Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (17 page)

 
          
 
"Take it easy, all he did was kick up
some dirt."

 
          
 
"How do we know?" cried Travis.
"We don't know anything! It's all a damn mystery! Get out there,
Eckels!"

 
          
 
Eckels fumbled his shirt. "I'll pay
anything. A hundred thousand dollars!"

 
          
 
Travis glared at Eckels' checkbook and spat.
"Go out there. The Monster's next to the Path. Stick your arms up to your
elbows in his mouth. Then you can come back with us."

 
          
 
"That's unreasonable!"

 
          
 
"The Monster's dead, you yellow bastard.
The bullets! The bullets can't be left behind. They don't belong in the Past;
they might change something. Here's my knife. Dig them out!"

 
          
 
The jungle was alive again, full of the old
tremorings and bird cries. Eckels turned slowly to regard that primeval garbage
dump, that hill of nightmares and terror. After a long time, like a
sleepwalker, he shuffled out along the Path.

 
          
 
He returned, shuddering, five minutes later,
his arms soaked and red to the elbows. He held out his hands. Each held a
number of steel bullets. Then he fell. He lay where he fell, not moving.

 
          
 
"You didn't have to make him do
that," said Lesperance.

 
          
 
"Didn't I? It's too early to tell."
Travis nudged the still body. "He'll five. Next time he won't go hunting
game like this. Okay." He jerked his thumb wearily at Lesperance.
"Switch on. Let's go home."

 
          
 
1492. 1776. 1812.

 
          
 
They cleaned their hands and faces. They
changed their caking shirts and pants. Eckels was up and around again, not
speaking. Travis glared at him for a full ten minutes.

 
          
 
"Don't look at me," cried Eckels.
"I haven't done anything."

 
          
 
"Who can tell?"

 
          
 
"Just ran off the Path, that's all, a
little mud on my shoes— what do you want me to do—get down and pray?"

 
          
 
"We might need it. I'm warning you,
Eckels, I might kill you yet. I've got my gun ready."

 
          
 
"I'm innocent. I've done nothing!"

 
          
 
1999. 2000. 2055.

 
          
 
The Machine stopped.

 
          
 
"Get out," said Travis.

 
          
 
The room was there as they had left it. But not
the same as they had left it. The same man sat behind the same desk. But the
same man did not quite sit behind the same desk.

 
          
 
Travis looked around swiftly. "Everything
okay here?" he snapped.

 
          
 
"Fine. Welcome home!"

 
          
 
Travis did not relax. He seemed to be looking
at the very atoms of the air itself, at the way the sun poured through the one
high window.

 
          
 
"Okay, Eckels, get out. Don't ever come
back."

 
          
 
Eckels could not move.

 
          
 
"You heard me," said Travis.
"What're you staring at?"

 
          
 
Eckels stood smelling of the air, and there
was a thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight, that only a
faint cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was there. The colors, white,
gray, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky beyond the
window, were . . . were . . . And there was a feel. His flesh twitched. His
hands twitched. He stood drinking the oddness with the pores of his body.
Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one of those whistles that only a
dog can hear. His body screamed silence in return. Beyond this room, beyond
this wall, beyond this man who was not quite the same man seated at this desk
that was not quite the same desk ... lay an entire world of streets and people.
What sort of world it was now, there was no telling. He could feel them moving
there, beyond the walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind.
...

 
          
 
But the immediate thing was the sign painted
on the office wall, the same sign he had read earlier today on first entering.
Somehow, the sign had changed:

 
          
 
TYME SEFARI INC.

 
          
 
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.

 
          
 
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.

 
          
 
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.

 
          
 
YU SHOOT ITT.

 
          
 
Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He
fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt,
trembling. "No, it can't be. Not a little thing like that. No!"

 
          
 
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold
and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful, and very dead.

 
          
 
"Not a little thing like that! Not a
butterfly!" cried Eckels.

 
          
 
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a
small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes
and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across
Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't change things. Killing one butterfly
couldn't be that important! Could it?

 
          
 
His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking:
"Who—who won the presidential election yesterday?"

 
          
 
The man behind the desk laughed. "You
joking? You know damn well. Deutscher, of course! Who else? Not that damn
weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a man with guts, by God!" The
official stopped. "What's wrong?"

 
          
 
Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He
scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking fingers. "Can't we,"
he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the Machine,
"can't we take it back, can't we make it alive again? Can't we start over?
Can't we—"

 
          
 
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited,
shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard Travis shift his
rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon.

 
          
 
There was a sound of thunder.

 
          
 
It was a day to be out of bed, to pull
curtains and fling open windows. It was a day to make your heart bigger with warm
mountain air.

 
          
 
Cora, feeling like a young girl in a wrinkled
old dress, sat up in bed.

