Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 (118 page)

The bus rushed on with a plummeting and swerving in the sweet green air of the afternoon, between the mountains baked like lion pelts, past rivers as sweet as wine and as clear as vermouth, over stone bridges, under aqueducts where water ran like clear wind in the ancient channels, past churches, through dust, and suddenly, quite suddenly the speedometer in Marie’s mind said, A million miles, Joseph is back a million miles and I’ll
never see him again. The thought stood up in her mind and covered the sky with a blurred darkness. Never, never again until the day I die or after that will I see him again, not for an hour or a minute or a second, not at all will I see him.

The numbness started in her fingertips. She felt it flow up through her hands, into her wrists and on along the arms to her shoulders and through her shoulders to her heart and up her neck to her head. She was a numbness, a thing of nettles and ice and prickles and a hollow thundering nothingness. Her lips were dry petals, her eyelids were a thousand pounds heavier than iron, and each part of her body was now iron and lead and copper and platinum. Her body weighed ten tons, each part of it was so incredibly heavy, and, in that heaviness, crushed and beating to survive, was her crippled heart, throbbing and tearing about like a headless chicken. And buried in the limestone and steel of her robot body was her terror and crying out, walled in, with someone tapping the trowel on the exterior wall, the job finished, and, ironically, it was her own hand she saw before her that had wielded the trowel, set the final brick in place, frothed on the thick slush of mortar and pushed everything into a tightness and a self-finished prison.

Her mouth was cotton. Her eyes were flaming with a dark flame the color of raven wings, the sound of vulture wings, and her head was so heavy with terror, so full of an iron weight, while her mouth was stuffed with invisible hot cotton, that she felt her head sag down into her immensely fat, but she could not see the fat, hands. Her hands were pillows of lead to lie upon, her hands were cement sacks crushing down upon her senseless lap, her ears, faucets in which ran cold winds, and all about her, not looking at her, not noticing, was the bus on its way through towns and fields, over hills and into corn valleys at a great racketing speed, taking her each and every instant one million miles and ten million years away from the familiar.

I must
not
cry out, she thought. No! No!

The dizziness was so complete, and the colors of the bus and her hands and skirt were now so blued over and sooted with lack of blood that in a moment she would be collapsed upon the floor, she would hear the surprise and shock of the riders bending over her. But she put her head far down and sucked the chicken air, the sweating air, the leather air, the carbon monoxide air, the incense air, the air of lonely death, and drew it back through the copper nostrils, down the aching throat, into her lungs which blazed as if she swallowed neon light. Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, Joseph.

It was a simple thing. All terror is a simplicity.

I cannot live without him, she thought. I have been lying to myself. I need him, oh Christ, I, I…

‘Stop the bus! Stop it!’

The bus stopped at her scream, everyone was thrown forward. Somehow she was stumbling forward over the children, the dogs barking, her hands flailing heavily, falling; she heard her dress rip, she screamed again, the door was opening, the driver was appalled at the woman coming at him in a wild stumbling, and she fell out upon the gravel, tore her stockings, and lay while someone bent to her; then she was vomiting on the ground, a steady sickness; they were bringing her bag out of the bus to her, she was telling them in chokes and sobs that she wanted to go that way; she pointed back at the city a million years ago, a million miles ago, and the bus driver was shaking his head. She half sat, half lay there, her arms about the suitcase, sobbing, and the bus stood in the hot sunlight over her and she waved it on; go on, go on; they’re all staring at me, I’ll get a ride back, don’t worry, leave me here, go on, and at last, like an accordion, the door folded shut, the Indian copper-mask faces were transported on away, and the bus dwindled from consciousness. She lay on the suitcase and cried, for a number of minutes, and she was not as heavy or sick, but her heart was fluttering wildly, and she was cold as someone fresh from a winter lake. She arose and dragged the suitcase in little moves across the highway and swayed there, waiting, while six cars hummed by, and at last a seventh car pulled up with a Mexican gentleman in the front seat, a rich car from Mexico City.

‘You are going to Uruapan?’ he asked politely, looking only at her eyes.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I am going to Uruapan.’

And as she rode in this car, her mind began a private dialogue:

‘What is it to be insane?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you know what insanity is?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can one tell? The coldness, was that the start?’

‘No.’

‘The heaviness, wasn’t that a part?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Is insanity screaming?’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘But that came later. First there was the heaviness, and the silence, and the blankness. That terrible void, that space, that silence, that aloneness, that backing away from life, that being in upon oneself and not wishing to look at or speak to the world. Don’t tell me that wasn’t the start of insanity.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were ready to fall over the edge.’

