Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (18 page)

 
          
T
o enter out into that silence that was
the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon
that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands
in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly
loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down
long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go,
but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or
as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would
stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a
cigar.

 
          
Sometimes
he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And
on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it
was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers
of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows. Sudden gray phantoms
seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn
against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a
tomb-like building was still open.

 
          
Mr.
Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet
making no noise on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to
sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would
parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might
click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a
lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.

 
          
On
this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, toward
the hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and
made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold
light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He
listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with
satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally
picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the
infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.

 
          
“Hello,
in there,” he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. “What’s up
tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and
do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?”

 
          
The
street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the
shadow of a hawk in midcountry. If he closed his eyes and stood very still,
frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry, windless
American desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the
streets, for company.

 
          
“What
is it now?” he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. “Eight-thirty P.M.?
Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the
stage?”

 
          
Was
that a murmur of laughter from within a moonwhite house? He hesitated, but went
on when nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section
of sidewalk. The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of
walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another
person walking, not once in all that time.

 
          
He
came to a cloverleaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways
crossed the town. During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas
stations open, a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position
as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed
homeward to the far directions. But now these highways, too, were like streams
in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.

 
          
He
turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home. He was within a
block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and
flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a
night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.

 
          
A
metallic voice called to him:

 
          
“Stand
still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!”

 
          
He
halted.

 
          
“Put
up your hands!”

 
          
“But—”
he said.

 
          
“Your
hands up! Or we’ll shoot!”

 
          
The
police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three
million, there was only
one
police
car left, wasn’t that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year,
the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was
no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering
the empty streets.

 
          
“Your
name?” said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn’t see the men in it
for the bright light in his eyes.

 
          
“Leonard
Mead,” he said.

 
          
“Speak
up!”

 
          
“Leonard
Mead!”

 
          
“Business
or profession?”

 
          
“I
guess you’d call me a writer.”

 
          
“No
profession,” said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him
fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

 
          
“You
might say that,” said Mr. Mead. He hadn’t written in years. Magazines and books
didn’t sell any more. Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now,
he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where
the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their
faces, but never really touching
them
.

 
          
“No
profession,” said the phonograph voice, hissing. “What are you doing out?”

 
          
“Walking,”
said Leonard Mead.

 
          
“Walking!”

 
          
“Just
walking,” he said simply, but his face felt cold.

 
          
“Walking,
just walking, walking?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.”

 
          
“Walking
where? For what?”

 
          
“Walking
for air. Walking to see.”

 
          
“Your
address!”

 
          
“Eleven
South Saint James Street.”

 
          
“And
there is air
in
your house, you have
an
air conditioner
, Mr. Mead?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“And
you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“No?”
There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.

 
          
“Are
you married, Mr. Mead?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Not
married,” said the police voice behind the fiery beam. The moon was high and
clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent.

 
          
“Nobody
wanted me,” said Leonard Mead with a smile.

 
          
“Don’t
speak unless you’re spoken to!”

 
          
Leonard
Mead waited in the cold night.

 
          
“Just
walking
, Mr. Mead?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“But
you haven’t explained for what purpose.”

 
          
“I
explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk.”

 
          
“Have
you done this often?”

 
          
“Every
night for years.”

 
          
The
police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly
humming.

 
          
“Well,
Mr. Mead,” it said.

 
          
“Is
that all?” he asked politely.

 
          
“Yes,”
said the voice. “Here.” There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police
car sprang wide. “Get in.”

 
          
“Wait
a minute, I haven’t done anything!”

 
          
“Get
in.”

 
          
“I
protest!”

 
          
“Mr.
Mead.”

 
          
He
walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he
looked in. As he had expected there was no one in the front seat, no one in the
car at all.

 
          
“Get
in.”

 
          
He
put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little
cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of
harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing
soft there.

 
          
“Now
if you had a wife to give you an alibi,” said the iron voice. “But—”

 
          
“Where
are you taking me?”

 
          
The
car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information,
somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. “To the
Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.”

 
          
He
got in. The door shut with a soft thud. The police car rolled through the night
avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.

 
          
They
passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of
houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric
lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm
in the cool darkness.

 
          
“That’s
my
house,” said Leonard Mead.

 
          
No
one answered him.

 
          
The
car moved down the empty river-bed streets and off away, leaving the empty
streets with the empty sidewalks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of
the chill November night.

 
          
B
ut of course he was going away, there
was nothing else to do, the time was up, the clock had run out, and he was
going very far away indeed. His suitcase was packed, his shoes were shined, his
hair was brushed, he had expressly washed behind his ears, and it remained only
for him to go down the stairs, out the front door, and up the street to the
small-town station where the train would make a stop for him alone. Then
Fox Hill
,
Illinois
, would be left far off in his past. And he would go on, perhaps to
Iowa, perhaps to Kansas, perhaps even to California; a small boy, twelve years
old, with a birth certificate in his valise to show he had been born forty-three
years ago.

