Bradbury, Ray - SSC 21

by Long After Midnight (v1. 1)

  She almost laughed.

  The bus started and all of the people in it shook and swayed and cried out and smiled, and the land of Mexico seemed to whirl about outside the window, like a dream undecided whether to stay or go, and then the greenness passed away, and the tovvn, and there was the Hotel de Las Flores with its open patio, and there, incredibly, hands in pockets, standing in the open door but looking at the sky and the volcano smoke, was Joseph, paying no attention to the bus or her and she was going away from him, he was growing remote already, his figure was dwindling like someone falling down a mine shaft, silently, without a scream. Now, before she had even the decency or inclination to wave, he was no larger than a boy, then a child, then a baby, in distance, in size, then gone around a corner, with the engine thundering, someone playing upon a guitar up front in the bus, and Marie, straining to look back, as if she might penetrate walls, trees, and distances, for another view of the man standing so quietly watching the blue sky.

  At last, her neck tired, she turned and folded her hands and examined what she had won for herself. A whole lifetime loomed suddenly ahead, as quickly as the turns and whirls of the highway brought her suddenly to edges of cliffs, and each bend of the road, even as the years, could not be seen ahead. For a moment it was simply good to lie back here, head upon jouncing seat rest, and contemplate quietness. To know nothing, to think nothing, to feel nothing, to be as nearly dead for a moment as one could be, with the eyes closed, the heart unheard, no special temperature to the body, to wait for life to come get her rather than to seek, at least for an hour. Let the bus take her to the train, the train to the plane, the plane to the city, and the city to her friends, and then, like a stone dropped into a cement mixer, let that life in the city do with her as it would, she flowing along in the mix and solidifying in any new pattern that seemed best.

  The bus rushed on with a plummeting and swerving in the sweet green air of the afternoon, between the mountains baked like lion pelts, past rivers as sweet as wine and as clear as vermouth, over stone bridges, under aqueducts where water ran like clear wind in the ancient channels, past churches, through dust, and suddenly, quite suddenly the speedometer in Marie's mind said, A million miles, Joseph is back a million miles and I'll never see him again. The thought stood up in her mind and covered the sky with a blurred darkness. Never, never again until the day I die or after that will I see him again, not for an hour or a minute or a second, not at all will I see him.

  The numbness started in her fingertips. She felt it flow up through her hands, into her wrists and on along the arms to her shoulders and through her shoulders to her heart and up her neck to her head. She was a numbness, a thing of nettles and ice and prickles and a hollow thundering nothingness. Her lips were dry petals, her eyelids were a thousand pounds heavier than iron, and each part of her body was now iron and lead and copper and platinum. Her body weighed ten tons, each part of it was so incredibly heavy, and, in that heaviness, crushed and beating to survive, was her crippled heart, throbbing and tearing about like a headless chicken. And buried in the limestone and steel of her robot body was her terror and crying out, walled in, with someone tapping the trowel on the exterior wall, the job finished, and, ironically, it was her own hand she saw before her that had wielded the trowel, set the final brick in place, frothed on the thick slush of mortar and pushed everything into a tightness and a self-finished prison.

  Her mouth was cotton. Her eyes were flaming with' a dark flame the color of raven wings, the sound of vulture wings, and her head was so heavy with terror, so full of an iron weight, while her mouth was stuffed with invisible hot cotton, that she felt her head sag down into her immensely fat, but she could not see the fat, hands. Her hands were pillows of lead to lie upon, her hands were cement sacks crushing down upon her senseless lap, her ears, faucets in which ran cold winds, and all about her, not looking at her,- not noticing, was the bus on its way through towns and fields, over hills and into com valleys at a great racketing speed, taking her each and every instant one million miles and ten million years away from the familiar.

  I must not cry out, she thought. No! No!

