Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (34 page)

 
          
 
'There's no doubt of it, Doone's the
best."

 
          
 
"Devil take Doone!"

 
          
 
"His reflex is uncanny, his lope on the
incline extraordinary, he's off and gone before you reach for your hat."

 
          
 
"Hoolihan's better, any day!"

 
          
 
"Day, hell. Why not now?"

 
          
 
I was at the far end of the bar at the top of
Grafton
Street
listening to the tenors singing, the
concertinas dying hard, and the arguments prowling the smoke, looking for
opposition. The pub was the Four Provinces and it was getting on late at night,
for
Dublin
. So there was the sure
threat of everything shutting at once, meaning spigots, accordions, piano lids,
soloists, trios, quartets, pubs, sweet shops and cinemas. In a great heave like
the Day of Judgment, half
Dublin
's
population would be thrown out into raw lamplight, there to find
themselves
wanting in gum-machine mirrors. Stunned, their
moral and physical sustenance plucked from them, the souls would wander like
battered moths for a moment, then wheel about for home.

 
          
 
But now here I was listening to a discussion
the heat of which, if not the hght, reached me at fifty paces.

 
          
 
"Doonel"

 
          
 
"Hoohhan!"

 
          
 
Then the smallest man at the far end of the
bar, turning, saw the curiosity enshrined in my all too open face and shouted,
"You're American, of course! And wondering what we're up to? Do you trust
my looks? Would you bet as I told you on a sporting event of great local
consequence? If *Yes' is your answer, come here!"

 
          
 
So I strolled my Guinness the length of the
Four Provinces to join the shouting men, as one violinist gave up destroying a
tune and the pianist hurried over, bringing his chorus with him.

           
 
"Name's Timulty!" The little man
took my hand.

 
          
 
"
Douglas
," I
said "I write for the cinema."

 
          
 
"Fillums!" cried everyone.

 
          
 
"Films," I admitted modestly.

 
          
 
"What luck! Beyond belief!" Timulty
seized me tighter. "You'll be the best judge ever, as well as bet! Are you
much for sports? Do you know, for instance, the cross-country, the four-forty,
and such man-on-foot exclusions?"

 
          
 
"I've witnessed two Olympic Games."

 
          
 
"Not just fillums, but the world
competition!" Timulty gasped. "You're the rare one. Well, now what do
you know of the special all-Irish decathlon event which has to do with picture
theaters?"

 
          
 
"What event is that?"

 
          
 
"What indeed! Hoolihan!"

 
          
 
An even littler fellow, pocketing his
harmonica, leaped forward, smiling. "Hoolihan, that's me. The best Anthem
Sprinter in aU
Ireland
!'*

 
          
 
''What sprinter?"
I asked,

 
          
 
"A-n-t-," spelled Hoolihan, much too
carefully, "-h-e-m. Anthem. Sprinter. The fastest"

 
          
 
"Since you been in
Dublin
,"
Timulty cut in, "
have
you attended the
cinema?"

 
          
 
"Last night," I said, "I saw a
Clark Gable film. Night before, an old Charles Laughton—“

 
          
 
"Enough! You're a fanatic, as are all the
Irish. If it weren't for cinemas and pubs to keep the poor and workless off the
street or in their cups, we'd have pulled the cork and let the isle sink long
ago. Well." He clapped his hands. "When the picture ends each night,
have you observed a peculiarity of the breed?"

 
          
 
"End of the picture?" I mused.
"Hold on! You can't mean the national anthem, can you?"

 
          
 
''Can we, boys?" cried Timulty.

 
          
 
"We can!" cried all.

 
          
 
"Any night, every night, for tens of
dreadful years, at the end of each dajnn fillum, as if you'd never heard the
baleful tune before," grieved Timulty, “the orchestra strikes up for
Ireland
.
And what happens then?"

 
          
 
"Why," said I, falling in with it,
"if you're any man at all, you try to get out of the theater in those few
precious moments between the end of the film and the start of the anthem."

           
 
"You've nailed it!"

 
          
 
"Buy the Yank a drink!"

 
          
 
"After all," I said casually,
"I'm in
Dublin
four months
now. The anthem has begun to pale. No disrespect meant," I added hastily.

 
          
 
"And none taken I" said Timulty.
"Or given by any of us patriotic I.R.A. veterans, survivors of the
Troubles and lovers of country. Still, breathing the same air ten thousand
times makes the senses reel. So, as you've noted, in that God-sent three- or
four-second interval any audience in its right mind beats it the hell out And
the best of the crowd is—"

 
          
 
"Doone," I said. "Or Hoolihan.
Your Anthem Sprinters!"

 
          
 
They smiled at me. I smiled at them.

 
          
 
We were all so proud of my intuition that I
bought them a round of Guinness.

 
          
 
Licking the suds from our lips, we regarded
each other with benevolence.

