Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (12 page)

 
          
 
"Might as well,"
observed Willy, "blow your brains out."

 
          
 
"Sure, but people had to get out of their
haunted houses. Walking through their parlors was like whistling past a
graveyard. All that silence . . ."

 
          
 
Willy sat up a little. "Speaking of
silence—"

 
          
 
"On the third night," said Antonelli
quickly, "we were all still in shock. We were saved from outright lunacy
by one woman. Somewhere in this town this woman strolled out of the house, and
came back a minute later. In one hand she held a paintbrush. And in the
other—"

 
          
 
"A bucket of paint," said Willy.

 
          
 
Everyone smiled, seeing how well he understood.

 
          
 
"If those psychologists ever strike off
gold medals, they should pin one on that woman and every woman like her in
every little town who saved our world from coming to an end. Those women who
instinctively wandered in at twilight and brought us the miracle cure."

 
          
 
Willy imagined it. There were the glaring
fathers and the scowling sons slumped by their dead TV sets waiting for the
damn things to shout Ball One, or Strike Two! And then they looked up from
their wake and there in the twilight saw the fair women of great purpose and
dignity standing and waiting with brushes and paint. And a glorious light
kindled their cheeks and eyes. . . .

 
          
 
"Lord, it spread like wildfire!"
said Antonelli. "House to house, city to city. Jigsaw-puzzle craze, 1932,
yoyo craze, 1928, were nothing compared with the Everybody Do Everything Craze
that blew this town to smithereens and glued it back again. Men everywhere
slapped paint on anything that stood still ten seconds; men everywhere climbed
steeples, straddled fences, fell off roofs and ladders by the hundreds. Women
painted cupboards, closets; kids painted Tinkertoys, wagons, kites. If they
hadn't kept busy, you could have built a wall around this town, renamed it
Babbling Brooks. All towns, ever3^where, the same, where people had forgotten
how to waggle their jaws, make their own talk. I tell you, men were moving in
mindless circles, dazed, until their wives shoved a brush into their hands and
pointed them toward the nearest unpainted wall!"

 
          
 
"Looks like you finished the job,"
said Willy.

 
          
 
"Paint stores ran out of paint three
times the first week.” Antonelli surveyed the town with pride. "The
painting could only last so long, of course, unless you start painting hedges
and spraying grass blades one by one. Now that the attics and cellars are
cleaned out, too, our fire is seeping off into, well, women canning fruit
again, making tomato pickles, raspberry, strawberry preserves. Basement shelves
are loaded. Big church doings, too. Organized bowling, night donkey baseball,
box socials, beer busts. Music shop sold five hundred ukeleles, two hundred and
twelve steel guitars, four hundred and sixty ocarinas and kazoos in four weeks.
I'm studying trombone. Mac, there, the flute. Band Concerts Thursday and Sunday
nights. Hand-crank ice-cream machines? Bert Tyson's sold two hundred last week
alone. Twenty-eight days, Willy, Twenty-eight Days That Shook the World!"

 
          
 
Willy Bersinger and Samuel Fitts sat there,
trying to imagine and feel the shock, the crushing blow.

 
          
 
"Twenty-eight days, the barbershop jammed
with men getting shaved twice a day so they can sit and stare at customers like
they might say something," said Antonelli, shaving Willy now. "Once,
remember, before TV, barbers were supposed to be great talkers. Well, this
month it took us one whole week to warm up, get the rust out. Now we're
spouting fourteen to the dozen. No quality, but our quantity is ferocious. When
you came in you heard the commotion. Oh, it'll simmer down when we get used to
the great Oblivion."

 
          
 
"Is that what everyone calls it?"

 
          
 
"It sure looked that way to most of us,
there for a while."

 
          
 
Willy Bersinger laughed quietly and shook his
head. "Now I know why you didn't want me to start lecturing when I walked
in that door."

 
          
 
Of course, thought Willy, why didn't I see it
right off? Four short weeks ago the wilderness fell on this town and shook it
good and scared it plenty. Because of the sunspots, all the towns in all the
Western world have had enough silence to last them ten years. And here I come
by with another dose of silence, my easy talk about deserts and nights with no
moon and only stars and just the little sound of the sand blowing along the
empty river bottoms. No telling what might have happened if Antonelli hadn't
shut me up. I see me, tarred and feathered, leaving town.

 
          
 
"Antonelli," he said aloud.
"Thanks."

 
          
 
"For nothing," said Antonelli. He
picked up his comb and shears. "Now, short on the sides, long in
back?"

