Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (12 page)

 
          
He
nodded. “Ten years, I’d say. There haven’t been any children drowned here this
year. There were twelve children drowned here since 1933, but we found all of
them before a few hours had passed. All except one, I remember.
This body here, why it must be ten years in the water.
It’s
not—pleasant.”

 
          
I
stared at the gray sack in his arms. “Open it,” I said. I don’t know why I said
it. The wind was louder.

 
          
He
fumbled with the sack.

 
          
“Hurry,
man, open it!” I cried.

 
          
“I
better not do that,” he said. Then perhaps he saw the way my face must have
looked. “She was such a
little
girl—”

 
          
He
opened it only part way. That was enough.

 
          
The
beach was deserted. There was only the sky and the wind and the water and the
autumn coming on lonely. I looked down at her there.

 
          
I
said something over and over.
A name.
The life guard
looked at me. “Where did you find her?” I asked.

 
          
“Down the beach, that way, in the shallow water.
It’s a
long, long time for her, isn’t it?”

 
          
I
shook my head.

 
          
“Yes,
it is. Oh God, yes it is.”

 
          
I
thought: people grow. I have grown. But she has not changed. She is still
small. She is still young. Death does not permit growth or change. She still
has golden hair. She will be forever young and I will love her forever, oh God,
I will love her forever.

 
          
The
life guard tied up the sack again.

 
          
Down
the beach, a few moments later, I walked by myself. I stopped, and looked down
at something. This is where the life guard found her, I said to myself.

 
          
There,
at the water’s edge, lay a sand castle, only half-built.
Just
like Tally and I used to build them.
She half and I
half.

 
          
I
looked at it. I knelt beside the sand castle and saw the small prints of feet
coming in from the lake and going back out to the lake again and not returning.

 
          
Then—I
knew.

 
          
“I’ll
help you finish it,” I said.

 
          
I
did. I built the rest of it up very slowly,
then
I
arose and turned away and walked off, so as not to watch it crumble in the
waves, as all things crumble.

 
          
I
walked back up the beach to where a strange woman named Margaret was waiting
for me, smiling. . . .

 
          
M
r.
Spallner
put
his hands over his face.

 
          
There
was the feeling of movement in space, the beautifully tortured scream, the
impact and tumbling of the car with wall, through wall, over and down like a
toy, and him hurled out of it. Then—silence.

 
          
The
crowd came running. Faintly, where he lay, he heard them running. He could tell
their ages and their sizes by the sound of their numerous feet over the summer
grass and on the lined pavement, and over the
asphalt street
,
and picking through the cluttered bricks to where his car hung half into the
night sky, still spinning its wheels with a senseless centrifuge.

 
          
Where
the crowd came from he didn’t know. He struggled to remain aware and then the
crowd faces hemmed in upon him, hung over him like the large glowing leaves of
down-bent trees. They were a ring of shifting, compressing, changing faces over
him, looking down, looking down,
reading
the time of
his life or death by his face, making his face into a
moondial
,
where the moon cast a shadow from his nose out upon his cheek to tell the time
of breathing or not breathing any more ever.

 
          
How
swiftly a crowd comes, he thought, like the iris of an eye compressing in out
of nowhere.

 
          
A siren.
A police voice.
Movement.
Blood trickled from his lips and he was being
moved into an ambulance. Someone said, “Is he dead?” And someone else said,
“No, he’s not dead.” And a third person said, “He won’t die, he’s not going to
die.” And he saw the faces of the crowd beyond him in the night, and he knew by
their expressions that he wouldn’t die. And that was strange. He saw a man’s
face, thin, bright,
pale
; the man swallowed and bit
his lips, very sick. There was a small woman, too, with red hair and too much
red on her cheeks and lips.
And a little boy with a freckled
face.
Others’ faces.
An old
man with a wrinkled upper lip, an old woman, with a mole upon her chin.
They had all come from—where?
Houses, cars, alleys, from the
immediate and the accident-shocked world.
Out of alleys and out of
hotels and out of streetcars and seemingly out of nothing they came.

 
          
The
crowd looked at him and he looked back at them and did not like them at all.
There was a vast wrongness to them. He couldn’t put his finger on it. They were
far worse than this machine-made thing that happened to him now.

 
          
The
ambulance doors slammed. Through the windows he saw the crowd looking in,
looking in. That crowd that always came so fast, so strangely fast, to form a
circle, to peer down, to probe, to gawk, to question, to point, to disturb, to
spoil the privacy of a man’s agony by their frank curiosity.

 
          
The
ambulance drove off. He sank back and their faces still stared into his face,
even with his eyes shut.

 
          
The
car wheels spun in his mind for days.
One wheel, four wheels,
spinning, spinning, and whirring, around and around.

 
          
He
knew it was wrong.
Something wrong with the wheels and the
whole accident and the running of feet and the curiosity.
The crowd
faces mixed and spun into the wild rotation of the wheels.

 
          
He
awoke.

 
          
Sunlight, a hospital room, a hand taking his pulse.

 
          
“How
do you feel?” asked the doctor.

 
          
The
wheels faded away. Mr.
Spallner
looked around.

 
          
“Fine—I
guess.”

