Free Masters of the Maze by Avram Davidson Page A

predicted, “some late.” It was also the oldest, dirtiest, smelliest, most rust-eaten one of all. But it was the only game in town, so N. Gordon boarded it, and, after a gloomy, chilly, jerky ride, was let off at a goat shed in the snow-covered foothills. Fortunately, he was awaited.
    “You, Mr. Jordan? I’m Ozzie Heid, work for Mr. Bellamy, let’s get in the car. Lordy, it’s cold out here, gimme your grip: there.”
    The warmth of the automobile was worth a mispronunciation, Nate thought; though the car seemed almost as old and worn and untidy as the railroad coach, it seemed somehow infinitely less nasty. The upthrusting springs of the front seat were covered well enough with old blankets and sheepskins; in the back, jammed with groceries and a pair of snowshoes and a shotgun, an old red setter bitch helped a pile of winter apples to mature.
    “Long time since I picked up any visitor there at Fishokan,” Ozzie said, wiping the inside of the windshield. “Man from the bank, doctor, and repairmen and such, they come by car. Fellow of your name and about your general type appearance, picked
him
up at the depot a few years ago, he wasn’t feeling no pain, like they say, stood on his head and whistled
Dixie,
nice sparkly young fellow, didn’t stay long, though, mmmm, well …”
    Ozzie’s face resembled one of those bas-relief maps which children are sometimes encouraged to make out of
papier-mâché
or plaster or whatever it is, and then color, instead of being taught to read and write and cypher, the little bastards; there were ranges and ridges and riverine systems and coastlines and valleys, in a surprising variety of colors — red, white, orange, yellow, purple. It seemed rather unfair to describe him as a Kallikak and he had only five fingers on each hand.
    “That’s Nokomas,” he said, by and by, as they passed through a cluster of old-looking houses dotted with new-looking gas stations and a lunch-wagon; “that’s where
we
live, the people that work for Mr. Bellamy, used to be Nokomas
Mills,
first woolen mills in this here entire part of the state, used water power, but that’s all been done away with now, oh, years and years ago. Next place we hit, Fisher’s Crossings, nothing but the roadhouse there and that’s closed this time of year, and the old Fisher house, after that, why, just woods and hills till we get to Darkglen. Ought to make it just about at dark, too. More or less I just unload you and pick up Glory, that’s Mrs. Smith, turn around and drive back to home. Only body else that works there this time o’ year, that’s Keren, she drives her own Buick.”
    “Drives it where?”
    “Why, back to Nokomas, too — there, see there, that’s where my boy and me cut most our wood for this winter, I burn wood, that’s what I burn,
wood.
Takes us a lot of time to cut enough cords, I can tell you, there’s people who laugh at us, got an oil burner, a person I could name, ‘All I do is switch a button,’ he says. Yes, and come one good storm, down go the wires, down goes the electricity, his oil tank might just be a puddle of piss for all the good it does him, but I just go out and get another armful of wood; here we turn off the county road,
lie
down, Beauty,
lie
down…. Smells something in the woods, dog has a nose that you wouldn’t believe, she used to cut up something wonderful at the big house from time to time, seems to get terrible excited and then scared half to death, so I don’t bring her no more, except for just a short trip like now.”
    Second-growth timber began to give way to thicker stands of higher, older trees, and the land commenced rising more steeply. It had been weeks since it had snowed in New York City, and that fall had long since been churned into a greasy black muck and washed away by rains. But here it still lay “white and smooth and even” — or, Nate mused, was it “white and
crisp
and even?”
    The question was perhaps not so much why there were no