 
          
 
"Long on the sides," said Willy
Bersinger, closing his eyes again, "short in back."

           
 
An hour later Willy and Samuel climbed back
into their jalopy, which someone, they never knew who, had washed and polished
while they were in the barbershop.

 
          
 
"Doom." Samuel handed over a small
sack of gold dust. "With a capital D."

 
          
 
"Keep it." Willy sat, thoughtful,
behind the wheel. "Let's take this money and hit out for Phoenix, Tucson,
Kansas City, why not? Right now we're a surplus commodity around here. We won't
be welcome again until those little sets begin to herringbone and dance and
sing. Sure as hell, if we stay, we'll open our traps and the gila monsters and
chicken hawks and the wilderness will slip out and make us trouble."

 
          
 
Willy squinted at the highway straight ahead.

 
          
 
"Pearl of the Orient, that's what he
said. Can you imagine that dirty old town, Chicago, all painted up fresh and
new as a babe in the morning light? We just got to go see Chicago, by
God!"

 
          
 
He started the car, let it idle, and looked at
the town.

 
          
 
"Man survives," he murmured. "Man
endures. Too bad we missed the big change. It must have been a fierce thing, a
time of trials and testings. Samuel, I don't recall, do you? What have we ever
seen on TV?"

 
          
 
"Saw a woman wrestle a bear two falls out
of three, one night."

 
          
 
"Who won?"

 
          
 
"Damned if I know. She—"

 
          
 
But then the jalopy moved and took Willy
Bersinger and Samuel Fitts with it, their hair cut, oiled and neat on their
sweet-smelling skulls, their cheeks pink-shaven, their fingernails flashing in
the sun. They sailed under clipped green, fresh-watered trees, through flowered
lanes, past daffodil-, lilac-, violet-, rose- and peppermint-colored houses on
the dustless road.

 
          
 
"Pearl of the Orient, here we come!"

 
          
 
A perfumed dog with permanented hair ran out,
nipped their tires and barked, until they were gone away and completely out of
sight.

 
          
 
It was a strange thing that could not be told.
It touched along the hairs on his neck as he lay wakening. Eyes shut, he
pressed his hands to the dirt.

 
          
 
Was the earth, shaking old fires under its
crust, turning over in its sleep?

 
          
 
Were buffalo on the dust prairies, in the
whistling grass, drumming the sod, moving this way like a dark weather?

 
          
 
No.

 
          
 
What? What, then?

 
          
 
He opened his eyes and was the boy Ho-Awi, of
a tribe named for a bird, by the hills named for the shadows of owls, near the
great ocean itself, on a day that was evil for no reason.

 
          
 
Ho-Awi stared at the tent flaps, which
shivered like a great beast remembering winter.

 
          
 
Tell me, he thought, the terrible thing, where
does it come from? Whom will it kill?

 
          
 
He lifted the flap and stepped out into his
village.

 
          
 
He turned slowly, a boy with bones in his dark
cheeks like the keels of small birds flying. His brown eyes saw god-filled,
cloud-filled sky, his cupped ear heard thistles ticking the war drums, but
still the greater mystery drew him to the edge of the village.

 
          
 
Here, legend said, the land went on like a
tide to another sea. Between here and there was as much earth as there were
stars across the night sky. Somewhere in all that land, storms of black buffalo
harvested the grass. And here stood Ho-Awi, his stomach a fist, wondering,
searching, waiting, afraid.

 
          
 
You too? said the shadow of a hawk.

 
          
 
Ho-Awi turned.

 
          
 
It was the shadow of his grandfather's hand
that wrote on the wind.

           
 
No. The grandfather made the sign for silence.
His tongue moved soft in a toothless mouth. His eyes were small creeks running
behind the sunken flesh beds, the cracked sand washes of his face.

 
          
 
Now they stood on the edge of the day, drawn
close by the unknown.

 
          
 
And Old Man did as the boy had done. His
mummified ear turned, his nostril twitched. Old Man too ached for some
answering growl from any direction that would tell them only a great timberfall
of weather had dropped from a distant sky. But the wind gave no answer, spoke
only to itself.

 
          
 
The Old Man made the sign which said they must
go on the Great Hunt. This, said his hands like mouths, was a day for the
rabbit young and the featherless old. Let no warrior come with them. The hare
and the dying vulture must track together. For only the very young saw life
ahead, and only the very old saw life behind; the others between were so busy
with life they saw nothing.

 
          
 
The Old Man wheeled slowly in all directions.