 
          
 
It was early, the sun barely on the horizon,
but already the birds were stirring from the pines and ten billion red ants
milled free from their bronze hills by the cabin door. Cora's husband Tom slept
like a bear in a snowy hibernation of bedclothes beside her. Will my heart wake
him up? she wondered.

 
          
 
And then she knew why this seemed a special
day.

 
          
 
"Benjy's coming!"

 
          
 
She imagined him far off, leaping green
meadows, fording streams where spring was pushing itself in cool colors of moss
and clear water toward the sea. She saw his great shoes dusting and flicking
the stony roads and paths. She saw his freckled face high in the sun looking
giddily down his long body at his distant hands flying out and back behind him.

 
          
 
Benjy, come on! she thought, opening a window
swiftly. Wind blew her hair like a gray spider web about her cold ears. Now

 
          
 
Benjy's at Iron Bridge, now at Meadow Pike,
now up Creek Path, over Chesley's Field . . .

 
          
 
Somewhere in those Missouri
mountains
was Benjy. Cora blinked. Those strange high hills beyond which twice a year she
and Tom drove their horse and wagon to town, and through which, thirty years
ago, she had wanted to run forever, saying, "Oh, Tom, let's just drive and
drive until we reach the sea." But Tom had looked at her as if she had
slapped his face, and he had turned the wagon around and driven on home,
talking to the mare. And if people lived by shores where the sea came like a
storm, now louder, now softer, every day, she did not know it. And if there
were cities where neons were like pink ice and green mint and red fireworks
each evening, she didn't know that either. Her horizon, north, south, east,
west, was this valley, and had never been anything else.

 
          
 
But now, today, she thought, Benjy's coming
from that world out there; he's seen it, heard it, smelt it; he'll tell me
about it. And he can write. She looked at her hands. He'll be here a whole
month and teach me. Then I can write out into that world and bring it here to
the mailbox I'll make Tom build today. "Get up, Tom! You hear?"

 
          
 
She put her hand out to push the bank of
sleeping snow.

 
          
 
By nine o'clock the valley was full of
grasshoppers flinging themselves through the blue, piney air, while smoke
curled into the sky.

 
          
 
Cora, singing into her pots and pans as she
polished them, saw her wrinkled face bronzed and freshened in the copper
bottoms. Tom was grumbling the sounds of a sleepy bear at his mush breakfast, while
her singing moved all about him, like a bird in a cage.

 
          
 
''Someone's mighty happy," said a voice.

 
          
 
Cora made herself into a statue. From the
comers of her eyes she saw a shadow cross the room.

 
          
 
"Mrs. Brabbam?" asked Cora of her
scouring cloth.

 
          
 
"That's who it is!" And there stood
the Widow Lady, her

 
          
 
gingham dress dragging the warm dust, her
letters in her chickeny hand. "Morning! I just been to my mailbox.
Got me a real beauty of a letter from my uncle George in
Springfield."
Mrs. Brabbam fixed Cora with a gaze like a silver
needle. "How long since you got a letter from your uncle, missus?"

 
          
 
"My uncles are all dead." It was not
Cora herself, but her tongue, that lied. When the time came, she knew, it would
be her tongue alone that must take communion and confess earthly sinning.

 
          
 
"It's certainly nicey getting mail."
Mrs. Brabbam waved her letters in a straight flush on the morning air.

 
          
 
Always twisting the knife in the flesh. How
many years, thought Cora, had this run on, Mrs. Brabbam and her smily eyes,
talking loud of how she got mail; implying that nobody else for miles around
could read? Cora bit her lip and almost threw the pot, but set it down,
laughing. "I forgot to tell you. My nephew Benjy's coming; his folks are
poorly, and he's here for the summer today. He'll teach me to write. And Tom's
building us a postal box, aren't you, Tom?"

 
          
 
Mrs. Brabbam clutched her letters. "Well,
isn't that fine! You lucky lady." And suddenly the door was empty. Mrs.
Brabbam was gone.

 
          
 
But Cora was after her. For in that instant
she had seen something like a scarecrow, something like a flicker of pure
sunlight, something like a brook trout jumping upstream, leap a fence in the
yard below. She saw a huge hand wave and birds flush in terror from a crab-apple
tree.

 
          
 
Cora was rushing, the world rushing back of
her, down the path. "Benjy!"

 
          
 
They ran at each other like partners in a
Saturday dance, linked arms, collided, and waltzed, jabbering.
"Benjy!"

 
          
 
She glanced swiftly behind his ear.

 
          
 
Yes, there was the yellow pencil.

 
          
 
"Benjy, welcome!"

 
          
 
"Why, ma'am!" He held her off at
arm's length. "Why, ma'am, you're crying"

 
          
 
"Here's my nephew," said Cora.

 
          
 
Tom scowled up from spooning his corn-meal
mush.

 
          
 
"Mighty glad," smiled Benjy.

