Bradbury, Ray - SSC 17
Page 12
POLICEMAN
Special police.
STRANGER
You said that.
POLICEMAN
I’ll say it again, and you’ll listen. Special police. And I’m looking for a criminal fugitive.
THE OLD MAN
(to himself, listening)Isn’t this world full of criminal fugitives?
As the policeman talks and the stranger and his wife listen, the old man, hidden between, behind the scrim panel wall, turns now this way, now that, cupping an ear on occasion, listening, responding. We can hear his response, but know that the policeman and the couple cannot.
POLICEMAN
A man in patched and dirty clothes-
THE OLD MAN
(to himself)I thought everyone’s clothes were patched and dirty!
POLICEMAN
-an old old man-
THE OLD MAN
But isn’t everyone old?
POLICEMAN
If you turn him in, there’s a week’s rations as reward.
The old man quickens at this, as do the stranger and his wife.
THE WIFE
A week’s rations!!?
STRANGER
(cutting across her)He-he must be Much Wanted.
POLICEMAN
(consulting his dossier)Much.
THE WIFE
(musing)A week’s rations.
THE OLD MAN
(amazed himself)A whole week!
POLICEMAN
(sensing his line is good)Plus!!
THE OLD MAN
Plus?
POLICEMAN
A bonus of ten cans of vegetable soup and five cans of beans!
STRANGER
(in spite of himself)Soup?
THE WIFE
Beans?
THE OLD MAN
Real tin cans, it must be, real cans with bright red labels. Cans that flash like silver meteors, oh I can see them even in the dark. What a fine reward. Not $10,000 for the old talking man, no, no, not $20,000, but… something that counts, that really means something … ten incredible cans of real not imitation soup, and five, count them, five brilliant circus-colored cans of exotic beans. Think of it. Think!
There is a long silence in which the husband and wife lean all unawares toward the policeman.
POLICEMAN
Think of it! Think!
THE OLD MAN
I am. They are. Listen. The faint murmurs of stomachs turning all uneasy. Too many years the world has fed them hairballs of nightmare and politics gone sour, a thin gruel. Now, their lips work, their saliva runs like Niagara!
The policeman listens as if he can hear their appetites at work, then turns and with his back to them, hand on the door, says,
POLICEMAN
Beans. Soup. Fifteen solid-pack cans!
Slam, he is out the door, gone. Bang, he knocks on other far doors, bang, bang.
POLICEMAN
(fading away)Special police … special police …
They listen to the fading sound until it is absolutely gone. Then they relax their knotted fists, and unlean their bodies. The secret panel whispers up. The husband and wife cannot bring themselves to look at the old man who stands there looking at them and then at the pitiful plate of food and the fork in his two hands. He does not move for a long time.
THE OLD MAN
(gently, in awe)Even I… even I was tempted to turn myself in, claim the reward, eat the soup …
He moves out to touch at their elbows, each in turn.
THE OLD MAN
Why? Why didn’t you hand me over?
The husband breaks away, impulsively, as if he must. He rushes to the table in a terrible hunger and crams all the food in his mouth as if to stave off his awful fear, need, and appetite.
STRANGER
Eat! Eat! You’ll find out. Wife, go on, you know what to do, get!
The wife hesitates and goes out.
THE OLD MAN
(worried)Where is she-?
STRANGER
Eat, old man, eat!
The old man brings his plate forward and, nonplused, picks at the food.
THE OLD MAN
Your wife-?
STRANGER
She’s gone to get the Others.
THE OLD MAN
(half-rising)Others!?
STRANGER
Everyone in the apartment house.
THE OLD MAN
(really on his feet now)Everyone!!??
STRANGER
Old man, look, if you’re going to run risks, shoot off your mouth, why not do it in the aggregate, one fell blow? Why waste your breath on one or two people if-
There are noises of people now approaching, murmuring, a shuffling of feet, and many shadows. The old man looks around as if the room were filling.
THE OLD MAN
Yes, but what shall I tell them?
STRANGER
What won’t you tell them! Isn’t this better than taking a chance in the open?
The crowd is coming in, unseen, with murmurs, shadows. The old man is still bewildered, uncertain.