 
          
 
Yes! He knew, he was certain, he was sure! To
find this thing of darkness would take the innocence of the newborn and the
innocence of the blind to see very clear.

 
          
 
Come! said the trembling fingers.

 
          
 
And snuffling rabbit and earthbound hawk
shadowed out of the village into changing weather.

 
          
 
They searched the high hills to see if the
stones lay atop each other, and they were so arranged. They scanned the
prairies, but found only the winds which played there like tribal children all
day. And found arrowheads from old wars.

 
          
 
No, the Old Man's hand drew on the sky, the
men of this nation and that beyond smoke by the summer fires while the squaws
cut wood. It is not arrows flying that we almost hear.

 
          
 
At last, when the sun sank into the nation of
buffalo hunters, the Old Man looked up.

 
          
 
The birds, his hands cried suddenly, are
flying south! Summer is over!

 
          
 
No, the boy's hands said, summer has just begun!
I see no birds!

 
          
 
They are so high, said the Old Man's fingers,
that only the bhnd can feel their passage. They shadow the heart more than the
earth. I feel them pass south in my blood. Summer goes. We may go with it.
Perhaps we are going away.

           
 
No! cried the boy aloud, suddenly afraid. Go
where? Why? For what?

 
          
 
Who knows? said the Old Man, and perhaps we
will not move. Still, even without moving, perhaps we are going away.

 
          
 
No! Go back! cried the boy, to the empty sky,
the birds unseen, the unshadowed air. Summer, stay!

 
          
 
No use, said the Old One's single hand, moving
by itself. Not you or me or our people can stay this weather. It is a season
changed, come to live on the land for all time.

 
          
 
But from where does it come?

 
          
 
This way, said the Old Man at last

 
          
 
And in the dusk they looked down at the great
waters of the east that went over the edge of the world, where no one had ever
gone.

 
          
 
There. The Old Man's hand clenched and thrust
out There it is.

 
          
 
Far ahead, a single light burned on the shore.

 
          
 
With the moon rising, the Old Man and the
rabbit boy padded on the sands, heard strange voices in the sea, smelled wild
burnings from the now suddenly close fire.

 
          
 
They crawled on their bellies. They lay
looking in at the light

 
          
 
And the more he looked, the colder Ho-Awi
became, and he knew that all the Old Man had said was true.

 
          
 
For drawn to this fire built of sticks and
moss, which flickered brightly in the soft evening wind which was cooler now,
at the heart of summer, were such creatures as he had never seen.

 
          
 
These were men with faces like white-hot
coals, with some eyes in these faces as blue as sky. All these men had glossy
hair on their cheeks and chins, which grew to a point. One man stood with
raised lightning in his hand and a great moon of sharp stuff on his head like
the face of a fish. The others had bright round tinkling crusts of material
cleaved to their chests which gonged slightly when they moved. As Ho-Awi
watched, some men lifted the gonging bright things from their heads, unskinned
the eye-blinding crab shells, the turtle casings from their chests, their arms,
their legs, and tossed these discarded sheaths to the sand. Doing this, the
creatures laughed, while out in the bay stood a black shape on the waters, a
great dark canoe with things like torn clouds hung on poles over it.

           
 
After a long while of holding their breath,
the Old Man and the boy went away.

 
          
 
From a hill, they watched the fire that was no
bigger than a star now. You could wink it out with an eyelash. If you closed
your eyes, it was destroyed.

 
          
 
Still, it remained.

 
          
 
Is this, asked the boy, the great happening?

 
          
 
The Old One's face was that of a fallen eagle,
filled with dreadful years and unwanted wisdom. The eyes were resplendently
bright, as if they welled with a rise of cold clear water in which all could be
seen, like a river that drank the sky and earth and knew it, accepted silently
and would not deny the accumulation of dust, time, shape, sound and destiny.

 
          
 
The Old Man nodded, once.

 
          
 
This was the terrible weather. This was how
summer would end. This made the birds wheel south, shadowless, through a
grieving land.

 
          
 
The worn hands stopped moving. The time of
questions was done.

 
          
 
Far away, the fire leaped. One of the
creatures moved. The bright stuff on his tortoise-shell body flashed. It was
like an arrow cutting a wound in the night.

 
          
 
Then the boy vanished in darkness, following
the eagle and the hawk that lived in the stone body of his grandfather.

 
          
 
Below, the sea reared up and poured another
great salt wave in billions of pieces which crashed and hissed like knives
swarming along the continental shores.