Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (26 page)

 
          
    You realize that all
men are like this.
That each person is to himself one alone.
One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid.
Like here, standing. If you should scream now, if you should holler for help,
would it matter?

 
          
    You are so close to the
ravine now that in the instant of your scream, in the interval between someone
hearing it and running to find you, much could happen.

 
          
    Blackness could come
swiftly, swallowing; and in one
titanically
freezing
moment all would be concluded. Long before dawn, long before police with
flashlights might probe the disturbed pathway, long before men with trembling
brains could rustle down the pebbles to your help. Even if they were within
five hundred yards of you now, and help
certainly
is, in three seconds a dark tide could rise to take all eight years of life
away from you and —  

 
          
    The essential impact of
life's loneliness crushes your beginning-to-tremble body. Mother is alone, too.
She cannot look to the sanctity of marriage, the protection of her family's
love, she cannot look to the United States Constitution or the City Police, she
cannot look anywhere, in this very instant, save into her heart, and there
she'll find nothing but uncontrollable repugnance and a will to fear. In this
instant it is an individual problem seeking an individual solution. You must
accept being alone and work on from there.

 
          
    You swallow hard, cling
to her. Oh, Lord, don't let her die, please, you think. Don't do anything to
us. Father will be coming home from lodge-meeting in an hour and if the house
is
empty.
. .?

 
          
    Mother advances down
the path into the primeval jungle. Your voice trembles.
'Mom.
Skip's all right. Skip's all right. He's all right. Skip's all right.'

 
          
    Mother's voice is
strained high. 'He always comes through here. I tell him not to, but those
darned kids, they come through here anyway. Some night he'll come through and
never come out again
— '

 
          
    Never come out again.
That could mean anything.
Tramps.
Criminals.
Darkness.
Accident.
Most of all — death.

 
          
   
Alone
in the universe.

 
          
    There are a million
small towns like this all over the world. Each as dark, as lonely, each as
removed, as full of shuddering and wonder. The reedy playing of minor-key
violins is the small towns' music, with no lights but many shadows. Oh the vast
swelling loneliness of them.
The secret damp ravines of them.
Life is a horror lived in them at night, when at all sides sanity, marriage,
children, happiness, is threatened by an ogre called Death.

 
          
    Mother raises her voice
into the dark.

 
          
    'Skip! Skipper!' she
calls. 'Skip!
Skipper!'

 
          
    Suddenly, both of you
realize there is something wrong.
Something very wrong.
You listen intently and realize what it is. The crickets have stopped chirping.

 
          
    Silence is complete.

 
          
    Never in your life
a silence like
this one.
One so utterly
complete.
Why should the crickets cease? Why? What reason? They have
never stopped ever before. Not ever.

 
          
    Unless. Unless —  

 
          
    Something is going to
happen.

 
          
    It is as if the whole
ravine is tensing, bunching together its black
fibres
,
drawing in power from all about sleeping
countrysides
,
for miles and miles. From dew-sodden forest and dells and rolling hills where
dogs tilt heads to moons, from all around the great silence is sucked into one
centre, and you at the core of it.
In ten seconds now,
something will happen, something will happen.
The crickets keep their
truce,
the stars are so low you can almost brush the tinsel.
There are swarms of them, hot and sharp.

 
          
   
Growing,
growing, the silence.
Growing, growing the tenseness. Oh it's so dark,
so far away from everything. Oh God!

 
          
    And then, way
way
off across the ravine:

 
          
    'Okay Mom! Coming,
Mother!'

 
          
    And again:

 
          
   
'Hi,
Mom!
Coming, Mom!'

 
          
    And then the quick
scuttering
of tennis shoes padding down through the pit of
the ravine as three kids come dashing, giggling.
Your brother
Skipper, Chuck Redman and
Augie
Bartz
.
Running, giggling.

 
          
    The stars suck up like
the stung antennae of ten million snails.

 
          
    The crickets sing!

