Grotto of the Dancing Deer

by Clifford D. Simak

  But Wilbur wiped his eyes and said it was all right and that if I’d just keep on he’d do the best he could to get a grip on himself.

  “What is going on here?” I asked in some astonishment. “You sound like you get drunk from hearing these sad stories.”

  “That’s what he does,” said Lester, the robot. “Why else do you think he’d sit and listen to your blabber.”

  “And you?” I asked of Lester.

  “Of course not,” Wilbur said. “He had no emotions. He is a mere machine.”

  I had another drink and I thought it over and it was as clear as day. So I told Wilbur my philosophy: “This is Saturday night and that’s the time to howl. So let’s you and I together—”

  “I am with you,” Wilbur cried, “as long as you can talk.”

  Lester clanked a gear in what must have been disgust, but that was all he did.

  “Get down every word of it,” Wilbur told the robot. “We’ll make ourselves a million. We’ll need it to get back all overpayment for our indoctrination.” He sighed. “Not that it wasn’t worth it. What a lovely, melancholy planet.”

  So I got cranked up and kept myself well lubricated and the night kept getting better every blessed minute.

  Along about midnight, I got falling-down drunk and Wilbur maudlin drink and we gave up by a sort of mutual consent. We got up off the stoop and by bracing one another we got inside the door and I lost Wilbur somewhere, but made it to my bed and that was the last I knew.

  When I woke up, I knew it was Sunday morning. The sun was streaming through the window and it was bright and sanctimonious, like Sunday always is around here.

  Sundays usually are quiet, and that’s one thing wrong with them. But this one wasn’t quiet. There was an awful din going on outside. It sounded like someone was throwing rocks and hitting a tin can.

  I rolled out of bed and my mouth tasted just as bad as I knew it would be. I rubbed some of the sand out of my eyes and started for the living room and just outside the bedroom door I almost stepped on Wilbur.

  He gave me quite a start and then I remembered who he was and I stood there looking at him, not quite believing it. I thought at first that he might be dead, but I saw he wasn’t. He was lying flat upon his back and his catfish mouth was open and every time he breathed the feathery whiskers on his lips stood straight out and fluttered.

  I stepped over him and went to the door to find out what all the racket was. And there stood Lester, the robot, exactly where we’d left him the night before, and out in the driveway a bunch of kids were pegging rocks at him. Those kids were pretty good. They hit Lester almost every time.

  I yelled at them and they scattered down the road. They knew I’d tan their hides.

  I was just turning around to go back into the house when a car swung into the drive. Joe Fletcher, our constable, jumped out and came striding toward me and I could see that he was in his best fire-eating mood.

  Joe stopped in front of the stoop and put both hands on his hips and starred first at Lester and then at me.

  “Sam,” he asked with a nasty leer, “what is going on here? Some of your pink elephants move in to live with you?”

  “Joe,” I said solemn, passing up the insult, “I’d like you to meet Lester.”

  Joe had opened up his mouth to yell at me when Wilbur showed up at the door.

  “And this is Wilbur,” I said. “Wilbur is an alien and Lester is a …”

  “Wilbur is a what!” roared Joe.

  Wilbur stepped out on the stoop and said: “What a sorrowful face. And so noble, too!”

  “He means you,” I said to Joe.

  “If you guys keep this up,” Joe bellowed, “I’ll run in the bunch of you.”

  “I meant no harm,” said Wilbur. “I apologize if I have bruised your sensitivities.”

  That was a hot one—Joe’s sensitivities!

  “I can see at a glance,” said Wilbur, “that life’s not been easy for you.”

  “I’ll tell the world it ain’t,” Joe said.

  “Nor for me,” said Wilbur, sitting down upon the stoop. “It seems that there are days a man can’t lay away a dime.”

  “Mister, you are right,” said Joe. “Just like I was telling the missus this morning when she up and told me that the kids needed some new shoes …”

  “It does beat hell how a man can’t get ahead.”

  “Listen, you ain’t heard nothing yet …”

  And so help me Hannah, Joe sat down beside him and before you could count to three started telling his life story.

  “Lester,” Wilbur said, “be sure you get this down.”

  I beat it back into the house and had a quick one to settle my stomach before I tackled breakfast.

  I didn’t feel like eating, but I knew I had to. I got out some eggs and bacon and wondered what I would feed Wilbur. For I suddenly remembered how his metabolism couldn’t stand liquor, and if it couldn’t take good whisky, there seemed very little chance that it would take eggs and bacon.

  As I was finishing my breakfast, Higman Morris came busting through the back door and straight into the kitchen. Higgy is our mayor, a pillar of the church, a member of the school board and a director of the bank, and he is a big stuffed shirt.

  “Sam,” he yelled at me, “this town has taken a lot from you. We have put up with your drinking and your general shiftlessness and your lack of public spirit. But this is too much!”

  I wiped some egg off my chin. “What is too much?”

  Higgy almost strangled, he was so irritated. “This public exhibition. This three-ring circus! This nuisance! And on a Sunday, too!”

  “Oh,” I said, “you mean Wilbur and his robot.”

