Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (32 page)

 
          
 
A dog barked far away in a nameless town.

 
          
 
Only the gravedigger, wide awake in his
tombyard, heard.

 
          
 
Under a pale April sky in a faint wind that blew
out of a memory of winter, the old man shuffled into the almost empty park at
noon. His slow feet were bandaged with nicotine-stained
swathes,
his hair was wild, long and gray as was his beard which enclosed a mouth which
seemed always atremble with revelation.

 
          
 
Now he gazed back as if he had lost so many
things he could not begin to guess there in the tumbled ruin, the toothless
skyline of the city. Finding nothing, he shuffled on until he found a bench
where sat a woman alone. Examining her, he nodded and sat to the far end of the
bench and did not look at her again.

 
          
 
He remained, eyes shut, mouth working, for
three minutes, head moving as if his nose were printing a single word on the
air. Once it was written, he opened his mouth to pronounce it in a clear, fine
voice;

 
          
 
"Coffee."

 
          
 
The woman gasped and stiffened.

 
          
 
The old man's gnarled fingers tumbled in
pantomime on his unseen lap.

 
          
 
"Twist the key! Bright-red, yellow-letter
can! Compressed air. Hisss! Vacuum pack. Ssst! Like a snake!"

 
          
 
The woman snapped her head about as if
slapped, to stare in dreadful fascination at the old man's moving tongue.

 
          
 
"The scent, the odor, the smell. Rich,
dark, wondrous Brazilian beans, fresh-ground!"

 
          
 
Leaping up, reeling as if gun-shot, the woman
tottered.

 
          
 
The old man flicked his eyes wide. "No!
I—"

 
          
 
But she was running, gone.

 
          
 
The old man sighed and walked on through the
park until he reached a bench where sat a young man completely involved with
wrapping dried grass in a small square of thin tissue paper. His thin fingers
shaped the grass tenderly, in an almost holy ritual, trembling as he rolled the
tube, put it to his mouth and, hypnotically, lit it. He leaned back, squinting
deliciously, communing with the strange rank air in his mouth and lungs.

 
          
 
The old man watched the smoke blow away on the
noon wind and said, "Chesterfields."

 
          
 
The young man gripped his knees tight

 
          
 
"Raleighs," said the old man.
"Lucky Strikes."

 
          
 
The young man stared at him.

 
          
 
"Kent.
Kool.
Marlboro," said the old man, not looking at him. "Those were the
names. White, red, amber packs, grass green, sky blue, pure gold, with the red
slick small ribbon that ran around the top that you pulled to zip away the
crinkly cellophane, and the blue government tax stamp—"

 
          
 
"Shut up," said the young man.

 
          
 
"Buy them in drugstores, fountains,
subways— "

 
          
 
"Shut up!"

 
          
 
"Gently," said the old man.
"It's just, that smoke of yours made me think—"

 
          
 
"Don't think!" The young man jerked
so violently his homemade cigarette fell in chaff to his lap. "Now look
what you made me do!"

 
          
 
"I'm sorry. It was such a nice friendly
day.”

 
          
 
"I'm no friend!"

 
          
 
"We're all friends now, or why live?”

 
          
 
"Friends!" the young man snorted,
aimlessly plucking at the shredded grass and paper. "Maybe there were
'friends’ back in 1970, but now .. .”

 
          
 
"1970. You must have been a baby then.
They still had Butterfingers then in bright-yellow wrappers. Baby Ruths. Clark
Bars in orange paper. Milky Ways—swallow a universe of stars, comets, meteors.
Nice.”

 
          
 
"It was never nice." The young man
stood suddenly. “What's wrong with you?”

 
          
 
"I remember limes, and lemons, that's
what's wrong with me. Do you remember oranges?"

 
          
 
"Damn right.
Oranges
, hell.
You calling me a liar?
You want me to feel bad?
You nuts?
Don't you know the law? You know I could turn you
in, you?"

 
          
 
"I know, I know,” said the old man,
shrugging. “The weather fooled me. It made me want to compare—“

 
          
 
"Compare rumors, that's what they'd say,
the police, the special cops, they'd say it, rumors, you trouble making
bastard, you."

 
          
 
He seized the old man's lapels, which ripped
so he had to grab another handful, yelling down into his face. "Why don't
I just blast the living Jesus out of you? I ain't hurt no one in so long, I.
.."

 
          
 
He shoved the old man. Which gave him the idea
to pummel, and when he pummeled he began to punch, and punching made it easy to
strike, and soon he rained blows upon the old man, who stood like one caught in
thunder and down-poured storm, using only his fingers to ward off blows that
fleshed his cheeks, shoulders, his brow, his chin, as the young man shrieked
cigarettes, moaned candies, yelled smokes, cried sweets until the old man fell
to be kick-rolled and shivering. The young man stopped and began to cry. At the
sound, the old man, cuddled, clenched into his pain, took his fingers away from
his broken mouth and opened his eyes to gaze with astonishment at his assailant
The young man wept

 
          
 
"Please . . ." begged the old man.

 
          
 
The young man wept louder, tears falling from
his eyes.

