Bradbury Stories (102 page)

On a final night, when Fentriss had almost yanked the phone out of the wall, fearful of another call from the Boston Symphony, he leaned an ax against the trunk of the new tree and addressed it and the empty sky.

“Last chance,” he said. “If the dawn patrol doesn't show by seven
A.M.
, it's quits.”

And he touched ax-blade against the tree-bole, took two shots of vodka so swiftly that the spirits squirted out both eyes, and went to bed.

He awoke twice during the night to hear nothing but a soft breeze outside his window, stirring the leaves, with not a ghost of song.

And awoke at dawn with tear-filled eyes, having dreamed that the birds had returned, but knew, in waking, it was only a dream.

And yet . . .?

Hark, someone might have said in an old novel. List! as in an old play.

Eyes shut, he fine-tuned his ears . . .

The tree outside, as he arose, looked fatter, as if it had taken on invisible ballasts in the night. There were stirrings there, not of simple breeze or probing winds, but of something in the very leaves that knitted and purled them in rhythms. He dared not look but lay back down to ache his senses and try to
know
.

A single chirp hovered in the window.

He waited.

Silence.

Go on, he thought.

Another chirp.

Don't breathe, he thought; don't let them know you're listening.

Hush.

A fourth sound, then a fifth note, then a sixth and seventh.

My God, he thought, is this a substitute orchestra, a replacement choir come to scare off my loves?

Another five notes.

Perhaps, he prayed, they're only tuning
up
!

Another twelve notes, of no special timbre or pace, and as he was about to explode like a lunatic conductor and fire the bunch—

It happened.

Note after note, line after line, fluid melody following spring freshet melody, the whole choir exhaled to blossom the tree with joyous proclamations of return and welcome in chorus.

And as they sang, Fentriss sneaked his hand to find a pad and pen to hide under the covers so that its scratching might not disturb the choir that soared and dipped to soar again, firing the bright air that flowed from the tree to tune his soul with delight and move his hand to remember.

The phone rang. He picked it up swiftly to hear Black ask if the waiting was over. Without speaking, he held the receiver in the window.

“I'll be damned,” said Black's voice.

“No,
anointed
,” whispered the composer, scribbling Cantata No. 2. Laughing, he called softly to the sky.

“Please. More slowly.
Legato
, not
agitato
.”

And the tree and the creatures within the tree obeyed.

Agitato
ceased.

Legato
prevailed.

“D
ID YOU HEAR ABOUT IT?”

“About what?”

“The niggers, the niggers!”

“What about 'em?”

“Them leaving, pulling out, going away; did you hear?”

“What you mean, pulling out? How can they do that?”

“They can, they will, they are.”

“Just a couple?”

“Every single one here in the South!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“I got to see that. I don't believe it. Where they going—Africa?”

A silence.

“Mars.”

“You mean the planet Mars?”

“That's right.”

The men stood up in the hot shade of the hardware porch. Someone quit lighting a pipe. Somebody else spat out into the hot dust of noon.

“They can't leave, they can't do that.”

“They're doing it, anyways.”

“Where'd you hear this?”

“It's everywhere, on the radio a minute ago, just come through.”

Like a series of dusty statues, the men came to life.

Samuel Teece, the hardware proprietor, laughed uneasily. “I wondered what happened to Silly. I sent him on my bike an hour ago. He ain't come back from Mrs. Bordman's yet. You think that black fool just pedaled off to Mars?”

The men snorted.

“All I say is, he better bring back my bike. I don't take stealing from no one, by God.”

“Listen!”

The men collided irritably with each other, turning.

