document: A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
   shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
   by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
   absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
   human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
   with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
   
  
  
    the hoofer
   
  
   by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
   
  
  
  
    A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
   in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
   
  
   They all
   knew he was a spacer
   because of the white goggle marks
   on his sun-scorched face, and so
   they tolerated him and helped him.
   They even made allowances for him
   when he staggered and fell in the
   aisle of the bus while pursuing the
   harassed little housewife from seat
   to seat and cajoling her to sit and
   talk with him.
   
   Having fallen, he decided to
   sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
   him to the back of the bus, dumped
   him on the rear seat, and tucked his
   gin bottle safely out of sight. After
   all, he had not seen Earth for nine
   months, and judging by the crusted
   matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
   have seen it too well now, even if
   he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
   gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
   excuses for a lot of things, when a
   man was just back from Big Bottomless.
   And who could blame a
   man for acting strangely?
   
   Minutes later, he was back up the
   aisle and swaying giddily over the
   little housewife. "How!" he said.
  "Me Chief Broken Wing. You
   wanta Indian wrestle?"
   
   The girl, who sat nervously staring
   at him, smiled wanly, and
   shook her head.
   
   "Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
   burbled affectionately, crashing into
   the seat beside her.
   
   The two men slid out of their
   seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
  "Come on, Broken Wing, let's
   go back to bed."
   
   "My name's Hogey," he said.
  "Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
   about being a Indian."
   
   "Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
   drink." They got him on his feet,
   and led him stumbling back down
   the aisle.
   
   "My ma was half Cherokee, see?
   That's how come I said it. You
   wanta hear a war whoop? Real
   stuff."
   
   "Never mind."
   
   He cupped his hands to his
   mouth and favored them with a
   blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
   while the female passengers
   stirred restlessly and hunched in
   their seats. The driver stopped the
   bus and went back to warn him
   against any further display. The
   driver flashed a deputy's badge and
   threatened to turn him over to a
   constable.
   
   "I gotta get home," Big Hogey
   told him. "I got me a son now,
   that's why. You know? A little
   baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
   him yet."
   
   "Will you just sit still and be
   quiet then, eh?"
   
   Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
  "Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
   make any trouble."
   
   When the bus started again, he
   fell on his side and lay still. He
   made retching sounds for a time,
   then rested, snoring softly. The bus
   driver woke him again at Caine's
   junction, retrieved his gin bottle
   from behind the seat, and helped
   him down the aisle and out of the
   bus.
   
   Big Hogey stumbled about for a
   moment, then sat down hard in the
   gravel at the shoulder of the road.
   The driver paused with one foot on
   the step, looking around. There was
   not even a store at the road junction,
   but only a freight building
   next to the railroad track, a couple
   of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
   and, just across the way, a deserted
   filling station with a sagging
   roof. The land was Great Plains
   country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
   
   Big Hogey got up and staggered
   around in front of the bus, clutching
   at it for support, losing his
   duffle bag.
   
   "Hey, watch the traffic!" The
   driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
   compassion he trotted
   around after his troublesome passenger,
   taking his arm as he sagged
   again. "You crossing?"
   
   "Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
   alone, I'm okay."
   
   The driver started across the
   highway with him. The traffic was
   sparse, but fast and dangerous in
   the central ninety-mile lane.
   
   "I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
  "I'm a tumbler, ya know?
   Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
   I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
   used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
   now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
   of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
   Hogey?"
   
   "Yeah. Your son. Come on."
   
   "Say, you gotta son? I bet you
   gotta son."
   
   "Two kids," said the driver,
   catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
   from his shoulder. "Both girls."
   
   "Say, you oughta be home with
   them kids. Man oughta stick with
   his family. You oughta get another
   job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
   waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
   on the gravel as they stepped
   onto the opposite shoulder, and
   sprawled again.
   
   The driver blew a weary breath,
   looked down at him, and shook his
   head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
   a constable after all. This guy could
   get himself killed, wandering
   around loose.
   
   "Somebody supposed to meet
   you?" he asked, squinting around
   at the dusty hills.
   
   " Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
   belched, and shook his head.
  "Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
   S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
   week ago." He looked up at the
   driver with a pained expression.
  "Week late, ya know? Marie's
   gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
   gonna be sore!" He waggled his
   head severely at the ground.
   
   "Which way are you going?" the
   driver grunted impatiently.
   
   Hogey pointed down the side-road
   that led back into the hills.
  "Marie's pop's place. You know
   where? 'Bout three miles from
   here. Gotta walk, I guess."
   
   "Don't," the driver warned.
  "You sit there by the culvert till
   you get a ride. Okay?"
   
   Hogey nodded forlornly.
   
   "Now stay out of the road," the
   driver warned, then hurried back
   across the highway. Moments later,
   the atomic battery-driven motors
   droned mournfully, and the bus
   pulled away.
   
   Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
   the back of his neck. "Nice
   people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
   All hoofers."
   
   With a grunt and a lurch, he got
   to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
   work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
   he fought to right himself
   with frantic arm motions, but gravity
   claimed him, and he went stumbling
   into the ditch.
   
   "Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
   he cried.
   
   The bottom of the ditch was wet,
   and he crawled up the embankment
   with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
   the shoulder again. The gin bottle
   was still intact. He had himself a
   long fiery drink, and it warmed him
   deep down. He blinked around at
   the gaunt and treeless land.
   
   The sun was almost down, forge-red
   on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
   sky faded into sulphurous
   yellow toward the zenith, and the
   very air that hung over the land
   seemed full of yellow smoke, the
   omnipresent dust of the plains.
   
   A farm truck turned onto the
   side-road and moaned away, its
   driver hardly glancing at the dark
   young man who sat swaying on his
   duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
   scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
   kept staring at the crazy sun.
   
   He shook his head. It wasn't really
   the sun. The sun, the real sun,
   was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
   the dead black pit. It painted everything
   with pure white pain, and you
   saw things by the reflected pain-light.
   The fat red sun was strictly a
   phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
   He hated it for what he knew it was
   behind the gory mask, and for what
   it had done to his eyes.
   
   
   
   With a grunt, he got to his feet,
   managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
   and started off down the middle of
   the farm road, lurching from side
   to side, and keeping his eyes on the
   rolling distances. Another car turned
   onto the side-road, honking angrily.
   
   Hogey tried to turn around to
   look at it, but he forgot to shift his
   footing. He staggered and went
   down on the pavement. The car's
   tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
   Hogey lay there for a moment,
   groaning. That one had hurt his
   hip. A car door slammed and a big
   man with a florid face got out and
   stalked toward him, looking angry.
   
   "What the hell's the matter with
   you, fella?" he drawled. "You
   soused? Man, you've really got a
   load."
   
   Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
   his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
   prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
   stand the gravity."
   
   The burly farmer retrieved his
   gin bottle for him, still miraculously
   unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
   he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
   get home pronto."
   
   "Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
   I'm just space burned. You
   know?"
   
   "Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
   Do you live around here?"
   
   It was obvious that the big man
   had taken him for a hobo or a
   tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
  "Goin' to the Hauptman's
   place. Marie. You know Marie?"
   
   The farmer's eyebrows went up.
  "Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
   her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
   Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
   He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
   her husband by any chance?"
   
   "Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
   Parker."
   
   "Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
   I'm going right past John Hauptman's
   place. Boy, you're in no
   shape to walk it."
   
   He grinned wryly, waggled his
   head, and helped Hogey and his
   bag into the back seat. A woman
   with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
   beside the farmer in the front,
   and she neither greeted the passenger
   nor looked around.
   
   "They don't make cars like this
   anymore," the farmer called over
   the growl of the ancient gasoline
   engine and the grind of gears.
  "You can have them new atomics
   with their loads of hot isotopes
   under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
   Martha?"
   
   The woman with the sun-baked
   neck quivered her head slightly.
  "A car like this was good enough
   for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
   enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
   
   Five minutes later the car drew
   in to the side of the road. "Reckon
   you can walk it from here," the
   farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
   road just up ahead."
   
