Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 66 — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

WHEN HE DIED the little I gave from time to time. Later, I told myself, later, when I had what I thought necessary. Then we would both enjoy the benefits of my thrift. Later. Always later. He died before that time ever came. Losing him was like losing a part of myself. I was away at the time, working north at what was to be my pro- fession, and we hadn’t seen each other for months. The news came in a letter from a stranger, and that same letter contained a sizeable sum of money. But the money meant nothing to me then. I travelled all night and saw the grave. I saw our old neighbours, too, and I was not proud of the way they looked at me. I questioned them and found that he had not died alone. A stranger had been with him, an old man, and they had lived together for a short while. He had been there at the death and had arranged the interment. I didn’t know who 33 the stranger was. I never saw him, but I had other things to worry about than unknown strangers. My father was dead, that was enough, and I hadn’t even said good- bye. And now it was too late. Time, they say, heals all wounds, and time was all I had. It was a slow healer. I dreamed of my father and saw him in a thousand ways. The back of a stranger, a song, a scrap of conversation, a place name, a thousand things which made him sud- denly real and alive again so that I seemed to hear his voice and see his smile and feel again the pain of my unbearable loss. Work offered an anodyne, and I worked like a man possessed. The money he had sent me—I never thought of. it as other than his gift— enabled me to forge ahead in my studies so that I soon became an expert in my field. Atomics was still new enough to offer splendid opportunities conmicloooks.conm