Bradbury, Ray - SSC 21

by Long After Midnight (v1. 1)

  Darling Adolf passed within twenty feet of the lower stands where the director sat fiddling with the tape-deck dials. The director crouched down. But there was no need. Summoned by the "Sieg Heils" and the fanfare of trumpets and brass, Der Fiihrer was drawn inevitably toward that dais where destiny awaited him. He was walking taller now and though his uniform was rumpled and the swastika emblem torn, and his mustache moth-eaten and his hair wild, it was the old Leader all right, it was him.

  The old producer sat up straight and watched. He whispered. He pointed.

  Far above, at the top of the stadium, three more men had stepepd into view.

  My God, thought the director, that's the team. The men who grabbed Adolf.

  A man with bushy eyebrows, a fat man, and a man like a wounded chimpanzee.

  Jesus. The director blinked. Goebbels. Goring. Hess. Three actors at liberty. Three half-ass kidnapers staring down at ...

  Adolf Hitler climbing up on the small podium by the fake microphones and the real one under the blowing torches which bloomed and blossomed and guttered and smoked on the cold October wind under the sprig of lilyhorns which lifted in four directions.

  Adolf lifted his chin. That did it. The crowd went absolutely mad. Which is to say, the director's hand, sensing the hunger, went mad, twitched the volume high so the air was riven and torn and shattered again and again and again with "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heill"

  Above, high on the stadium rim, the three watching figures lifted their arms in salute to their Fuhrer.

  Adolf lowered his chin. The sounds of the crowd faded. Only the torch flames whispered.

  Adolf made his speech.

  He must have yelled and chanted and brayed and sputtered and whispered hoarsely and wrung his hands and beat the podium with his fist and plunged his fist at the sky and shut his eyes and shrieked like a disemboweled trumpet for ten miuntes, twenty minutes, half an hour as the sun vanished beyond the earth and the three other men up on the stadium rim watched and listened and the producer and the director waited and watched. He shouted things about the whole world and he yelled things about Germany and he shrieked things about himself and he damned this and blamed that and praised yet a third, until at last he began to repeat, and repeat the same words over and over as if he had reached the end of a record inside himself and the needle was fastened to a circle track which hissed and hiccuped, hiccuped and hissed, and then faded away at last into a silence where you could only hear his heavy breathing, which broke at last into a sob and he stood with his head bent while the others now could not look at him but looked only at their shoes or the sky or the way the wind blew dust across the field. The flags fluttered. The single torch bent and lifted and twisted itself again and talked under its breath.

  At last, Adolf raised his head to finish his speech.

  "Now I must speak of them."

  He nodded up to the top of the stadium where the three men stood against the sky.

  "They are nuts. I am nuts, too. But at least I know I am nuts. I told them: crazy, you are crazy. Mad, you are mad. And now, my own craziness, my own madness, well, it has run itself down. I am tired.

  "So now, what? I give the world back to you. I had it for a small while here today. But now you must keep it and keep it better than I would. To each of you I give the world, but you must promise, each of you to keep your own part and work with it. So there. Take it."

  He made a motion with his free hand to the empty seats, as if all the world were in his fingers and at last he were letting it go.

  The crowd murmured, stirred, but said nothing loud.

  The flags softly tongued the air. The flames squatted on themselves and smoked.

  Adolf pressed his fingers onto his eyeballs as if suddenly seized with a blinding headache. Without looking over at the director or the producer, he said, quietly:

  "Time to go?"

  The director nodded.

  Adolf limped off the podium and came to stand below where the old man and the younger director sat.

  "Go ahead, if you want, again, hit me."

  The director sat and looked at him. At last he shook his head.

  "Do we finish the film?" asked Adolf.

  The director looked at the producer. The old man shrugged and could find nothing to say.

  "Ah, well," said the actor. "Anyway, the madness is over, the fever has dropped. I have made my speech at Nuremberg. God, look at those idiots up there. Idiots!" he called suddenly at the stands. Then back to the director, "Can you think? They wanted to hold me for ransom. I told them what fools they were. Now I'll go tell them again. I had to get away from them. I couldn't stand their stupid talk. I had to come here and be my own fool in my own way for the last time. Well ..."