  The dizziness was so complete, and the colors of the bus and her hands and skirt were now so blued over and sooted with lack of blood that in a moment she. would be collapsed upon the floor, she would hear the surprise and shock of the riders bending over her. But she put her head far down and sucked the chicken air, the sweating air, the leather air, the carbon monoxide air, the incense air, the air of lonely death, and drew it back through the copper nostrils, down the aching throat, into her lungs which blazed as if she swallowed neon light. Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, Joseph.

  It was a simple thing. All terror is a simplicity.

  I cannot live without him, she thought. I have been lying to myself. I need him, oh Christ, I, I...

  "Stop the bus! Stop it!"

  The bus stopped at her scream, everyone was thrown forward. Somehow she was stumbling forward over the children, the dogs barking, her hands flailing heavily, falling; she heard her dress rip, she screamed again, the door was opening, the driver was appalled at the woman coming at him in a wild stumbling, and she fell out upon the gravel, tore her stockings, and lay while someone bent to her; then she was vomiting on the ground, a steady sickness; they were bringing her bags out of the bus to her, she was telling them in chokes and sobs that she wanted to go that way; she pointed back at the city a million years ago, a million miles ago, and the bus driver was shaking his head. She half sat, half lay there, her arms about the suitcase, sobbing, and the bus stood in the hot sunlight over her and she waved it on; go on, go on; they're all staring at me, I'll get a ride back, don't worry, leave me here, go on, and at last, like an accordion, the door folded shut, the Indian copper-mask faces were transported on away, and the bus dwindled from consciousness. She lay on the suitcase and cried, for a number of minutes, and she was not as heavy or sick, but her heart was fluttering wildly, and she was cold as someone fresh from a winter lake. She arose and dragged the suitcase in little moves across the highway and swayed there, waiting, while six cars hummed by, and at last a seventh car pulled up with a Mexican gentleman in the front seat, a rich car from Mexico City.

  "You are going to Uruapan?" he asked politely, looking only at her eyes.

  "Yes," she said at last, "I am going to Uruapan."

  And as she rode in this car, her mind began a private dialogue:

  "What is it to be insane?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you know what insanity is?"

  "I don't know."

  "Can one tell? The coldness, was that the start?"

  "No."

  "The heaviness, wasn't that a part?"

  "Shut up."

  "Is insanity screaming?"

  "I didn't mean to."

  "But that came later. First there was the heaviness, and the silence, and the blankness. That terrible void, that space, that silence, that aloneness, that backing away from life, that being in upon oneself and not wishing to look at or speak to the world. Don't tell me that wasn't the start of insanity."

  "Yes."

  "You were ready to fall over the edge."

  "I stopped the bus just short of the cliff."

  "And what if you hadn't stopped the bus? Would they have driven into a little town or Mexico City and the driver turned and said to you through the empty bus, 'All right, senora, all out.' Silence. 'All right, senora, all out.' Silence. 'Senora?' A stare into space. 'Senora!’ A rigid stare into the sky of life, empty, empty, oh, empty. 'Senoral' No move. 'Senora' Hardly a breath.

  You sit there, you sit there, you sit there, you sit there, you sit there.

  "You would not even hear. 'Senora,' he would cry, and tug at you, but you wouldn't feel his hand. And the police would be summoned beyond your circle of comprehension, beyond your eyes or ears or body. You could not even hear the heavy boots in the car. 'Senora, you must leave the bus.' You do not hear. 'Senora, what is your name?' Yo
ur mouth is shut. 'Senora, you must come with us.' You sit like a stone idol. 'Let us see her passport.' They fumble with your purse which lies untended in your stone lap. 'Senora Marie Elliott, from California. Senora Elliott?' You stare at the empty sky. 'Where are you coming from? Where is your husband?' You were never married. 'Where are you going?' Nowhere. 'It says she was born in Illinois.' You were never born. 'Senora, senora' They have to carry you, like a stone, from the bus. You will talk to no one. No, no, no one. 'Marie, this is me, Joseph.' No, too late. 'Marie!' Too late. 'Don't you recognize me?' Too late. Joseph. No, Joseph, no nothing, too late, too late."

