Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (20 page)

 
          
 
where it wanted to hurt him. Sometimes this
faith drove her into a senseless anger, from which she recovered quickly,
knowing how useless it was to criticize something as contained as a stone in a
peach.

 
          
 
"Why didn't I ever catch it from
you?" she said at last.

 
          
 
He laughed a little bit, softly, "Catch
what?"

 
          
 
"I caught everything else. You shook me
up and down in other ways. I didn't know anything but what you taught me."
She stopped. It was hard to explain. Their life had been like the warm blood in
a person passing through tissues quietly, both ways.

 
          
 
"Everything but religion," she said,
"I never caught that from you."

 
          
 
"It's not a catching thing," he
said. "Someday you just relax. And there it is."

 
          
 
Relax, she thought. Relax what? The body. But
how to relax the mind? Her fingers twitched beside her. Her eyes wandered idly
about the vast interior of the powerhouse. The machines stood over her in dark
silhouettes with little sparkles crawling on them. The humming-humming-humming
crept along her limbs.

 
          
 
Sleepy. Tired. She drowsed. Her eyes lidded
and opened and lidded and opened. The humming=humming filled her marrow as if
small hummingbirds were suspended in her body and in her head.

 
          
 
She traced the half-seen tubing up and up into
the ceiling, and she saw the machines and heard the invisible whirlings. She
suddenly became very alert in her drowsiness. Her eyes moved swiftly up and up
and then down and across, and the humming-singing of the machines grew louder
and louder, and her eyes moved, and her body relaxed; and on the tall, green
windows she saw the shadows of the high-tension wires rushing off into the
raining night.

 
          
 
Now the humming was in her, her eyes jerked,
she felt herself yanked violently upright. She felt seized by a whirling
dynamo, around, around in a whirl, out, out, into the heart of whirling
invisibilities, fed into, accepted by a thousand copper wires, and shot, in an
instant, over the earth!

 
          
 
She was everywhere at once!

 
          
 
Streaking along high monster towers in
instants, sizzling between high poles where small glass knobs sat like crystal-green
birds holding the wires in their non-conductive beaks, branching in four
directions, eight secondary directions, finding towns, hamlets, cities, racing
on to farms, ranches, haciendas, she descended gently like a widely filamented
spider web upon a thousand square miles of desert!

 
          
 
The earth was suddenly more than many separate
things, more than houses, rocks, concrete roads, a horse here or there, a human
in a shallow, boulder-topped grave, a prickling of cactus, a town invested with
its own light surrounded by night, a million apart things. Suddenly it all had
one pattern encompassed and held by the pulsmg electric web.

 
          
 
She spilled out swiftly into rooms where life
was rising from a slap on a naked child's back, into rooms where life was
leaving bodies like the light fading from an electric bulb—the filament
glowing, fading, finally colorless. She was in every town, every house, every
room, making light-patterns over hundreds of miles of land; seeing, hearing
everything, not alone any more, but one of thousands of people, each with his
ideas and his faiths.

 
          
 
Her body lay, a lifeless reed, pale and
trembling. Her mind, in all its electric tensity, was flung about this way,
that, down vast networks of powerhouse tributary.

 
          
 
Everything balanced. In one room she saw life
wither; in another, a mile away, she saw wineglasses lifted to the newborn,
cigars passed, smiles, handshakes, laughter. She saw the pale, drawn faces of
people at white deathbeds, heard how they understood and accepted death, saw
their gestures, felt their feelings, and saw that they, too, were lonely in
themselves, with no way to get to the world to see the balance, see it as she
was seeing it now.

 
          
 
She swallowed. Her eyelids flickered and her
throat burned under her upraised fingers.

 
          
 
She was not alone.

 
          
 
The dynamo had whirled and flung her with
centrifugal force out along a thousand lines into a million glass capsules
screwed into ceilings, plucked into light by a pull of a cord or a twist of a
knob or a flick of a switch.

 
          
 
The light could be in any room; ail that was
needed was to touch the switch. All rooms were dark until light came. And here
she was, in all of them at once. And she was not alone. Her grief was but one
part of a vast grief, her fear only one of countless others. And this grief was
only a half thing. There was the other half; of things born, of comfort in the
shape of a new child, of food in the warmed body, of colors for the eye and
sounds in the awakened ear, and spring wild flowers for the smelling.

