The Bradbury Chronicles (15 page)

The next morning, after they had returned from the island, Ray and Grant were walking the streets of the highland town of Patzcuaro when a limousine wheeled up alongside them and a window slowly lowered. A woman's voice called out. It was the woman from the island with whom they had talked until dawn. She formally introduced herself as the wife of the French ambassador to Mexico. She had enjoyed Ray's company and told him that if he was ever in Paris, to look her up. In the twenty-odd times he traveled to Paris in the decades to follow, he met and dined with Madame Garreau-Dombasle often. He wrote her each year on the anniversary of Día de los Muertos, and dedicated his 1972 book,
The Halloween Tree,
to her. Before they had bid adieu on the streets of Patzcuaro, Madame Garreau-Dombasle spoke of another haunting spectacle the two boys might investigate: the mummies of Guanajuato. Just the sound of it gave Ray the chills.

Grant was battling illness—he had suffered a strep throat earlier in the trip—and they were still bickering as they rumbled into the town of Guanajuato. Roughly four hours northwest of Mexico City, Guanajuato was tucked into a mountainous landscape. The narrow cobblestoned streets and alleys were lined with buildings in the French and Spanish colonial styles. Flowers cascaded from balconies of the colorful pastel-hued stucco buildings. Ornate mission bell towers marked the city skyline. On Madame's word, Ray and Grant's morbid curiosity brought them looking for the infamous mummies of Guanajuato. Ray and Grant were directed to a local cemetery, where they descended a long stairway to a lengthy subterranean corridor. There, stacked against the walls, some of them wired in place, stood more than one hundred naturally mummified corpses. The bodies had been exhumed and displayed as a form of extortion by graveyard groundskeepers after families fell behind on payments for the plots. When the dues were paid in full, the deceased would be returned six feet under. In the meantime, an odd natural phenomenon occurred with the recently unearthed corpses—because of the soil composition and the dry climate, the bodies had been naturally mummified. The visit to the mummies of Guanajuato would haunt Ray Bradbury—and his work—for decades.

Grant and Ray next made their way to Mexico City, where they stayed at a bed-and-breakfast that had been recommended to them by Neva's friend Anne Anthony. While personal relationships and sexuality were never discussed in the Bradbury household, Anne Anthony was Neva's lifelong partner; they shared a home for decades until Neva's death in 2001. While Ray never discussed Neva's sexual preference or her relationship with Anne, it is likely that they were already a couple in 1945. Anne was a photographer, and had traveled through Mexico on assignment for
National Geographic
magazine.

Ray and Grant checked into the charming private home and on their first morning, while in the breakfast room, a large sheepdog with, as Ray recalled, one blue eye and one brown eye bounded in, followed by its owner, a tall man who was just a little tipsy from a morning cocktail or two. The man was John Steinbeck.

“I went into shock,” Ray said. He recognized the author right away. Steinbeck was in Mexico as the film version of his book
The Pearl
was being produced nearby.
The Grapes of Wrath
had been one of Ray's very favorite books ever since he first read it in the summer of 1939. Now Ray was sitting across the breakfast table from its author. “He was a happy drunk,” recalled Ray, who remembered Steinbeck as having a great sense of humor. Ray, uncharacteristically, was too shy to tell Steinbeck that he, too, was a writer. He was too shy even to mention his great love of
The Grapes of Wrath
. He simply sat there in awe.

Meeting one of his great literary idols was the high point of the trip for Ray, along with a letter he received in Mexico City, which had been forwarded by his parents. The letter was from an editor named Don Congdon at Simon & Schuster Publishers in New York. Congdon had just left his post at
Collier's
magazine, where, before leaving, he had heard office scuttlebutt about a recent short-story acquisition, a tale titled “One Timeless Spring,” written by an unknown named William Elliott. Congdon wrote Ray a fan letter, unaware that the Elliott name was a pseudonym:

 

Dear Mr. Elliott:

The people in
Collier's
fiction department, of which I was a member until a month ago, tell me you write very well and might be interested in doing a novel. If you are considering anything of length, I'd like very much to hear from you.

Cordially,

Don Congdon

 

Ray was amazed. Even before the publication of his first book by a small house in Wisconsin, he was being courted by Simon & Schuster. Ray had only a rough outline of a novel he had been contemplating, a concept tentatively titled
The Small Assassins
. As with
Dark Carnival,
this new idea also focused on the themes of his childhood fears, but this time, it was a novel-in-stories all gleaned from his Illinois boyhood. The novel examined the themes of youth and old age. It was a book that would later become, in part,
Dandelion Wine
and its unfinished sequel,
Farewell Summer
. What he had was all very preliminary, hardly more than a glimmer. Nonetheless, a dialogue had been started up between Ray and Don Congdon. It was a dialogue that would continue for the rest of their lives.

