Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (51 page)

 
          
 
"Here, lad, here ... tell us . . ."

 
          
 
". . . what happened, eh? eh?"

 
          
 
Then the body was gone off the bar, the
potential wake over, the room empty save for the American, the Doc, the revived
lad, and two softly cudgeling friends. Outside you could hear the crowd putting
the one serious result of the great collision into the volunteer's car.

 
          
 
The Doc said, "Finish your drink,
Mr.—?"

 
          
 
"McGuire," said the American.

 
          
 
"By the saints, he's Irish!"

 
          
 
No, thought the American, far away, looking
numbly around at the pub, at the recovered bicyclist seated, waiting for the
crowd to come back and mill about him, seeing the blood-spotted floor, the two
bicycles tilted near the door like props from a vaudeville turn, the dark night
waiting outside with its improbable fog, listening to the roll and cadence and
gentle equilibrium of these voices balanced each in its own throat and
environment. No, thought the American named McGuire, I'm almost, but certainly
not quite, Irish. . . .

 
          
 
"Doctor," he heard himself say as he
placed money on the bar, "do you often have auto wrecks, collisions,
between people in cars?"

 
          
 
"Not in our town!" The Doc nodded
scornfully east. "If you like that sort of thing, now,
Dublin
's
the very place for it!"

 
          
 
Crossing the pub together, the Doc took his
arm as if to impart some secret which would change his Fates. Thus steered, the
American found the stout inside himself a shifting weight he must accommodate
from side to side as the Doc breathed soft in his ear.

 
          
 
"Look here now, McGuire, admit it, you've
driven but little in
Ireland
,
right? Then, listen! Driving to Meynooth, fog and all, you'd best take it fast!
Raise a dm! Why? Scare the cyclists and cows off the path, both sides! If you
drive
slow
, why you'll creep up on and do away with
dozens before they know what took them off! And another thing: when a car
approaches, douse your lights! Pass each other, lights out, in safety. Them
devil's own lights have put out more eyes and demolished more innocents than
all of seeing's worth. Is it clear, now? Two things: speed, and douse your
lights when cars loom up!"

 
          
 
At the door, the American nodded. Behind him
he heard the one victim, settled easy in his chair, working the stout around on
his tongue, thinking, preparing, beginning his tale:

 
          
 
"Well, I'm on me way home, blithe as you
please, assailing downhill near the cross when—"

 
          
 
Outside in the car with the other collision
victim moaning softly in the back seat, the Doc offered final advice.

 
          
 
"Always wear a cap, lad. If you want to
walk nights ever, on the roads, that is. A cap'll save you the frightful
migraines should you meet Kelly or Moran or any other hurtling full-tilt the
other way, full of fiery moss and hard-skulled from birth. Even on foot, these
men are dangerous. So you see,
there's rules
for
pedestrians too in
Ireland
,
and wear a cap at night is Number One!"

 
          
 
Without thinking, the American fumbled under
the seat, brought forth a brown tweed cap purchased in
Dublin
that day.

 
          
 
and
put it on.
Adjusting it, he looked out at the dark mist boiling across the night. He
listened to the empty highway waiting for him ahead, quiet, quiet, quiet, but
not quiet somehow. For hundreds of long strange miles up and down all of
Ireland he saw a thousand crossroads covered with a thousand fogs through which
one thousand tweed-capped, grey-mufl3ered phantoms wheeled along in mid-air,
singing, shouting, and smelling of Guiness Stout.

 
          
 
He blinked. The phantoms shadowed off. The
road lay empty and dark and waiting.

 
          
 
Taking a deep breath, shutting his eyes, the
American named McGuire turned the key in the switch and stepped on the starter.

 
          
 
"They're very odd," I said. "The
little Mexican couple."

 
          
 
"How do you mean?" asked my wife.

 
          
 
"Never a sound," I said.
"Listen."

 
          
 
Ours was a house deep back in among tenements,
to which another half house had been added. When my wife and I purchased the
house, we rented the additional quarters which lay walled up against one side
of our parlor. Now, listening at this particular wall, we heard our hearts
beat.

 
          
 
"I know they're home," I whispered.
"But in the three years they've lived here I've never heard a dropped pan,
a spoken word, or the sound of a light switch. Good God, what are they doing in
there?"

 
          
 
"I'd never thought," said my wife.
"It is peculiar."

