Clifford D. Simak
The Visitors (v1.0)
1. LONE PINE, MINNESOTA
George, the barber, slashed his scissors in the air, snipped their blades together furiously.
"I tell you, Frank, I don't know what goes with you," he said to the man who sat in the barber chair. "I read your article on what the fish and wildlife people did up on the reservation. You didn't seem too upset about it."
"Actually, I'm not," said Frank Norton. "It doesn't mean that much. If people don't want to pay the reservation license, they can go fishing someplace else."
Norton was publisher-editor-advertising manager-circulation manager-general sweeper-out of the Lone Pine Sentinel, which had its offices across the street from the barber shop.
"It galls me," said the barber. "It ain't right to give them redskins control over the hunting and fishing rights on the reservation. As if the reservation wasn't a part of the state of Minnesota or even of these here United States. Now a white man can't go fishing on the reservation on the regular state license. He'll have to buy a license from the tribe. And the tribe will be allowed to set up their own rules and regulations. It ain't fight, I tell you."
"It shouldn't make much difference to people such as you and I," said Norton. "If we want to go fishing, we have this trout stream right at the edge of town. In the pool below the bridge, there are rainbow of a size to scare you.
"It's the principle of the thing," the barber said. "The fish and wildlife people say the redskins own the land. Their land, hell! It's not their land. We're just letting them live there. When you go to the reservation, they will charge you to fish or hunt; they'll charge you plenty for the license. Probably more than you pay the state. They'll put on their own limits and restrictions. We'll have to live by their laws, laws that we had nothing to do with making. And they'll hassle us. You just watch, they'll hassle us."
"George, you're getting yourself all worked up," said Norton. "I don't think they'll hassle anyone. They'll want people to come up there. They'll do everything they can to attract fishermen. It'll be money in their pockets."
George, the barber, snipped his scissors. "Them goddamn redskins," he said. "Always bellyaching about their rights. And putting on airs. Calling themselves native Americans. Not Indians any more. Oh, Christ, no, now they're native Americans. And saying we took away their land."
Norton chuckled. "Well, when you come right down to it, I would suppose we did take away their land. And no matter how you feel about it, George, they are native Americans. If that is what they want to call themselves, it appears to me that they have a right to. They were here first and we did take away their land."
"We had a right to it," said George. "It was just lying there. They weren't using it. Once in a while, they'd harvest a little wild rice or shoot a duck or kill a beaver for its fur. But they weren't really using the land. They were letting it go to waste. They didn't know how to use it. And we did. So we came and used it. I tell you, Frank, we had a right to take it over and use it. We have the right to use any land that isn't being used. But, even now, we aren't allowed to.
"Take this land over across the river. Big, tall, straight trees that have been standing there since Christ was a pup. Waiting to be used. Somehow, in the early days, the loggers missed them and they're still just standing there, like they been standing almost since creation. Thousands of acres of them, just waiting. Millions of board feet waiting to be sawed. There are lumber companies that want to go in there. They went into court to gain themselves the right to harvest them. But the judge said no. You can't lay an axe to them, he said. They're a primitive wilderness area and they can't be touched. The forest service told the court those thousands of acres of trees are a national heritage and have to be saved for posterity. How come we can get so hung up on heritage and posterity?"
"I don't know," said Norton. "I'm not upset about it. It's nice to stand here and look out over that primitive wilderness, nice to go out for a while and walk in it. It's peaceful over there across the river. Peaceful and sort of awesome. Sort of nice to have it there."
"I don't give a damn," said the barber. "I tell you it isn't right. We're being pushed around. Pushed around by fuzzy-headed dogooders and simple-minded bleeding hearts who scream we got to help those poor, downtrodden redskins and we got to save the trees and we can't pollute the air. I don't care what those bleeding hearts may have to say, those redskins have no one but themselves to blame. They're a lazy lot. They ain't got an honest day of work in all of them together. They just lie around and bellyache. They always have their hands out. They're always claiming that we owe them something—no matter how much we give them, they claim we owe them more. I tell you, we don't owe them nothing but a good, swift kick in their lazy butts. They had their chance and they didn't make it. They were too dumb to make it, or too lazy. They had this whole damn country before the white men came and they did nothing with it. For years, we've been taking care of them and the more we do for them, the more they want. Now they're not only asking for things, they're demanding them. That's what everyone is doing—demanding things they haven't got. ‘What right have any of them to be demanding anything? Who do they think they are?
"You mark my word. Before they are through with it, those redskins up on the reservation will be demanding that we give them back all of northern Minnesota, and maybe some of Wisconsin, too. Just like they are doing out in the Black Hills. Say the Black Hills and the Bighorn region belong to them. Something about some old treaties of a hundred years or more ago. Saying we took the land away from them when we had no right to. Got that bill in Congress and a suit in the courts demanding the Black Hills and the Bighorn. And, more than likely, some silly judge will say they have a right to it and there are eggheads in Congress who are working for them, saying they have a legal right to the land that the white men have spent years and millions of dollars making into something that is worthwhile. All it was when the Indians had it was buffalo range."
The barber flourished his shears. "You just wait and see," he said. "The same thing will happen here."
"The trouble with you, George," said Norton, "is that you are a bigot."
"You can call me any name you want to," said the barber. "We are friends and I won't take offense at it. But I know what is right and what is wrong. And I ain't afraid to speak out about it. When you call a man a bigot, all that you are saying is that he doesn't believe something that you believe in. You've come to the end of your argument and you call him a name instead."
Norton made no answer and the barber ceased his talking and got down to work.
Outside the shop, the two blocks of stores and business places in the town of Lone Pine drowsed in the late afternoon of an early autumn day. A few cars were parked along the street. Three dogs went through elaborate, formal canine recognition rites, three old friends meeting at the northwest corner of an intersection. Stuffy Grant, tattered and disreputable man-about-town, sat on a nail keg outside the town's one hardware store, paying close attention to the smoking of a fairly decent-sized cigar stub that he had rescued from the gutter. Sally, the waitress at the Pine Cafe, slowly swept the sidewalk in front of her place of employment, making the job last, reluctant to leave the warm autumn sunshine and go inside again. At the end of the easternmost block, Kermit Jones, the banker, drove his car into the corner service station.
Jerry Conklin, forestry student working for his doctorate at the University of Minnesota, parked his car at the end of the bridge that spanned the Pine River below the town, took out his cased fly rod, and began assembling it. When he had stopped at the Lone Pine service station several months ago, en route to a forestry camp in the primitive wilderness area, the attendant had told him of the monster trout that lurked in the pool below the bridge. An avid fly fisherman, he had kept this piece of information in his mind ever since it had been given him, but with no chance until now to act upon it. On this day, he had driven a number of miles out of his way from another forestry camp where he had spent several days studying the ecology of a mature and undisturbed white pine forest, so that he could try the pool below the bridge.