  “There’s a crowd collecting out in front and I’ve had a dozen calls, and Joe is sitting out there with this—this—”

  “Alien,” I supplied.

  “And they’re bawling on one another’s shoulders like a pair of three-year-olds and … Alien!”

  “Sure,” I said. “What did you think he was?”

  Higgy reached out a shaky hand and pulled out a chair and fell weakly into it. “Samuel,” he said slowly, “give it to me once again. I don’t think I heard you right.”

  “Wilbur is an alien,” I told him, “from some other world. He and his robot came here to listen to sad stories.”

  “Sad stories?”

  “Sure. He likes sad stories. Some people like them happy and others like them dirty. He just likes them sad.”

  “If he is an alien,” said Higgy, talking to himself.

  “He’s one, sure enough,” I said.

  “Sam, you’re sure of this?”

  “I am.”

  Higgy got excited. “Don’t you appreciate what this means to Millville? This little town of ours—the first place on all of Earth that an alien visited!”

  I wished he would shut up and get out so I could have an after breakfast drink. Higgy didn’t drink, especially on Sundays. He’d have been horrified.

  “The world will beat a pathway to our door!” he shouted. He got out of the chair and started for the living room. “I must extend my official welcome.”

  I trotted along behind him, for this was one I didn’t want to miss.

  Joe had left and Wilbur was sitting alone on the stoop and I could see that he already had on a sort of edge.

  Higgy stood in front of him and thrust out his chest and held out his hand and said, in his best official manner: “I am the mayor of Millville and I take great pleasure in extending to you our sincerest welcome.”

  Wilbur shook hands with him and then he said: “Being the mayor of a city must be something of a burden and a great responsibility. I wonder that you bear up under it.”

  “Well, there are times …” said Higgy.

  “But I can see that y
ou are the kind of man whose main concern is the welfare of his fellow creatures and as such, quite naturally, you become the unfortunate target of outrageous and ungrateful actions.”

  Higgy sat down ponderously on the stoop. “Sir,” he said to Wilbur, “you would not believe all I must put up with.”

  “Lester,” said Wilbur, “see that you get this down.”

  I went back into the house. I couldn’t stomach it.

  There was quite a crowd standing out there in the road—Jake Ellis, the junkman, and Don Myers, who ran the Jolly Miller, and a lot of others. And there, shoved into the background and sort of peering out, was the Widow Frye. People were on their way to church and they’d stop and look and then go on again, but others would come and take their place, and the crowd was getting bigger instead of thinning out.

  I went out to the kitchen and had my after-breakfast drink and did the dishes and wondered once again what I would feed Wilbur. Although, at the moment, he didn’t seem to be too interested in food.

  Then I went into the living room and sat down in the rocking chair and kicked off my shoes. I sat there wiggling my toes and thinking about what a screwy thing it was that Wilbur should get drunk on sadness instead of good red liquor.

  The day was warm and I was wore out and the rocking must have helped to put me fast asleep, for suddenly I woke up and there was someone in the room. I didn’t see who it was right off, but I knew someone was there.

  It was the Widow Frye. She was all dressed up for Sunday, and after all those years of passing my house on the opposite side of the street and never looking at it, as if the sight of it or me might contaminate her—after all these years, there she was all dressed up and smiling. And me sitting there with all my whiskers on and my shoes off.

  “Samuel,” said the Widow Frye, “I couldn’t help but tell you. I think your Mr. Wilbur is simply wonderful.”

  “He’s an alien,” I said. I had just woke up and was considerable befuddled.

  “I don’t care what he is,” said the Widow Frye. “He is such a gentleman and so sympathetic. Not in the least like a lot of people in this horrid town.”

  I got to my feet and I didn’t know exactly what to do. She’d caught me off my guard and at a terrible disadvantage. Of all people in the world, she was the last I would have expected to come into my house.

  I almost offered her a drink, but caught myself just in time.

  “You been talking to him?” I asked lamely.

  “Me and everybody else,” said the Widow Frye. “And he has a way with him. You tell him your troubles and they seem to go away. There’s a lot of people waiting for their turn.”

  “Well,” I told her, “I am glad to hear you say that. How’s he standing up under all this?”

  The Widow Frye moved closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I think he’s getting tired. I would say—well, I’d say he was intoxicated if I didn’t know better.”

  I took a quick look at the clock.

  “Holy smoke!” I yelled.

  It was almost four o’clock. Wilbur had been out there six or seven hours, lapping up all the sadness this village could dish out. By now he should be stiff clear up to his eyebrows.

  I busted out the door and he was sitting on the stoop and tears were running down his face and he was listening to Jack Ritter—and Old Jack was the biggest liar in all of seven counties. He was just making up this stuff he was telling Wilbur.

  “Sorry, Jack,” I said, pulling Wilbur to his feet.

  “But I was just telling him …”

  “Go on home,” I hollered, “you and the others. You got him all tired out.”

  “Mr. Sam,” said Lester, “I am glad you came. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  The Widow Frye held the door open and I got Wilbur in and put him in my bed, where he could sleep it off.

  When I came back, the Widow Frye was waiting. “I was just thinking, Samuel,” she said. “I am having chicken for supper and there is more than I can eat. I wonder if you’d like to come on over.”

