.

“Fine,” Smeg said. He got out, slammed the door, reached into the back for the flat-crowned Western hat he affected in these parts. It tended to break down some barriers.

“You forgetting your papers?” Painter asked.

“Papers?” Smeg turned, looked at the man.

“Them papers full of questions you gov'ment people allus use.”

“Oh.” Smeg shook his head. “We can forget about papers today.”

“You jes' going to wander around?” Painter asked.

“That's right.”

“Well, some folks'll talk to you,” Painter said. “Got all kinds of different folks here.” He turned away, started to walk off.

“Please, just a minute,” Smeg said.

Painter stopped as though he'd run into a barrier, spoke without turning. “You want something?”

“Where're you going, Mr. Painter?”

“Jes' down the road a piece.”

“I'd … ahhh, hoped you might guide me,” Smeg said. “That is if you haven't anything better to do?”

Painter turned, stared at him. “Guide? In Wadeville?” He looked around him, back to Smeg. A tiny smile tugged at his mouth.

“Well, where do I find your sheriff, for instance?” Smeg asked.

The smile disappeared. “Why'd you want him?”

“Sheriffs usually know a great deal about an area.”

“You sure you actual' want to see him?”

“Sure. Where's his office?”

“Well now, Mr. Smeg…” Painter hesitated, then: “His office is just around the corner here, next the bank.”

“Would you show me?” Smeg moved forward, his feet kicking up dust puddles in the street. “Which corner?”

“This'n right here.” Painter pointed to a fieldstone building at his left. A weed-grown lane led off past it. The corner of a wooden porch jutted from the stone building into the lane.

Smeg walked past Painter, peered down the lane. Tufts of grass grew in the middle and along both sides, green runners stretching all through the area. Smeg doubted that a wheeled vehicle had been down this way in two years—possibly longer.

A row of objects on the porch caught his attention. He moved closer, studied them, turned back to Painter.

“What're all those bags and packages on that porch?”

“Them?” Painter came up beside Smeg, stood a moment, lips pursed, eyes focused beyond the porch.

“Well, what are they?” Smeg pressed.

“This here's the bank,” Painter said. “Them's night deposits.”

Smeg turned back to the porch. Night deposits? Paper bags and fabric sacks left out in the open?

“People leaves 'em here if'n the bank ain't open,” Painter said. “Bank's a little late opening today. Sheriff had 'em in looking at the books last night.”

Sheriff examining the bank's books?
Smeg wondered. He hoped Rick was missing none of this and could repeat it accurately … just in case. The situation here appeared far more mysterious than the reports had indicated. Smeg didn't like the feeling of this place at all.

“Makes it convenient for people who got to get up early and them that collects their money at night,' Painter explained.

“They just leave it right out in the open?” Smeg asked.

“Yep. ‘Night deposit' it's called. People don't have to come aound when—”

“I know what it's called! But … right out in the open like that … without a guard?”

“Bank don't open till ten thirty most days,” Painter said. “Even later when the sheriff's had 'em in at night.”

“There's a guard,” Smeg said. “That's it, isn't it?”

“Guard? What we need a guard fer? Sheriff says leave them things alone, they gets left alone.”

The sheriff again,
Smeg thought. “Who … ahh deposits money like this?” he asked.

“Like I said: the people who got to get up early and…”

“But
who
are these people?”

“Oh. Well, my cousin Reb: He has the gas station down to the forks. Mr. Seelway at the General Store there. Some farmers with cash crops come back late from the city. Folks work across the line at the mill in Anderson when they get paid late of a Friday. Folks like that.”

“They just … leave their money out on this porch.”

“Why not?”

“Lord knows,” Smeg whispered.

“Sheriff says don't touch it, why—it don't get touched.”

Smeg looked around him, sensing the strangeness of this weed-grown street with its wide-open night depository protected only by a sheriff's command. Who was this sheriff?
What
was this sheriff?

“Doesn't seem like there'd be much money in Wadeville,” Smeg said. “That gas station down the main street out there looks abandoned, looks like a good wind would blow it over. Most of the other buildings—”

“Station's closed,” Painter said. “You need gas, just go out to the forks where my cousin, Reb—”

“Station failed?” Smeg asked.

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“Sheriff, he closed it.”

“Why?”

“Fire hazard. Sheriff, he got to reading the state Fire Ordinance one day. Next day he told ol' Jamison to dig up the gas tanks and cart 'em away. They was too old and rusty, not deep enough in the ground and didn't have no concrete on 'em. 'Sides that, the building's too old, wood all oily.”

“The sheriff ordered it … just like that.” Smeg snapped his fingers.

“Yep. Said he had to tear down that station. Ol' Jamison sure was mad.”

“But if the sheriff says do it, then it gets done?” Smeg asked.

“Yep. Jamison's tearing it down—one board every day. Sheriff don't seem to pay it no mind long as Jamison takes down that one board every day.”

Smeg shook his head. One board every day. What did that signify? Lack of a strong time sense? He looked back at the night deposits on the porch, asked: “How long have people been depositing their money here this way?”

“Been since a week or so after the sheriff come.”

“And how long has that been?”

“Ohhhhh … four, five years maybe.”

Smeg nodded to himself. His little group of Slorin had been on the planet slightly more than five years. This could be … this could be—He frowned. But what if it wasn't?

The dull plodding of footsteps sounded from the main street behind Smeg. He turned, saw a tall fat man passing there. The man glanced curiously at Smeg, nodded to Painter.

“Mornin', Josh,” the fat man said. It was a rumbling voice.

“Mornin', Jim,” Painter said.

The fat man skirted the Plymouth, hesitated to read the emblem on the car door, glanced back at Painter, resumed his plodding course down the street and out of sight.

“That was Jim,” Painter said.

“Neighbor?”

“Yep. Been over to the Widow McNabry's again … all the whole dang' night. Sheriff's going to be mighty displeasured, believe me.”

“He keeps an eye on your morals, too?”

“Morals?” Painter scratched the back of his neck. “Can't rightly say he does.”

“Then why would he mind if … Jim—”

“Sheriff, he says it's a sin and a crime to take what don't belong to you, but it's a blessing to give. Jim, he stood right up to the sheriff, said he jes' went to the widow's to give. So—” Painter shrugged.

“The sheriff's open to persuasion, then?”

“Some folks seem to think so.”