Ray was ready to go home. He was frightened at what he perceived as constant reminders of his own mortality. And he and Grant were not getting along at all. “I couldn't do anything right,” said Ray. Grant bristled at Ray's natural ability to meet new people and make new friends. It seemed to annoy him when Ray shared the story of his recent publishing success. “He was jealous of everything I did,” said Ray. “My first story in
Mademoiselle
was on the newsstands while we were in Mexico and I showed it to everyone. My God, it was a big magazine. I was excited. But Grant thought I was being arrogant and egotistical.”

After six weeks and seven thousand miles, relations between the two former friends reached the boiling point. One day, as they neared the U.S. border, they wheeled into a small service station and Grant asked Ray to keep an eye on the gas pump as the vehicle filled. Ray happily obliged, but as the tank topped off, gasoline began overflowing, pouring down the side of the car. Grant exploded.

“You can't do anything right!” he yelled at Ray. Very little gasoline had been wasted, but that didn't matter to Grant. He had had it with his inept friend with the poor Spanish skills and the myopic diet and the lack of automotive know-how. They argued much of the way back into the United States. “He wouldn't let up,” Ray said. They stopped one night in a small Arizona town to rest. By sunup, Ray had made a decision. He was leaving. Without saying a word, he left the hotel, found a Greyhound bus station, and bought himself a ticket. He would head back to Los Angeles on his own, leaving Grant to travel the rest of the way alone. In his haste, Ray forgot his typewriter—the portable typewriter he had purchased in 1937. Ray later learned that when Grant had discovered that he had left, he grabbed the typewriter and carried it to the bank of a nearby river. In a symbolic and defiant gesture, Grant hurled the old typewriter into the murky water, where it quickly sank.

Ray is bold. He is not a shrinking violet. He'll tackle all kinds of things, some of them beyond my understanding, and acquit himself always well, often brilliantly. He is a phenomenon and I'm very lucky to know him.

—
NORMAN CORWIN
,
godfather of the Golden Age of radio

R
AY RETURNED
to Los Angeles the day before Thanksgiving 1945, regretting he had ever embarked on the adventure in the first place. Still, Mexico had left an indelible impression. It wasn't a complete loss. He had met John Steinbeck, one of his great literary heroes. He had met Madame Garreau-Dombasle, a woman who would become a lifelong friend. He had received his first correspondence from Don Congdon, a man who would guide his career. Ray had experienced much in Mexico that would later inspire several remarkable short stories, including “The Next in Line,” “The Lifework of Juan Diaz,” “The Highway,” and “The Fox and the Forest.” And, as mementos of his trip, he had purchased a series of small, primitive wooden masks from a native woodcarver in Guanajuato. The tribal masks caused him to reconsider the carnival-themed cover concept for his forthcoming collection,
Dark Carnival
. Ray jettisoned his original idea of using an illustration of a carousel in the forest, and instead he set out to find a photographer who could do something with the Mexican masks.

Throughout his career, Ray would be actively involved in the dust jacket designs for his books. In the years to come, he would help conceptualize many more first-edition jackets, among them
The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451,
the English edition of
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Long After Midnight, The Toynbee Convector,
and
Green Shadows, White Whale
. Although he contributed detailed original sketches for book-cover illustrations over the years, it wouldn't be until 2004 that his own original art would be used on a first edition, for the story collection titled
The Cat's Pajamas
.

In late 1945, he went to the Los Angeles Arts Center, a local school for the arts, and inquired about talented student photographers. After viewing the work of several, and at least a hundred photos in all, Ray's eye was caught by the photographs of George Barrows, a protégé of Ansel Adams. Barrows was in his early twenties and had already exhibited his work in San Francisco and L.A. After a phone call and a meeting, Barrows agreed to take shots of Ray's Mexican masks and see what he could come up with.

“He came back with two different designs and I sent them off to August Derleth,” said Ray. The cover art for
Dark Carnival
was born. But as much as Ray loved the dark drama of Barrow's cover art for the book, more than a half century later, he had some criticism of it too. “The main problem is, when you put it down in a bookstore among other books, it disappears. It was too dark.”

Amazingly, even after all their trouble in Mexico, Ray was still frequenting the Beaches' home, and his friendship with Grant Beach remained intact, though it was sorely strained. They never discussed the trip or what had occurred between them. And Ray, who shared a special relationship with Grant's mother, commiserated with her about his troubles with her sometimes difficult son.