   He helped Hogey out of the car
   and drove away without looking
   back to see if Hogey stayed on his
   feet. The woman with the sun-baked
   neck was suddenly talking
   garrulously in his direction.
   
   It was twilight. The sun had set,
   and the yellow sky was turning
   gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
   and his legs would no longer hold
   him. He blinked around at the land,
   got his eyes focused, and found
   what looked like Hauptman's place
   on a distant hillside. It was a big
   frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
   and a few scrawny trees. Having
   located it, he stretched out in
   the tall grass beyond the ditch to
   take a little rest.
   
   Somewhere dogs were barking,
   and a cricket sang creaking monotony
   in the grass. Once there was the
   distant thunder of a rocket blast
   from the launching station six miles
   to the west, but it faded quickly. An
   A-motored convertible whined past
   on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
   
   When he awoke, it was night,
   and he was shivering. His stomach
   was screeching, and his nerves dancing
   with high voltages. He sat up
   and groped for his watch, then remembered
   he had pawned it after
   the poker game. Remembering the
   game and the results of the game
   made him wince and bite his lip
   and grope for the bottle again.
   
   He sat breathing heavily for a
   moment after the stiff drink. Equating
   time to position had become
   second nature with him, but he had
   to think for a moment because his
   defective vision prevented him from
   seeing the Earth-crescent.
   
   Vega was almost straight above
   him in the late August sky, so he
   knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
   about eight o'clock. He
   braced himself with another swallow
   of gin, picked himself up and
   got back to the road, feeling a little
   sobered after the nap.
   
   He limped on up the pavement
   and turned left at the narrow drive
   that led between barbed-wire fences
   toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
   five hundred yards or so from the
   farm road. The fields on his left
   belonged to Marie's father, he
   knew. He was getting close—close
   to home and woman and child.
   
   He dropped the bag suddenly
   and leaned against a fence post,
   rolling his head on his forearms
   and choking in spasms of air. He
   was shaking all over, and his belly
   writhed. He wanted to turn and
   run. He wanted to crawl out in the
   grass and hide.
   
   What were they going to say?
   And Marie, Marie most of all.
   How was he going to tell her about
   the money?
   
   Six hitches in space, and every
   time the promise had been the
   same: One more tour, baby, and
   we'll have enough dough, and then
   I'll quit for good. One more time,
   and we'll have our stake—enough
   to open a little business, or buy a
   house with a mortgage and get a
   job.
   
   
   And she had waited, but the
   money had never been quite enough
   until this time. This time the tour
   had lasted nine months, and he had
   signed on for every run from station
   to moon-base to pick up the
   bonuses. And this time he'd made
   it. Two weeks ago, there had been
   forty-eight hundred in the bank.
   And now ...
   
   " Why? " he groaned, striking his
   forehead against his forearms. His
   arm slipped, and his head hit the
   top of the fencepost, and the pain
   blinded him for a moment. He staggered
   back into the road with a
   low roar, wiped blood from his
   forehead, and savagely kicked his
   bag.
   
   It rolled a couple of yards up the
   road. He leaped after it and kicked
   it again. When he had finished
   with it, he stood panting and angry,
   but feeling better. He shouldered
   the bag and hiked on toward the
   farmhouse.
   
   They're hoofers, that's all—just
   an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
   even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
   born tumbler. Know what that
   means? It means—God, what does
   it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
   where Earth's like a fat
   moon with fuzzy mold growing on
   it. Mold, that's all you are, just
   mold.
   
   A dog barked, and he wondered
   if he had been muttering aloud. He
   came to a fence-gap and paused in
   the darkness. The road wound
   around and came up the hill in
   front of the house. Maybe they were
   sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
   already heard him coming. Maybe ...
   
   He was trembling again. He
   fished the fifth of gin out of his
   coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
   half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
   wouldn't do to go home with a
   bottle sticking out of his pocket.
   He stood there in the night wind,
   sipping at it, and watching the reddish
   moon come up in the east. The
   moon looked as phoney as the
   setting sun.
   
