The Lost Bradbury (5 page)

“Was that your
only
wonder-working device?” laughed Marcott. “How inefficient! Yes, I’ll return it as soon as possible, granting of course that you never know my name. You should be thankful I didn’t look you up in the phone book to give your life to the flame.”

“You should not have let it get out of your hands,” muttered the old man. “What if it is lost?”

“It will not be lost. I sent it to my wife, enclosing a note, telling her it was—well, it was a clever idea of mine, all around. She’s divorcing me, plans on marrying a man named Eldridge. They plane to Reno in the morning. But I thought of a rather interesting and different way of utilizing the candle to get rid of Eldridge. I’ll let Helen—”

A brisk wind came up, drowning out Jules’ voice, so that he had to speak louder, but speak he did. The little shopkeeper listened, nodding, approving in spite of himself, almost smiling.

The wind blew wilder and the stars were very clear. Jules thought, it is a glorious night. But—

One more question.

“The victim of the candle,” asked Jules. “When the spell is cast, what happens? Is it very bad?”

The shopkeeper nodded ominously.

“You saw what happened to the cat? Well—”

* * * *

Helen Marcott jerked back as the hand cracked across her cheek for the second time. Tears started to her full brown eyes and the marks of John Eldridge’s fingers scarred her face.

Eldridge stood over her. Then he whirled and went to the door. He turned, his face ugly and suffused. His eyes cut first at Helen Marcott and then at the freshly opened box, the box in which reclined the feminine blue-pastel candle.

“Gifts from your husband! Behind my back!” he grated. “What am I supposed to think? After all we supposedly meant to each other! Well, if you want
me,
you’ll find me at—”      

The door slammed, slicing off Eldridge’s voice.

Helen Marcott heard his footsteps drumming down the hall out of her life. And tears streaked down her cheeks over the fresh red marks left by Eldridge’s hand when he had slapped her.

He had
slapped
her!

All over a gift from Jules. All over a blue candle. Helen Marcott tried to think clearly. She was seeing Eldridge concisely for the first time.

She was still crying, thinking about her disillusionment in Eldridge, when she struck a match. Carefully she set the candle on the table next to herself and lit it.

She paused. The candle looked so peaceful and contented.

Helen Marcott picked up the letter Jules had thoughtfully enclosed. How gentle, how nice of him.

She read the letter over again, taking in every word.

* * * *

“Darling Helen: A little remembrance to show that there are no hard feelings. This is a prayer candle. To bring good fortune and happiness to the one you love, light the candle in the evening and, three times, repeat the name of your beloved.

With fond memories,

Jules.”

Helen Marcott brushed away the tears. She turned to the flaming candlestick. Her gentle breath touched the flame, three times, quietly, fervently, longingly, as she said: “Jules—Jules—Jules—”

The candle flame flickered.

 
THE DUCKER

This was first published in the winter 1943 issue of Weird Tales, and reprinted the next year
Weird Tales
(Canada). “The Ducker” was also anthologized in the British anthology,
Weird Legacies
(1977), and became the forerunner for “Bang! You’re Dead!,” another short story featuring protagonist Johnny Choir which came out in 1944.

* * * *

The transport was loaded, ready to leave at midnight. Feet shuffled up long wooden gangplanks. A lot of songs were being sung. A lot of silent goodbyes were being said to New York Harbour. Military insignia flashed in the loading lights….

Johnny Choir wasn’t afraid. His khaki-clad arms trembled with excitement and uncertainty, but he wasn’t afraid. He held onto the railing and thought. The thinking came down over him like a bright shell, cutting out the soldiers, the transport, the noise. He thought about the days that had slipped by him.

A few years before—

Days in the green park, down by the creek, under the shady oaks and elms, near the grey-planked benches and the bright flowers. The kids, he among them, came like an adolescent avalanche down the tall hillsides, yelling, laughing, tumbling.

Sometimes they’d have carven hunks of wood with clothes-pins from the wash-line for triggers; rubber bands, snapped and flicked through the summer air, for ammunition. Sometimes they’d have cap-guns, exploding pointedly at one another. And most of the time when they couldn’t afford powder-caps, they just pointed their dime revolvers at one another and shouted:

“Bang! You’re dead.”

“Bang-bang—I gotcha!”

It wasn’t simple as all that, though. Arguments rose, quick, hot, short, and over in a minute.

“Bang, I gotcha!”

“Aw, you missed me a mile!
Boom!
There, I got
you!”

“Oh, no you didn’t either! How could you get me? You were shot. You were dead. You couldn’t shoot me.”

“I already said you missed me. I ducked.”

“Aw, you can’t duck a bullet. I pointed right at you.”

“I
still
ducked.”

“Nuts. You always say that, Johnny. You don’t play right. You’re shot. You gotta lay down!”

“But I’m the sergeant—I can’t die.”

“Well, I’m better than a sergeant. I’m a captain.”

“If you are a captain, then I’m a general!”

“
I’m
a major-general!”

“I quit. You don’t play fair.”

The eternal wrangling for position, the bloody noses and hoarse name-calling, the promised retribution of “I’ll tell my Dad on you”. All of it a part and parcel of being a wild horseling of eleven, with the bit out of your bucked-toothed mouth all during June and July and August.

* * * *

And only in autumn did the parents ride out after you and the other fiery colts, to rope you and brand you behind the ears with soap and water and chuck you off to that corral with the red-brick walls and the rusty bell in the tower….

That wasn’t so long ago. Just—seven years.

He was still a kid inside. His body had grown, stretched, towered, tanned its skin, hardened its muscle, darkened its tawny shock of long hair, tightened its lines around jaw and eyes, thickened fingers and knuckles, but the brain didn’t feel as if it had grown in sympathy with the rest. It was still green; full of tall lush oaks and elms in summer; a creek ran through it, and the kids climbed around on its convolutions shouting, “This way, gang—we’ll take a short-cut and head them off at Dead Man’s Gulch!”

