The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg

"The Stranger"by Chris Van Allsburg

A fantasy is a story that could never really happen in the real world. What couldn't really happen in this Snapshot?

Farmer Bailey was driving his truck on a beautiful fall day. Suddenly he heard a noise. He thought he had hit a deer. He jumped out of the truck. It wasn't a deer. It was a man! The man looked at him with terror. He seemed shocked but not hurt. Farmer Bailey took the man home with him.

He and Mrs. Bailey sat the man on the parlor sofa. They asked him questions. It seemed that the man just did not know how to talk. And he was dressed in very strange clothing. Mrs. Bailey asked a doctor to check the man. The doctor said the man was fine, but he did have a bump on his head, so he might have lost his memory. Then the doctor handed Mrs. Bailey his thermometer. "Please throw this away," he said. "It won't go above zero. It must not work."

Mr. Bailey gave the man some of his own clean clothes. The man seemed to have difficulty with the buttons. At dinner, he seemed fascinated by the steam rising from the hot soup. He watched the Bailey's little girl, Katy, blow on the soup in her spoon to cool it. The man copied her. At the same time, Mrs. Bailey felt a cold draft!

The stranger stayed for weeks. He worked in the fields. He worked hard but never got tired. Over time he became less timid with the family.

Mr. Bailey began to notice that the weather was odd. It had felt like fall before the man came. But now trees stayed green. And it was as warm as summer.

One day the stranger noticed that the trees to the north were colored orange and red. The green trees around the Bailey farm seemed drab to him. He thought something was wrong. He idly picked a green leaf and blew on it. It turned red.

The next day he dressed in his old clothes. He had tears in his eyes. The Baileys realized that he was leaving them. He hugged them all. They went outside to wave to him. But he had disappeared. It was suddenly cold out. And the trees had changed color.

The man did not return. But every fall after that, the Baileys' trees stay green longer than their neighbors' do, and then they change color overnight. And the Baileys know they'll find a note etched in frost on the window. It always says, "See you next year."