   He straightened in sudden determination.
   It had to be sometime.
   Get it over with, get it over with
   now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
   through, and closed it firmly
   behind him. He retrieved his bag,
   and waded quietly through the tall
   grass until he reached the hedge
   which divided an area of sickly
   peach trees from the field. He got
   over the hedge somehow, and started
   through the trees toward the
   house. He stumbled over some old
   boards, and they clattered.
   
   " Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
   on.
   
   The dogs were barking angrily,
   and he heard a screen door slam.
   He stopped.
   
   "Ho there!" a male voice called
   experimentally from the house.
   
   One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
   stood frozen in the shadow of a
   peach tree, waiting.
   
   "Anybody out there?" the man
   called again.
   
   Hogey waited, then heard the
   man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
  'im."
   
   The hound's bark became eager.
   The animal came chasing down the
   slope, and stopped ten feet away to
   crouch and bark frantically at the
   shadow in the gloom. He knew the
   dog.
   
   "Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
   boy—here!"
   
   The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
   trotted closer, and went
  " Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
   suspiciously again.
   
   "Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
   whispered.
   
   The dog came forward silently,
   sniffed his hand, and whined in
   recognition. Then he trotted around
   Hogey, panting doggy affection and
   dancing an invitation to romp. The
   man whistled from the porch. The
   dog froze, then trotted quickly back
   up the slope.
   
   "Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
   man on the porch said. "Chasin'
   armadillos again, eh?"
   
   The screen door slammed again,
   and the porch light went out.
   Hogey stood there staring, unable
   to think. Somewhere beyond the
   window lights were—his woman,
   his son.
   
   What the hell was a tumbler doing
   with a woman and a son?
   
   After perhaps a minute, he stepped
   forward again. He tripped over
   a shovel, and his foot plunged into
   something that went squelch and
   swallowed the foot past the ankle.
   He fell forward into a heap of
   sand, and his foot went deeper into
   the sloppy wetness.
   
   He lay there with his stinging
   forehead on his arms, cursing softly
   and crying. Finally he rolled
   over, pulled his foot out of the
   mess, and took off his shoes. They
   were full of mud—sticky sandy
   mud.
   
   The dark world was reeling
   about him, and the wind was dragging
   at his breath. He fell back
   against the sand pile and let his
   feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
   his toes. He was laughing
   soundlessly, and his face was wet
   in the wind. He couldn't think. He
   couldn't remember where he was
   and why, and he stopped caring,
   and after a while he felt better.
   
   The stars were swimming over
   him, dancing crazily, and the mud
   cooled his feet, and the sand was
   soft behind him. He saw a rocket
   go up on a tail of flame from the
   station, and waited for the sound of
   its blast, but he was already asleep
   when it came.
   
   It was far past midnight when he
   became conscious of the dog licking
   wetly at his ear and cheek. He
   pushed the animal away with a low
   curse and mopped at the side of his
   face. He stirred, and groaned. His
   feet were burning up! He tried to
   pull them toward him, but they
   wouldn't budge. There was something
   wrong with his legs.
   
   For an instant he stared wildly
   around in the night. Then he remembered
   where he was, closed his
   eyes and shuddered. When he
   opened them again, the moon had
   emerged from behind a cloud, and
   he could see clearly the cruel trap
   into which he had accidentally
   stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
   careful stack of new lumber, a
   pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
   of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
   mixer—well, it added up.
   
   He gripped his ankles and pulled,
   but his feet wouldn't budge. In
   sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
   but his ankles were clutched by the
   concrete too, and he fell back in
   the sand with a low moan. He lay
   still for several minutes, considering
   carefully.
   
   He pulled at his left foot. It was
   locked in a vise. He tugged even
   more desperately at his right foot.
   It was equally immovable.
   
   He sat up with a whimper and
   clawed at the rough concrete until
   his nails tore and his fingertips
   bled. The surface still felt damp,
   but it had hardened while he slept.
   
   He sat there stunned until Hooky
   began licking at his scuffed fingers.
   He shouldered the dog away, and
   dug his hands into the sand-pile to
   stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
   his face, panting love.
   