 
          
 
Whenever a light blinked out, life threw
another switch; rooms were illumined afresh.

 
          
 
She was with those named Clark and those named
Gray and the Shaws and Martins and Hanfords, the Fentons, the Drakes, the
Shattucks, the Hubbells, and the Smiths. Being alone was not alone, except in
the mind. You had all sorts of peekholes in your head. A silly, strange way to
put it, perhaps, but there were the holes; the ones to see through and see that
the world was there and people in it, as hard put to and uneasy as yourself;
and there were the holes for hearing, and the one for speaking out your grief
and getting rid of it, and the holes for knowing the changes of season through
the scents of summer grain or winter ice or autumn fires. They were there to be
used so that one was not alone. Loneliness was a shutting of the eyes. Faith
was a simple opening.

 
          
 
The light-net fell upon all the world she had
known for twenty years, herself blended with every line. She glowed and pulsed
and was gentled in the great easy fabric. It lay across the land, covering each
mile like a gentle, warm, and humming blanket. She was everywhere.

 
          
 
In the powerhouse the turbines whirled and
hummed and the electric sparks, like little votive candles, jumped and
clustered upon bent elbows of electric piping and glass. And the machines stood
like saints and choruses, haloed now yellow, now red, now green, and a massed
singing beat along the roof hollows and echoed down in endless hymns and
chants. Outside, the wind clamored at the brick walls and drenched the glazed
windows with rain; inside, she lay upon her small pillow and suddenly began to
cry.

 
          
 
Whether it was with understanding, acceptance,
joy, resignation, she couldn't know. The singing went on, higher and higher,
and she was everywhere. She put out her hand, caught hold of her husband, who
was still awake, his eyes fixed at the ceiling. Perhaps he had run everywhere,
too, in this instant, through the network of light and power. But then, he had
always been everywhere at once. He felt himself a unit of a whole and therefore
he was stable; to her, unity was new and shaking. She felt his arms suddenly
around her and she pressed her face into his shoulder for a long while, hard,
while the humming and the humming climbed higher, and she cried freely,
achingly, against him. . . .

 
          
 
In the morning the desert sky was very clear.
They walked from the powerhouse quietly, saddled their horses, cinched on all
of the equipment, and mounted.

 
          
 
She settled herself and sat there under the blue
sky. And slowly she was aware of her back, and her back was straight, and she
looked at her alien hands on the reins, and they had ceased trembling. And she
could see the far mountains; there was no blur nor a running-of-color to
things. All was solid stone touching stone, and stone touching sand, and sand
touching wild flower, and wild flower touching the sky in one continuous clear
flow, everything definite and of a piece.

 
          
 
"Wope!" cried Berty, and the horses
walked slowly off, away from the brick building, through the cool sweet morning
air.

 
          
 
She rode handsomely and she rode well, and in
her, like a stone in a peach, was a peacefulness. She called to her husband as
they slowed on a rise, "Berty!"

 
          
 
"Yes?"

 
          
 
"Can we . . ." she asked.

 
          
 
"Can we what?" he said, not hearing
the first time.

 
          
 
"Can we come here again sometime?"
she asked, nodding back toward the powerhouse. "Once in a while? Some
Sunday?"

 
          
 
He looked at her and nodded slowly. "I
reckon. Yes. Sure. I reckon so."

 
          
 
And as they rode on into town she was humming,
humming a strange soft tune, and he glanced over and listened to it, and it was
the sound you would expect to hear from sun-warmed railroad ties on a hot
summer day when the air rises in a shimmer, flurried and whirling; a sound in
one key, one pitch, rising a little, falling a little, humming, humming, but
constant, peaceful, and wondrous to hear.

 
          
 
All night Mrs. Navarrez moaned, and these
moans filled the tenement like a light turned on in every room so no one could
sleep. All night she gnashed her white pillow and wrung her thin hands and
cried, "My Joe!" The tenement people, at 3 a.m., finally discouraged
that she would never shut her painted red mouth, arose, feeling warm and
gritty, and dressed to take the trolley downtown to an all-night movie. There
Roy Rogers chased bad men through veils of stale smoke and spoke dialogue above
the soft snorings in the dark night theater.

