by Ray Bradbury
‘I see them clearly,’ he said.
‘You think I’ve forgotten the time you went out to find the Lost Tribe of the Osseos, or whatever, in Wisconsin some place where you could dogtrot to town Saturday nights and tank up, and fell in that quarry and broke your leg and laid there three nights?’
‘Your recall,’ he said, ‘is total.’
‘Then what’s this about pagan natives and the Time of Going Away? I’ll tell you what it is – it’s the Time of Staying at Home! It’s the time when fruit don’t fall off the trees into your hand, you got to walk to the store for it. And why do we walk to the store for it? Someone in this house, I’ll name no names, took the car apart like a clock some years back and left it strewn all down the yard. I’ve raised auto parts in my garden ten years come Thursday. Ten more years and all that’s left of our car is little heaps of rust. Look out that window! It’s leaf-raking-and-burning time. It’s chopping-trees-and-sawing-wood-for-the-fire time. It’s clean-out-stoves-and-hang-storm-doors-and-windows time. It’s shingle-the-roof time, that’s what it is, and if you think you’re out to escape it, think again!’
He placed his hand to his chest. ‘It pains me you have so little trust in my natural sensitivity to oncoming Doom.’
‘It pains me that National Geographies fall in the hands of crazy old men. I see you read those pages then fall into those dreams I always have to sweep up after. Those Geographic and Popular Mechanics publishers should be forced to see all the half-finished rowboats, helicopters, and one-man batwing gliders in our attic, garage, and cellar. Not only see, but cart them home!’
‘Chatter on,’ he said. ‘I stand before you, a white stone sinking in the tides of Oblivion. For God’s sake, woman, can’t I drag myself off to die in peace?’
‘Plenty of time for Oblivion when I find you stone cold across the kindling pile.’
‘Jesting Pilate!’ he said. ‘Is recognition of one’s own mortality nothing but vanity?’
‘You’re chewing it like a plug of tobacco.’
‘Enough!’ he said. ‘My earthly goods are stacked on the back porch. Give them to the Salvation Army.’
‘The Geographies too?’
‘Yes, damn it, the Geographies ! Now stand aside!’
‘If you’re going to die, you won’t need that suitcase full of clothing,’ she said.
‘Hands off, woman! It may take some few hours. Am I to be stripped of my last creature comforts? This should be a tender scene of parting. Instead – bitter recriminations, sarcasm, doubt strewn to every wind.’
‘All right,’ she said.’ Go spend a cold night in the woods.’
‘I’m not necessarily going to the woods.’
‘Where else is there for a man in Illinois to go to die?’
‘Well,’ he said, and paused. ‘Well, there’s always the open highway.’
‘And be run down, of course; I’d forgotten that.’
‘No, no!’ He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. ‘The empty side-roads leading nowhere, everywhere, through night forests, wilderness, to distant lakes’
‘Now, you’re not going to go rent a canoe, are you, and paddle off? Remember the time you tipped over and almost drowned at Fireman’s Pier?’
‘Who said anything about canoes?’
‘You did! Pagan islanders, you said, paddling off into the great unknown.’
‘That’s the South Seas! Here a man has to strike off on foot to find his natural source, seek his natural end. I might walk north along the Lake Michigan shore, the dunes, the wind, the big breakers there.’
‘Willie, Willie,’ she said softly, shaking her head. ‘Oh, Willie, Willie, what will I do with you?’
He lowered his voice. ‘Just let me have my head,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, quietly. ‘Yes.’ And tears came to her eyes.
‘Now, now,’ he said.
‘Oh, Willie …’ She looked a long while at him. ‘Do you really think with all your heart you’re not going to live?’
He saw himself reflected, small but perfect, in her eye, and looked away uneasily. ‘I thought all night about the universal tide that brings man in and takes him out. Now it’s morning and good-bye.’
‘Good-bye?’ She looked as if she’d never heard the word before.