 
          
He
tried to find words.
About the accident.
“Doctor?”

 
          
“Yes?”

 
          
“That
crowd—was it last night?”

 
          
“Two
days ago. You’ve been here since Thursday. You’re all right, though. You’re
doing fine. Don’t try and get up.”

 
          
“That
crowd.
Something about wheels, too.
Do accidents make
people, well, a—little off?”

 
          
“Temporarily, sometimes.”

 
          
He
lay staring up at the doctor. “Does it hurt your time sense?”

 
          
“Panic
sometimes does.”

 
          
“Makes
a minute seem like an hour, or maybe
an hour seem
like
a minute?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“Let
me tell you then.” He felt the bed under him, the sunlight on his face. “You’ll
think I’m crazy. I was driving too fast, I know. I’m sorry now. I jumped the
curb and hit that wall. I was hurt and numb, I know, but I still remember
things.
Mostly—the crowd.”
He waited a moment and then
decided to go on, for he suddenly knew what it was that bothered him. “The
crowd got there too quickly. Thirty seconds after the smash they were all
standing over me and staring at
me .
 . .
it’s not right they should run that fast, so late at
night. . . .”

 
          
“You
only think it was thirty seconds,” said the doctor. “It was probably three or
four minutes. Your senses—”

 
          
“Yeah,
I know—my senses, the accident. But I was conscious! I remember one thing that
puts it all together and makes it funny, God, so damned funny.
The wheels of my car, upside down.
The wheels were still
spinning when the crowd got there!”

 
          
The
doctor smiled.

 
          
The
man in bed went on. “I’m positive! The wheels were spinning and spinning
fast—the front wheels! Wheels don’t spin very long, friction cuts them down.
And these were really spinning!”

 
          
’You’re
confused,” said the doctor.

 
          
“I’m
not confused. That street was empty. Not a soul in sight. And then the accident
and the wheels still spinning and all those faces over me, quick, in no time. And
the way they looked down at me, I
knew
I wouldn’t die. . . .”

 
          
“Simple
shock,” said the doctor, walking away into the sunlight.

 
          
They
released him from the hospital two weeks later. He rode home in a taxi. People
had come to visit him during his two weeks on his back, and to all of them he
had told his story, the accident, the spinning wheels,
the
crowd. They had all laughed with him concerning it, and passed it off.

 
          
He
leaned forward and tapped on the taxi window.

 
          
“What’s
wrong?”

 
          
The
cabbie looked back. “Sorry, boss. This is one
helluva
town to drive in.
Got an accident up ahead.
Want me to
detour?”

 
          
“Yes.
No. No! Wait. Go ahead. Let’s—let’s take a look.”

 
          
The
cab moved forward, honking.

 
          
“Funny
damn thing,” said the cabbie.
“Hey,
you
!
Get that
fleatrap
out the
way!” Quieter, “Funny thing—more damn people.
Nosy people.”

 
          
Mr.
Spallner
looked down and watched his fingers tremble
on his knee. “You noticed that, too?”

 
          
“Sure,”
said the cabbie.
“All the time.
There’s always a
crowd. You’d think it was
their own
mother got
killed.”

 
          
“They
come running awfully fast,” said the man in the back of the cab.

 
          
“Same way with a fire or an explosion.
Nobody
around.
Boom.
Lotsa
people around.
I
dunno
.”

 
          
“Ever
seen an accident—at night?”

 
          
The
cabbie nodded. “Sure.
Don’t make no
difference.
There’s always a crowd.”

 
          
The
wreck came in view. A body lay on the pavement. You knew there was a body even
if you couldn’t see it.
Because of the crowd.
The crowd with its back toward him as he sat in the rear of the
cab.
With its back toward him.
He opened the
window and almost started to yell. But he didn’t have the nerve. If he yelled
they might turn around.

 
          
And
he was afraid to see their faces.

 
          
“I
seem to have a penchant for accidents,” he said, in his office. It was late
afternoon. His friend sat across the desk from him, listening. “I got out of
the hospital this morning and first thing on the way home, we detoured around a
wreck.”

 
          
“Things
run in cycles,” said Morgan.

 
          
“Let
me tell you about my accident.”

 
          
“I’ve
heard it.
Heard it all.”

 
          
“But
it was funny, you must admit.”

 
          
“I
must admit.
Now how about a drink?”

 
          
They
talked on for half an hour or more. All the while they talked, at the back of
Spallner’s
brain a small watch ticked, a watch that never
needed winding. It was the memory of a few little things. Wheels and faces.

 
          
At
about five-thirty there was a hard metal noise in the street. Morgan nodded and
looked out and down. “What’d I tell you?
Cycles.
A truck and a cream-colored Cadillac.
Yes, yes.”

 
          
Spallner
walked to the window. He was very cold and as he
stood there, he looked at his watch, at the small minute hand. One two three
four five seconds—people running—eight nine ten eleven twelve—from all over,
people came running—fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen seconds—more people,
more cars, more horns blowing. Curiously distant,
Spallner
looked upon the scene as an explosion in reverse, the fragments of the
detonation sucked back to the point of impulsion. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one
seconds and the crowd
was
there.
Spallner
made a gesture down at them, wordless.