For I must not read, he told himself. I must not read and know the way that it will go, for then I would write the way that I had read it, and I must not do that. I must write it the way I know it is, the way I plan to write it, the only way to write it.
I must be honest, for someday the race of man…and the race of other things as well…may know the book and read it and every word must be exactly so and I must write so well and so simply that all can understand.
He threw back the covers of the bed and crawled beneath them, and as he did he saw the letter and picked it up.
With a steady finger, he inserted his nail beneath the flap and ran it along the edge and the mucilage dissolved in a brittle storm of powder that showered down on the sheet.
He took the letter out and unfolded it carefully, so that it would not break, and saw that it was typewritten, with many mistakes that were X'd out, as if the man who wrote it found a typewriter an unhandy thing to use.
He rolled over on one side and held the paper under the lamp and this is what he read:
XXI
Bridgeport, Wis.
July 11, 1987
I write this letter to myself, so that the postmark may prove beyond controversy the day and year that it was written, and I shall not open it but shall place it among my effects against the day when someone, a member of my own family, God willing, may open it and read. And reading, know the thing that I believe and think, but dare not say while I am still alive, lest someone call me touched.
For I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man's average alloted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time, while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next.
I have no morbid fear of death, nor any sentimental wish to gain the brief immortality that a thought accorded me after I am dead may give me, for the thought itself will be a fleeting one and the one who holds it himself will not have too many years of life, for the years of man are short…far too short for any perfect understanding of any of the problems that a lifetime poses.
While it is more than likely that this letter will be read by my immediate descendants, who are well acquainted with me, I am still aware that through some vagary of fate it may fall yet unopened into the hands of someone many years after I am long forgotten, or even into the hands of strangers.
Feeling that the circumstance which I have to tell is of more than ordinary interest, even at the risk of reporting something which may be well known to the one who reads this letter, I shall here include some of the basic facts about myself and my locality and situation.
My name is John H. Sutton and I am a member of a numerous family which had its roots in the East, but one branch of which situated in this locality about one hundred years ago. While I must ask, if the reader of this be unacquainted with the Suttons, that my word be taken at face value without substantiating proof, I would like to state that we Suttons are a sober lot and not given to jokes, and that our reputation for integrity and honesty is singularly unquestioned.
While I was educated for the law, I soon found it not entirely to my liking and for the last forty years or more have followed the occupation of farming, finding more content in it than I ever found in law. For farming is an honest and a soul-warming job that gives one contact with the first essentials of living, and there is, I find, a satisfaction that is almost smug in the simple yet mystifying process of raising food from soil.
For the past number of years I have not been physically able to continue with the more strenuous labor of the farm, but pride myself that I still do most of the chores and still hold active management, which means that I am in the habit of making regular tours of the acres to see how things are coming.
Through the years, I have grown to love this country, although it is rough and in many instances not suited to easy cultivation. In fact, I sometimes find myself viewing with pity the men who hold broad, flat acreages with no hills to rest their eyes. Their land may be more fertile and more easily worked than mine, but I have something that they do not have…a setting for my life where I am keenly aware of all the beauties of nature, all the changes of the seasons.
Of late years, as my step has slowed and I have found that more than normal exertion is tiring, I have fallen into the habit of arbitrarily setting for myself certain places of rest during my inspection of the farm. It is not mere coincidence that each of these resting places is a spot which recommends itself to the eye and spirit. I believe, in fact, if the truth be told, that I look forward to these resting places more than I do the inspection of the fields and pastures, although, Lord knows, I derive much satisfaction from every aspect of my trips.
There is one spot which has always had, from the very first, a sense of the special for me. If I were still a child I might best explain it by saying that it seems to be an enchanted place.
It is a deep cleft in the bluff that runs down to the river valley and it is located at the north end of the bluff pasture. There is a fair-sized boulder at the top of the cleft, and this boulder is shaped appropriately for sitting, which may be one of the reasons why I liked it, for I am a man who takes to comfort.
From the boulder one may see the sweep of the river valley with a stressed third-dimensional quality, due no doubt to the height of the vantage point plus the clearness of the air, although at times the whole scene is enveloped with a blue mist of particularly tantalizing and lucid clarity.
The view is a charming one and I have often sat there for an hour at a time, doing absolutely nothing, thinking nothing, but at peace with the world and with myself.
But there is a strangeness to the spot and this strangeness is one that I find hard to explain, for search as I may, I find no word at my command to adequately express the thing I wish to say or the condition which I would describe.
It is as if the place were tingling…as if the place were waiting for something to happen, as if that one particular spot held great possibilities for drama or for revelation, and while revelation may seem a strange word to use, I find that it comes the closest of any to the thing I have felt many times as I sat upon the boulder and gazed across the valley.
It has often seemed to me that there on that one area of earth, something could or might happen which could or might happen nowhere else on the entire planet. And I have, at times, tried to imagine what that happening might be, and I shrink from telling some of the possibilities that I have imagined, although in truth, in other things I am perhaps not imaginative enough.
To approach the boulder, I cut across the lower end of the bluff pasture, a place which is often in better grass than the rest of the grazing area, for the cattle, for some reason, do not often venture there. The pasture ends in a thin growth of trees, the forerunners of the verdant mass of foliage which sweeps down the bluff side. Just a few rods inside the trees is the boulder and because of the trees the boulder is always shaded, no matter what the time of the day, but the view is unobstructed because of the rapid falling away of the ground.
One day about ten years ago, July 4, 1977, to be exact, I approached this place and found a man and a strange machine at the lower end of the pasture, just clear of the trees.
I say machine, because that is what it appeared to be, although to tell the truth I could not make too much of it. It was like an egg, pointed slightly at each end, as an egg might look if someone stepped on it and did not break it, but spread it out, so that the ends became more pronounced. It had no working parts outside and so far as I could see not even a window, although it was apparent that the operator of it sat inside its body.
For the man had what appeared to be a door open and was standing outside and working at what may have been the motor, although when I ventured to look, it appeared like no motor I had ever seen before. Truth to tell, however, I never did get a good look at the motor or at anything else about the contraption, for the man, as soon as he saw me, most adroitly maneuvered me away from it and engaged me in such pleasant and intelligent conversation that I could not, without the utmost rudeness, change the subject or free myself from his inquiries long enough to pay attention to all the things that stirred my curiosity. I remember now, thinking back, that there were many things which I would have liked to ask him but which I never got around to, and it seems to me now that he must have anticipated these very questions and deliberately and skillfully steered me away from them.
As a matter of fact, he never did tell me who he was or where he came from or why he happened to be in
