The Visitors (v1.0)

27. LONE PINE

Sally, the waitress at the Pine Cafe, brought Frank Norton his plate of ham and eggs and sat down at the table to talk with him. The door came open and Stuffy Grant came fumbling in.

"Come on over, Stuffy," Norton called to him, "and sit down with us. I'll buy you your breakfast."

"That's handsome of you," said Stuffy, "and if you don't mind, I'll take you up on it. I been out watching them visitors of ours mowing down the trees. It was quite a walk, but I got up before light so I could get there early before any tourists showed up. Them tourists kind of take an edge off watching them. I wanted to see if maybe they were starting to bud, like the one that was here before."

"And are they?" asked Sally.

"Well, not yet. It seems to me it's taking them a little longer than the other one. But any day now they'll be doing it. They got long rows of those bales of white stuff strung out behind them. I been trying to think what that stuff is eafled."

"Cellulose," said Norton.

"That's right," said Stuffy. "That is what it's called."

"Since when did you get so interested in the visitors?" asked Sally.

"I don't rightly know," Stuffy told her. "I guess it was from the very start, when this batch first sat down. You might say I was sort of involved with them. There was this girl writer from down in Minneapolis and that first night, I held the phone for her so she could talk to her editor when she got back and then I was the one who brought word to her when the second batch landed. I was sleeping off a drunk this side of the river and saw them coming down and right away I told myself she would want to know. It didn't seem right to me that I should go pounding at her door in the middle of the night, an old reprobate like me. I thought she might be mad at me. But I went and done it anyhow and she wasn't mad at me. She gave me ten dollars later on. She and that camera fellow she had along with her, they were real nice people."

"Yes, they were," said Sally. "So were all the newspaper and TV people. It seems a little strange that they now are gone. Of course, there are still a lot of people coming to see the baby visitors. Sometimes they go down to see the others, too. But these people aren't like the news people. They're just sightseers. Drop in for a cup of coffee and a doughnut, once in a while a sandwich, but they don't come for meals and they never tip. I suppose that in a little place like this, and not buying much, they don't feel there is any need of it."

"At first," said Stuffy, "I went out to see the Visitors, every single day like I've done since they came, telling myself I should keep watch of them so that if anything happened, I could let that girl reporter know. But I don't think that's the reason anymore, not the main reason. I've got so I like to watch them for themselves. Once I told myself they were things from a long way off and that they really shouldn't be here, but it doesn't seem that way now. It's gotten so that they seem just like people to me. I used to be afraid of them, but now I'm not seared of them. I walk right up to them and put out my hand and lay it on their hides and they're not cold, but warm, just like a person's warm."

"If you're going to have breakfast," Norton said to him, "you better tell Sally what you want. I'm way ahead of you."

"You said that you were paying for my breakfast."

"That's what I said."

"Frank, how come that you.

"Well, you might say that I had an impulse that I may be sorry for. If you don't hurry up.

"Then," said Stuffy, "I'll have a stack of cakes with a couple of eggs, sunny side up, dumped on top of them. And if you have some sausages and maybe a piece or two of bacon and a couple of extra pats of butter."