Far up the street the levee seemed to have broken. The black warm waters descended and engulfed the town. Between the blazing white banks of the town stores, among the tree silences, a black tide flowed. Like a kind of summer molasses, it poured turgidly forth upon the cinnamon-dusty road. It surged slow, slow, and it was men and women and horses and barking dogs, and it was little boys and girls. And from the mouths of the people partaking of this tide came the sound of a river. A summer-day river going somewhere, murmuring and irrevocable. And in that slow, steady channel of darkness that cut across the white glare of day were touches of alert white, the eyes, the ivory eyes staring ahead, glancing aside, as the river, the long and endless river, took itself from old channels into a new one. From various and uncountable tributaries, in creeks and brooks of color and motion, the parts of this river had joined, become one mother current, and flowed on. And brimming the swell were things carried by the river: grandfather clocks chiming, kitchen clocks ticking, caged hens screaming, babies wailing; and swimming among the thickened eddies were mules and cats, and sudden excursions of burst mattress springs floating by, insane hair stuffing sticking out, and boxes and crates and pictures of dark grandfathers in oak frames—the river flowing it on while the men sat like nervous hounds on the hardware porch, too late to mend the levee, their hands empty.

Samuel Teece wouldn't believe it. “Why, hell, where'd they get the transportation? How they goin' to get to Mars?”

“Rockets,” said Grandpa Quartermain.

“All the damn-fool things. Where'd they get rockets?”

“Saved their money and built them.”

“I never heard about it.”

“Seems these niggers kept it secret, worked on the rockets all themselves, don't know where—in Africa, maybe.”

“Could they
do
that?” demanded Samuel Teece, pacing about the porch. “Ain't there a law?”

“It ain't as if they're declarin' war,” said Grandpa quietly.

“Where do they get off, God damn it, workin' in secret, plottin'?” shouted Teece.

“Schedule is for all this town's niggers to gather out by Loon Lake. Rockets be there at one o'clock, pick 'em up, take 'em to Mars.”

“Telephone the governor, call out the militia,” cried Teece. “They should've given notice!”

“Here comes your woman, Teece.”

The men turned again.

As they watched, down the hot road in the windless light first one white woman and then another arrived, all of them with stunned faces, all of them rustling like ancient papers. Some of them were crying, some were stern. All came to find their husbands. They pushed through barroom swing doors, vanishing. They entered cool, quiet groceries. They went in at drug shops and garages. And one of them, Mrs. Clara Teece, came to stand in the dust by the hardware porch, blinking up at her stiff and angry husband as the black river flowed full behind her.

“It's Lucinda, Pa; you got to come home!”

“I'm not comin' home for no damn darkie!”

“She's leaving. What'll I do without her?”

“Fetch for yourself, maybe. I won't get down on my knees to stop her.”

“But she's like a family member,” Mrs. Teece moaned.

“Don't shout! I won't have you blubberin' in public this way about no goddamn—”

His wife's small sob stopped him. She dabbed at her eyes. “I kept telling her, ‘Lucinda,' I said, ‘you stay on and I raise your pay, and you get
two
nights off a week, if you want,' but she just looked set! I never seen her so set, and I said, ‘Don't you love me, Lucinda?' and she said yes, but she had to go because that's the way it was, is all. She cleaned the house and dusted it and put luncheon on the table and then she went to the parlor door and—and stood there with two bundles, one by each foot, and shook my hand and said, ‘Good-bye, Mrs. Teece.' And she went out the door. And there was her luncheon on the table, and all of us too upset to even eat it. It's still there now, I know; last time I looked it was getting cold.”

Teece almost struck her. “God damn it, Mrs. Teece, you get the hell home. Standin' there makin' a sight of yourself!”

“But, Pa . . .”

He strode away into the hot dimness of the store. He came back out a few seconds later with a silver pistol in his hand.

His wife was gone.

The river flowed black between the buildings, with a rustle and a creak and a constant whispering shuffle. It was a very quiet thing, with a great certainty to it; no laughter, no wildness, just a steady, decided, and ceaseless flow.

Teece sat on the edge of his hardwood chair. “If one of 'em so much as laughs, by Christ, I'll kill 'em.”

The men waited.

The river passed quietly in the dreamful noon.

“Looks like you goin' to have to hoe your own turnips, Sam,” Grandpa chuckled.

