Bradbury, Ray - Chapbook 18 (2 page)

 
          
He wanted to dash into the bridge
party, upset it, a fox in a chicken-yard, the cards fluttering all around like
chicken feathers burst upward in clouds! He stopped himself only with a
violent, trembling effort. Now, now, man, control yourself. This is a
revelation, take it for what it’s worth, understand it,
savor
it. But a
skeleton
!
screamed
his subconscious.
I won’t stand for it. It’s vulgar, it’s terrible,
it’s
frightening. Skeletons are horrors: they clink and tinkle and rattle in old
castles, hung from oaken beams, making long, indolently rustling pendulums on
the wind…

 
          
‘Darling, will you come meet the
ladies?’ His wife’s clear, sweet voice called from far away.

 
          
Mr
Harris
stood. His
skeleton
held him up! This thing inside, this invader this
horror, was supporting his arms, legs, and head! It was like feeling someone
just behind you who shouldn’t be there. With every step, he realized how
dependent he was on this other Thing.

 
          
‘Darling, I’ll be with you in a
moment,’ he called weakly. To himself he said, Come on, brace up! You’ve got to
go back to work tomorrow. Friday you must make that trip to
Phoenix
.
It’s a long drive.
Hundreds of miles.
Must be in shape
for that trip or you won’t get
Mr
Creldon
to invest in your ceramics business. Chin up, now!

 
          
A moment later he stood among the
ladies, being introduced to
Mrs
Withers,
Mrs
Abblematt
, and Miss
Kirthy
, all of whom had skeletons inside them, but took it
very calmly, because nature had carefully clothed the bare nudity of clavicle,
tibia, and femur with breasts, thighs, calves, with coiffure and eyebrow
satanic, with bee-stung lips and—
Lord
!
shouted
Mr
Harris inwardly—when they talk or eat, part of their
skeleton shows—their
teeth
! I never thought of that. ‘Excuse me,’ he
gasped, and ran from the room only in time to drop his lunch among the petunias
over the garden balustrade.

 
          
That night, seated on the bed as his
wife undressed, he pared his toenails and fingernails scrupulously. These
parts, too, were where his skeleton was shoving, indignantly growing out. He
must have muttered part of this theory, because next thing he knew his wife, in
negligee, was on the bed, her arms about his neck, yawning, ‘Oh, my darling,
fingernails are
not
bone, they’re only hardened epidermis!’

 
          
He threw the scissors down. ‘Are you
certain? I hope so. I’d feel better.’ He looked at the curve of her body,
marveling. ‘I hope all people are made the same way.’

 
          
‘If you aren’t the
darndest
hypochondriac!’
She held him at arm’s
length. ‘Come on. What’s wrong? Tell mama.’

 
          
‘Something inside me,’ he said.
‘Something—I ate.’

 
          
The next morning and all afternoon at
his downtown office,
Mr
Harris sorted out the sizes,
shapes, and construction of various bones in his body with displeasure. At ten
A.M. he asked to feel
Mr
Smith’s elbow one moment.
Mr
Smith obliged, but scowled suspiciously. And after lunch
Mr
Harris asked to touch Miss Laurel’s shoulder blade
and she immediately pushed
herself
back against him,
putting like a kitten and shutting her eyes.

 
          
‘Miss Laurel!’ he snapped. ‘Stop
that!’

 
          
Alone, he pondered his neuroses. The
war was just over, the pressure of his work, the uncertainty of the future,
probably had much to do with his mental outlook. He wanted to leave the office,
get into business for himself. He had more than a little talent for ceramics
and sculpture. As soon as possible he’d head for
Arizona
,
borrow that money from
Mr
Creldon
,
build a kiln and set up shop. It was a worry. What a case he was. But luckily
he had contacted M.
Munigant
, who seemed eager to
understand and help him. He would fight it out with himself, not go back to
either
Munigant
or Dr Burleigh unless he was forced
to. The alien feeling would pass. He sat staring into space.

 
          
The alien feeling did not pass. It
grew.

 
          
On Tuesday and Wednesday it bothered
him terrifically that his epidermis, hair and other appendages were of a high
disorder, while the
integumented
skeleton of
himself
was a slick clean structure of efficient
organization. Sometimes, in certain lights with his lips drawn morosely down,
weighted with melancholy, he imagined he saw his skull grinning at him behind
the flesh.

 
          
Let go!
he
cried. Let go of me! My lungs! Stop!

 
          
He gasped convulsively, as if his
ribs were crushing the breath from him.

 
          
My brain—stop
squeezing it!

 
          
And terrifying headaches burnt his
brain to a blind cinder.

 
          
My
insides,
let them be, for God’s sake! Stay away from my heart!

 
          
His heart cringed from the fanning
motion of ribs like pale spiders crouched and fiddling with their prey.

 
          
Drenched with sweat, he lay upon the
bed one night while Clarisse was out attending a Red Cross meeting. He tried to
gather his wits but only grew more aware of the conflict between his dirty
exterior and this beautiful cool clean
calciumed
thing inside.

 
          
His complexion: wasn’t it oily and
lined with worry?

 
          
Observe the flawless, snow-white
perfection of the skull.

 
          
His nose: wasn’t it too large?

 
          
Then observe the tiny bones of the
skull’s nose before that monstrous nasal cartilage begins forming the lopsided
proboscis.