Ray was still writing at the Beaches' home a few days a week, using 413 North Figueroa Street as his business mailing address. It was there that Ray was inspired to write one of his greatest mainstream literary stories. It was late in the day and Ray was sitting with Grant and his mother at their small kitchen table. There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Beach went to answer it. Standing there, between two police officers, was one of the Mexican tenants from the building she owned next door. “He was being deported back to Mexico,” Ray said. “His visa had expired and the last thing he said in broken English as he stood there in the doorway, as he reached out and grabbed Mrs. Beach's hand, was, ‘Mrs. Beach, I see you never. I see you never.'” The rhythm and the sadness of the words reverberated in Ray's mind. The next day, he sat down and wrote the short story “I See You Never.”

Even as Ray was still frequenting the Beaches' house, Grant's jealousy over his publishing success was escalating. And soon the jealousy turned malicious.

Monumental news had arrived. Ray's story “The Big Black and White Game,” recently published in the August issue of
American Mercury
magazine, had been selected for inclusion in
The Best American Short Stories of the Year
anthology, edited by Martha Foley. Since 1936, when Ray discovered this series at Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, it had been a dream of his to have a story chosen for the esteemed collection. But the letter from
American Mercury
arrived at Figueroa Street and had been intercepted by Grant Beach, who opened it.

“Grant wrote back under my name,” recalled Ray, “and he refused the honor.” Of course, Ray didn't know any of this until a week later, when an editor from the magazine sent him a telegram:

 

URGE YOU STRONGLY TO GIVE PERMISSION TO FOLEY TO REPRINT YOUR MERCURY STORY IN BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. IT WILL BE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE IN EVERY WAY. PLEASE REPLY COLLECT IMMEDIATELY.

 

When Ray read the Western Union telegram, he was flummoxed. He wasn't sure what the editor was talking about, but he had a sneaking suspicion. Ray called the editor and assured him that he enthusiastically accepted the honor of being included in the anthology. He then took the streetcar downtown to Figueroa Street to confront Grant Beach. Ray put his friend on the spot. “Have you been intercepting my mail?” he asked. Cornered, Grant admitted what he had done. “He had been jealous all along,” said Ray. “He was a secret writer and he never told me.” Ray felt angry and betrayed, and from that day forward, their relationship was never the same.

“Just get your work done,” Ray always said, and that's exactly what he did. His work on assembling the various stories for
Dark Carnival
was progressing at a prodigious clip. Yet, interestingly, as Bradbury scholars Jonathan R. Eller and William F. Touponce, authors of
Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction,
note, the book, even before its publication, already “represented a backward glance at the first (and perhaps most important) phase of his development as a professional writer. By 1946 he had gone as far as he could with weird fiction.”

Ray's recent sales to mainstream literary magazines portended big things for his future, and marked the beginning of the end of his career as the “Poet of the Pulps.” He had learned his lessons well from his early mentors and he was now outpublishing them. When he told Ed Hamilton about the sale of “One Timeless Spring” to
Collier's,
Hamilton affectionately prodded, “You are the viper at my bosom!” When Ray told Leigh Brackett the same news, her stunned retort was, “You son of a bitch!”

In March 1945,
Who Knocks?
the anthology of dark fantasy that included Ray's short story “The Lake,” was published. It was Ray's first appearance in book form—another milestone. He continued working on the
Dark Carnival
manuscript, as the book went through several incarnations reflecting the speed in which he was maturing as a writer. The book was initially intended as a retrospective of the weird fiction that he had published in the pulps. But it had grown into something much more, thanks to his recent successes in the mainstream magazine market. As
Dark Carnival
took shape, it served as a sort of bridge between his provincial pulp past and his wide-horizoned literary future. The book included early Bradbury pulp classics, such as “The Lake,” “The Crowd,” “The Jar,” and “The Wind.” Now, dissatisfied with the caliber of writing in these tales, Ray polished each of them with varying degrees of rewrites. Other early weird tales, such as “The Poems,” “The Ducker,” “Trip to Cranamockett,” and “The Watchers,” were eventually deemed unworthy by their creator and excised from the book altogether. “A story like ‘The Watchers' is not a good story. It's clumsy,” said Ray. “The style is very inept.”

Ray continued to change the architecture of the collection. Throughout the assembly of
Dark Carnival,
he discarded stories he no longer liked and replaced them with new ones that he felt better reflected his current abilities. But the ongoing revisions frustrated his publisher, August Derleth, who begrudgingly allowed his new author to continue tinkering with the manuscript right up to the brink of publication.

