Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 (121 page)

‘Then one night, Dad vanished, too. Perhaps he sailed off on some mad boat like the rest, to forget us all. I forgive him. The poor beast was wild with hunger and nutty for want of something to give us and no giving.

‘So then my mother simply washed away in her own tears, dissolved, you might say, like a sugar-crystal saint, and was gone before the morning fog rolled back, and the grass took her, and my sister, aged twelve, overnight grew tall, but I, me, oh, me? I grew small. Each decided, you see, long before that, of course, on going his or her way.

‘But then part of my decision happened early on. I knew, I swear I did! the quality of my own Thespian performance!

‘I heard it from every decent beggar in Dublin when I was nine days old. ‘What a beggar’s babe
that
is!’ they cried.

‘And my mother, standing outside the Abbey Theater in the rain when I was twenty and thirty days old, and the actors and directors coming out tuning their ears to my Gaelic laments,
they
said I should be signed up and trained! So the stage would have been mine with size, but size never came. And there’s no brat’s roles in Shakespeare. Puck, maybe; what else? So meanwhile at forty days and fifty nights after being born my performance made hackles rise and beggars yammer to borrow my hide, flesh, soul and voice for an hour here, an hour there. The old lady rented me out by the half day when she was sick abed. And not a one bought and bundled me off did not return with praise. ‘My God,’ they cried, “his yell would suck money from the Pope’s poorbox!”

‘And outside the Cathedral one Sunday morn, an American cardinal was riven to the spot by the yowl I gave when I saw his fancy skirt and bright cloth. Said he: “That cry is the first cry of Christ at his birth, mixed with the dire yell of Lucifer churned out of Heaven and spilled in fiery muck down the landslide slops of Hell!”

‘That’s what the dear Cardinal said. Me, eh? Christ and the Devil in one lump, the gabble screaming out my mouth half lost, half found, can you
top
that?’

‘I cannot,’ I said.

‘Then, later on, many years further, there was this wild American film director who chased White Whales? The first time he spied me, he took a quick look and…winked! And took out a pound note and did not put it in my sister’s hand, no, but took my own scabby fist and tucked the pound in and gave it a squeeze and another wink, and him gone.

‘I seen his picture later in the paper, him stabbing the White Whale with a dread harpoon, and him proper mad, and I always figured, whenever we passed, he had my number, but I never winked back. I played the part dumb. And there was always a good pound in it for me, and him proud of my not giving in and letting him know that I knew that he knew.

‘Of all the thousands who’ve gone by in the grand Ta-Ta! he was the only one ever looked me right in the eye, save you! The rest were all too embarrassed by life to so much as gaze as they put out the dole.

‘Well, I mean now, what with that film director, and the Abbey Players, and the cardinals and beggars telling me to go with my own natural self and talent and the genius busy in my baby fat, all
that
must have turned my head.

‘Added to which, my having the famines tolled in my ears, and not a day passed we did not see a funeral go by, or watch the unemployed march up and down in strikes, well, don’t you see? Battered by rains and storms of people and knowing so much, I
must
have been driven down, driven back, don’t you think?

‘You cannot starve a babe and have a man; or do miracles run different than of old?

‘My mind, with all the drear stuff dripped in my ears, was it likely to want to run around free in all that guile and sin and being put upon by natural nature and unnatural man? No. No! I just wanted my little cubby, and since I was long out of that, and no squeezing back, I just squinched myself small against the rains. I flaunted the torments.

‘And, do you know? I won.’

You did, Brat, I thought. You did.

‘Well, I guess that’s my story,’ said the small creature there perched on a chair in the empty saloon bar.

He looked at me for the first time since he had begun his tale.

The woman who was his sister, but seemed his gray mother, now dared to lift her gaze, also.

‘Do,’ I said, ‘do the people of Dublin know about you?’

‘Some. And envy me. And hate me, I guess, for getting off easy from God, and his plagues and Fates.’

‘Do the police know?’

‘Who would tell them?’

There was a long pause.

Rain beat on the windows.

Somewhere a door-hinge shrieked like a soul in torment as someone went out and someone else came in.

Silence.

‘Not me.’ I said.

‘Ah, Christ, Christ…’

And tears rolled down the sister’s cheeks.

And tears rolled down the sooty strange face of the babe.