   "Get away!" he croaked savagely.
   
   The dog whined softly, trotted
   a short distance away, circled, and
   came back to crouch down in the
   sand directly before Hogey, inching
   forward experimentally.
   
   Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
   sand and cursed between his teeth,
   while his eyes wandered over the
   sky. They came to rest on the sliver
   of light—the space station—rising
   in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
   where the gang was—Nichols
   and Guerrera and Lavrenti
   and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
   Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
   him.
   
   Keesey would have a rough time
   for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
   was no playground. The first time
   you went out of the station in a
   suit, the pit got you. Everything
   was falling, and you fell, with it.
   Everything. The skeletons of steel,
   the tire-shaped station, the spheres
   and docks and nightmare shapes—all
   tied together by umbilical cables
   and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
   sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
   black ocean with its tentacles bound
   together by drifting strands in the
   dark tide that bore it.
   
   
   
   Everything was pain-bright or
   dead black, and it wheeled around
   you, and you went nuts trying to
   figure which way was down. In fact,
   it took you months to teach your
   body that all ways were down and
   that the pit was bottomless.
   
   He became conscious of a plaintive
   sound in the wind, and froze to
   listen.
   
   It was a baby crying.
   
   It was nearly a minute before he
   got the significance of it. It hit him
   where he lived, and he began jerking
   frantically at his encased feet
   and sobbing low in his throat.
   They'd hear him if he kept that up.
   He stopped and covered his ears to
   close out the cry of his firstborn. A
   light went on in the house, and
   when it went off again, the infant's
   cry had ceased.
   
   Another rocket went up from the
   station, and he cursed it. Space was
   a disease, and he had it.
   
   "Help!" he cried out suddenly.
  "I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
   
   He knew he was yelling hysterically
   at the sky and fighting the relentless
   concrete that clutched his
   feet, and after a moment he stopped.
   
   The light was on in the house
   again, and he heard faint sounds.
   The stirring-about woke the baby
   again, and once more the infant's
   wail came on the breeze.
    Make the kid shut up, make the
   kid shut up ...
   
   
   But that was no good. It wasn't
   the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
   fault. No fathers allowed in space,
   they said, but it wasn't their fault
   either. They were right, and he had
   only himself to blame. The kid was
   an accident, but that didn't change
   anything. Not a thing in the world.
   It remained a tragedy.
   
   A tumbler had no business with a
   family, but what was a man going
   to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
   and make yourself a eunuch. But
   that was no good either. They needed
   bulls out there in the pit, not
   steers. And when a man came down
   from a year's hitch, what was he
   going to do? Live in a lonely shack
   and read books for kicks? Because
   you were a man, you sought out a
   woman. And because she was a
   woman, she got a kid, and that was
   the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
   nobody's at all.
   
   He stared at the red eye of Mars
   low in the southwest. They were
   running out there now, and next
   year he would have been on the
   long long run ...
   
   But there was no use thinking
   about it. Next year and the years
   after belonged to little Hogey.
   
   He sat there with his feet locked
   in the solid concrete of the footing,
   staring out into Big Bottomless
   while his son's cry came from the
   house and the Hauptman menfolk
   came wading through the tall grass
   in search of someone who had cried
   out. His feet were stuck tight, and
   he wouldn't ever get them out. He
   was sobbing softly when they found
   him.
question_text: How do the other humans (hoofers) help Hogey get home?
response: Hogey gets home through the kindness of the hoofers, who all know him to be a spacer due to the white marks on his face. As such, when Hogey becomes rowdy and drunk on the bus, they gracefully pick him up and seat him down at the back of the bus. After getting off the bus, Hogey has trouble crossing the highway with all the passing cars and the bus driver compassionately helps him across the road. The driver even inquired about someone picking him up, before warning Hogey not to traipse through the hills alone and instead, wait for someone to come along. 
  
  As Hogey staggers down the pavement, he stumbles in front of a farmer’s truck. Since the farmer recognizes Hogey’s residence and identity, he helps Hogey get closer to his destination and drops him off right on the road in front of Hauptman’s place. 
  