His voice was unsteady. ‘Of course, if you absolutely insist I stay, Mildred –’
‘No!’ She braced herself and blew her nose. ‘You feel what you feel; I can’t fight that!’
‘You sure?’ he said.
‘You’re the one that’s sure, Willie,’ she said. ‘Get on along now. Take your heavy coat; the nights are cold.’
‘But –’ he said.
She ran and brought his coat and kissed his cheek and drew back quickly before he could enclose her in his bear hug. He stood there working his mouth, gazing at the big armchair by the fire. She threw open the front door. ‘You got food?’
‘I won’t need …’ He paused. ‘I got a boiled-ham sandwich and some pickles in my case. Just one, That’s all I figured I’d…’
And then he was out the door and down the steps and along the path towards the woods. He turned and was going to say something but thought better of it, waved, and went on.
‘Now, Will,’ she called. ‘Don’t overdo. Don’t make too much distance the first hour! You get tired, sit down! You get hungry, eat! And …’
But here she had to stop and turn away and get out her handkerchief.
A moment later, she looked up the path and it looked as though nobody had passed there in the last ten thousand years. It was so empty she had to go in and shut the door.
Night-time, nine o’clock, nine-fifteen, stars out, moon round, house lights strawberry-coloured through the curtains, the chimney blowing long comet tails of fireworks, sighing warm. Down the chimney, sounds of pots and pans and cutlery, fire on the hearth, like a great orange cat. In the kitchen, the big iron cook-stove full of jumping flames, pans boiling, bubbling, frying, vapours, and steams in the air. From time to time the old woman turned and her eyes listened and her mouth listened, wide, to the world outside this house, this fire, and this food.
Nine-thirty and, from a great distance away from the house, a solid whacking, chunking sound.
The old woman straightened up and laid down a spoon.
Outside, the dull solid blows came again and again in the moonlight. The sound went on for three or four minutes, during which she hardly moved except to tighten her mouth or her fists with each solid chunking blow. When the sounds stopped, she threw herself at the stove, the table, stirring, pouring, lifting, carrying, setting down.
She finished just as new sounds came from the dark land outside the windows. Footsteps came slowly up the path, heavy shoes weighed the front porch.
She went to the door and waited for a knock.
None came.
She waited a full minute.
Outside on the porch a great bulk stirred and shifted from side to side uneasily.
Finally she sighed and called sharply at the door. ‘Will, is that you breathing out there?’
No answer. Only a kind of sheepish silence behind the door.
She snatched the door wide.
The old man stood there, an incredible stack of cordwood in his arms. His voice came from behind the stack.
‘Saw smoke in the chimney; figured you might need wood,’ he said.
She stood aside. He came in and placed the wood carefully by the hearth, not looking at her.
She looked out on the porch and picked up the suitcase and brought it in and shut the door.
She saw him sitting at the dinner table.
She stirred the soup on the stove to a great boiling whirl.
‘Roast beef in the oven?’ he asked quietly.
She opened the oven door. The steam breathed across the room to wrap him up. He closed his eyes, seated there, bathed.
‘What’s that other smell, the burning?’ he asked a moment later.
> She waited, back turned, and finally said, ‘National Geographies.’
He nodded slowly, saying nothing.
Then the food was on the table, warm and tremorous, and there was a moment of silence after she sat down and looked at him. She shook her head. She looked at him. Then she shook her head again silently.
‘Do you want to ask the blessing?’ she said.
‘You,’ he said.
They sat there in the warm room by the bright fire and bowed their heads and closed their eyes. She smiled and began.
‘Thank you, Lord …’
The Gift
TOMORROW would be Christmas and even while the three of them rode to the rocket port, the mother and father were worried. It was the boy’s first flight into space, his very first time in a rocket, and they wanted everything to be perfect. So when, at the customs table, they were forced to leave behind his gift which exceeded the weight limit by no more than a few ounces and the little tree with the lovely white candles, they felt themselves deprived of the season and their love.