 
          
His body: wasn’t it plump?

 
          
Well, consider the skeleton;
slender, svelte, economical of line and contour. Exquisitely carved oriental
ivory! Perfect, thin as a white praying mantis!

 
          
His eyes: weren’t they protuberant,
ordinary,
numb
-looking?

 
          
Be so kind as to note the
eye-sockets of the skull: so deep and rounded, somber, quiet pools,
all-knowing, eternal. Gaze deep and you never touch the bottom of their dark
understanding. All irony, all life, all everything is there in the cupped
darkness.

 
          
Compare. Compare. Compare.

 
          
He raged for hours. And the skeleton,
ever the frail and solemn philosopher, hung quietly inside, saying not a word,
suspended like a delicate insect within a chrysalis, waiting and waiting.

 
          
Harris sat slowly up.

 
          
‘Wait a minute. Hold on!’ he
exclaimed. ‘You’re helpless, too, I’ve got you,
too
, I
can make you do anything I want! You can’t prevent it! I say move your
carpales
,
metacarpales
, and
phalanges and—
sswtt
—up they go, as I wave to
someone!’ He laughed. ‘I order the fibula and femur to
locomote
and
Hunn
two three four.
Hunn
two three four—we walk around the block. There!’

 
          
Harris grinned.

 
          
‘It’s a fifty-fifty fight.
Even-Stephen.
And we’ll fight it out, we two! After all, I’m
the part that
thinks
! Yes, by God!
yes
.
Even if I didn’t have you.
I could still think!’

 
          
Instantly, a tiger’s jaw snapped
shut, chewing his brain in half, Harris screamed. The bones of his skull
grabbed hold and gave him nightmares. Then slowly, while he shrieked, nuzzled
and ate the nightmares one by one, until the last one was gone and the light
went out…

 
          
At the end of the week he postponed
the
Phoenix
trip because of his
health. Weighing himself on a penny scale he saw the slow gliding red arrow
point to: 165.

 
          
He groaned. Why, I’ve weighed 175 for
years. I can’t have lost 10 pounds! He examined his cheeks in the fly-dotted
mirror. Cold, primitive fear rushed over him in odd little shivers. You, you! I
know what you’re about,
you
!

 
          
He shook his fist at his bony face,
particularly addressing his remarks to his superior maxillary, his inferior
maxillary, to his cranium and to his cervical vertebrae.

 
          
‘You damn thing, you! Think you can
starve
me,
make me lose weight, eh? Peel the flesh
off, leave nothing, but skin on bone. Trying to ditch me, so you can be
supreme, ah? No, no!’

 
          
He fled into a cafeteria.

 
          
Turkey
,
dressing, creamed potatoes, four vegetables, three desserts, he could eat none
of it, he was sick to his stomach. He forced himself. His teeth began to ache.
Bad teeth, is it?
he
thought angrily. I’ll eat in
spite of every tooth clanging and banging and rattling so they fall in my
gravy.

 
          
His head blazed, his breath jerked in
and out of a constricted chest, his teeth raged with pain, but he knew one
small victory. He was about to drink milk when he stopped and poured it into a
vase of nasturtiums. No calcium for you, my boy, no calcium for you. Never
again shall I eat foods with calcium or other bone-fortifying minerals. I’ll
eat for one of us, not both, my lad.

 
          
‘One hundred and fifty pounds,’ he
said the following week to his wife. ‘Do you
see
how I’ve changed?’

 
          
‘For the better,’ said Clarisse. ‘You
were always a little plump for your height, darling.’ She stroked his chin. ‘I
like your face. It’s so much nicer; the lines of it are so firm and strong
now.’

 
          
‘They’re not
my
lines, they’re
his, damn him! You mean to say you like him better than you like me?’

 
          
‘Him?
Who’s
“
him
”?’

 
          
In the parlor mirror, beyond
Clarisse, his skull smiled back at him behind his fleshy grimace of hatred and
despair.

 
          
Fuming, he popped malt tablets into
his mouth. This was one way of gaining weight when you couldn’t keep other
foods down. Clarisse noticed the malt pellets.

 
          
‘But, darling, really, you don’t have
to regain the weight for me,’ she said.

 
          
Oh, shut up!
he
felt like saying.

 
          
She made him lie with his head in her
lap. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched you lately. You’re so—badly off. You
don’t say anything, but you look—hunted. You toss in bed at night. Maybe you
should go to a psychiatrist. But I think I can tell you everything he would
say. I’ve put it all together from hints you’ve let escape you. I can tell you
that you and your skeleton are one and the same, one nation, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all. United you stand, divided you fall. If you two
fellows can’t get along like an old married couple in the future, go back and
see Dr Burleigh. But, first, relax. You’re in a vicious circle; the more you
worry, the more your bones stick out, the more you worry. After all, who picked
this fight—you or that anonymous entity you claim is lurking around behind your
alimentary canal?’

 
          
He closed his eyes. ‘I did. I guess I
did. Go on.
Clarisse, keep talking.’

 
          
‘You rest now,’ she said softly.
‘Rest and forget.’

 
          
Mr
Harris
felt buoyed up for half a day, then he began to sag. It was all very well to
blame his imagination, but this particular skeleton, by God, was fighting back.