Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (41 page)

 
          
 
He thrust out his hands to orchestrate, to
conduct, to flourish. There was music in his head, in his mouth shut tight, and
he played the great machine, the thunderously silent organ, bass, tenor,
soprano, low, high, and at last, at last, a chord that shuddered him so that he
had to shut his eyes.

 
          
 
About nine o'clock that night she heard him
calling, "Cora!" She went upstairs. His head peered down at her from
above, smiling at her. He waved his hat.
"Good-by,
Cora."

 
          
 
"What do you mean?" she cried.

 
          
 
"I've thought it over for three days and
I'm saying good-by."

 
          
 
"Come down out of there, you fool!"

 
          
 
"I drew five hundred dollars from the
bank yesterday. I've been thinking about this. And then when it happened, well
. . . Cora . . ." He shoved his eager hand down. "For the last time,
will you come along with me?"

 
          
 
"In the attic? Hand down that stepladder,
William Finch. I'll climb up there and run you out of that filthy place!"

 
          
 
"I'm going to Hannahan's Pier for a bowl
of clam chowder," he said. "And I'm requesting the brass band to play
'Moonlight Bay.' Oh, come on, Cora . . ." He motioned his extended hand.

 
          
 
She simply stared at his gentle, questioning
face.

 
          
 
"Good-by," he said.

 
          
 
He waved gently, gently. Then his face was
gone, the straw hat was gone.

 
          
 
"William!" she screamed.

 
          
 
The attic was dark and silent.

 
          
 
Shrieking, she ran and got a chair and used it
to groan her way up into the musty darkness. She flourished a flashlight.
"William! William!"

 
          
 
The dark spaces were empty. A winter wind
shook the house.

 
          
 
Then she saw the far west attic window, ajar.

 
          
 
She fumbled over to it. She hesitated, held
her breath. Then, slowly, she opened it. The ladder was placed outside the
window, leading down onto a porch roof.

 
          
 
She pulled back from the window.

 
          
 
Outside the opened frame the apple trees shone
bright green, it was twilight of a summer day in July. Faintly, she heard
explosions, firecrackers going off. She heard laughter and distant voices.
Rockets burst in the warm air, softly, red, white, and blue, fading.

 
          
 
She slammed the window and stood reeling.
"William!"

 
          
 
Wintry November light glowed up through the
trap in the attic floor behind her. Bent to it, she saw the snow whispering
against the cold clear panes down in that November world where she would spend
the next thirty years.

 
          
 
She did not go near the window again. She sat
alone in the black attic, smelling the one smell that did not seem to fade. It
lingered like a sigh of satisfaction, on the air. She took a deep, long breath.

 
          
 
The old, the familiar, the unforgettable scent
of drugstore sarsaparilla.

 
          
 
He lay on his bed and the wind blew through
the window over his ears and over his half-opened mouth so it whispered to him
in his dream. It was like the wind of time hollowing the Delphic caves to say
what must be said of yesterday, today, tomorrow. Sometimes one voice gave a
shout far off away, sometimes two, a dozen, an entire race of men cried out
through his mouth, but their words were always the same:

 
          
 
"Look, look, we've done it!"

 
          
 
For suddenly he, they, one or many, were flung
in the dream, and flew. The air spread in a soft warm sea where he swam,
disbelieving.

 
          
 
"Look, look! It's done!"

 
          
 
But he didn't ask the world to watch; he was
only shocking his senses wide to see, taste, smell, touch the air, the wind,
the rising moon. He swam alone in the sky. The heavy earth was gone.

 
          
 
But wait, he thought, wait now!

 
          
 
Tonight—what night is this?

 
          
 
The night before, of course. The night before
the first flight of a rocket to the Moon. Beyond this room on the baked desert
floor one hundred yards away the rocket waits for me.

           
 
Well, does it now? Is there really a rocket?

 
          
 
Hold on! he thought, and twisted, turned,
sweating, eyes tight, to the wall, the fierce whisper in his teeth. Be certain-sure!
You, now, who are you?