Both of them let the tears go, did not try to wipe them off, and at last they stopped, and we drank up the rest of our gin and sat a moment longer and then I said: ‘The best hotel in town is the Royal Hibernian, the best for beggars, that is,’

‘True,’ they said.

‘And for fear of meeting me, you’ve kept away from the richest territory?’

‘We have.’

‘The night’s young,’ I said. ‘There’s a flight of rich ones coming in from Shannon just before midnight.’

I stood up.

‘If you’ll let…I’ll be happy to walk you there, now.’

‘The Saints’ calendar is full,’ said the woman, ‘but somehow we’ll find room for you.’

Then I walked the woman McGillahee and her brat back through the rain toward the Royal Hibernian Hotel, and us talking along the way of the mobs of people coming in from the airport just before twelve, drinking and registering at that late hour, that fine hour for begging, and with the cold rain and all, not to be missed.

I carried the babe for some part of the way, she looking tired, and when we got in sight of the hotel, I handed him back, saying:

‘Is this the first time, ever?’

‘We was found out by a tourist? Aye,’ said the babe. ‘You have an otter’s eye.’

‘I’m a writer.’

‘Nail me to the Cross,’ said he. ‘I might have known! You won’t—’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t write a single word about this, about you, for another fifteen years or more.’

‘Mum’s the word?’

‘Mum.’

We were a hundred feet from the hotel steps.

‘I must shut up here,’ said Brat, lying there in his old sister’s arms, fresh as peppermint candy from the gin, round-eyed, wild-haired, swathed in dirty linens and wools, small fists gently gesticulant. ‘We’ve a rule, Molly and me, no chat while at work. Grab my hand.’

I grabbed the small fist, the little fingers. It was like holding a sea anemone.

‘God bless you,’ he said.

‘And God,’ I said, ‘take care of you.’

‘Ah,’ said the babe, ‘in another year we’ll have enough saved for the New York boat.’

‘We will,’ she said.

‘And no more begging, and no more being the dirty babe crying by night in the storms, but some decent work in the open, do you know, do you see, will you light a candle to that?’

‘It’s lit.’ I squeezed his hand.

‘Go on ahead.’

‘I’m gone,’ I said.

And walked quickly to the front of the hotel where airport taxis were starting to arrive.

Behind, I heard the woman trot forward, I saw her arms lift, with the Holy Child held out in the rain.

‘If there’s mercy in you!’ she cried. ‘Pity—!’

And heard the coins ring in the cup and heard the sour babe wailing, and more cars coming and the woman crying Mercy and Thanks and Pity and God Bless and Praise Him and wiping tears from my own eyes, feeling eighteen inches tall, somehow made it up the high steps and into the hotel and to bed where rains fell cold on the rattled windows all the night and where, in the dawn, when I woke and looked out, the street was empty save for the steady falling storm…

It leapt over the country in great stone arches. It was empty now, with the wind blowing in its slucies; it took a year to build, from the land in the North to the land in the South.

‘Soon,’ said mothers to their children, ‘soon now the Aqueduct will be finished. Then they will open the gates a thousand miles North and cool water will flow to us, for our crops, our flowers, our baths, and our tables.’

The children watched the Aqueduct being built stone on solid stone. It towered thirty feet in the sky, with great gargoyle spouts every hundred yards which would drop tiny streams down into yard reservoirs.

In the North there was not only one country, but two. They had rattled their sabers and clashed their shields for many years.

Now, in the Year of the Finishing of the Aqueduct, the two Northern countries shot a million arrows at each other and raised a million shields, like numerous suns, flashing. There was a cry like an ocean on a distant shore.

At the year’s end the Aqueduct stood finished. The people of the Hot South, waiting, asked, ‘When will the water come? With war in the North, will we starve for water, will our crops die?’

A courier came racing. ‘The war is terrible,’ he said. ‘There is a slaughtering that is unbelievable. More than one hundred million people have been slain.’

‘For what?’

‘They disagreed, those two Northern countries.

‘That’s all we know. They disagreed.’

The people gathered all along the stone Aqueduct. Messengers ran along the empty sluiceways with yellow streamers, crying. ‘Bring vases and bowls, ready your fields and plows, open your baths, fetch water glasses!’

A thousand miles of filling Aqueduct and the slap of naked courier feet in the channel, running ahead. The people gathered by the tens of millions from the boiling countryside, the sluiceways open, waiting, their crocks,
urns, jugs, held up toward the gargoyle spouts where the wind whistled emptily.