 
          
 
"Now," said Timulty, his voice husky
with emotion, his eyes squinted off at the scene, "at this very moment,
not one hundred yards down the slight hill, in the comfortable dark of the
Grafton Street Theatre, seated on the aisle of the fourth row center is—"

 
          
 
"Doone," said I.

 
          
 
“The man's eerie," said Hoolihan, lifting
his cap to me.

 
          
 
"Well—" Timulty swallowed his
disbelief—"Doone's there all right He's not seen the fillum before, it's a
Deanna Durbin brought back by the asking, and the time is now . . ."

 
          
 
Everyone glanced at the wall clock.

 
          
 
“
Ten o'clock
!"
said the crowd.

 
          
 
"And in just fifteen minutes the cinema
will be letting the customers out for good and all."

 
          
 
"And?" I asked.

 
          
 
"And," said Timulty. "And! If
we should send Hoolihan here in for a test of speed and agility, Doone would be
ready to meet the challenge."

 
          
 
"He didn't go to the show just for an
Anthem Sprint, did he?"

 
          
 
"Good grief, no. He went for the Deanna
Durbin songs and all. Doone plays the piano here, for sustenance. But if he
should casually note the entrance of Hoolihan here, who would make himself
conspicuous by his late arrival just across from Doone, well, Doone would know
what was up.

           
 
They would salute each other and both sit
listening to the dear music until finis hove in sight"

 
          
 
"Sure." Hoolihan danced lightly on
his toes, flexing his elbows. "Let me at him , let me at him!"

 
          
 
Timulty peered close at me. "Mr. Douglas,
I observe your disbelief. The details of the sport have bewildered you. How is
it, you ask, that full-grown men have time for such as this? Well, time is the
one thing the Irish have plenty of lying about. With no jobs at hand, what's
minor in your country must be made to look major in ours. We have never seen
the elephant, but we've learned a bug under a microscope is the greatest beast
on earth. So while it hasn't passed the border, the Anthem Sprint's a
high-blooded sport once you're in it. Let me nail down the stiles!"

 
          
 
"First," said Hoolihan reasonably,
"knowing what he knows now, find out if the man wants to bet."

 
          
 
Everyone looked at me to see if their
reasoning had been wasted.

 
          
 
"Yes," I said.

 
          
 
All agreed I was better than a human being.

 
          
 
"Introductions are in order," said
Timulty. "Here's Fogarty, exit-watcher supreme. Nolan and Clannery,
aisle-superintendent judges. Clancy, timekeeper. And general spectators
O'Neill, Bannion and the Kelly boys, count 'em! Come on!"

 
          
 
I felt as if a vast street-cleaning machine,
one of those brambled monsters all mustache and scouring brush, had seized me.
The amiable mob floated me down the hill toward the multiplicity of little
blinking lights where the cinema lured us on. Hustling, Timulty shouted the
essentials:

 
          
 
"Much depends on the character of the
theater, of course!"

 
          
 
"Of course!" I yelled back.

 
          
 
"There be the liberal free thinking
theaters with grand aisles, grand exits and even grander, more spacious
latrines. Some with so much porcelain, the echoes alone put you in shock. Then
there's the parsimonious mousetrap cinemas with aisles that squeeze the breath
from you, seats that knock your knees, and doors best sidled out of on your way
to the men's lounge in the sweet shop across the alley. Each theater is
carefully assessed, before, during and after a sprint, the facts set down. A
man is judged then, and his time reckoned good or inglorious, by whether he had
to fight his way through men and women en masse, or mostly men, mostly women,
or, the worst, children at the flypaper matinees. The temptation with children,
of course, is lay into them as you'd harvest hay, tossing them in windrows to
left and right, so we've stopped that. Now mostly it's nights here at the
Grafton!"

 
          
 
The mob stopped. The twinkling theater lights
sparkled in our eyes and flushed our cheeks.

 
          
 
“The ideal cinema," said Fogarty,

 
          
 
"Why?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Its aisles," said Clannery,
"are neither too wide nor too narrow, its exits well placed, the door
hinges oiled, the crowds a proper mixture of sporting bloods and folks who mind
enough to leap aside should a Sprinter, squandering his energy, come dashing up
the aisle."

 
          
 
I had a sudden thought. "Do you—handicap
your runners?"

 
          
 
"We do! Sometimes by shifting exits when
the old are known too well. Or we put a summer coat on one, a winter coat on
another. Or seat one chap in the sixth row, while the other takes the third.
And if a man turns terrible feverish swift, we add the greatest known burden of
all—"

 
          
 
"Drink?" I said.

 
          
 
"What else? Now, Doone, being fleet, is a
two-handicap man. Nolan!" Timulty held forth a flask, "Run this in.
Make Doone take two swigs, big ones."