  "That is what would have happened, is it not?"

  "Yes." She trembled.

  "If you had not stopped the bus, you would have been heavier and heavier, true? And silenter and silenter and more made up of nothing and nothing and nothing."

  "Yes."

  "Senora" said the Spanish gentleman driving, breaking in on her thoughts. "It is a nice day, isn't it?"

  "Yes," she said, both to him and the thoughts in her mind.

  The old Spanish gentleman drove her directly to her hotel and let her out and doffed his hat and bowed to her.

  She nodded and felt herN mouth move with thanks, but she did not see him. She wandered into the hotel and found herself with her suitcase back in her room, that room she had left a thousand years ago. Her husband was there.

  He lay in the dim light of late afternoon with his back turned, seeming not to have moved in the hours since she had left. He had not even known that she was gone, and had been to the ends of the earth and had returned. He did not even know.

  She stood looking at his neck and the dark hairs curling there like ash fallen from the sky.

  She found herself on the tiled patio in the hot light. A bird rustled in a bamboo cage. In the cool darkness somewhere, the girl was playing a waltz on the piano.

  She saw but did not see two butterflies which darted and jumped and lit upon a bush near her hand, to seal themselves together. She felt her gaze move to see the two bright things, all gold and yellow on the green leaf, their wings beating in slow pulses as they were joined. Her mouth moved and her hand swung like a pendulum, senselessly.

  She watched her fingers tumble on the air and close on the two butterflies, tight, tighter, tightest. A scream was coming up into her mouth. She pressed it back. Tight, tighter, tightest.

  She felt her hand open all to herself. Two lumps of bright powder fell to the shiny patio tiles. She looked down at the small ruins, then snapped her gaze up.

  The girl who played the piano was standing in the middle of the garden, regarding her with appalled and startled eyes.

  The wife put out her hand, to touch the distance, to say something, to explain, to apologize to the girl, this place, the world, everyone. But the girl went away.

  The sky was full of smoke which went straight up and veered away south toward Mexico City.

  She wiped the wing-pollen from her numb fingers and talked over her shoulder, not knowing if that man inside heard, her eyes on the smoke and the sky.

  "Y6u know ... we might try the volcano tonight. It looks good. I bet there'll be lots of fire."

  Yes, she thought, and it will fill the air and fall all around us, and take hold of us tight, tighter, tightest, and then let go and let us fall and we'll be ashes blowing south, all fire.

  "Did you hear me?"

  She stood over the bed and raised a fist high but never brought it down to strike him in the face.

  A Story of Love

  That was the week Ann Taylor came to teach summer school at Green Town Central. It was the summer of her twenty-fourth birthday, and it was the summer when Bob Spaulding was just fourteen.

  Everyone remembered Ann Taylor, for she was that teacher for whom all the children wanted to bring huge oranges or pink flowers, and for whom they rolled up the rustling green and yellow maps of the world without being asked. She was that woman who always seemed to be passing by on days when the shade was green under the tunnels of oaks and elms in the old town, her face shifting with the bright shadows as she walked, until it was all things to all people. She was the fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot early-June morning. Whenever you needed an opposite, Ann Taylor was there. And those rare few days in the world when the climate was balanced as fine as a maple leaf between winds that blew just right, those were the days like Ann Taylor, and should have been so named on the calendar.

  As for Bob Spaulding, he was the cousin who walked alone through town on any October evening with a pack of leaves after him like a horde of Hallowe'en mice, or you would see him, like a slow white fish in spring in the tart waters of tie Fox Hill Creek, baking brown with the shine of a chestnut to his face by autumn. Or you might hear his voice in those treetops where the wind entertained; dropping down hand by hand, there would come Bob Spaulding to sit alone and look at the world, and later you might see him on the lawn with the ants crawling over his books as he read through the long afternoons alone, or played himself a game of chess on Grandmother's porch, or picked out a solitary tune upon the black piano in the bay window. You never saw him with any other child.