‘It’s coming!’ The word passed from person to person down the one thousand miles.

And from a great distance, there was the sound of rushing and running, the sound that liquid makes in a stone channel. It flowed slowly at first and then faster, and then very fast down into the Southern land, under the hot sun.

‘It’s here! Any second now. Listen!’ said the people. They raised their glasses into the air.

Liquid poured from the sluiceways down the land, out of gargoyle mouths, into the stone baths, into the glasses, into the fields. The fields were made rich for the harvest. People bathed. There was a singing you could hear from one field to one town to another.

‘But, Mother!’ A child held up his glass and shook it, the liquid whirled slowly. ‘This isn’t water!’

‘Hush!’ said the mother.

‘It’s red,’ said the child. ‘And it’s thick.’

‘Here’s the soap, wash yourself, don’t ask questions, shut up,’ she said. ‘Hurry into the field, open the sluicegates, plant the rice!’

In the fields, the father and his two sons laughed into one another’s faces. ‘If this keeps up, we’ve a great life ahead. A full silo and a clean body.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the two sons. ‘The President is sending a representative North to make certain that the two countries there continue to disagree.’

‘Who knows, it might be a fifty-year war!’

They sang and smiled.

And at night they all lay happily, listening to the good sound of the Aqueduct, full and rich, like a river, rushing through their land toward the morning.

They were incredibly in love. They said it. They knew it. They lived it. When they weren’t staring at each other they were hugging. When they weren’t hugging they were kissing. When they weren’t kissing they were a dozen scrambled eggs in bed. When they were finished with the amazing omelet they went back to staring and making noises.

Theirs, in sum, was a Love Affair. Print it out in capitals. Underline it. Find some italics. Add exclamation points. Put up the fireworks. Tear down the clouds. Send out for some adrenaline. Roustabout at three A.M. Sleep till noon.

Her name was Beth. His name was Charles.

They had no last names. For that matter, they rarely called each other by their first names. They found new names every day for each other, some of them capable of being said only late at night and only to each other, when they were special and tender and most shockingly unclad.

Anyway, it was Fourth of July every night. New Year’s every dawn. It was the home team winning and the mob on the field. It was a bobsled downhill and everything cold racing by in beauty and two warm people holding tight and yelling with joy.

And then…

Something happened.

At breakfast about one year into the conniption fits Beth said, half under her breath:

‘Gotcha.’

He looked up and said, ‘What?’

‘Gotcha,’ she said. ‘A game. You never played Gotcha?’

‘Never even heard of it.’

‘Oh, I’ve played it for years.’

‘Do you buy it in a store?’ he asked.

‘No, no. It’s a game I made up, or almost made up, based on an old ghost story or scare story. Like to play it?’

‘That all depends.’ He was back shoveling away at his ham and eggs.

‘Maybe we’ll play it tonight—it’s fun. In fact,’ she said, nodding her head once and beginning to go on with her breakfast again, ‘it’s a definite thing. Tonight it is. Oh, bun, you’ll love it.’

‘I love everything we do,’ he said.

‘It’ll scare the hell out of you,’ she said.

‘What’s the name again?’

‘Gotcha,’ she said.

‘Never heard of it.’

They both laughed. But her laughter was louder than his.

It was a long and delicious day of luscious name-callings and rare omelets and a good dinner with a fine wine and then some reading just before midnight, and at midnight he suddenly looked over at her and said:

‘Haven’t we forgotten something?’

‘What?’

‘Gotcha.’

‘Oh, my, yes!’ she said, laughing. ‘I was just waiting for the clock to strike the hour.’

Which it promptly did. She counted to twelve, sighed happily and said. ‘All right—let’s put out most of the lights. Just keep the small lamp lighted by the bed. Now, there.’ She ran around putting out all the other lights, and came back and plumped up his pillow and made him lie right in the middle of the bed. ‘Now, you stay right there. You don’t move, see. You just…
wait
. And see what
happens
—okay?’

‘Okay.’ He smiled indulgently. At times like these she was a ten-yearold Girl Scout rushing about with some poisoned cookies on a grand lark. He was always ready, it seemed, to eat the cookies. ‘Proceed.’

‘Now, be very quiet,’ she said. ‘No talking. Let me talk if I want—okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Here goes,’ she said, and disappeared.