THE Old MAN
(half-nods)Yes. Strange. I hate pain. I hate being hit and chased. But my tongue moves…
STRANGER
(encouraging him)Yes, that’s it…
THE OLD MAN
… I must hear what it has to say…
STRANGER
(egging him on)That’s it!
The old man looks around as the shadows move and the crowd begins to quiet. He pecks at his food, uncertainly.
STRANGER
(still trying to distract him)That’s no way to eat! Shovel it in!
As if needing this sustenance and to break the spell, the old man loads his fork.
THE OLD MAN
One shovel and it’s gone.(shrugs)So … one shovel.(eats)
And as he swallows, the weight of the food, it almost seems, sinks him down into the chair and gives him strength at the same time, and the crowd is there now, all about we see their shadows, and the wife enters and nods.
At her nod, the crowd goes to complete waiting silence. Surrounded by their breathing, the old man is uneasy somewhat, still.
The stranger, sensing this, half-attacks.
THE STRANGER
Now tell me, why are you such a damn fool you make us damn fools seek you out and risk our necks to bring you here, eh? Well… ?
The old man, looking around, recalls something, his eyes half-light, he shakes his head with recollection.
THE OLD MAN
Why … it’s almost like the theater … motion-picture houses …
THE STRANGER
(urging this on)Drive-in movies, too, yes, yes …
The old man gazes about, half-pleased, half-afraid, both in and out of other years now. He rises, steps forward.
THE OLD MAN
But… the show… the entertainment… why … it’s … me!
The crowd murmurs a bit in response, eager, and the old man puts down his empty plate as if gathering his resources. He nods sadly, going back in his mind. He half-squints his eyes.
THE OLD MAN
Yes, yes. The hour grows late in the day, the sun is down the sky, and soon, in the evening hours, with the lights dim, the entertainment begins, the show starts, the wonders commence, things will be said, people will hold hands and listen like the old days with the balconies and the dark, or the cars and the dark … And in the midst of the smell of popcorn and spearmint gum and orange crush … the show begins …
Now, thoroughly oriented, the old man looks up out of his own depths and is ready for the performance. Slowly he looks at his audience, to the left, to the right and straight ahead. He glances at the stranger, then forgets him and talks.
THE OLD MAN
Fool. That’s what you called me. I accept the name. Well then, how did I start my foolishness? Years ago, I looked at the ruined world, the dictatorships, the dead states, the empty nations, and said, “What can I do? Me, a tired ol
d man, what? Rebuild a devastation? Ha!” But lying half asleep one night I remembered a phonograph record I once owned …
He lifts the wife’s hand like a phonograph-arm and her fingertip the needle. He cranks the air. He puts her “needle” finger down.
THE OLD MAN
The phonograph, the record. What a phonograph, what a song! An ancient vaudeville team, the Duncan Sisters!
The record hisses and we hear the Duncan sisters, singing.
THE SONG
“Remembering, is all I do, dear Remembering” .. . etc.
THE OLD MAN
You hear that? Hear some more!
They listen, the old man sways, almost dances.
THE OLD MAN
Remembering? Remembering. I sang the song. Remembering. And suddenly it wasn’t a song, it was a way of life!
STRANGER
A way of life?
THE OLD MAN
What did I have to offer a world that was forgetting? My memory! How could my memory help? By offering comparisons! By telling the young what once was. By considering our losses! I found the more I remembered, the more I could remember! Millions of things.
STRANGER
Like what?
The music has faded, but remains as a ghost echo all through the following:
THE OLD MAN
Like … imitation flowers.
Suddenly he has some in his hand.
THE OLD MAN
Kazoos. You ever play a kazoo?
He produces one and plays “Remembering” for a few notes.
THE OLD MAN
Jew’s harps… !Harmonicas!
He produces both.
THE OLD MAN
Thimbles! How long since you saw, if you ever did see, a thimble!
Like a sorcerer he produces one, two, three, four, five thimbles, one for each finger and thumb of his left hand.
THE OLD MAN
Bicycle clips, not bicycles, no, but first bicycle clips!
These he clips onto his pants.