 
          
 
By dawn Mrs. Navarrez was still sobbing and
screaming.

 
          
 
During the day it was not so bad. Then the
massed choir of babies crying here or there in the house added the saving grace
of what was almost a harmony. There was also the chugging thunder of the
washing machines on the tenement porch, and chenille-robed women standing on
the flooded, soggy boards of the porch, talking their Mexican gossip rapidly.
But now and again, above the shrill talk, the washing, the babies, one could
hear Mrs. Navarrez like a radio tuned high. "My Joe, oh, my poor
Joe!" she screamed.

 
          
 
Now, at twilight, the men arrived with the
sweat of their work under their arms. Lolling in cool bathtubs all through the
cooking tenement, they cursed and held their hands to their ears.

 
          
 
"Is she still at it!" they raged
helplessly. One man even kicked her door. "Shut up, woman!" But this
only made Mrs. Navarrez shriek louder. "Oh, ah! Joe, Joe!"

 
          
 
"Tonight we eat out!" said the men
to their wives. All through the house, kitchen utensils were shelved and doors
locked as men hurried their perfumed wives down the halls by their pale elbows.

 
          
 
Mr. Villanazul, unlocking his ancient, flaking
door at midnight, closed his brown eyes and stood for a moment, swaying. His
wife Tina stood beside him with their three sons and two daughters, one in
arms.

 
          
 
"Oh God," whispered Mr. Villanazul.
"Sweet Jesus, come down off the cross and silence that woman." They
entered their dim little room and looked at the blue candlelight flickering
under a lonely crucifix. Mr. Villanazul shook his head philosophically.
"He is still on the cross."

 
          
 
They lay in their beds like burning barbecues,
the summer night basting them with their own liquors. The house flamed with
that ill woman's cry.

 
          
 
"I am stifled!" Mr. Villanazul fled
through the tenement, downstairs to the front porch with his wife, leaving the
children, who had the great and miraculous talent of sleeping through all
things.

 
          
 
Dim figures occupied the front porch, a dozen
quiet men crouched with cigarettes fuming and glowing in their brown fingers,
women in chenille wrappers taking what there was of the summer-night wind. They
moved like dream figures, like clothes dummies worked stiffly on wires and
rollers. Their eyes were puffed and their tongues thick.

 
          
 
"Let us go to her room and strangle
her," said one of the men.

 
          
 
"No, that would not be right," said
a woman. "Let us throw her from the window."

 
          
 
Everyone laughed tiredly.

 
          
 
Mr. Villanazul stood blinking bewilderedly at
all the people. His wife moved sluggishly beside him.

 
          
 
"You would think Joe was the only man in the
world to join the Army," someone said irritably. "Mrs. Navarrez, pah!
This Joe-husband of hers will peel potatoes; the safest man in the
infantry!"

 
          
 
"Something must be done." Mr.
Villanazul had spoken. He was startled at the hard firmness of his own voice.
Everyone glanced at him.

 
          
 
"We can't go on another night," Mr.
Villanazul continued bluntly.

 
          
 
"The more we pound her door, the more she
cries," explained Mr. Gomez.

 
          
 
"The priest came this afternoon,"
said Mrs. Gutierrez. "We sent for him in desperation. But Mrs. Navarrez
would not even let him in the door, no matter how he pleaded. The priest went
away. We had Officer Gilvie yell at her, too, but do you think she
listened?"

 
          
 
"We must try some other way, then,"
mused Mr. Villanazul. "Someone must be-sympathetic—with her."

 
          
 
"What other way is there?" asked Mr.
Gomez.

 
          
 
"If only," figured Mr. Villanazul
after a moment's thought, "if only there was a single man among us."

 
          
 
He dropped that like a cold stone into a deep
well. He let the splash occur and the ripples move gently out.

 
          
 
Everybody sighed.

 
          
 
It was like a little summer-night wind arisen.
The men straightened up a bit; the women quickened.

 
          
 
"But," replied Mr. Gomez, sinking
back, "we are all married. There is no single man."