Which is to say that she sank down like the dark witch, melting, melting, at the foot of the bed. She let her bones collapse softly. Her head and her hair followed her Japanese paper-lantern body down, fold on fold, until the air at the foot of the bed was empty.

‘Well done!’ he cried.

‘You’re not supposed to talk. Sh-h.’

‘I’m sh-h-h-ed.’

Silence. A minute passed. Nothing.

He smiled a lot, waiting.

Another minute passed, Silence. He didn’t know where she was.

‘Are you still at the foot of the bed?’ he asked. ‘Oh, sorry.’ He sh-h-hed himself. ‘Not supposed to talk.’

Five minutes passed. The room seemed to get somewhat darker. He sat up a bit and fixed his pillow and his smile got somewhat less expectant. He peered about the room. He could see the light from the bathroom shining on the wall.

There was a sound like a small mouse in one far corner of the room. He looked there but could see nothing.

Another minute passed. He cleared his throat.

There was a whisper from the bathroom door, down near the floor.

He glanced that way and grinned and waited. Nothing.

He thought he felt something crawling under the bed. The sensation passed. He swallowed and blinked.

The room seemed almost candlelit. The light bulb, one hundred and fifty watts, seemed now to have developed fifty-watt problems.

There was a scurry like a great spider on the floor, but nothing was visible. After a long while her voice murmured to him like an echo, now from this side of the dark room, now that.

‘How do you like it
so
far?’

‘I…’

‘Don’t speak,’ she whispered.

And was gone again for another two minutes. He was beginning to feel his pulse jump in his wrists. He looked at the left wall, then the right, then the ceiling.

And suddenly a white spider was crawling along the foot of the bed. It was her hand, of course, imitating a spider. No sooner there than gone.

‘Ha!’ He laughed.

‘Sh-h!’ came the whisper.

Something ran into the bathroom. The bathroom light went out. Silence. There was only the small light in the bedroom now. A faint rim of perspiration appeared on his brow. He sat wondering why they were doing this.

A clawing hand snatched up on the far left side of the bed, gesticulated and vanished. The watch ticked on his wrist.

Another five minutes must have gone by. His breathing was long and somewhat painful, though he couldn’t figure why. A small frown gathered in the furrow between his eyes and did not go away. His fingers moved on the quilt all to themselves, as if trying to get away from him.

A claw appeared on the right side. No, it hadn’t been there at all! Or had it?

Something stirred in the closet directly across the room. The door slowly opened upon darkness. Whether something went in at that moment or was already there, waiting to come out, he could not say. The door now opened upon an abyss that was as deep as the spaces between the stars. A few dark shadows of coats hung inside, like disembodied people.

There was a running of feet in the bathroom.

There was a scurry of cat feet by the window.

He sat up. He licked his lips. He almost said something. He shook his head. A full twenty minutes had passed.

There was a faint moan, a distant laugh that hushed itself. Then another groan…where? In the shower?

‘Beth?’ he said at last.

No answer. Water dripped in the sink suddenly, drop by slow drop. Something had turned it on.

‘Beth?’ he called again, and hardly recognized his voice, it was so pale.

A window opened somewhere. A cool wind blew a phantom of curtain out on the air.

‘Beth,’ he called weakly.

No answer.

‘I don’t like this,’ he said.

Silence.

No motion. No whisper. No spider. Nothing.

‘Beth?’ he called, a bit louder.

No breathing, even, anywhere.

‘I don’t like this game.’

Silence.

‘You hear me, Beth?’

Quiet.

‘I don’t like this game.’

Drip in the bathroom sink.

‘Let’s stop the game, Beth.’

Wind from the window.

‘Beth?’ he called again. ‘Answer me. Where are you?’

Silence.

‘You all right?’

The rug lay on the floor. The light grew small in the lamp. Invisible dusts stirred in the air.

‘Beth…you okay?’

Silence.

‘Beth?’

Nothing.

‘Beth!’

‘Oh-h-h-h-h-h…
ah-h-h-h-h!
’

He heard the shriek, the cry, the scream.

A shadow sprang up. A great darkness leaped upon the bed. It landed on four legs.

‘Ah!’ came the shout.

‘Beth!’ he screamed.

‘Oh-h-h-h!’ came the shriek from the thing.

Another great leap and the dark thing landed on his chest. Cold hands seized his neck. A white face plunged down. A mouth gaped and shrieked:

‘Gotcha!’

‘Beth!’ he cried.