 
          
“Willie!”
called a voice belowstairs.

 
          
“Yes!”
He hoisted his suitcase. In his bureau mirror he saw a face made of June
dandelions and July apples and warm summer-morning milk. There, as always, was
his look of the angel and the innocent, which might never, in the years of his
life, change.

 
          
“Almost
time,” called the woman’s voice.

 
          
“All
right!” And he went down the stairs, grunting and smiling. In the living room
sat Anna and Steve, their clothes painfully neat.

 
          
“Here
I am!” cried Willie in the parlor door.

 
          
Anna
looked like she was going to cry. “Oh, good Lord, you can’t really be leaving
us, can you, Willie?”

 
          
“People
are beginning to talk,” said Willie quietly. “I’ve been here three years now.
But when people begin to talk, I know it’s time to put on my shoes and buy a
railway ticket.”

 
          
“It’s
all so strange. I don’t understand. It’s so sudden,” Anna said. “Willie, we’ll
miss you.”

 
          
“I’ll
write you every Christmas, so help me. Don’t you write me.”

 
          
“It’s
been a great pleasure and satisfaction,” said Steve, sitting there, his words
the wrong size in his mouth. “It’s a shame it had to stop. It’s a shame you had
to tell us about yourself. It’s an awful shame you can’t stay on.”

 
          
“You’re
the nicest folks I ever had,” said Willie, four feet high, in no need of a
shave, the sunlight on his face.

 
          
And
then Anna
did
cry. “Willie, Willie.”
And she sat down and looked as if she wanted to hold him but was afraid to hold
him now; she looked at him with shock and amazement and her hands empty, not
knowing what to do with him now.

 
          
“It’s
not easy to go,” said Willie. “You get used to things. You want to stay. But it
doesn’t work. I tried to stay on once after people began to suspect. ‘How
horrible!’ people said. ‘All these years, playing with our innocent children,’
they said, ‘and us not guessing! Awful!’ they said. And finally I had to just
leave town one night. It’s not easy. You know darned well how much I love both
of you. Thanks for three swell years.”

 
          
They
all went to the front door. “Willie, where’re you going?”

 
          
“I
don’t know. I just start traveling. When I see a town that looks green and
nice, I settle in.”

 
          
“Will
you ever come back?”

 
          
“Yes,”
he said earnestly with his high voice. “In about twenty years it should begin
to show in my face. When it does, I’m going to make a grand tour of all the
mothers and fathers I’ve ever had.”

 
          
They
stood on the cool summer porch, reluctant to say the last words. Steve was
looking steadily at an elm tree. “How many other folks’ve you stayed with, Willie?
How many adoptions?”

 
          
Willie
figured it, pleasantly enough. “I guess it’s about five towns and five couples
and over twenty years gone by since I started my tour.”

 
          
“Well,
we can’t holler,” said Steve. “Better to’ve had a son thirty-six months than
none whatever.”

 
          
“Well,”
said Willie, and kissed Anna quickly, seized at his luggage, and was gone up
the street in the green noon light, under the trees, a very young boy indeed,
not looking back, running steadily.

 
          
The
boys were playing on the green park diamond when he came by. He stood a little
while among the oak-tree shadows, watching them hurl the white, snowy baseball
into the warm summer air, saw the baseball shadow fly like a dark bird over the
grass, saw their hands open in mouths to catch this swift piece of summer that
now seemed most especially important to hold onto. The boys’ voices yelled. The
ball lit on the grass near Willie.

 
          
Carrying
the ball forward from under the shade trees, he thought of the last three years
now spent to the penny, and the five years before that, and so on down the line
to the year when he was really eleven and twelve and fourteen and the voices
saying: “What’s wrong with Willie, missus?” “Mrs. B., is Willie late agrowin’?”
“Willie, you smokin’ cigars lately?” The echoes died in summer light and color.
His mother’s voice: “Willie’s twenty-one today!” And a thousand voices saying:
“Come back, son, when you’re fifteen; then maybe we’ll give you a job.”

 
          
He
stared at the baseball in his trembling hand, as if it were his life, an
interminable ball of years strung around and around and around, but always
leading back to his twelfth birthday. He heard the kids walking toward him; he
felt them blot out the sun, and they were older, standing around him.

 
          
“Willie!
Where you goin’?” They kicked his suitcase.

 
          
How
tall they stood to the sun. In the last few months it seemed the sun had passed
a hand above their heads, beckoned, and they were warm metal drawn melting
upwards; they were golden taffy pulled by an immense gravity to the sky,
thirteen, fourteen years old, looking down upon Willie, smiling, but already
beginning to neglect him. It had started four months ago:

 
          
“Choose
up sides! Who wants Willie?”

 
          
“Aw,
Willie’s too little; we don’t play with ‘kids.’”