 
          
 
Me? he thought. My name?

 
          
 
Jedediah Prentiss, born 1938, college graduate
1959, licensed rocket pilot, 1965. Jedediah Prentiss . . . Jedediah Prentiss. .
. .

 
          
 
The wind whistled his name away! He grabbed
for it, yelling.

 
          
 
Then, gone quiet, he waited for the wind to
bring his name back. He waited a long while, and there was only silence, and
then after a thousand heartbeats he felt motion.

 
          
 
The sky opened out like a soft blue flower.
The Aegean Sea stirred soft white fans through
a distant
wine-colored surf.

 
          
 
In the wash of the waves on the shore, he
heard his name.

 
          
 
Icarus.

 
          
 
And again in a breathing whisper.

 
          
 
Icarus.

 
          
 
Someone shook his arm and it was his father
saying his name and shaking away the night. And he himself lay small,
half-turned to the window and the shore below and the deep sky, feeling the
first wind of morning ruffle the golden feathers bedded in amber wax lying by
the side of his cot. Golden wings stirred half-alive in his father's arms, and
the faint down on his own shoulders quilled trembling as he looked at these
wings and beyond them to the cliff,

 
          
 
"Father, how's the wind?"

 
          
 
"Enough for me, but never enough for you.
..."

 
          
 
"Father, don't worry. The wings seem
clumsy now, but my bones in the feathers will make them strong, my blood in the
wax will make it five!"

 
          
 
"My blood, my bones too, remember; each
man lends his flesh to his children, asking that they tend it well. Promise
you'll not go high, Icarus. The sun or my son, the heat of one, the fever of
the other, could melt these wings. Take care!"

 
          
 
And they carried the splendid golden wings
into the morning and heard them whisper in their arms, whisper his name or a
name or some name that blew, spun, and settled like a feather on the soft air.

 
          
 
Montgolfier.

 
          
 
His hands touched fiery rope, bright linen,
stitched thread gone hot as summer. His hands fed wool and straw to a breathing
flame.

 
          
 
Montgolfier.

 
          
 
And his eye soared up along the swell and
sway, the oceanic tug and pull, the immensely wafted silver pear still filling
with the shimmering tidal airs channeled up from the blaze. Silent as a god
tilted slumbering above French countryside, this delicate linen envelope, this
swelling sack of oven-baked air would soon pluck itself free. Draughting upward
to blue worlds of silence, his mind and his brother's mind would sail with it,
muted, serene among island clouds where uncivilized lightnings slept. Into that
uncharted gulf and abyss where no birdsong or shout of man could follow, the
balloon would hush itself. So cast adrift, he, Montgolfier, and all men, might
hear the unmeasured breathing of God and the cathedral tread of eternity.

 
          
 
"Ah . . ." He moved, the crowd
moved, shadowed by the warm balloon. "Everything's ready, everything's
right. . . ."

 
          
 
Right. His lips twitched in his dream. Right.
Hiss, whisper, flutter, rush. Right.

 
          
 
From his father's hands a toy jumped to the
ceilmg, whirled in its own wind, suspended, while he and his brother stared to
see it flicker, rustle, whistle, heard it murmuring their names.

 
          
 
Wright.

 
          
 
Whispering: wind, sky, cloud, space, wing, fly
. . .

 
          
 
"Wilbur, Orville? Look, how's that?"

 
          
 
Ah. In his sleep, his mouth sighed.

 
          
 
The toy helicopter hummed, bumped the ceiling,
murmured eagle, raven, sparrow, robin, hawk; murmured eagle, raven, sparrow,
robin, hawk. Whispered eagle, whispered raven, and at last, fluttering to their
hands with a susurration, a wash of blowing weather from summers yet to come,
with a last whir and exhalation, whispered hawk.

 
          
 
Dreaming, he smiled.

 
          
 
He saw the clouds rush down the Aegean sky.