And flailed and wallowed and turned but it clung to him and looked down and the face was white and the eyes raved wide and the nostrils flared. And the big bloom of dark hair in a flurry above fell down in a stormwind. And the hands clawing at his neck and the air breathed out of that mouth and nostrils as cold as polar wind, and the weight of the thing on his chest light but heavy, thistledown but an anvil crushing, and him thrashing to be free, but his arms pinned by the fragile legs and the face peering down at him so full of evil glee, so brimful of malevolence, so beyond this world and in another, so alien, so strange, so never seen before, that he had to shriek again.

‘No! No! No! Stop! Stop!’

‘Gotcha!’ screamed the mouth.

And it was someone he had never seen before. A woman from some time ahead, some year when age and things had changed everything, when darkness had gathered and boredom had poisoned and words had killed, and everything gone to ice and lostness and nothing, no residues of love, only hate, only death.

‘No! Oh, God! Stop!’

He burst into tears. He began to sob.

She stopped.

Her hands went away cold and came back warm to touch, hold, pet him.

And it was Beth.

‘Oh, God, God, God!’ he wailed. ‘No, no, no!’

‘Oh, Charles, Charlie,’ she cried, all remorse. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘You did. Oh God, you did, you did!’

His grief was uncontrollable.

‘No, no. Oh, Charlie,’ she said, and burst into tears herself. She flung herself out of bed and ran around turning on lights. But none of them were bright enough. He was crying steadily now. She came back and slid in by him and put his grieving face to her breast and held him, hugged him, patted him, kissed his brow and let him weep.

‘I’m sorry. Charlie, listen, sorry. I didn’t—’

‘You
did
!’

‘It was only a game!’

‘A game! You call that a game, game, game!’ he wailed, and wept again.

And finally, at last, his crying stopped and he lay against her and she was warm and sister/mother/friend/lover again. His heart, which had crashed,
now moved to some near-calm. His pulses stopped fluttering. The constric tion around his chest let go.

‘Oh, Beth, Beth,’ he wailed, softly.

‘Charlie,’ she apologized, her eyes shut.

‘Don’t ever do that again.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Promise you’ll never do that again?’ he said, hiccuping.

‘I swear, I promise.’

‘You were
gone
. Beth—that wasn’t
you
!’

‘I promise, I swear, Charlie.’

‘All right,’ he said.

‘Am I forgiven, Charlie?’

He lay a long while and at last nodded, as if it had taken some hard thinking.

‘Forgiven.’

‘I’m sorry, Charlie. Let’s get some sleep. Shall I turn the lights off?’

Silence.

‘Shall I turn the lights off, Charlie?’

‘No-no.’

‘We have to have the lights off to sleep, Charlie.’

‘Leave a few on for a little while,’ he said, eyes shut.

‘All right,’ she said, holding him. ‘For a little while.’

He took a shuddering breath and came down with a chill. He shook for five minutes before her holding him and stroking him and kissing him made the shiver and the tremble go away.

An hour later she thought he was asleep and got up and turned off all the lights save the bathroom light, in case he should wake and want at least one on. Getting back into bed, she felt him stir. His voice, very small, very lost, said:

‘Oh, Beth, I loved you so much.’

She weighed his words. ‘Correction. You
love
me so much.’

‘I
love
you so much,’ he said.

It took her an hour, staring at the ceiling, to go to sleep.

The next morning at breakfast he buttered his toast and looked at her. She sat calmly munching her bacon. She caught his glance and grinned at him.

‘Beth,’ he said.

‘What?’ she asked.

How could he tell her? Something in him was cold. The bedroom even in the morning sun seemed smaller, darker. The bacon was burned. The toast was black. The coffee had a strange and alien flavor. She looked very
pale. He could feel his heart, like a tired fist, pounding dimly against some locked door somewhere.

‘I…’ he said, ‘we…’

How could he tell her that suddenly he was afraid? Suddenly he sensed that this was the beginning of the end. And beyond the end there would never be anyone to go to anywhere at any time—no one in all the world.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

Five minutes later she asked, looking at her crumpled eggs, ‘Charles, do you want to play the game tonight? But this time it’s me, and this time it’s you who hides and jumps out and says, “Gotcha”?’

He waited because he could not breathe.

‘No.’

He did not want to know that part of himself.

Tears sprang to his eyes.

‘Oh, no,’ he said.