In retrospect, it is most fascinating that
Dark Carnival
would not only become a groundbreaking work of American gothic horror, but the book—Ray's first—would be the seminal influence behind several Bradbury classics yet to be written. The short story “The Night,” for example, a tale gleaned from Ray's memory as a child in Illinois, would spark many more midwestern stories to come, and it would ultimately become a part of 1957's
Dandelion Wine
. The short story “Homecoming” would be the first in a series of ghoulish Illinois family tales, ultimately becoming the cornerstone tale of 2001's novel-in-stories,
From the Dust Returned
. During the time he was putting his
Dark Carnival
together, Ray began writing the short story “The Black Ferris,” which would later evolve into 1962's
Something Wicked This Way Comes
. Although he didn't know it at the time, with
Dark Carnival,
he was sowing the seeds of his literary future.

Ray had earmarked his story “Homecoming” as the leadoff tale for
Dark Carnival
. The story had been rejected by the
Weird Tales
editors, dismissed, according to Ray, as too offbeat, too quirky, too untraditional. Ray's relationship with the pulp publication was winding down. But while “Homecoming” had been turned down by
Weird Tales,
Ray nonetheless had a good feeling about the story. A tale of a foundling human child raised by a family of vampires, its essential metaphor resounded well beyond genre fiction. This was the story of so many children who felt like outsiders—a decidedly human yarn, dressed in the gothic accoutrements of dark fantasy. It sprang from Ray's own experience as a sensitive, imaginative, oft-misunderstood boy in Waukegan, Illinois, in the 1920s. On a hunch, Ray sent “Homecoming” to
Mademoiselle,
the women's fashion magazine, which at the time was known for publishing strong and original new fiction. Since
Mademoiselle
had published his story “Invisible Boy,” Ray hoped this story might have a chance there, too. But despite the magazine's editorial daring, this charming tale about an eccentric family of monsters was hardly their typical fare. Ray fired it off in the mail nonetheless. Upon arrival at the magazine's East Forty-second Street offices, it was promptly relegated to the slush pile with scores of other unsolicited submissions until one day an office assistant plucked it out of the pile and read it. He was a young New York writer who had recently achieved some publishing success of his own in the pages of
Mademoiselle
and
Harper's Bazaar
. His name was Truman Capote.

Capote liked “Homecoming” and brought it to the attention of the magazine's fiction editor, George Davis, and his assistant, Rita Smith. “Homecoming” was odd, to say the least. But Davis had a reputation for pushing boundaries. Davis and Smith wrestled for weeks over the question of how they could work with Ray's Halloween vampire family story. At first, they considered asking the author to revise the story to fit their publication. However, it quickly became clear that by doing so, the charm of the tale would be lost. Almost as quickly, they came up with another, bolder idea. They would change the publication to fit the story. It was an inspired, unprecedented move.

“They put together an entire October issue built around my ‘Homecoming,'” said Ray, “and got Kay Boyle and others to write October essays to round out the magazine. They hired the talented Charles Addams, who was then an offbeat cartoonist for
The New Yorker,
and beginning to draw his own strange and wonderful ‘Addams Family.' He created a remarkable two-page spread of my October house and my Family streaming through the autumn air and loping around the ground.”

The sale of the story to
Mademoiselle
pleased August Derleth. He was proud of his young author, and he knew that each new Bradbury story appearance would only bolster
Dark Carnival
when it was finally published. “Homecoming” was slated to be the first story in
Dark Carnival,
and now it had the added cachet of initial publication in a well-regarded New York magazine. Before
Dark Carnival
had even rolled off the press, Ray Bradbury had moved beyond the caliber of its publisher. Ray had been accepted into the world of the New York literati.

 

O
NE DAY
in April 1946, Ray walked into Fowler Brothers Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles. It was an unseasonably warm day, yet Ray was wearing a favorite military-style trench coat, lined with several deep pockets, and carrying his briefcase. There had been a recent rash of thievery in the shop and the owner, Mr. Fowler, had asked his employees to keep an eye out for the culprit. A young woman spotted Ray and was instantly suspicious. Based on his getup, she was convinced she had the crook, and from a distance, she began following him around the bookstore. The woman's name was Marguerite McClure. She was twenty-four years old. She had short, stylish brown hair, hazel eyes, and a porcelain complexion; and she possessed a slightly aristocratic air, a quiet elegance that was enhanced by her preference for couture clothes. Ray set his briefcase down on top of a pile of books—another odd gesture surely hinting that he was the book bandit—and she approached to investigate. “May I help you?” Marguerite asked, more accusatory than friendly.