All Flesh Is Grass by Clifford D. Simak

attracted anyone’s attention. Of course it had no dial and it was not connected, but looking through the window, that would not have been apparent.
    More than likely, I told myself, whoever had put it on the desk had come back and taken it. Perhaps it meant that the ones who had talked to me had reconsidered and had decided I was not the man they wanted. They had taken back the phone and, with it, the offer of the job.
    And if that were the case, there was only one thing I could do—forget about the job and take back the fifteen hundred. Although that, I knew, would be rather hard to do. I needed that fifteen hundred so bad I could taste it.
    Back in the car, I sat for a moment before starting the motor, wondering what I should do next. And there didn’t seem to be anything to do, so I started the engine and drove slowly up the street.
    Tomorrow morning, I told myself, I’d pick up Alf Peterson and we’d have our week of fishing. It would be good, I thought, to have old Alf to talk with. We’d have a lot to talk about—his crazy job down in Mississippi and my adventure with the phone.
    And maybe, when he left, I’d be going with him. It would be good, I thought, to get away from Millville.
    I pulled the car into the driveway and left it standing there. Before I went to bed, I’d want to get the camping and the fishing gear together and packed into the car against an early start, come morning. The garage was small and it would be easier to do the packing with the car standing in the driveway.
    I got out and stood beside the car. The house was a hunched shadow in the moonlight and past one corner of it I could see the moonlit glitter of an unbroken pane or two in the sagging greenhouse. I could just see the tip of the elm tree, the seedling elm that stood at one corner of the greenhouse. I remembered the day I had been about to pull the seedling out, when it was no more than a sprout, and how my dad had stopped me, telling me that a tree had as much right to live as anybody else. That’s exactly what he’d said—as much as anybody else. He’d been a wonderful man, I thought; he believed, deep inside his heart, that flowers and trees were people.
    And once again I smelled the faint perfume of the purple flowers that grew in profusion all about the greenhouse—the same perfume I’d smelled at the foot of the Sherwood porch. But this time there was no circle of enchantment.
    I walked around the house and as I approached the kitchen door I saw there was a light inside. More than likely, I thought, I had forgotten it, although I could not remember that I had turned it on.
    The door was open, too, and I could remember shutting it and pushing on it with my hand to make sure the latch had caught before I’d gone out to the car.
    Perhaps, I thought, there was someone in there waiting for me, or someone had been here and left and the place was looted, although there was, God knows, little enough to loot. It could be kids, I thought—some of these mixed-up kids would do anything for kicks.
    I went through the door fast and then came to a sudden halt in the middle of the kitchen. There was someone there, all right; there was someone waiting.
    Stiffy Grant sat in a kitchen chair and he was doubled over, with his arms wrapped about his middle, and rocking slowly, from side to side, as if he were in pain.
    â€œStiffy!” I shouted, and Stiffy moaned at me.
    Drunk again, I thought. Stiffer than a goat and sick, although how in the world he could have gotten drunk on the dollar I had given him was more than I could figure. Maybe, I thought, he had made another touch or two, waiting to start drinking until he had cash enough to really hang one on.
    â€œStiffy,” I said, sharply, “what the hell’s the matter?”
    I was plenty sore at him. He could get plastered as often as he liked and it was all right with me, but he had no right to come busting in on