‘I stopped the bus just short of the cliff.’

‘And what if you hadn’t stopped the bus? Would they have driven into a little town or Mexico City and the driver turned and said to you through the empty bus, “All right,
señora
, all out.” Silence. “All right,
señora
, all out.” Silence. “
Señora
?” A stare into space. “
Señora!
” A rigid stare into the sky of life, empty, empty, oh, empty. “
Señora!
” No move. “
Señora
.’ Hardly a breath. You sit there, you sit there, you sit there, you sit there, you sit there.

‘You would not even hear. “
Señora
,” he would cry, and tug at you, but you wouldn’t feel his hand. And the police would be summoned beyond your circle of comprehension, beyond your eyes or ears or body. You could not even hear the heavy boots in the car. “
Señora
, you must leave the bus.” You do not hear. “
Señora
, what is your name?” Your mouth is shut. “
Señora
, you must come with us.” You sit like a stone idol. “Let us see her passport.” They fumble with your purse which lies untended in your stone lap. “
Señora
Marie Elliott, from California.
Señora
Elliott?” You stare at the empty sky. “Where are you coming from? Where is your husband?” You were never married. “Where are you going?” Nowhere. “It says she was born in Illinois.” You were never born, “
Señora, señora
.” They have to carry you, like a stone, from the bus. You will talk to no one. No, no, no one. “Marie, this is me, Joseph.” No, too late. “Marie!” Too late, “Don’t you recognize me?” Too late. Joseph. No Joseph, no nothing, too late, too late.’

‘That is what would have happened, is it not?’

‘Yes.’ She trembled.

‘If you had not stopped the bus, you would have been heavier and heavier, true? And silenter and silenter and more made up of nothing and nothing and nothing.’

‘Yes.’

‘
Señora
,’ said the Spanish gentleman driving, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘It is a nice day, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she said, both to him and the thoughts in her mind.

The old Spanish gentleman drove her directly to her hotel and let her out and doffed his hat and bowed to her.

She nodded and felt her mouth move with thanks, but she did not see him. She wandered into the hotel and found herself with her suitcase back in her room, that room she had left a thousand years ago. Her husband was there.

He lay in the dim light of late afternoon with his back turned, seeming not to have moved in the hours since she had left. He had not even known that she was gone, and had been to the ends of the earth and had returned. He did not even know.

She stood looking at his neck and the dark hairs curling there like ash fallen from the sky.

She found herself on the tiled patio in the hot light. A bird rustled in a bamboo cage. In the cool darkness somewhere, the girl was playing a waltz on the piano.

She saw but did not see two butterflies which darted and jumped and lit upon a bush near her hand, to seal themselves together. She felt her gaze move to see the two bright things, all gold and yellow on the green leaf, their wings beating in slow pulses as they were joined. Her mouth moved and her hand swung like a pendulum, senselessly.

She watched her fingers tumble on the air and close on the two butterflies, tight, tighter, tightest. A scream was coming up into her mouth. She pressed it back. Tight, tighter, tightest.

She felt her hand open all to itself. Two lumps of bright powder fell to the shiny patio tiles. She looked down at the small ruins, then snapped her gaze up.

The girl who played the piano was standing in the middle of the garden, regarding her with appalled and startled eyes.

The wife put out her hand, to touch the distance, to say something, to explain, to apologize to the girl, this place, the world, everyone. But the girl went away.

The sky was full of smoke which went straight up and veered away south toward Mexico City.

She wiped the wing-pollen from her numb fingers and talked over her shoulder, not knowing if that man inside heard, her eyes on the smoke and the sky.

‘You know…we might try the volcano tonight. It looks good. I bet there’ll be lots of fire.’

Yes, she thought, and it will fill the air and fall all around us, and take hold of us tight, tighter, tightest, and then let go and let us fall and we’ll be ashes blowing south, all fire.

‘Did you hear me?’

She stood over the bed and raised a fist high but
never
brought it down to strike him in the face.

The carnival had come to town like an October wind, like a dark bat flying over the cold lake, bones rattling in the night, mourning, sighing, whispering up the tents in the dark rain. It stayed on for a month by the gray, restless lake of October, in the black weather and increasing storms and leaden skies.

During the third week, at twilight on a Thursday, the two small boys walked along the lake shore in the cold wind.

‘Aw, I don’t believe you,’ said Peter.