THE OLD MAN
Antimacassars. Do you know them??? Giant snowflakes for the furniture! And … ! Once a man asked me to remember just the dashboard dials on a Cadillac. I remembered. I told him in detail. He listened. He cried great tears down his face. Happy tears or sad? I can’t say. I only remember. Not literature, no. I never had a head for plays or poems, they slip away, they die. All I am, really, is a trash-heap of the mediocre, the third-rate-hand-me-down, useless and chromed-over slush and junk of a racetrack civilization that ran “last” over a precipice and still hasn’t struck bottom. So all I can offer really is scintillant junk, the clamored-after chronometers and absurd machineries of a never-ending river of robots and robot-mad owners. Yet, one way or another, civilization must get back on the road. Those who can offer fine butterfly poetry, let them remember, let them offer. Those who can weave and build butterfly nets, let them weave, let them build. My gift is smaller than both, and perhaps contemptible in the long hoist, climb, jump, toward the old and amiably silly peak. But I must dream myself worthy. For the things, silly or not, that people remember are the things they will search for again. I will then ulcerate the people’s half-dead desires with vinegar-gnat memory. So perhaps they’ll rattle-bang the Big Clock together again, which is the City, the State, and then the World. Let one man want wine, another lounge chairs, a third a batwing glider to soar the March winds on and so you build even greater electropterodactyls to scour even greater winds with even greater peoples-Someone wants moron Christmas trees and some wise man goes to cut them. Pack this all together, wheel in wheel, want in want, and I’m there to oil and keep it running. Ho, once I would have raved, “Only the best is best, only quality is true!” But roses grow from blood manure. Mediocre must be, so most-excellent fine can bloom. And I shall be the Best Mediocre there is and fight all who say, “Slide under, sink back, dust-wallow, let brambles scurry over your living grave!” I shall protest the roving apeman tribes, the sheep-people munching the far fields preyed on by the feudal land-baron wolves who rarefy themselves in the few skyscraper summits and hoard unremembered foods. And these villains I will kill with can opener and corkscrew, I shall run down with ghosts of Buick, Kissel-Car, and Moon, thrash them with licorice whips until they cry “Mercy!” Can one do this?
He surveys the full panoply of memories hung upon his inner eye. He finishes:
THE OLD MAN
… one can only try.
The old man stands among his memories in a moment of silence.
Someone clears his throat.
The old man starts out of his spell. The crowd murmurs.
The old man and the stranger look around as if not guessing the reaction of the audience, which murmurs louder now, half like a disturbed or perhaps wounded but perhaps placated and petted Beast, not knowing whether to applaud the poetry or damn the sad upheaval of old memory!
THE STRANGER
Old man…
THE OLD MAN
(looking around)What did I say?
THE STRANGER
You’d better go now-
THE OLD MAN
Did they hear me?
THE STRANGER
They-
THE OLD MAN
Did they understand? What-?
The stranger takes his elbow and thrusts a folded red ticket, very long and bright, upon him.
THE STRANGER
To be on the safe side-
THE OLD MAN
Safe side … ?
THE STRANGER
Here’s a ticket from a friend of mine in Transportation. One train crosses the country each week. Each week I get a free pass for some idiot I want to help. This week, it’s you.
THE OLD MAN
(taking the paper)Me? Ticket? …(reads)“One-way to Chicago Abyss.”(glances up)Is the Abyss still there?
THE STRANGER
(trying to move him, glancing around uneasily at the audience now himself, which still murmurs)Yes, yes. This time next year, Lake Michigan may break through the last crust and make a new lake in the bomb crater where the city once was. There’s life of sorts around the crater rim, and a branch train runs west once a month. After you leave here, keep moving…
THE OLD MAN
Moving … ?
THE STRANGER
Forget you met or know us.
THE OLD MAN
Forget?!(almost laughs at the suggestion)Me?!
THE STRANGER
And for God’s sake, for the next year in the open, alone, declare a moratorium. Keep your fine mouth shut.(hands over a second, yellow card)And here. This is a dentist I know near Kansas Trace. Tell him to make you a new set of teeth that will only open at mealtimes.