Boat whistles blew their tops. Manhattan’s metal buildings tossed back an echo of them. Gangplanks clattered up and away. Men’s voices shouted.

Johnny Choir was aware of it, suddenly. His wild, quick thoughts were stampeded by the reality of the ship nosing out into the harbour. He felt his hands trembling on the cold iron rail. Some of the boys sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” They made a lot of warm noise.

“Come out of it, Choir,” someone said. Eddie Smith came and brushed Johnny Choir’s elbow. “Penny for your thoughts.”

Johnny looked at all that dark, glittering water. “Why ain’t I in 4-F?” he said simply.

Eddie Smith looked at the water, too, and laughed. “Why?”

Johnny Choir said, “I’m only a kid. I’m ten years old. I like ice-cream cones and candy bars and roller skates. I want my mama.”

Smith rubbed his small white chin.

“You got the most distorted sense of humour, Choir. So help me. You say all you got to say with the perfect dead-pan expression. Someone else might think you were serious….”

Johnny spit slowly over the side, experimentally, to see how long it would take the spit to reach the water. Not long. Then he tried to watch where it landed to see how long he could still see it. Not long, either.

Smith said, “Here we go. Don’t know where, but we’re going. Maybe England, maybe Africa, maybe Who Knows?”

“Do—do those other guys play fair, Private Smith?”

“Huh?”

Johnny Choir gestured. “If you shoot those other guys over there, then they got to fall down, don’t they?”

“Hell, yes. But, why—”

“And they can’t shoot back if they get shot first.”

“That’s a basic fact of war. You shoot the other guy first, he’s out of the fight. Now, why are you—”

“That’s all right then,” said Johnny Choir. His stomach eased down soft and nice inside him. Resting light and smooth, his hands didn’t twitch on the rail any more.

“As long as that is a basic rule, Private Smith, then I got nothing to be afraid of. I’ll play. I’ll play war good.”

Smith stared at Johnny.

“If you play war like you talk war, it’s gonna be a funny kind of war, I’ll say so.”

The sound of the boat whistle hit against the clouds. The ship cut out of New York Harbour under the stars.

And Johnny Choir slept like a teddy-bear all that night….

* * * *

The African landing was warm, fast, simple, uneventful. Johnny lugged his equipment in his big easy-swinging hands, found his assigned company truck and the long hot delivery inland from Casablanca began. He sat tallest in his row, facing another row of friends in the rear of the truck. They bounced, jiggled, laughed, smoked, joked all along the way, and it was quite a bit of fun.

One thing Johnny Choir noticed was how nice the officers were to one another. None of the officers stomped their feet and cried, “I want to be general or I won’t play!,” “I want to be captain or I won’t play!” They took orders, gave orders, rescinded orders and asked for orders in a crisp military fashion that seemed, to Johnny, to be the finest bit of play acting ever. It seemed a hard thing to act that way all the time, but they did. Johnny admired them for it and never questioned their right to give him orders. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, they told him. They were helpful. Heck. They were okay. Not like in the old days when everybody argued about who was going to be general or sergeant or corporal.

Johnny said nothing of his thoughts to anyone. Whenever he had time he just kept them and mulled them over. It was so bewildering. This was the biggest game he had ever played—uniforms, bigger guns and everything and—

The long dusty trip inland over jolting roads and glorified cowpaths was little more than bumps, shouts and sweat to Johnny Choir. This didn’t smell like Africa. It smelled like sun, wind, rain, mud, heat, sweat, cigarettes, trucks, oil, gasoline. Universal odours that denied all the Dark menace of the old geography book Africa. He looked hard but he didn’t see any coloured men with juju paint on their black faces. The rest of the time he was too engrossed spooning food into his mouth, and coming down the hash-line for second helpings.

It was one hot noon one hundred miles from the Tunisian border, with Johnny just finishing his lunch, when a German Stuka fell out of the sun, coming right for Johnny. It spit bullets.

Johnny stood there and watched it. Tin plates, eating utensils, helmets clattered, shining, on the hard-packed sand as the other company members scattered, yelling, and dug their noses into ditches and behind boulders, behind trucks and jeeps.

Johnny stood there grinning the kind of grin you always use when you look straight at the sun. Someone yelled, “Choir, duck!”

The dive bomber strafed, slugging, punching. Johnny stood straight up with his spoon raised to his mouth. Little pocks exploded dust into a showered line a few feet to one side of him. He watched the line tiptoe instantly by him and go spattering on a few yards before the Stuka lifted gilded wings and went away.

Johnny watched it out of sight.

Eddie Smith peered over the edge of a jeep. “Choir, you nut. Why didn’t you get behind the truck?”

Johnny ate again. “That guy couldn’t hit the side of a barn-door with a bucket of paint.”

Smith looked at him as if he were a Saint in a niche in a church. “You’re either the bravest guy I know or the dumbest.”

“I guess maybe I’m brave,” said Johnny though his voice sounded a bit uncertain, as if he couldn’t make up his mind yet.

Smith snorted. “Hell. The way you talk.”

* * * *

The inland movement continued. Rommel was entrenched at Mareth and the British 8th was drawing up, readying its heavy artillery for a barrage that, rumour had it, would start in approximately five days. The long queue of trucks reached the Tunisian border, ground over and up into hill country….

The Afrika Korps had stormed through Kasserine Pass almost to the border of Tunisia, and now they were retreating back toward Gafsa.

“That’s swell,” was all Johnny Choir would say. “That’s the way it should be.”