  He limped off across the empty field, calling back quietly:

  "I'll be in your car outside, waiting. If you want, I am yours for the final scenes. If not, no, and that ends it."

  The director and the producer waited until Adolf had climbed to the top of the stadium. They could hear his voice drift down, cursing those other three, the man with the bushy eyebrows, the fat man, and the ugly chimpanzee, calling them many things, waving his hands. The three backed off and went away, gone.

  Adolf stood alone high in the cold October air.

  The director gave him a final lift of the sound volume. The crowd, obedient, banged out a last "Sieg Heil"

  Adolf lifted his free hand, not into a salute, but some sort of old, easy, half-collapsed mid-Atlantic wave. Then he was gone, too.

  The sunlight went with him. The sky was no longer blood-colored. The wind blew dust and want-ads from a German paper across the stadium floor.

  "Son of a bitch," muttered the old man. "Let's get out of here."

  They left the torches to burn and the flags to blow, but shut off the sound equipment.

  "Wish I'd brought a record of Yankee Doodle to march us out of here," said the director.

  "Who needs records. We'll whistle. Why not?"

  "Why not!"

  He held the old man's elbow going up the stairs in the dusk, but it was only halfway up, they had the guts to try to whistle.

  And then it was suddenly so funny they couldn't finish the tune.

  The Miracles of Jamie

  Jamie Winters worked his first miracle in the morning. The second, third, and various other miracles came later in the day. But the first miracle was always the most important.

  It was always the same: "Make Mother well. Put color in her cheeks. Don't let Mom be sick too much longer."

  It was Mom's illness that had first made him think about himself and miracles. And because of her he kept on, learning how to be good at them so that he could keep her well and could make life jump through a hoop.

  It was not the first day that he had worked miracles. He had done them in the past, but always hesitantly, since sometimes he did not say them right, or Ma and Pa interrupted, or the other kids in the seventh grade at school made noise. They spoiled things.

  But in the past month he had felt his power flow over him like cool, certain water; he bathed in it, basked in it, had come from the shower of it beaded with glory water and with a halo of wonder about his dark-haired head.

  Five days ago he'd taken down the family Bible, with real color pictures of Jesus as a boy in it, and had compared them with his own face in the bathroom mirror, gasping. He shook all over. There it was.

  And wasn't Ma getting better every day now? Well— there!

  Now, on Monday morning, following the first miracle at home, he worked a second one at school. He wanted to lead the Arizona State Day parade as head of his class battalion. And the principal, naturally, selected Jamie to lead. Jamie felt fine. The girls looked up to him, bumping him with their soft, thin little elbows, especially one named Ingrid, whose golden hair rustled in Jamie's face as they all hurried out of the cloakroom.

  Jamie Winters held his head so high, and when he drank from the chromium fountain he bent so carefully and
twisted the shining handle so exactly, so precisely—so godlike and indomitable.

  Jamie knew it would be useless to tell his friends. They'd laugh. After all, Jesus was pounded nail through palm and ankle to a Calvary Hill cross because he told on himself. This time, it would be wise to wait. At least until he was sixteen and grew a beard, thus establishing once and for all the incredible proof of his identity!

  Sixteen was somewhat young for a beard, but Jamie felt that he could exert the effort to force one if the time came and necessity demanded.

  The children poured from the schoolhouse into the hot spring light. In the distance were the mountains, the foothills spread green with cactus, and overhead was a vast Arizona sky of very fine blue. The children donned paper hats and crepe-paper Sam Browne belts in blue and red. Flags burst open upon the wind; everybody yelled and formed into groups, glad to escape the schoolrooms for one day.

  Jamie stood at the head of the line, very calm and quiet. Someone said something, and Jamie realized that it was young Huff who was talking.

  "I hope we win the parade prize," said Huff worriedly.

  Jamie looked at him. "Oh, we'll win all right. I know we'll win. I'll guarantee it! Heck, yes!"

  Huff was brightened by such steadfast faith. "You think so?"