 
          
 
"Oh," said everyone, and settled
down into the hot, empty river bed of night, smoke rising, silent.

 
          
 
"Then," Mr. Villanazul shot back,
lifting his shoulders, tightening his mouth, "it must be one of us!"

 
          
 
Again the night wind blew, stirring the people
in awe.

 
          
 
"This is no time for selfishness!"
declared Villanazul. "One of us must do this thing! That, or roast in hell
another night!"

 
          
 
Now the people on the porch separated away
from him, blinking. ''You will do it, of course, Mr. Villanazul?" they
wished to know.

 
          
 
He stiffened. The cigarette almost fell from
his fingers. "Oh, but I—" he objected.

 
          
 
“You," they said. "Yes?"

 
          
 
He waved his hands feverishly. "I have a
wife and five children, one in arms!"

 
          
 
"But none of us are single, and it is
your idea and you must have the courage of your convictions, Mr.
Villanazul!" everyone said.

 
          
 
He was very frightened and silent. He glanced
with startled flashes of his eyes at his wife.

 
          
 
She stood wearily weaving on the night air,
trying to see him.

 
          
 
"I'm so tired," she grieved.

 
          
 
"Tina," he said.

 
          
 
"I will die if I do not sleep," she
said.

 
          
 
"Oh, but, Tina," he said.

 
          
 
"I will die and there will be many
flowers and I will be buried if I do not get some rest," she murmured.

 
          
 
"She looks very bad," said everyone.

 
          
 
Mr. Villanazul hesitated only a moment longer.
He touched his wife's slack hot fingers. He touched her hot cheek with his
lips.

 
          
 
Without a word he walked from the porch.

 
          
 
They could hear his feet climbing the unlit
stairs of the house, up and around to the third floor where Mrs. Navarrez
wailed and screamed.

 
          
 
They waited on the porch.

 
          
 
The men fit new cigarettes and flicked away
the matches, talking like the wind, the women wandering around among them, all
of them coming and talking to Mrs. Villanazul, who stood, lines under her tired
eyes, leaning against the porch rail.

 
          
 
"Now" whispered one of the men
quietly. "Mr. Villanazul is at the top of the house!"

 
          
 
Everybody quieted.

 
          
 
"Now," hissed the man in a stage
whisper. "Mr. Villanazul taps at her door! Tap, tap."

 
          
 
Everyone listened, holding his breath.

 
          
 
Far away there was a gentle tapping sound.

 
          
 
"Now, Mrs. Navarrez, at this intrusion,
breaks out anew with crying!"

 
          
 
At the top of the house came a scream.

 
          
 
"Now," the man imagined, crouched,
his hand delicately weaving on the air, "Mr. Villanazul pleads and pleads,
softly, quietly, to the locked door."

 
          
 
The people on the porch lifted their chins
tentatively, trying to see through three flights of wood and plaster to the
third floor, waiting.

 
          
 
The screaming faded.

 
          
 
"Now, Mr. Villanazul talks quickly, he
pleads, he whispers, he promises," cried the man softly.

 
          
 
The screaming settled to a sobbing, the
sobbing to a moan, and finally all died away into breathing and the pounding of
hearts and listening.

 
          
 
After about two minutes of standing, sweating,
waiting, everyone on the porch heard the door far away upstairs rattle its
lock, open, and, a second later, with a whisper, close.

 
          
 
The house was silent.

 
          
 
Silence lived in every room like a light
turned off. Silence flowed like a cool wine in the tunnel halls. Silence came
through the open casements like a cool breath from the cellar. They all stood
breathing the coolness of it.

 
          
 
"Ah," they sighed.

 
          
 
Men flicked away cigarettes and moved on
tiptoe into the silent tenement. Women followed. Soon the porch was empty. They
drifted in cool halls of quietness.

 
          
 
Mrs. Villanazul, in a drugged stupor, unlocked
her door.

 
          
 
"We must give Mr. Villanazul a
banquet," a voice whispered.

 
          
 
'Tight a candle for him tomorrow." The
doors shut.

 
          
 
In her fresh bed Mrs. Villanazul lay. He is a
thoughtful man, she dreamed, eyes closed. For such things, I love him. The
silence was like a cool hand, stroking her to sleep.