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nakedness of the human race.
    He still was human. Funny, he thought, that he should stay human, that in a century of association with these beings from the many stars he should have, through it all, remained a man of Earth.
    For in many ways, his ties with Earth were cut. Old Winslowe Grant was the only human he ever talked with now. His neighbors shunned him, and there were no others, unless one could count watchers, and those he seldom saw-only glimpses of them, only the places they had been.
    Only old Winslowe Grant and Mary and the other people from the shadow who came occasionally to spend lonely hours with him.
    That was all of Earth he had, old Winslowe and the shadow people and the homestead acres that lay outside the house-but not the house itself, for the house was alien now.
    He shut his eyes and remembered how the house had been in the olden days. There had been a kitchen, in this same area where he was sitting, with file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt (14 of 103) [1/19/03 4:01:51 PM]
     
    file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt the iron cookstove, black and monstrous, in its corner, showing its row of fiery teeth along the slit made by the grate. Pushed against the wall had been the table where the three of them had eaten, and he could remember how the table looked, with the vinegar cruet and the glass that held the spoons and the Lazy Susan with the mustard, horseradish, and chili sauce sitting in a group, a sort of centerpiece in the miple of the red checkered cloth that the table wore.
    There had been a winter night and he had been, it seemed, no more than three or four. His mother was busy at the stove with supper. He was sitting on the floor in the center of the kitchen, playing with some blocks, and outside he could hear the muffled howling of the wind as it prowled along the eaves. His father had come in from milking at the barn, and a gust of wind and a swirl of snow had come into the room with him. Then he’d shut the door and the wind and snow were gone, shut outside this house, condemned to the outer darkness and the wilderness of night. His father had set the pail of milk that he had been carrying on the kitchen sink and Enoch saw that his beard and eyebrows were coated with snow and there was frost on the whiskers all around his mouth.
    He held that picture still, the three of them like historic manikins posed in a cabinet in a museum-his father with the frost upon his whiskers and the great felt boots that came up to his knees; his mother with her face flushed from working at the stove and with the lace cap upon her head, and himself upon the floor, playing with the blocks.
    There was one other thing that he remembered, perhaps more clearly than all the rest of it. There was a great lamp sitting on the table, and on the wall behind it hung a calendar, and the glow of the lamp fell like a spotlight upon the picture on the calendar. There was old Santa Claus, riding in his sleigh along a woodland track and all the little woodland people had turned out to watch him pass. A great moon hung above the trees and there was thick snow on the ground. A pair of rabbits sat there, gazing soulfully at Santa, and a deer beside the rabbits, with a raccoon just a little distance off, ringed tail wrapped about his feet, and a squirrel and chickadee side by side upon an overhanging branch. Old Santa had his whip raised high in greeting and his cheeks were red and his smile was merry and the reindeer hitched to his sled were fresh and spirited and proud.
    Through all the years this mid-nineteenth-century Santa had ripen down the snowy aisles of time, with his whip uplifted in happy greeting to the woodland creatures. And the golden lamplight had ripen with him, still bright upon the wall and the checkered tablecloth.
    So, thought Enoch, some things do endure-the memory and the thought and the snug warmness of a childhood kitchen on a stormy winter