 
          
 
"Only one light on, that same dim little
blue twenty-five-watt bulb they bum in their parlor. If you walk by and peer in
their front door, there he is, sitting in his armchair, not saying a word, his
hands in his lap. There she is, sitting in the other armchair, looking at him,
saying nothing. They don't move."

 
          
 
"At first glance I always think they're
not home," said my wife.

           
 
"Their parlor's so dark. But if you stare
long enough, your eyes get used to it and you can make them out, sitting
there."

 
          
 
"Some day," I said, "I'm going
to run in, turn on their lights, and yell! My God, if I can't stand their
silence, how can they? They can talk, can't they?"

 
          
 
"When he pays the rent each month, he
says hello."

 
          
 
"What else?"

 
          
 
"Good-by."

 
          
 
I shook my head. "When we meet in the
alley he smiles and runs."

 
          
 
My wife and I sat down for an evening of
reading, the radio, and talk. "Do they have a radio?"

 
          
 
"No radio, television, telephone. Not a
book, magazine, or paper in their house."

 
          
 
"Ridiculous!"

 
          
 
"Don't get so excited."

 
          
 
"I know, but you can't sit in a dark room
two or three years and not speak, not listen to a radio, not read or even eat,
can you? I've never smelled a steak or an egg frying. Damn it, I don't believe
I've ever heard them go to bed!"

 
          
 
"They're doing it to mystify us,
dear."

 
          
 
"They're succeeding!"

 
          
 
I went for a walk around the block. It was a nice
summer evening. Returning, I glanced idly in their front door. The dark silence
was there, and the heavy shapes, sitting, and the little blue light burning. I
stood a long time, finishing my cigarette. It was only in turning to go that I
saw him in the doorway, looking out with his bland, plump face. He didn't move.
He just stood there, watching me.

 
          
 
"Evening," I said.

 
          
 
Silence. After a moment, he turned, moving
away into the dark room.

 
          
 
In the morning, the little Mexican left the
house at
seven o'clock
, alone,
hurrying down the alley, observing the same silence he kept in his rooms. She
followed at
eight o'clock
, walking
carefully, all lumpy under her dark coat, a black hat balanced on her frizzy,
beauty-parlor hair. They had gone to work this way, remote and silent, for
years.

 
          
 
"Where do they work?" I asked at
breakfast.

 
          
 
"He's a blast-furnace man at U. S. Steel
here. She sews in a dress loft somewhere."

 
          
 
"That's hard work."

 
          
 
I typed a few pages of my novel, read, idled,
typed some more. At five in the afternoon I saw the little Mexican woman come
home, unlock her door, hurry inside, hook the screen, and lock the door tight.

 
          
 
He arrived at six sharp in a rush. Once on
their back porch, however, he became infinitely patient. Quietly, raking his
hand over the screen, lightly, like a fat mouse scrabbling, he waited. At last
she let him in. I did not see their mouths move.

 
          
 
Not a sound during suppertime. No frying. No
rattle of dishes. Nothing.

 
          
 
I saw the small blue lamp go on.

 
          
 
"That's how he is," said my wife,
"when he pays the rent. Raps so quietly I don't hear. I just happen to
glance out the window and there he is. God knows how long he's waited,
standing, sort of *nibbHng' at the door."

 
          
 
Two nights later, on a beautiful July evening,
the little Mexican man came out on the back porch and looked at me, working in
the garden and said, "You're crazy!" He turned to my wife.
"You're crazy too!" He waved his plump hand quietly. "I don't
like you. Too much noise. I don't like you. You're crazy."

 
          
 
He went back into his little house.

 
          
 
August, September, October, November. The
"mice," as we now referred to them, lay quietly in their dark nest.
Once my wife gave him some old magazines with his rent receipt. He accepted
these politely, with a smile and a bow, but no word. An hour later she saw him
put the magazines in the yard incinerator and strike a match.

 
          
 
The next day he paid the rent three months in
advance, no doubt figuring that he would only have to see us up close once
every twelve weeks. When I saw him on the street he crossed quickly to the
other side to greet an imaginary friend. She, similarly, ran by me, smiling
wildly, bewildered, nodding. I never got nearer than twenty yards to her. If
there was plumbing to be fixed in their house, they went silently forth on
their own, not telling us, and brought back a plumber who worked, it seemed,
with a flashlight.

 
          
 
"God damnedest thing," he told me
when I saw him m the alley. "Damn fool place there hasn't got any light
bulbs in the sockets. When I asked where they all were, damn it, they just
smiled at me!"