 
          
 
He felt the balloon sway drunkenly, its great
bulk ready for the clear running wind.

 
          
 
He felt the sand hiss up the Atlantic shelves from
the soft dunes that might save him if he, a fledgling bird, should fall. The
framework struts hummed and chorded like a harp, and himself caught up in its
music.

 
          
 
Beyond this room he felt the primed rocket
glide on the desert field, its fire-wings folded, its fire-breath kept, held
ready to speak for three billion men. In a moment he would wake and walk slowly
out to that rocket.

 
          
 
And stand on the rim of the cliff.

 
          
 
Stand cool in the shadow of the warm balloon.

 
          
 
Stand whipped by tidal sands drummed over
Kitty Hawk.

 
          
 
And sheathe his boy's wrists, arms, hands,
fingers with golden wings in golden wax.

 
          
 
And touch for a final time the captured breath
of man, the warm gasp of awe and wonder siphoned and sewn to lift their dreams.

 
          
 
And spark the gasoline engine.

 
          
 
And take his father's hand and wish him well
with his own wings, flexed and ready, here on the precipice.

 
          
 
Then whirl and jump.

 
          
 
Then cut the cords to free the great balloon.

 
          
 
Then rev the motor, prop the plane on air.

 
          
 
And crack the switch, to fire the rocket fuse.

 
          
 
And together in a single leap, swim, rush,
flail, jump, sail, and glide, upturned to sun, moon, stars, they would go above
Atlantic, Mediterranean; over country, wilderness, city, town; in gaseous
silence, riffling feather, rattle-drum frame, in volcanic eruption, in timid,
sputtering roar; in start, jar, hesitation, then steady ascension, beautifully
held, wondrously transported, they would laugh and cry each his own name to
himself. Or shout the names of others unborn or others long-dead and blown away
by the wine wind or the salt wind or the silent hush of balloon wind or the
wind of chemical fire. Each feeling the bright feathers stir and bud
deep-buried and thrusting to burst from their riven shoulder blades!
Each leaving behind the echo of their flying, a sound to encircle,
recircle the earth in the winds and speak again in other years to the sons of
the sons of their sons, asleep but hearing the restless
midnight
sky.

 
          
 
Up, yet further up, higher, higher! A spring
tide, a summer flood, an unending river of wings!

 
          
 
A bell rang softly.

 
          
 
No, he whispered, I'll wake in a moment. Wait
. . .

 
          
 
The
Aegean
slid away
below the window, gone; the Atlantic dunes, the French countryside, dissolved
down to
New Mexico
desert. In his
room near his cot stirred no plumes in golden wax.
Outside,
no wind-sculpted pear, no trap-drum butterfly machine.
Outside only a
rocket, a combustible dream, waiting for the friction of his hand to set it
off.

 
          
 
In the last moment of sleep someone asked his
name.

 
          
 
Quietly, he gave the answer as he had heard it
during the hours from
midnight
on.

 
          
 
"Icarus Montgolfier
Wright."

 
          
 
He repeated it slowly so the questioner might
remember the order and spelling down to the last incredible letter.

 
          
 
"Icarus Montgolfier Wright.

 
          
 
"Born: nine hundred years before Christ.
Grammar school:
Paris
, 1783. High
school, college:
Kitty Hawk
, 1903. Graduation from Earth
to Moon: this day, God willing,
August
1, 1970
.
Death and burial, with luck, on Mars,
sunomer 1999 in the Year of Our Lord."

 
          
 
Then he let himself drift awake.

 
          
 
Moments later, crossing the desert Tarmac, he
heard someone shouting again and again and again.

 
          
 
And if no one was there or if someone was
there behind him, he could not tell. And whether it was one voice or many,
young

 
          
 
or old, near or very far away, rising or
falling, whispering or shouting to him all three of his brave new names, he
could not tell, either. He did not turn to see.

 
          
 
For the wind was slowly rising and he let it
take hold and blow him all the rest of the way across the desert to the rocket
which stood waiting there.