  "I know so! Leave it to me!"

  "What do you mean, Jamie?"

  "Nothing. Just watch and see, that's all. Just watch!"

  "Now, children!" Mr. Palmborg, the principal, clapped hands; the sun shone on his glasses. Silence came quickly. "Now, children," he said, nodding, "remember what we taught you yesterday about marching. Remember how you pivot to turn a corner, and remember those special routines we practiced, will you?"

  "Sure!" everybody said at once.

  The principal concluded his brief address and the parade began, Jamie heading it with his hundreds of following disciples.

  The feet bent up and straightened down, and the street went under them. The yellow sun warmed Jamie and he, in turn, bade it shine the whole day to make things perfect.

  When the parade edged onto Main Street, and the high-school band began pulsing its brass heart and rattling its wooden bones on the drums, Jamie wished they would play "Stars and Stripes Forever."

  Later, when they played "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," Jamie thought quickly, oh, yeah, that’s what he'd meant—"Columbia," not "Stars and Stripes Forever"—and was satisfied that his wish had been obeyed.

  The street was lined with people, as it was on the Arizona rodeo days in February. People sweated in intent layers, five deep for over a mile; the rhythm of feet came back in reflected cadence from two-story frame fronts. There were occasional glimpses of mirrored armies marching in the tall windows of the J. C. Penney Store or of the Morble Company. Each cadence was like a whip thud on the dusty asphalt, sharp and true, and the band music shot blood through Jamie's miraculous veins.

  He concentrated, scowling fiercely. Let us win, he thought. Let everyone march perfectly: chins up, shoulders back, knees high, down, high again, sun upon denimed knees rising in a blue tide, sun upon tanned girl-knees like small, round faces upping and falling. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Perfection surged confidently through Jamie, extending into an encompassing aura that held his own group intact. As he moved, so moved the nation. As his fingers snapped in a brisk pendulum at his sides, so did their fingers, their arms cutting an orbit. And as his shoes trod asphalt, so theirs followed in obedient imitation.

  As they reached the reviewing stand, Jamie cued them; they coiled back upon their own lines like bright garlands twining to return again, marching in the original direction, without chaos.

  Oh, so darn perfect! cried Jamie to himself.

  It was hot. Holy sweat poured out of Jamie, and the world sagged from side to side. Presently the drums were exhausted and the children melted away. Lapping an ice-cream cone, Jamie was relieved that it was all over.

  Mr. Palmborg came rushing up, all heated and sweating.

  "Children, children, I have an announcement to make!" he cried.

  Jamie looked at young Huff, who stood beside him, also with an ice-cream cone. The children shrilled, and Mr. Palmborg patted the noise into a ball which he made vanish like a magician.

  "We've won the competition! Our school marched finest of all the schools!"

  In the clamor and noise and jumping up and down and hitting one another on the arm muscles in celebration, Jamie nodded quietly over his ice-cream cone, looked at young Huff, and said, "See? I told you so. Now, will you believe in me!"

  Jamie continued licking his cold cone with a great, golden peace in him.

  Jamie did not immediately tell his friends why they had won the marching competition. He had observed a tendency in them to be suspicious and to ridicule anyone who told them that they were not as good as they thought they were, that their talent had been derived from an outside source.

  No, it was enough for Jamie to savor his minor and major victories; he enjoyed his little secret, he enjoyed the things that happened. Such things as getting high marks in arithmetic or winning a basketball game were ample reward. There was always some byproduct of his miracles to satisfy his as-yet-small hunger.

  He paid attention to blonde young Ingrid with the placid gray-blue eyes. She, in turn, favored him with her attentions, and he knew then that his ability was well rooted, established.

  Aside from Ingrid, there were other good things. Friendships with several boys came about in wondrous fashion. One case, though, required some little thought and care. The boy's name was Cunningham. He was big and fat and bald because some fever had necessitated shaving his skull. The kids called him Billiard; he thanked them by kicking them in the shins, knocking them down, and sitting on them while he performed quick dentistry with his knuckles.