 
          
 
I lay at night thinking about the little mice.
Where were they from?
Mexico
, yes.
What part?
A farm, a small village,
somewhere by a river?
Certainly no city or town.
But a place where there were stars and the normal lights and darknesses, the
goings and comings of the moon and the sun they had known the better part of
their lives. Yet here they were, far, far away from home, in an impossible
city, he sweating out the hell of blast furnaces all day, she bent to jittering
needles in a sewing loft. They came home then to this block, through a loud
city, avoided clanging streetcars and saloons that screamed like red parrots
along their way. Through a million shriekings they ran back to their parlor,
their blue light, their comfortable chairs, and their silence. I often thought
of this. Late at night I felt if I put out my hand, in the dark of my own
bedroom, I might feel adobe and hear a cricket and a river running by under the
moon and someone singing softly to a faint guitar.

 
          
 
Late one December evening the next-door
tenement burned. Flames roared at the sky, bricks fell in avalanches, and
sparks littered the roof where the quiet mice lived.

 
          
 
I pounded their door.

 
          
 
"Fire!" I cried. "Fire!"

 
          
 
They sat motionless in their blue-lighted
room.

 
          
 
I pounded violently. "You hear?
Fire!"

 
          
 
The fire engines arrived. They gushed water
into the tenement. More bricks fell. Four of them smashed holes in the little
house. I climbed to the roof, extinguished the small fires there, and scrambled
down, my face dirty and my hands cut. The door to the little house opened. The
quiet little Mexican and his wife stood in the doorway, solid and unmoved.

 
          
 
"Let me in!" I cried. "There's
a hole in your roof; some sparks may have fallen in your bedroom!"

 
          
 
I pulled the door wide, pushed past them.

 
          
 
"No!" the little man grunted.

 
          
 
"Ah!" the little woman ran in a
circle like a broken toy.

 
          
 
I was inside with a flashlight. The little man
seized my arm.

 
          
 
I smelled his breath.

 
          
 
And then my flashlight shot through the rooms
of their house. Light sparkled on a hundred wine bottles standing in the hall,
two hundred bottles shelved in the kitchen, six dozen along the parlor
wallboards, more of the same on bedroom bureaus and in closets. I do not know
if I was more impressed with the hole in the bedroom ceiling or the endless
glitter of so many bottles. I lost count. It was like an invasion of gigantic
shining beetles, struck dead, deposited, and left by some ancient disease.

 
          
 
In the bedroom I felt the little man and woman
behind me in the doorway. I heard their loud breathing and I could feel their
eyes. I raised the beam of my flashlight away from the glittering bottles, I
focused it carefully, and for the rest of my visit, on the hole in the yellow
ceiling.

 
          
 
The little woman began to cry. She cried
softly. Nobody moved.

 
          
 
The next morning they left.

 
          
 
Before we even knew they were going, they were
half down the alley at
6 a.m.
,
carrying their luggage, which was light enough to be entirely empty. I tried to
stop them. I talked to them. They were old friends, I said. Nothing had
changed, I said. They had nothing to do with the fire, I said, or the roof.
They were innocent bystanders, I insisted! I would fix the roof myself, no
charge, no charge to them! But they did not look at me. They looked at the
house and at the open end of the alley ahead of them while I talked. Then, when
I stopped they nodded to the alley as if agreeing that it was time to go, and
walked off, and then began to run, it seemed, away from me, toward the street
where there were streetcars and buses and automobiles and many loud avenues
stretching in a maze. They hurried proudly, though, heads up, not looking back.

 
          
 
It was only by accident I ever met them again.
At Christmas time, one evening, I saw the little man running quietly along the
twilight street ahead of me. On a personal whim I followed. When he turned, I
turned. At last, five blocks away from our old neighborhood, he scratched
quietly at the door of a little white house. I saw the door open, shut, and
lock him in. As night settled over the tenement city, a small light burned like
blue mist in the tiny living room as I passed. I thought I saw, but probably
imagined, two silhouettes there, he on his side of the room in his own
particular chair, and she on her side of the room, sitting, sitting in the
dark, and one or two bottles beginning to collect on the floor behind the
chairs, and not a sound, not a sound between them. Only the silence.

 
          
 
I did not go up and knock. I strolled by. I
walked on along the avenue, listening to the parrot cafes scream. I bought a
newspaper, a magazine, and a quarter-edition book. Then I went home to where
all the lights were lit and there was warm food upon the table.