Free All Flesh Is Grass by Clifford D. Simak Page B

wrong?”
    â€œDon’t be defensive. You know there’s something wrong. Something wrong with us.”
    â€œI suppose you’re right,” I told her. “It’s not the way it should be. It’s not the way I had thought it would be, if you came home again.”
    I wanted to reach out for her, to take her in my arms—but I knew, even as I wanted it, that it was not the Nancy Sherwood who was sitting here beside me, but that other girl of long ago I wanted in my arms.
    We sat in silence for a moment, then she said, “Let’s try again some other time. Let’s forget about all this. Some evening I’ll dress up my prettiest and we’ll go out for dinner and some drinks.”
    I turned and put out my hand, but she had opened the door and was halfway out of the car.
    â€œGood night, Brad,” she said, and went running up the walk.
    I sat and listened to her running, up the walk and across the porch. I heard the front door close and I kept on sitting there, with the echo of her running still sounding in my brain.

5
    I told myself that I was going home. I told myself that I would not go near the office or the phone that was waiting on the desk until I’d had some time to think. For even if I went and picked up the phone and one of the voices answered, what would I have to tell them? The best that I could do would be to say I had seen Gerald Sherwood and had the money, but that I’d have to know more about what the situation was before I took their job. And that wasn’t good enough, I told myself; that would be talking off the cuff and it would gain me nothing.
    And then I remembered that early in the morning I’d be going fishing with Alf Peterson and I told myself, entirely without logic, that in the morning there’d be no time to go down to the office.
    I don’t suppose it would have made any difference if I’d had that fishing date or not. I don’t suppose it would have made any difference, no matter what I told myself. For even as I swore that I was going home, I knew, without much question, that I’d wind up at the office.
    Main Street was quiet. Most of the stores were closed and only a few cars were parked along the curb. A bunch of farm boys, in for a round of beers, were standing in front of the Happy Hollow tavern.
    I parked the car in front of the office and got out. Inside I didn’t even bother to turn on the light. Some light was shining through the window from a street light at the intersection and the office wasn’t dark.
    I strode across the office to the desk, with my hand already reaching out to pick up the phone—and there wasn’t any phone.
    I stopped beside the desk and stared at the top of it, not believing. I bent over and, with the flat of my hand, swept back and forth across the desk, as if I imagined that the phone had somehow become invisible and while I couldn’t see it I could locate it by the sense of touch. But it wasn’t that, exactly. It was simply, I guess, that I could not believe my eyes.
    I straightened up from feeling along the desk top and stood rigid in the room, while an icy-footed little creature prowled up and down my spine. Finally I turned my head, slowly, carefully, looking at the corners of the office, half expecting to find some dark shadow crouching there and waiting. But there wasn’t anything. Nothing had been changed. The place was exactly as I had left it, except there wasn’t any phone.
    Turning on the light, I searched the office. I looked in all the corners, I looked beneath the desk, I ransacked the desk drawers and went through the filing cabinet.
    There wasn’t any phone.
    For the first time, I felt the touch of panic. Someone, I thought, had found the phone. Someone had managed to break in, to unlock the door somehow, and had stolen it. Although, when I thought of it, that didn’t make much sense. There was nothing about the phone that would have