 
          
    The darkness pulls
back, startled, shocked,
angry
. Pulls back, losing its
appetite at being so rudely interrupted as it prepared to feed. As the dark
retreats like a wave on a shore, three kids pile out of it, laughing.

 
          
   
'Hi,
Mom!
Hi, Shorts! Hey!'

 
          
    It smells like Skipper
all right.
Sweat and grass and his oiled leather baseball
glove.

 
          
    'Young man, you're
going to get a licking,' declares Mother. She puts away her fear instantly. You
know she will never tell anybody of it, ever. It will be in her heart though,
for all time, as it is in your heart, for all time.

 
          
    You walk home to bed in
the late summer night. You are glad Skipper is alive.
Very
glad.
For a moment there you thought —  

 
          
    Far off in the dim
moonlit country, over a viaduct and down a valley, a train goes rushing along
and it whistles like a lost metal thing, nameless and running. You go to bed,
shivering, beside your brother, listening to that train whistle, and thinking
of a cousin who lived way out in the country where that train is now; a cousin
who died of pneumonia late at night years and years ago. . . You smell the
sweat of Skip beside you. It is magic. You stop trembling. You hear footsteps
outside the house on the sidewalk, as Mother is turning out the lights. A man
clears his throat in a way you recognize.

 
          
    Mom says, 'That's your
father.'

 
          
    It is.

 
          
'THAT'S the man, right over there,'
said Mrs.
Ribmoll
, nodding across the street. 'See
that man perched on the tar barrel
afront
Mr.
Jenkens's
store? Well, that's him. They call him Odd
Martin.'

 
          
    'The one that says he's
dead?' cried Arthur.

 
          
    Mrs.
Ribmoll
nodded.
'Crazy as a weasel down a
chimney.
Carries on firm about how he's been dead since the Flood and
nobody
appreciates
it.'

 
          
    'I see him sitting
there every day,' cried Arthur.

 
          
    'Oh, yes, he sits
there, he does. Sits there and stares at nothing. I say it's a crying shame
they don't throw him in jail!'

 
          
    Arthur made a face at
the man.
'Yah!'

 
          
    'Never mind, he won't
notice you.
Most uncivil man I ever seen.
Nothing
pleases him.' She yanked Arthur's arm. 'Come on, sonny, we got shopping to do.'

 
          
    They walked on up the
street past the barber shop. In the window, after they'd gone by, stood Mr.
Simpson, snipping his blue shears and chewing his tasteless gum. He squinted
thoughtfully out through the fly-specked glass, looking at the man sitting over
there on the tar barrel. 'I figure the best thing
could
happen to Odd Martin would
be to get married,' he figured. His eyes
glinted slyly. Over his shoulder he looked at his manicurist, Miss Weldon, who
was busy burnishing the scraggly fingernails of a farmer named
Gilpatrick
. Miss Weldon, at this suggestion, did not look
up. She had heard it often. They were always ragging her about Odd Martin.

 
          
    Mr. Simpson walked back
and started work on
Gilpatrick's
dusty hair again.
Gilpatrick
laughed softly. 'What woman would marry Odd?
Sometimes I almost believe he
is
dead. He's got an awful
odour
to him.'

 
          
    Miss Weldon looked up
at Mr.
Gilpatrick's
face and carefully cut his finger
with one of her little scalpels. '
Gol
darn it!' He
jumped. 'Watch what you're
doin
', woman!'

 
          
    Miss Weldon looked at
him with calm little blue eyes in a small white face. Her hair was mouse-brown;
she wore no makeup and talked to no one most of the time.

 
          
    Mr. Simpson cackled and
snicked
his blue steel shears. 'Hope, hope, hope!' he
laughed like that. 'Miss Weldon, she knows what she's
doin
',
Gilpatrick
. Just you
be
careful, Miss Weldon, he give a bottle of eau de cologne to Odd Martin last
Christmas. It helped cover up his smell.'

 
          
    Miss Weldon laid down
her instruments.