 
          
 
Cora held his arm tight so he couldn't vanish.
She felt faint, wanting to sit, stand, run, but she only beat her heart fast
and laughed at strange times. Now, in an instant, the far countries were
brought near; here was this tall boy, lighting up the room like a pine torch,
this boy who had seen cities and seas and been places when things had been
better for his parents.

 
          
 
"Benjy, I got peas, com, bacon, mush,
soup, and beans for breakfast."

 
          
 
"Hold on!" said Tom.

 
          
 
"Hush, Tom, the boy's down to the bone with
walking." She turned to the boy. "Benjy, tell me all about yourself.
You did go to school?"

 
          
 
Benjy kicked off his shoes. With one bare foot
he traced a word in the hearth ashes.

 
          
 
Tom scowled. "What's it say?"

 
          
 
"It says," said Benjy, "C and O
and R and A. Cora"

 
          
 
"My name, Tom, see it! Oh, Benjy, it's
good you really write, child. We had one cousin here, long ago, claimed he
could spell upside down and backwards. So we fattened him up and he wrote
letters and we never got answers. Come to find out he knew just enough spelling
to mail letters to the dead-letter office. Lord, Tom knocked two months' worth
of vittles out of that boy, batting him up the road with a piece of
fence."

 
          
 
They laughed anxiously.

 
          
 
"I write fine," said the serious
boy.

 
          
 
"That's all we want to know." She
shoved a cut of berry pie at him. "Eat."

 
          
 
By ten-thirty, with the sun riding higher,
after watching Benjy devour heaped platters of food, Tom thundered from the
cabin, jamming his cap on. "I'm going out, by God, and cut down half the
forest!" he said angrily.

 
          
 
But no one heard. Cora was seated in a
breathless spell. She was watching the pencil behind Benjy's peach-fuzz ear.
She saw him finger it casually, lazily, indifferently. Oh, not so casual,
Benjy, she thought. Handle it like a spring robin's egg. She wanted to touch
the pencil, but hadn't touched one in years because it made her feel foolish
and then angry and then sad. Her hand twitched in her lap.

 
          
 
"You got some paper?" asked Benjy.

 
          
 
"Oh, land, I never thought," she
wailed, and the room walls darkened. "What'll we do?"

 
          
 
"Just happens I brought some." He
fetched a tablet from his little bag. "You want to write a letter
somewhere?"

 
          
 
She smiled outrageously. "I want to write
a letter to ... to . . ." Her face fell apart. She looked around for
someone in the distance. She looked at the mountains in the morning sunshine.
She heard the sea rolling off on yellow shores a thousand miles away. The birds
were coming north over the valley, on their way to multitudes of cities
indifferent to her need at this instant.

 
          
 
"Benjy, why, I never thought until this
moment. I don't know anybody in all that world out there. Nobody but my aunt.
And if I wrote her it'd make her feel bad, a hundred miles from here, to have
to find someone else to read the letter to her. She's got a whale-boned-corset
sort of pride. Make her nervous the next ten years, that letter setting in her
house on the mantel. No, no letter to her." Cora's eyes moved from the
hills and the unseen ocean. "Who then? Where? Someone. I just've got to
get me some letters."

 
          
 
"Hold on." Benjy fished a dime
magazine from his coat. It had a red cover of an undressed lady screaming away
from a green monster. "All sorts of addresses in here."

 
          
 
They leafed the pages together. "What's
this?" Cora tapped an ad.

 
          
 
" 'here's your Power Plus free muscle
chart. Send name, address,'" read Benjy, "'to Dept. M-3 for Free
Health Map!'"

 
          
 
"And what about this one?"

 
          
 
"'detectives make secret investigations,
particulars free, write: g.d.m. detective school —'"

 
          
 
'^Everything's free. Well, Benjy." She
looked at the pencil in his hand. He drew up his chair. She watched him turn
the pencil in his fingers, making minor adjustments. She saw him bite his tongue
softly. She saw him squint his eyes. She held her breath. She bent forward. She
squinted her own eyes and clamped her tongue.

 
          
 
Now, now Benjy raised his pencil, licked it,
and set it down to the paper.

 
          
 
There it is, thought Cora.

 
          
 
The first words. They formed themselves slowly
on the incredible paper.

 
          
 
Dear Power Plus Muscle Company Sirs, [he
wrote].

 
          
 
The morning blew away on a wind, the morning
flowed down the creek, the morning flew off with some ravens, and the sun
burned on the cabin roof. Cora didn't turn when she heard a shuffle at the
blazing, sun-filled door. Tom was there, but not there; nothing was before her
but a series of filled pages, a whispering pencil, and Benjy's careful Palmer
Penmanship hand. Cora moved her head around, around, with each o, each /, with
each small hill of an m; each tiny dot made her head peck like a chicken; each
crossed t made her tongue lick across her upper lip.

 
          
 
"It's noon and I'm hungry!" said Tom
almost behind her.