 
          
And
they raced ahead of him, drawn by the moon and the sun and the turning seasons
of leaf and wind, and he was twelve years old and not of them any more. And the
other voices beginning again on the old, the dreadfully familiar, the cool
refrain: “Better feed that boy vitamins, Steve.” “Anna, does shortness
run
in your family?” And the cold fist
kneading at your heart again and knowing that the roots would have to be pulled
up again after so many good years with the “folks.”

 
          
“Willie,
where are you goin’?”

 
          
He
jerked his head. He was back among the towering, shadowing boys who milled
around him like giants at a drinking fountain bending down.

 
          
“Goin’
a few days visitin’ a cousin of mine.”

 
          
“Oh.”
There was a day, a year ago, when they would have cared very much indeed. But
now there was only curiosity for his luggage, their enchantment with trains and
trips and far places.

 
          
“How
about a coupla fast ones?” said Willie.

 
          
They
looked doubtful, but, considering the circumstances, nodded. He dropped his bag
and ran out; the white baseball was up in the sun, away to their burning white
figures in the far meadow, up in the sun again, rushing, life coming and going
in a pattern. Here,
there!
Mr. and
Mrs. Robert Hanlon, Creek Bend, Wisconsin, 1932, the first couple, the first
year! Here, there! Henry and Alice Boltz,
Limeville
,
Iowa
, 1935! The baseball flying. The Smiths, the Eatons, the Robinsons!
1939! 1945! Husband and wife, husband and wife, husband and wife, no children,
no children, no children! A knock on this door, a knock on that.

 
          
“Pardon
me. My name is William. I wonder if—”

 
          
“A
sandwich? Come in, sit down. Where you
from
,
son?”

 
          
The
sandwich, a tall glass of cold milk, the smiling, the nodding, the comfortable,
leisurely talking.

 
          
“Son,
you look like you been traveling. You run
off
from somewhere?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Boy,
are you an orphan?”

 
          
Another
glass of milk.

 
          
“We
always wanted kids. It never worked out. Never knew why. One of those things.
Well, well. It’s getting late, son. Don’t you think you better hit for home?”

 
          
“Got
no home.”

 
          
“A
boy like you? Not dry behind the ears? Your mother’ll be worried.”

 
          
“Got
no home and no folks anywhere in the world. I wonder if—I wonder—could I sleep
here tonight?”

 
          
“Well,
now, son, I don’t just know. We never considered taking in—” said the husband.

 
          
“We
got chicken for supper tonight,” said the wife, “enough for extras, enough for
company....”

 
          
And
the years turning and flying away, the voices, and the faces, and the people,
and always the same first conversations. The voice of Emily Robinson, in her
rocking chair, in summer-night darkness, the last night he stayed with her, the
night she discovered his secret, her voice saying:

 
          
“I
look at all the little children’s faces going by. And I sometimes think, What a
shame, what a shame, that all these flowers have to be cut, all these bright
fires have to be put out. What a shame these, all of these you see in schools
or running by, have to get tall and unsightly and wrinkle and turn gray or get
bald and finally, all bone and wheeze, be dead and buried off away. When I hear
them laugh I can’t believe they’ll ever go the road I’m going. Yet here they
come!
I still remember Wordsworth’s
poem: ‘When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the
lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.’ That’s how I
think of children, cruel as they sometimes are, mean as I know they can be, but
not yet showing the meanness around their eyes or
in
their eyes, not yet full of tiredness. They’re so eager for
everything! I guess that’s what I miss most in older folks, the eagerness gone
nine times out of ten, the freshness gone, so much of the drive and life down
the drain. I like to watch school let out each day. It’s like someone threw a
bunch of flowers out the school front doors. How does it feel, Willie? How does
it feel to be young forever? To look like a silver dime new from the mint? Are
you happy? Are you as fine as you
seem?
”

 
          
The
baseball whizzed from the blue sky, stung his hand like a great pale insect.
Nursing it, he heard his memory say:

 
          
“I
worked with what I had. After my folks died, after I found I couldn’t get man’s
work anywhere, I tried carnivals, but they only laughed. ‘Son,’ they said,
‘you’re not a midget, and even if you are, you look like a
boy!
We want midgets with midgets’
faces!
Sorry, son, sorry.’ So I left home, started out, thinking:
What was I? A boy. I looked like a boy, sounded like a boy, so I might as well
go on being a boy. No use fighting it. No use screaming. So what could I do?
What job was handy? And then one day I saw this man in a restaurant looking at
another man’s pictures of his children. ‘Sure wish I had kids,’ he said. ‘Sure
wish I had kids.’ He kept shaking his head. And me sitting a few seats away from
him, a hamburger in my hands. I sat there,
frozen!
At that very instant I knew what my job would be for most of my life. There was
work for me, after all. Making lonely people happy. Keeping myself busy.
Playing forever. I knew I had to play forever. Deliver a few papers, run a few
errands, mow a few lawns, maybe. But
hard
work? No. All I had to do was be a mother’s son and a father’s pride: I turned
to the man down the counter from me. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. I
smiled
at him....”