 
          
    'Sorry, Miss Weldon,'
apologized Mr. Simpson. 'I won't say no more.'

 
          
    Reluctantly, she took
up her instruments again.

 
          
    'Hey!' cried one of the
four other men waiting in the shop. 'There he goes
again!
' Mr. Simpson whirled, almost taking
Gilpatrick's
pink ear with him in his shears. 'Come look, boys!'

 
          
    Across the street the
sheriff stepped out of his office door just then and he saw it happen, too. He
saw what Odd Martin was doing.

 
          
    Everybody came running
from all the little stores.

 
          
    The sheriff walked over
and looked down into the gutter.

 
          
    'Come on, now, Odd
Martin, come on now,' he shouted. He poked down into the gutter with his shiny
black boot-tip. 'Come on, get up! You're not dead. You're good as me. You'll
catch your death of cold there with all them gum wrappers and cigar butts. Come
on, get up!'

 
          
    Mr. Simpson arrived on
the scene and looked at Odd Martin lying there. 'He looks like a bottle
a milk
.'

 
          
    'He's
takin
' up valuable
parkin
' space
for cars, this
bein
' Friday
mornin
','
whined the sheriff.
'And lots of people
needin
'
the area.
Here now,
Odd!
Hmm.
Well.
. . give me a hand here, boys.'

 
          
    They lifted the body up
on to the sidewalk.

 
          
    'Let him stay here,'
declared the sheriff, jostling around in his boots. 'Just let him stay till he
gets tired of
layin
'
. He's done this a million times before.
Likes
the publicity.
Vamoose, you kids!'

 
          
    He sent a bunch of
children skipping ahead of his cheek of tobacco.

 
          
    Back in the barber
shop, Simpson looked around. 'Where's Miss Weldon?
Unh.'
He looked through the window. 'There she is, brushing him off again, while he
lies there.
Fixing his coat, buttoning it up.
Here she
comes back. Don't
nobody
fun with her, she resents
it.'

 
          
    The barber clock said
twelve and then one and then two and then three. Mr. Simpson kept track of it.
'I make you a bet that Odd Martin lies over there till
four o'clock
,' he said.

 
          
    Someone else said,
'I'll bet he's there until four-thirty.'

 
          
    'Last time — ' a
snickering of the shears ' — he was there five hours. Nice warm day today. He
may snooze there until six. I'll say six. Let's see your money, gents!'

 
          
    The money was put on
the shelf by the hair-ointments.

 
          
    One of the younger men
shaved a stick with his penknife. 'It's
sorta
funny
how we joke about Odd. Sometimes I wonder if we
ain't
really just scared of him, inside us. I mean, we won't let ourselves believe
he's really dead. We don't dare believe it. We'd never get over it if we knew.
So we make him a
kinda
joke. We let him lay around.
He don't hurt
nobody
. He's just there. But I notice
old Sawbones Hudson's never really touched
Odd's
heart with his stethoscope. Scared of what he'd find, I bet.'

 
          
    'Scared of what he'd
find!'
Laughter.
Simpson laughed and
snished
his shears. Two men with crusty beards laughed, a
little too loud. The laughter didn't last long. 'Great one for
jokin
', you
you
are!' they all
said, slapping their gaunt knees.

 
          
    Miss Weldon, she went
on manicuring her clients.

 
          
    'He's
gettin
' up!'

 
          
    There was a general half-rising
of all the bodies in the shop and a lot of neck twisting to watch Odd Martin
gain his feet. 'He's up on one knee, now up on the other, now someone's
givin
' him a hand.'

 
          
    'It's Miss Weldon. She
sure got over there in a rush!'

 
          
    'What time is it?'

 
          
   
'Four-fifteen!
You lose,
Simp
! Pay us!'

 
          
    The bet was settled.

 
          
    'That Miss Weldon's a
queer beetle herself.
Takin
' after a man like Odd.'