  It was upon this Billiard Cunningham that Jamie hoped to apply his greatest ecclesiastical power. Walking through the rough paths of the desert toward his home, Jamie often conjured up visions of himself picking up Billiard by his left foot and cracking him like a whip so as to shock him senseless. Dad had once done that to a rattlesnake. Of course, Billiard was too heavy for this neat trick. Besides, it might hurt him, and Jamie didn't really want him killed or anything, just dusted off a little to show him where he belonged in the world.

  But when he chinned up to Billiard, Jamie got cold feet and decided to wait a day or two longer for meditation. There was no use rushing things, so he let Billiard go free. Boy, Billiard didn't know how lucky he was at such times, Jamie clucked to himself.

  One Tuesday, Jamie carried Ingrid's books home. She lived in a small cottage not far from the Santa Catalina foothills. Together they walked in peaceful content, needing no words. They even held hands for a while.

  Turning about a clump of prickly pears, they came face to face with Billiard Cunningham.

  He stood with his big feet planted across the path, plump fists on his hips, staring at Ingrid with appreciative eyes. Everybody stood still, and Billiard said:

  "I'll carry your books, Ingrid. Here."

  He reached to take them from Jamie.

  Jamie fell back a step. "Oh, no, you don't," he said.

  "Oh, yes, I do," retorted Billiard.

  "Like heck you do," said Jamie.

  "Like heck I don't," exclaimed Billiard, and snatched again, knocking the books into the dust.

  Ingrid yelled, then said, "Look here, you can both carry my books. Half and half. That'll settle it."

  Billiard shook his head.

  "All or nothing," he leered.

  Jamie looked back at him.

  "Nothing, then!" he shouted.

  He summoned up his powers like wrathful storm clouds; lightning crackled hot in each fist. What matter if Billiard loomed four inches taller and some several broader? The fury-wrath lived in Jamie; he would knock Billiard senseless with one clean bolt—maybe two.

  There was no room for stuttering fear now; Jamie was cauterized clean of it by a great rage. He p
ulled away back and let Billiard have it on the chin.

  "Jamie!" screamed Ingrid.

  The only miracle after that was how Jamie got out of it with his life.

  Dad poured Epsom salts into a dishpan of hot water, stirred it firmly, and said, "You oughta known better, darn your hide. Your mother sick an' you comin' home all banged up this way."

  Dad made a leathery motion of one brown hand. His eyes were bedded in crinkles and lines, and his mustache was pepper-gray and sparse, as was his hair.

  "I didn't know Ma was very sick anymore," said Jamie.

  "Women don't talk much," said Dad, dryly. He soaked a towel in steaming Epsom salts and wrung it out. He held Jamie's beaten profile and swabbed it. Jamie whimpered. "Hold still," said Dad. "How you expect me to fix that cut if you don't hold still, darn it."

  "What's going on out there?" Mother's voice asked from the bedroom, real tired and soft

  "Nothing," said Dad, wringing out the towel again. "Don't you fret. Jamie just fell and cut his lip, that's all."

  "Oh, Jamie," said Mother.

  "I'm okay, Ma," said Jamie. The warm towel helped to normalize things. He tried not to think of the fight. It made bad thinking. There were memories of flailing arms, himself pinned down, Billiard whooping with delight and beating downward while Ingrid, crying real tears, threw her books, screaming, at his back.

  And then Jamie staggered home alone, sobbing bitterly.

  "Oh, Dad," he said now. "It didn't work." He meant his physical miracle on Billiard. "It didn't work."

  "What didn't work?" said Dad, applying liniment to bruises.

  "Oh, nothing. Nothing." Jamie licked his swollen lip and began to calm down. After all, you can't have a perfect batting average. Even the Lord made mistakes. And—Jamie grinned suddenly—yes, yes, he had meant to lose the fight! Yes, he had. Wouldn't Ingrid love him all the more for having fought and lost just for her?

  Sure. That was the answer. It was just a reversed miracle, that was all!

  "Jamie," Mother called him.

  He went in to see her.

  With one thing and another, including Epsom salts and a great resurgence of faith in himself because Ingrid loved him now more than ever, Jamie went through the rest of the week without much pain.