“I'm not bad at shootin' white folks neither.” Teece didn't look at Grandpa. Grandpa turned his head away and shut up his mouth.

“Hold on there!” Samuel Teece leaped off the porch. He reached up and seized the reins of a horse ridden by a tall Negro man. “You, Belter, come down off there!”

“Yes, sir.” Belter slid down.

Teece looked him over. “Now, just what you think you're doin'?”

“Well, Mr. Teece . . .”

“I reckon you think you're goin', just like that song—what's the words? ‘Way up in the middle of the air'; ain't that it?”

“Yes, sir.” The Negro waited.

“You recollect you owe me fifty dollars, Belter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You tryin' to sneak out? By God, I'll horsewhip you!”

“All the excitement, and it slipped my mind, sir.”

“It slipped his mind.” Teece gave a vicious wink at his men on the hardware porch. “God damn, mister, you know what you're goin' to do?”

“No, sir.”

“You're stayin' here to work out that fifty bucks, or my name ain't Samuel W. Teece.” He turned again to smile confidently at the men in the shade.

Belter looked at the river going along the street, that dark river flowing and flowing between the shops, the dark river on wheels and horses and in dusty shoes, the dark river from which he had been snatched on his journey. He began to shiver. “Let me go, Mr. Teece. I'll send your money from up there, I promise!”

“Listen, Belter.” Teece grasped the man's suspenders like two harp strings, playing them now and again, contemptuously, snorting at the sky, pointing one bony finger straight at God. “Belter, you know anything about what's up there?”

“What they tells me.”

“What they tells him! Christ! Hear that? What they tells him!” He swung the man's weight by his suspenders, idly, ever so casual, flicking a finger in the black face. “Belter, you fly up and up like a July Fourth rocket, and bang! There you are, cinders, spread all over space. Them crackpot scientists, they don't know nothin', they kill you all off!”

“I don't care.”

“Glad to hear that. Because you know what's up on that planet Mars? There's monsters with big raw eyes like mushrooms! You seen them pictures on those future magazines you buy at the drugstore for a dime, ain't you? Well! Them monsters jump up and suck marrow from your bones!”

“I don't care, don't care at all, don't care.” Belter watched the parade slide by, leaving him. Sweat lay on his dark brow. He seemed about to collapse.

“And it's cold up there; no air, you fall down, jerk like a fish, gaspin', dyin', stranglin', stranglin' and dyin'. You
like
that?”

“Lots of things I don't like, sir. Please, sir, let me go. I'm late.”

“I'll let you go when I'm ready to let you go. We'll just talk here polite until I say you can leave, and you know it damn well. You want to travel, do you? Well, Mister Way up in the Middle of the Air, you get the hell home and work out that fifty bucks you owe me! Take you two months to do that!”

“But if I work it out, I'll miss the rocket, sir!”

“Ain't that a shame now?” Teece tried to look sad.

“I give you my horse, sir.”

“Horse ain't legal tender. You don't move until I get my money.” Teece laughed inside. He felt very warm and good.

A small crowd of dark people had gathered to hear all this. Now as Belter stood, head down, trembling, an old man stepped forward.

“Mister?”

Teece flashed him a quick look. “Well?”

“How much this man owe you, mister?”

“None of your damn business!”

The old man looked at Belter. “How much, son?”

“Fifty dollars.”

The old man put out his black hands at the people around him. “There's twenty-five of you. Each give two dollars; quick now, this no time for argument.”

“Here, now!” cried Teece, stiffening up, tall, tall.

The money appeared. The old man fingered it into his hat and gave the hat to Belter. “Son,” he said, “you ain't missin' no rocket.”

Belter smiled into the hat. “No, sir, I guess I ain't!”

Teece shouted: “You give that money back to them!”

Belter bowed respectfully, handing the money over, and when Teece would not touch it he set it down in the dust at Teece's feet. “There's your money, sir,” he said. “Thank you kindly.” Smiling, he gained the saddle of his horse and whipped his horse along, thanking the old man, who rode with him now until they were out of sight and hearing.