Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (45 page)

Today I drove into Sunbury, and just for a test I brought home a bottle of Sunbury Dairy Milk. Now we’ll see…I fill a bowl. Homer and Moses are wondering almost audibly if this is the same distasteful stuff I’ve been serving the last week. I put down the bowl; they fall to with such gusto that milk splashes on to
their whiskers and drips all over the floor. That settles it. Tonight I’ll put a note in the bottle, stopping delivery from Maple Valley Dairy.

I don’t understand it! I wrote very clearly.
“Please deliver no more milk.” Lo and behold, the driver has the gall to leave me two bottles. I certainly won’t pay for it. The ineffable, unutterable nerve of the man!

Sunbury Dairy doesn’t deliver up Maple Valley. I’ll just buy milk with my groceries. And tonight I’ll write a firm note to Maple Valley Dairy.

November 21

Dear Sirs:

Leave no more milk! I don’t want it. My cats won’t drink it. Here is fifty cents for the two bottles I have used.

Isabel Durbrow

I am perplexed and angry. The insolence of the people is incredible. They took the two bottles back, then left me another. And a note. It’s on rough gray paper, and it reads:

“You asked for it; you are going to get it.”

The note has a rather unpleasant ring to it. It certainly couldn’t be a threat…I don’t think I like these people…They must deliver very early; I’ve never heard so much as a step.

The farmer down the road is delivering my wood. I say to him, “Mr. Gable, this Maple Valley Dairy, they have a very odd way of doing business.”

“Maple Valley Dairy?” Mr. Gable looks blank. “I don’t think I know them.”

“Oh,” I ask him, “don’t you buy their milk?”

“I’ve got four cows of my own to
milk.”

“Maple Valley Dairy must be further
up the road.”

“I hardly think so,” says Mr. Gable. “I’ve never heard of them.”

I show him the bottle; he looks surprised, and shrugs.

Many of these country people don’t travel more than a mile or two from home the whole of their lives.

Tomorrow is milk day; I believe I’ll get up early and tell the driver just what I think of the situation.

It is six o’clock; very gray and cold. The milk is already on the porch. What time do they deliver, in Heaven’s
name?

Tomorrow is milk day again. This time I’ll get up at four o’clock and wait till he arrives.

The alarm goes off. It startles me. The room is still dark. I’m warm and drowsy. For a moment I can’t remember why I should get up…The milk, the insufferable Maple Valley Dairy. Perhaps I’ll let it go till next time…I hear a thump on the porch. There he is now! I jump up, struggle into a bathrobe, run across the room.

I open the door. The milk is on the porch. I don’t see the milkman. I don’t see the truck. I don’t hear anything. How could he get away so fast? It’s incredible. I find this whole matter very disturbing.

To make matters worse
there’s another letter from Poole in the mail. This one I read, and am sorry that I bothered. He is planning to fight the divorce. He wants to come back and live with me. He explains at great length the effect I have on him; it’s conceited and parts are rather disgusting. Where have I disappeared to? He’s sick of this stalling around. The letter is typical of Poole, the miserable
soul in the
large flamboyant body. I was never a person to him; I was an ornamental vessel into which he could spend his passion—a lump of therapic
clay he could knead and pound and twist. He is a very ugly man; I was his wife all of six weeks…I’d hate to have him find me out here. But Mrs. Lipscomb won’t tell…

Farmer Gable brought me another load of wood. He says he smells winter in the air. I suppose it’ll snow before long. Then won’t the fire feel good!

The alarm goes off. Three-thirty. I’m going to catch that milkman
if it’s the last thing I do.

I crawl out on the cold floor. Homer and Moses wonder what the hell’s going on. I find my slippers, my bathrobe. I go to the porch.

No milk yet. Good. I’m in time. So I wait. The east is only tinged
with gray; a pale moon shines on the porch. The hill across the road is tarnished silver, the trees black.

I wait…It is four o’clock. The moon is setting.

I wait…It is four-thirty.

Then five.

No milkman.

I am cold and stiff. My joints ache. I cross the room and light a fire in the wood stove. I see Homer looking at the door. I run to the window. The milk is in its usual place.

There is something very wrong here. I look up the valley, down the valley. The sky is wide and dreary. The trees stand on top of the hills like people looking out to sea. I can’t believe that anyone is playing a joke on me…Today I’ll go looking for the Maple Valley Dairy.