‘Come on, and I’ll show you,’ said Hank.

They left wads of spit behind them all along the moist brown sand of the crashing shore. They ran to the lonely carnival grounds. It had been raining. The carnival lay by the sounding lake with nobody buying tickets from the flaky black booths, nobody hoping to get the salted hams from the whining roulette wheels, and none of the thin-fat freaks on the big platforms. The midway was silent, all the gray tents hissing on the wind like gigantic prehistoric wings. At eight o’clock perhaps, ghastly lights would flash on, voices would shout, music would go out over the lake. Now there was only a blind hunchback sitting on a black booth, feeling of the cracked china cup from which he was drinking some perfumed brew.

‘There,’ said Hank, pointing.

The black Ferris wheel rose like an immense light-bulbed constellation against the cloudy sky, silent.

‘I still don’t believe what you said about it,’ said Peter.

‘You wait, I saw it happen. I don’t know how, but it did. You know how carnivals are: all funny. Okay; this one’s even
funnier
.’

Peter let himself he led to the high green hiding place of a tree.

Suddenly, Hank stiffened. ‘
Hist!
There’s Mr Cooger, the carnival man, now!’ Hidden, they watched.

Mr Cooger, a man of some thirty-five years, dressed in sharp bright
clothes, a lapel carnation, hair greased with oil, drifted under the tree, a brown derby hat on his head. He had arrived in town three weeks before, shaking his brown derby hat at people on the street from inside his shiny red Ford, tooting the horn.

Now Mr Cooger nodded at the little blind hunchback, spoke a word. The hunchback blindly, fumbling, locked Mr Cooger into a black seat and sent him whirling up into the ominous twilight sky. Machinery hummed.

‘See!’ whispered Hank. ‘The Ferris wheel’s going the wrong way. Backwards instead of forwards!’

‘So what?’ said Peter.

‘Watch!’

The black Ferris wheel whirled twenty-five times around. Then the blind hunchback put out his pale hands and halted the machinery. The Ferris wheel stopped, gently swaying, at a certain black seat.

A ten-year-old boy stepped out. He walked off across the whispering carnival ground, in the shadows.

Peter almost fell from his limb. He searched the Ferris wheel with his eyes. ‘Where’s Mr Cooger!’

Hank poked him. ‘You wouldn’t believe! Now
see
!’

‘Where’s Mr Cooger at!’

‘Come on, quick, run!’ Hank dropped and was sprinting before he hit the ground.

Under giant chestnut trees, next to the ravine, the lights were burning in Mrs Foley’s white mansion. Piano music tinkled. Within the warm windows, people moved. Outside, it began to rain, despondently, irrevocably, forever and ever.

‘I’m
so
wet,’ grieved Peter, crouching in the bushes. ‘Like someone squirted me with a hose. How much longer do we wait?’

‘Ssh!’ said Hank, cloaked in wet mystery.

They had followed the little boy from the Ferris wheel up through town, down dark streets to Mrs Foley’s ravine house. Now, inside the warm dining room of the house the strange little boy sat at dinner, forking and spooning rich lamb chops and mashed potatoes.

‘I know his name,’ whispered Hank, quickly. ‘My mom told me about him the other day. She said, “Hank, you hear about the li’l orphan boy moved in Mrs Foley’s? Well, his name is Joseph Pikes and he just came to Mrs Foley’s one day about two weeks ago and said how he was an orphan run away and could he have something to eat, and him and Mrs Foley been getting on like hot apple pie ever since.” That’s what my mom said,’ finished Hank, peering through the steamy Foley window. Water dripped from his nose. He held on to Peter who was twitching with cold. ‘Pete, I didn’t like his looks from the first, I didn’t. He looked—mean.’

‘I’m scared,’ said Peter, frankly wailing. ‘I’m cold and hungry and I don’t know what this’s all about.’

‘Gosh, you’re dumb!’ Hank shook his head, eyes shut in disgust. ‘Don’t you see, three weeks ago the carnival came. And about the same time this little ole orphan shows up at Mrs Foley’s. And Mrs Foley’s son died a long time ago one night one winter, and she’s never been the same, so here’s this little ole orphan boy who butters her all around.’

‘Oh,’ said Peter, shaking.

‘Come on,’ said Hank. They marched to the front door and banged the lion knocker.

After a while the door opened and Mrs Foley looked out.

‘You’re all wet, come in,’ she said. ‘My land,’ she herded them into the hall. ‘What do you want?’ she said, bending over them, a tall lady with lace on her full bosom and a pale thin face with white hair over it. ‘You’re Henry Walterson, aren’t you?’