 
          
    Simpson clicked his
scissors. 'Being an orphan, she's got quiet ways. She likes men who don't say
much. Odd, he
don't
say hardly anything.
Just the opposite of us crude, crude men, eh, fellows?
We
talk too much. Miss Weldon don't like our way of
speakin
'.'

 
          
    'There they go.
The two of ‘
em
.
Miss
Weldon and Odd Martin.'

 
          
    'Say, take a little
more off around my ears, will you
Simp
?'

 
          
    Skipping down the
street, bounding a red rubber ball,
came
little
Radney
Bellows, his blond hair flopping in a yellow fringe
over his blue eyes. He bounced the ball abstractedly, tongue between lips, and
the ball fell under Odd Martin's feet where he sat once more on the tar barrel.
Inside the grocery, Miss Weldon was doing her supper shopping, putting soup
cans and vegetable cans into a basket.

 
          
    'Can I have my ball?'
asked little
Radney
Bellows upwards at the six feet
two inches of Odd Martin. No one was within hearing distance.

 
          
    'Can you have your
ball?' said Odd Martin haltingly. He turned it over inside his head, it
appeared. His level, grey eyes shaped up
Radney
like
one would shape up a little ball of clay. 'You can have your ball, yes; take
it.'

 
          
   
Radney
bent slowly and took hold of the bright red rubber globe and arose slowly, a
secretive look in his eyes.

 
          
    'I know something.'

 
          
    Odd Martin looked down.
'You know something?'

 
          
   
Radney
leaned forward. 'You're
dead
.'

 
          
    Odd Martin sat there.

 
          
    'You're really dead,'
whispered little
Radney
Bellows. 'But I'm the only
one who really knows. I believe you, Mr. Odd. I tried it once myself. Dying, I
mean. It's hard. It's work. I
laid
on the floor for an
hour. But my stomach itched, so I scratched it, and the blood got up in my head
and made me dizzy. Then — I quit. Why?' He looked at his shoes.
' ‘Cause
I had to go to the bathroom.'

 
          
    A slow, understanding
smile formed in the soft pallid flesh of Odd Martin's long, bony face. 'It
is
work. It isn't easy.'

 
          
    'Sometimes, I think
about you,' said
Radney
. 'I see you walk by my house.
Nights.
Sometimes two in the
morning.
I wake up. I know you're out walking around. I know I should
look out, and I do, and, gee, there you are, walking and walking. Not going
hardly any place.'

 
          
    'There's no place to
go.' Odd sat with his large, square, calloused hands on his knees. 'I try
thinking of some — place to — go — ' He slowed, like a horse to a bit-pull ' —
but it's hard to think. I try and — try. Sometimes I almost know what to do,
where to go. Then, I forget. Once I had an idea to go to a doctor and have him
declare me dead, but, somehow — ' his voice was slow and husky and low ' — I
never got there.'

 
          
   
Radney
looked straight at him. 'If you want, I'll take you.'

 
          
    Odd Martin glanced
leisurely at the setting sun. 'No. I'm weary, tired, but I'll — wait. Now I've
gone this far, I'm curious to see what happens next. After the flood that
washed away my farm and all my stock and put me under water, like a chicken in
a bucket, I filled up like you'd fill a thermos with water, and I came walking
out of the flood, anyhow. But I knew I was dead. Late of nights I lay listening
in my room, but there's no heartbeat in my ears or in my chest or in my wrists,
though I lie still as a cold cricket. Nothing inside me but
a
darkness
and a relaxation and an understanding. There must be a reason
for me still walking, though. Maybe it was because I was still young when I
died. Only twenty-eight, and not married yet. I always wanted to marry, never
got around to it. Here I am, doing odd jobs around town, saving my money,
‘cause I never eat,
heck, I can't
eat, and sometimes getting so discouraged and downright bewildered that I lie
in the gutter and hope they'll take me and poke me in a pine box and lay me
away for ripening. Yet, at the same time — I don't want that. I want a little
more. I realize it whenever Miss Weldon walks by and I see the wind playing her
hair like a little brown feather — ' He sighed away into a pause.