 
          
 
"Don't cry," said the old man.
"We won't be hungry forever. We'll rebuild the cities. Listen, I didn't
mean for you to cry, only to think. Where are we going, what are we doing,
what've we done? You weren't hitting me. You meant to hit something else, but I
was handy. Look, I'm sitting up. I'm okay."

 
          
 
The young man stopped crying and blinked down
at the old man, who forced a bloody smile.

 
          
 
"You . . . you can't go around,"
said the young man, "making people unhappy. I'll find someone to fix
you!"

 
          
 
"Wait!" The old man struggled to his
knees. "No!"

 
          
 
But the young man ran wildly off out of the
park, yelling.

 
          
 
Crouched alone, the old man felt his bones,
found one of his teeth lying red amongst the strewn gravel, handled it sadly.

 
          
 
"Fool," said a voice.

 
          
 
The old man glanced over and up.

 
          
 
A lean man of some forty years stood leaning
against a tree nearby, a look of pale weariness and curiosity on his long face.

 
          
 
"Fool," he said again.

           
 
The old man gasped. "You were there, all
the time, and did nothing?"

 
          
 
"What, fight one fool to save another?
No." The stranger helped him up and brushed him off. "I do my
fighting where it pays. Come on. You're going home with me."

 
          
 
The old man gasped again. "Why?"

 
          
 
“That boy'll be back with the police any
second. I don't want you stolen away, you're a very precious commodity. I've
heard of you, looked for you for days now. Good grief, and when I find you
you're up to your famous tricks. What did you say to the boy made him
mad?"

 
          
 
"I said about oranges and lemons, candy,
cigarettes. I was just getting ready to recollect in detail wind-up toys, briar
pipes and back scratchers, when he dropped the sky on me."

 
          
 
"I almost don't blame him. Half of me
wants to hit you itself. Come on, double time. There's a siren, quick!"

 
          
 
And they went swiftly, another way, out of the
park.

 
          
 
He drank the homemade wine because it was
easiest The food must wait until his hunger overcame the pain in his broken
mouth. He sipped, nodding.

 
          
 
"Good, many thanks, good."

 
          
 
The stranger who had walked him swiftly out of
the park sat across from him at the flimsy dining-room table as the stranger's
wife placed broken and mended plates on the worn cloth.

 
          
 
"The beating," said the husband at
last "How did it happen!"

 
          
 
At this the wife almost dropped a plate.

 
          
 
"Relax," said the husband. "No
one followed us. Go ahead, old man, tell us, why do you behave like a saint
panting after martyrdom? You're famous, you know. Everyone's heard about you.
Many would like to meet you. Myself, first, I want to know what makes you tick.
Well?"

 
          
 
But the old man was only entranced with the
vegetables on the chipped plate before him. Twenty-six, no, twenty-eight peas!
He counted the impossible sum! He bent to the incredible vegetables like a man
praying over his quietest beads. Twenty-eight glorious green peas, plus a few
graphs of half-raw spaghetti announcing that today business was fair. But under
the line of pasta, the cracked line of the plate showed where business for
years now was more than terrible. The old man hovered counting above the food
like a great and inexplicable buzzard crazily fallen and roosting in this cold
apartment, watched by his Samaritan hosts until at last he said, "These
twenty-eight peas remind me of a film I saw as a child. A comedian—do you know
the word?—a funny man met a lunatic in a midnight house in this film and . .
."

 
          
 
The husband and wife laughed quietly.

 
          
 
"No, that's not the joke yet,
sorry," the old man apologized. "The lunatic sat the comedian down to
an empty table, no knives, no forks, no food. 'Dinner is served!' he cried.
Afraid of murder, the comedian fell in with the make-believe. 'Great!' he
cried, pretending to chew steak, vegetables, dessert. He bit nothings. 'Fine!'
he swallowed air. 'Wonderful!' Eh . . . you may laugh now."

 
          
 
But the husband and wife, grown still, only
looked at their sparsely strewn plates.

 
          
 
The old man shook his head and went on.
"The comedian, thinking to impress the madman, exclaimed, 'And these
spiced brandy peaches! Superb!' 'Peaches?' screamed the madman, drawing a gun.
'I served no peaches! You must be insane!' And shot the comedian in the
behind!"

 
          
 
The old man, in the silence which ensued,
picked up the first pea and weighed its lovely bulk upon his bent tin fork. He
was about to put it in his mouth when—

 
          
 
There was a sharp rap on the door.

 
          
 
"Special police!" a voice cried.

 
          
 
Silent but trembling, the wife hid the extra
plate.

 
          
 
The husband rose calmly to lead the old man to
a wall where a panel hissed open, and he stepped in and the pan& hissed
shut and he stood in darkness hidden away as, be-yond, unseen, the apartment
door opened. Voices murmured excitedly. The old man could imagine the special
police man in his midnight-blue uniform, with drawn gun, entering to see only
the flimsy furniture, the bare walls, the echoing linoleum floor, the
glassless, cardboarded-over windows, this thin and oily film of civilization
left on an empty shore when the storm tide of war went away.