Hank nodded, glancing fearfully at the dining room where the strange little boy looked up from his eating. ‘Can we see you alone, ma’am?’ And when the old lady looked palely surprised, Hank crept over and shut the hall door and whispered at her. ‘We got to warn you about something, it’s about that boy come to live with you, that orphan?’

The hall grew suddenly cold. Mrs Foley drew herself high and stiff. ‘Well?’

‘He’s from the carnival, and he ain’t a boy, he’s a man, and he’s planning on living here with you until he finds where your money is and then run off with it some night, and people will look for him but because they’ll be looking for a little ten-year-old boy they won’t recognize him when he walks by a thirty-five-year-old man, named Mr Cooger!’ cried Hank.

‘What
are
you talking about?’ declared Mrs Foley.

‘The carnival and the Ferris wheel and this strange man, Mr Cooger, the Ferris wheel going backward and making him younger. I don’t know how, and him coming here as a boy, and you can’t trust him, because when he has your money he’ll get on the Ferris wheel and it’ll go
forward
, and he’ll be thirty-five years old again, and the boy’ll be gone forever!’

‘Good night, Henry Walterson, don’t
ever
come back!’ shouted Mrs Foley.

The door slammed. Peter and Hank found themselves in the rain once more. It soaked into and into them, cold and complete.

‘Smart guy,’ snorted Peter. ‘Now you fixed it. Suppose he heard us, suppose he comes and
kills
us in our beds tonight, to shut us all up for keeps!’

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ said Hank.

‘Wouldn’t he?’ Peter seized Hank’s arm. ‘Look.’

In the big bay window of the dining room now the mesh curtain pulled
aside. Standing there in the pink light, his hand made into a menacing fist, was the little orphan boy. His face was horrible to see, the teeth bared, the eyes hateful, the lips mouthing out terrible words. That was all. The orphan boy was there only a second, then gone. The curtain fell into place. The rain poured down upon the house. Hank and Peter walked slowly home in the storm.

During supper, Father looked at Hank and said, ‘If you don’t catch pneumonia, I’ll be surprised, Soaked, you were, by God! What’s this about the carnival?’

Hank fussed at his mashed potatoes, occasionally looking at the rattling windows. ‘You know Mr Cooger, the carnival man, Dad?’

‘The one with the pink carnation in his lapel?’ asked Father.

‘Yes!’ Hank sat up. ‘You’ve seen him around?’

‘He stays down the street at Mrs O’Leary’s boarding house, got a room in back. Why?’

‘Nothing,’ said Hank, his face glowing.

After supper Hank put through a call to Peter on the phone. At the other end of the line, Peter sounded miserable with coughing.

‘Listen, Pete!’ said Hank. ‘I see it all now. When that li’l ole orphan boy, Joseph Pikes, gets Mrs Foley’s money, he’s got a good plan.’

‘What?’

‘He’ll stick around town as the carnival man, living in a room at Mrs O’Leary’s. That way nobody’ll get suspicious of him. Everybody’ll be looking for that nasty little boy and he’ll be gone. And he’ll be walking around, all disguised as the carnival man. That way, nobody’ll suspect the carnival at all. It would look funny if the carnival suddenly pulled up stakes.’

‘Oh,’ said Peter, sniffling.

‘So we got to act fast,’ said Hank.

‘Nobody’ll believe us, I tried to tell my folks but they said hogwash!’ moaned Peter.

‘We got to act tonight, anyway. Because why? Because he’s gonna try to kill us! We’re the only ones that know and if we tell the police to keep an eye on him, he’s the one who stole Mrs Foley’s money in cahoots with the orphan boy, he won’t live peaceful. I bet he just tries something tonight. So, I tell you, meet me at Mrs Foley’s in half an hour.’

‘Aw,’ said Peter.

‘You wanna die?’

‘No.’ Thoughtfully.

‘Well, then. Meet me there and I bet we see that orphan boy sneaking out with the money, tonight, and running back down to the carnival grounds with it, when Mrs Foley’s asleep. I’ll see you there. So long. Pete!’

‘Young man,’ said Father, standing behind him as he hung up the phone.
‘You’re not going anywhere. You’re going straight up to bed. Here.’ He marched Hank upstairs. ‘Now hand me out everything you got on.’ Hank undressed. ‘There’re no other clothes in your room are there?’ asked Father. ‘No, sir, they’re all in the hall closet,’ said Hank, disconsolately.