  That first morning, Miss Ann Taylor entered through the side door of the schoolroom and all of the children sat still in their seats as they saw her write her name on the board in a nice round lettering.

  "My name is Ann Taylor," she said, quietly. "And I'm your new teacher."

  The room seemed suddenly flooded with illumination, as if the roof had moved back; and the trees were full of singing birds. Bob Spaulding sat with a spitball he had just made, hidden in his hand. After a half-hour of listening to Miss Taylor, he quietly let the spitball drop to the floor.

  That day, after class, he brought in a bucket of water and a rag and began to wash the boards.

  "What's this?" She turned to him from her desk, where she had been correcting spelling papers.

  "The boards are kind of dirty," said Bob, at work.

  "Yes, I know. Are you sure you want to clean them?"

  "I suppose I should have asked permission," he said, halting uneasily.

  "I think we can pretend you did," she replied, smiling, and at this smile he finished the boards in an amazing burst of speed and pounded the erasers so furiously that the air was full of snow, it seemed, outside the open window.

  "Let's see," said Miss Taylor. "You're Bob Spaulding, aren't you?"

  "Yes'm."

  "Well, thank you, Bob."

  "Could I do them every day?" he asked.

  "Don't you think you should let the others try?"

  "I'd like to do them," he said. "Every day."

  "We'll try it for a while and see," she said.

  He lingered.

  "I think you'd better run on home," she said, finally.

  "Good night." He walked slowly and was gone.

  The next morning he happened by the place where she took board and room just as she was coming out to walk to school.

  "Well, here I am," he said.

  "And do you know," she said, "I'm not surprised."

  They walked together.

  "May I carry your books?" he asked.

  "Why, thank you, Bob."

  "It's nothing," he said, taking them.

  They walked for a few minutes and he did not say a word. She glanced over and slightly down at him and saw how at ease he was and how happy he seemed, and she decided to let him break the silence, but he never did. When they reached the edge of the school ground he gave the books back to her. "I guess I better leave you here," he said. "The other kids wouldn't understand."

  "I'm not sure I do, either, Bob," said Miss Taylor.

  "Why we're friends," said Bob earnestly and with a great natural honesty.

  "Bob—" she started to say.

  "Yes'm?"

  "Never mind." She walked away.

  "I'll be in class," he said.

  And he was in class, and he wa
s there after school every night for the next two weeks, never saying a word, quietly washing the boards and cleaning the erasers and rolling up the maps while she worked at her papers, and there was the clock silence of four o'clock, the silence of the sun going down in the slow sky, the silence with the catlike sound of erasers patted together, and the drip of water from a moving sponge, and the rustle and turn of papers and the scratch of a pen, and perhaps the buzz of a fly banging with a tiny high anger against the tallest clear pane of window in the room. Sometimes the silence would go on this way until almost five, when Miss Taylor would find Bob Spaulding in the last seat of the room, sitting and looking at her silently, waiting for further orders.

  "Well, it's time to go home," Miss Taylor would say, getting up.

  "Yes'm."

  And he would run to fetch her hat and coat. He would also lock the schoolroom door for her unless the janitor was coming in later. Then they would walk out of the school and across the yard, which was empty, the janitor taking down the chain swings slowly on his stepladder, the sun behind the umbrella trees. They talked of all sorts of various things.

  "And what are you going to be, Bob, when you grow up?"

  "A writer," he said.

  "Oh, that's a big ambition; it takes a lot of work."

  "I know, but I'm going to try," he^aid. "I've read a lot."

  "Bob, haven't you anything to do after school?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "I mean, I hate to see you kept in so much, washing the boards."

  "I like it," he said. "I never do what I don't like."

  "But nevertheless."

  "No, I've got to do that," he said. He thought for a while and said, "Do me a favor, Miss Taylor?"

  "It all depends."

  "I walk every Saturday from out around Buetrick Street along the creek to Lake Michigan. They're a lot of butterflies and crayfish and birds. Maybe you'd like to walk, too."