The boy was waiting for them in the Terminal room. Walking towards him, after their unsuccessful clash with the Interplanetary officials, the mother and father whispered to each other.
‘What shall we do?’
‘Nothing, nothing. What can we do?’
‘Silly rules!’
‘And he so wanted the tree!’
The siren gave a great howl and people pressed forward into the Mars Rocket. The mother and father walked at the very last, their small pale son between them, silent.
‘I’ll think of something,’ said the father.
‘What …?’ asked the boy.
And the rocket took off and they were flung headlong into dark space.
The rocket moved and left fire behind and left Earth behind on which the date was 24 December 2052, heading out into a place where there was no time at all, no month, no year, no hour. They slept away the rest of the first ‘day’. Near midnight, by their Earth-time New York watches, the boy awoke and said, ‘I want to go look out the porthole.’
There was only one port, a ‘window’ of immensely thick glass, of some size, up on the next deck.
‘Not quite yet,’ said the father. ‘I’ll take you up later.’
‘I want to see where we are and where we’re going.’
‘I want you to wait, for a reason,’ said the father.
He had been lying awake, turning this way and that, thinking of the abandoned gift, the problem of the season, the lost tree and the white candles. And at last, sitting up, no more than five minutes ago, he believed he had found a plan. He need only carry it out and this journey would be fine and joyous indeed.
‘Son,’ he said, ‘in exactly one half-hour it will be Christmas.’
‘Oh,’ said the mother, dismayed that he had mentioned it. Somehow she had rather hoped the boy would forget.
The boy’s face grew feverish and his lips trembled. ‘I know, I know. Will I get a present, will I? Will I have a tree? You promised –’
‘Yes, yes, all that, and more,’ said the father.
The mother started. ‘But –’
‘I mean it,’ said the father. ‘I really mean it. All and more, much more. Excuse me, now. I’ll be back.”
He left them for about twenty minutes. When he came back he was smiling. ‘Almost time.’
‘Can I hold your watch?’ asked the boy, and the watch was handed over and he held it ticking in his fingers as the rest of the hour drifted by in fire and silence and unfelt motion.
‘It’s Christmas now ! Christmas! Where’s my present?’
‘Here we go,’ said the father, and took his boy by the shoulder and led him from the room, down the hall, up a ramp-way, his wife following.
‘I don’t understand,’ she kept saying.
‘You will. Here we are,’ said the father.
They had stopped at the closed door of a large cabin. The father tapped three times and then twice, in a code. The door opened and the light in the cabin went out and there was a whisper of voices.
‘Go on in, son,’ said the father.
‘It’s dark.’
‘I’ll hold your hand. Come on, mama.’
They stepped into the room and the door shut, and the room was very dark indeed. And before them loomed a great glass eye, the porthole, a window four feet high and six feet wide, from which they could look out into space.
The boy gasped.
Behind him, the father and the mother gasped with him, and then in the dark room some people began to sing.
‘Merry Christmas, son,’ said the father.
And the voices in the room sang the old, the familiar carols, and the boy moved forward slowly until his face was pressed against the cool glass of the port. And he stood there for a long long time, just looking and looking out into space and the deep night at the burning and the burning of ten billion billion white and lovely candles….
The Little Mice
‘THEY’RE very odd,’ I said. ‘The little Mexican couple.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked my wife.
"Never a sound,’ I said. ‘Listen.’
Ours was a house deep back in among tenements, to which another half-house had been added. When my wife and I purchased the house, we rented the additional quarter which lay walled up against one side of our parlour. Now, listening at this particular wall, we heard our hearts beat.
‘I know they’re home,’ I whispered. ‘But in the three years they’ve lived here I’ve never heard a dropped pan, a spoken word, or the sound of a light switch. Good God, what are they doing in there?’
‘I’d never thought,’ said my wife. ‘It is peculiar.’