‘Good,’ said Dad and shut and locked the door.

Hank stood there, naked. ‘Holy cow,’ he said.

‘Go to bed,’ said Father.

Peter arrived at Mrs Foley’s house at about nine-thirty, sneezing, lost in a vast raincoat and mariner’s cap. He stood like a small water hydrant on the street, mourning softly over his fate. The lights in the Foley house were warmly on upstairs. Peter waited for a half an hour, looking at the rain-drenched slick streets of night.

Finally, there was a darting paleness, a rustle in wet bushes.

‘Hank?’ Peter questioned the bushes.

‘Yeah.’ Hank stepped out.

‘Gosh,’ said Peter, staring. ‘You’re—you’re
naked
!’

‘I ran all the way,’ said Hank. ‘Dad wouldn’t let me out.’

‘You’ll get pneumonia,’ said Peter.

The lights in the house went out.

‘Duck,’ cried Hank, bounding behind some bushes. They waited. ‘Pete,’ said Hank. ‘You’re wearing pants, aren’t you?’

‘Sure,’ said Pete.

‘Well, you’re wearing a raincoat, and nobody’ll know, so lend me your pants,’ said Hank.

A reluctant transaction was made. Hank pulled the pants on.

The rain let up. The clouds began to break apart.

In about ten minutes a small figure emerged from the house, bearing a large paper sack filled with some enormous loot or other.

‘There he is,’ whispered Hank.

‘There he goes!’ cried Peter.

The orphan boy ran swiftly.

‘Get after him!’ cried Hank.

They gave chase through the chestnut trees, but the orphan boy was swift, up the hill, through the night streets of town, down past the rail yards, past the factories, to the midway of the deserted carnival. Hank and Peter were poor seconds, Peter weighted as he was with the heavy raincoat, and Hank frozen with cold. The thumping of Hank’s bare feet sounded through the town.

‘Hurry, Pete! We can’t let him get to that Ferris wheel before we do, if he changes back into a man we’ll never prove anything!’

‘I’m hurrying!’ But Pete was left behind as Hank thudded on alone in the clearing weather.

‘Yah!’ mocked the orphan boy, darting away, no more than a shadow ahead, now. Now vanishing into the carnival yard.

Hank stopped at the edge of the carnival lot. The Ferris wheel was going up and up into the sky, a big nebula of stars caught on the dark earth and turning forward and forward, instead of backward, and there sat Joseph Pikes in a black-painted bucket-seat, laughing up and around and down and up and around and down at little old Hank standing there, and the little blind hunchback had his hand on the roaring, oily black machine that made the Ferris wheel go ahead and ahead. The midway was deserted because of the rain. The merry-go-round was still, but its music played and crashed in the open spaces. And Joseph Pikes rode up into the cloudy sky and came down and each time he went around he was a year older, his laughing changed, grew deep, his face changed, the bones of it, the mean eyes of it, the wild hair of it, sitting there in the black bucket-seat whirling, whirling swiftly, laughing into the bleak heavens where now and again a last split of lightning showed itself.

Hank ran forward at the hunchback by the machine. On the way he picked up a tent spike. ‘Here now!’ yelled the hunchback. The black Ferris wheel whirled around. ‘You!’ stormed the hunchback, fumbling out. Hank hit him in the kneecap and danced away. ‘Ouch!’ screamed the man, falling forward. He tried to reach the machine brake to stop the Ferris wheel. When he put his hand on the brake, Hank ran in and slammed the tent spike against the fingers, mashing them. He hit them twice. The man held his hand in his other hand, howling. He kicked at Hank. Hank grabbed the foot, pulled, the man slipped in the mud and fell. Hank hit him on the head, shouting.

The Ferris wheel went around and around and around.

‘Stop, stop the wheel!’ cried Joseph Pikes-Mr Cooger, flung up in a stormy cold sky in the bubbled constellation of whirl and rush and wind.

‘I can’t move,’ groaned the hunchback. Hank jumped on his chest and they thrashed, biting, kicking.

‘Stop, stop the wheel!’ cried Mr Cooger, a man, a different man and voice this time, coming around in panic, going up into the roaring hissing sky of the Ferris wheel. The wind blew through the high dark wheel spokes. ‘Stop, stop, oh, please stop the wheel!’

Hank leaped up from the sprawled hunchback. He started in on the brake mechanism, hitting it, jamming it, putting chunks of metal in it, tying it with rope, now and again hitting at the crawling weeping dwarf.