  I couldn’t say nothing for a moment. Then I shook my head.

  “Thanks just the same,” I said, “but I have to stay and watch over Wilbur. He won’t pay attention to the robot.”

  The Widow Frye was disappointed. “Some other time?”

  “Yeah, some other time.”

  I went out after she was gone and invited Lester in.

  “Can you sit down,” I asked, “or do you have to stand?”

  “I have to stand,” said Lester.

  So I left him standing there and sat down in the rocker.

  “What does Wilbur eat?” I asked. “He must be getting hungry.”

  The robot opened a door in the middle of his chest and took out a funny-looking bottle. He shook it and I could hear something rattling around inside of it.

  “This is his nourishment,” said Lester. “He takes one every day.”

  He went to put the bottle back and a big fat roll fell out. He stooped and picked it up.

  “Money,” he explained.

  “You folks have money, too?”

  “We got this when we were indoctrinated. Hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Hundred-dollar bills!”

  “Too bulky otherwise,” said Lester blandly. He put the money and the bottle back into his chest and slapped shut the door.

  I sat there in a fog. Hundred-dollar bills!

  “Lester,” I suggested, “maybe you hadn’t ought to show anyone else that money. They might try to take it from you.”

  “I know,” said Lester. “I keep it next to me.” And he slapped his chest. His slap would take the head right off a man.

  I sat rocking in the chair and there was so much to think about that my mind went rocking back and forth with the chair. There was Wilbur first of all and the crazy way he got drunk, and the way the Widow Frye had acted, and all those hundred-dollar bills.

  Especially those hundred-dollar bills.

  “This indoctrination business?” I asked. “You said it was bootleg.”

  “It is, most definitely,” said Lester. “Acquired by some misguided individual who sneaked in and taped it to sell to addicts.”

  “But why sneak in?”

  “Off limits,” Lester said. “Outside the reservation. Beyond the pale. Is the meaning clear?”

  “And this misguided adventurer figured he could sell the information he had taped, the—the—”

  “The culture pattern,” said Lester. “Your logic trends in the correct direction, but it is not as simple as you make it sound.”

  “I suppose not,” I said. “And this same misguided adventurer picked up the money, too.”

  “Yes, he did. Quite a lot of it.”

  I sat there for a while longer, then went in for a look at Wilbur. He was fast asleep, his catfish mouth blowing the whiskers in and out. So I went into the kitchen and got myself some supper.

  I had just finished eating when a knock came at the door.

  It was old Doc Abel from the sanitorium.

  “Good evening, Doc,” I said. “I’ll rustle up a drink.”

  “Skip the drink,” said Doc. “Just trot out your alien.”

  He stepped into the living room and stopped short at the sight of Lester.

  Lester must have seen that he was astonished for he tried immediately to put him at ease. “I am the so-called alien’s robot. Yet despite the fact that I am a mere machine, I am a faithful servant. If you wish to tell your sadness, you may relate it to me with perfect confidence. I shall relay it to my master.”

  Doc sort of rocked back on his heels, but it didn’t floor him.

  “Just any kind of sadness?” he asked, “or do you hanker for a special kind?”

  “The master,” Lester said, “prefers the deep-down sadness, although he
will not pass up any other kind.”

  “Wilbur gets drunk on it,” I said. “He’s in the bedroom now sleeping off a jag.”

  “Likewise,” Lester said, “confidentially, we can sell the stuff. There are people back home with their tongues hanging to their knees for this planet’s brand of sadness.”

  Doc looked at me and his eyebrows were so high that they almost hit his hairline.

  “It’s on the level, Doc,” I assured him. “It isn’t any joke. You want to have a look at Wilbur?”

  Doc nodded and I led the way into the bedroom and we stood there looking down at Wilbur. Sleeping all stretched out, he was a most unlovely sight.

  Doc put his hand up to his forehead and dragged it down across his face, pulling down his chops so he looked like a bloodhound. His big, thick, loose lips made a blubbering sound as he pulled his palm across them.

  “I’ll be damned!” said Doc.

  Then he turned around and walked out of the bedroom and I trailed along behind him. He walked straight to the door and went out. He walked a ways down the driveway, then stopped and waited for me. Then he reached out and grabbed me by the shirt front and pulled it tight around me.

  “Sam,” he said, “you’ve been working for me for a long time now and you are getting sort of old. Most other men would fire a man as old as you are and get a younger one. I could fire you any time I want to.”

  “I suppose you could,” I said and it was an awful feeling, for I had never thought of being fired. I did a good job of janitoring up at the sanitorium and I didn’t mind the work. And I thought how terrible it would be if a Saturday came and I had no drinking money.

  “You been a loyal and faithful worker,” said old Doc, still hanging onto my shirt, “and I been a good employer . I always give you a Christmas bottle and another one at Easter.”

  “Right,” I said. “True, every word of it.”

  “So you wouldn’t fool old Doc,” said Doc. “Maybe the rest of the people in this stupid town, but not your old friend Doc.”

  “But, Doc,” I protested, “I ain’t fooling no one.”