‘Only one light on, that same dim little blue 25-watt bulb they burn in the parlour. If you walk by and peer in their front door, there he is, sitting in his armchair, not saying a word, his hands in his lap. There she is, sitting in the other armchair, looking at him, saying nothing. They don’t move.’
‘At first glance I always think they’re not home,’ said my wife. ‘Their parlour’s so dark. But if you stare long enough, your eyes get used to it and you can make them out, sitting there.’
‘Some day,’ I said, ‘I’m going to run in, turn on their lights, and yell! My God, if I can’t stand their silence, how can they? They can talk, can’t they?’
‘When he pays the rent each month, he says hello.’
‘What else?’
‘Good-bye.’
I shook my head. ‘When we meet in the alley he smiles and runs.’
My wife and I sat down for an evening of reading, the radio, and talk. ‘Do they have a radio?’
‘No radio, television, telephone. Not a book, magazine, or paper in their house.’
‘Ridiculous!’
‘Don’t get so excited.’
‘I know, but you can’t sit in a dark room two or three years and not speak, not listen to a radio, not read or even eat, can you? I’ve never smelled a steak, or an egg frying. Damn it, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard them go to bed!’
‘They’re doing it to mystify us, dear.’
‘They’re succeeding!’
I went for a walk around the block. It was a nice summer evening. Returning I glanced idly in their front door. The dark silence was there, and the heavy shapes, sitting, and the little blue light burning. I stood a long time, finishing my cigarette. It was only in turning to go that I saw him in the doorway, looking out with his bland, plump face. He didn’t move. He just stood there, watching me.
‘Evening,’ I said.
Silence. After a moment, he turned, moving away into the dark room.
In the morning, the little Mexican left the house at seven o’clock alone, hurrying down the alley, observing the same silence he kept in his rooms. She followed at eight o’clock, walking carefully, all lumpy under her dark coat, a black hat balanced on her frizzy, beauty parlour hair. They had gone to work this way, remote and silent, for yea
rs.
‘Where do they work?’ I asked, at breakfast.
‘He’s a blast furnaceman at U.S. Steel here. She sews in a dress loft somewhere.’
‘That’s hard work.’
I typed a few pages of my novel, read, idled, typed some more. At five in the afternoon I saw the little Mexican woman come home, unlock her door, hurry inside, hook the screen, and lock the door tight.
He arrived at six sharp, in a rush. Once on their back porch, however, he became infinitely patient. Quietly, raking his hand over the screen, lightly, like a fat mouse scrabbling, he waited. At last she let him in. I did not see their mouths move.
Not a sound during supper time. No frying. No rattle of dishes. Nothing.
I saw the small blue lamp go on.
‘That’s how he is,’ said my wife, ‘when he pays the rent. Raps so quietly I don’t hear. I just happen to glance out of the window and there he is. God knows how long he’s waited, standing, sort of “nibbling” at the door.’
Two nights later, on a beautiful July evening the little Mexican man came out on the back porch and looked at me, working in the garden and said, ‘You’re crazy!’ He turned to my wife. ‘You’re crazy, too!’ He waved his plump hand, quietly. ‘I don’t like you. Too much noise. I don’t like you. You’re crazy.’
He went back into his little house.
August, September, October, November. The ‘mice’, as we now referred to them, lay quietly in their dark nest. Once, my wife gave him some old magazines with his rent receipt. He accepted these politely, with a smile and a bow, but no word. An hour later she saw him put the magazines in the yard incinerator and strike a match.
The next day he paid the rent three months in advance, no doubt figuring that he would only have to see us up close once every twelve weeks. When I saw him on the street, he crossed quickly to the other side to greet an imaginary friend. She, similarly, ran by me, smiling wildly, bewildered, nodding. I never got nearer than twenty yards to her. If there was plumbing to be fixed in their house, they went silently forth on their own, not telling us, and brought back a plumber who worked, it seemed, with a flashlight.
