Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (19 page)

 
          
“But,
Willie,” said Mrs. Emily long ago, “didn’t you ever get lonely? Didn’t you ever
want—
things
—that grown-ups wanted?”

 
          
“I
fought that out alone,” said Willie. “I’m a boy, I told myself, I’ll have to
live in a boy’s world, read boys’ books, play boys’ games, cut myself off from
everything else. I can’t be both. I got to be only one thing—young. And so I
played that way. Oh, it wasn’t easy. There were times—” He lapsed into silence.

 
          
“And
the family you lived with, they never knew?”

 
          
“No.
Telling them would have spoiled everything. I told them I was a runaway; I let
them check through official channels, police. Then, when there was no record,
let them put in to adopt me. That was best of all; as long as they never
guessed. But then, after three years, or five years, they guessed, or a
traveling man came through, or a carnival man saw me, and it was over. It
always had to end.”

 
          
“And
you’re very happy and it’s
nice
being
a child for over forty years?”

 
          
“It’s
a living, as they say. And when you make other people happy, then you’re almost
happy too. I got my job to do and I do it. And anyway, in a few years now I’ll
be in my second childhood. All the fevers will be out of me and all the
unfulfilled things and most of the dreams. Then I can relax, maybe, and play
the role all the way.”

 
          
He
threw the baseball one last time and broke the reverie. Then he was running to
seize his luggage. Tom, Bill, Jamie, Bob, Sam—their names moved on his lips.
They were embarrassed at his shaking hands.

 
          
“After
all, Willie, it ain’t as if you’re going to
China
or
Timbuktu
.”

 
          
“That’s
right, isn’t it?” Willie did not move.

 
          
“So
long, Willie. See you next week!”

 
          
“So
long, so long!”

 
          
And
he was walking off with his suitcase again looking at the trees, going away
from the boys and the street where he had lived, and as he turned the corner a
train whistle screamed, and he began to run.

 
          
The
last thing he saw and heard was a white ball tossed at a high roof, back and
forth, back and forth, and two voices crying out as the ball pitched now up, down,
and back through the sky, “Annie, annie, over! Annie, annie, over!” like the
crying of birds flying off to the far south.

 
          
In
the early morning, with the smell of the mist and the cold metal, with the iron
smell of the train around him and a full night of traveling shaking his bones
and his body, and a smell of the sun beyond the horizon, he awoke and looked
out upon a small town just arising from sleep. Lights were coming on, soft
voices muttered, a red signal bobbed back and forth, back and forth in the cold
air. There was that sleeping hush in which echoes are dignified by clarity, in
which echoes stand nakedly alone and sharp. A porter moved by, a shadow in
shadows.

 
          
“Sir,”
said Willie.

 
          
The
porter stopped.

 
          
“What
town’s this?” whispered the boy in the dark.

 
          
“Valleyville.”

 
          
“How
many people?”

 
          
“Ten
thousand. Why? This your stop?”

 
          
“It
looks green.” Willie gazed out at the cold morning town for a long time. “It
looks nice and quiet,” said Willie.

 
          
“Son,”
said the porter, “you know where you
going?
”

 
          
“Here,”
said Willie, and got up quietly in the still, cool, iron-smelling morning, in
the train dark, with a rustling and stir.

 
          
“I
hope you know what you’re doing, boy,” said the porter.

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” said Willie. “I know what I’m doing.” And he was down the dark aisle,
luggage lifted after him by the porter, and out in the smoking, steaming-cold,
beginning-to-lighten morning. He stood looking up at the porter and the black
metal train against the few remaining stars. The train gave a great wailing
blast of whistle, the porters cried out all along the line, the cars jolted,
and his special porter waved and smiled down at the boy there, the small boy
there with the big luggage who shouted up to him, even as the whistle screamed
again.

 
          
“What?”
shouted the porter, hand cupped to ear.

 
          
“Wish
me luck!” cried Willie.

 
          
“Best
of luck, son,” called the porter, waving, smiling. “Best of luck, boy!”

 
          
“Thanks!”
said Willie, in the great sound of the train, in the steam and roar.

 
          
He
watched the black train until it was completely gone away and out of sight. He
did not move all the time it was going. He stood quietly, a small boy twelve
years old, on the worn wooden platform, and only after three entire minutes did
he turn at last to face the empty streets below.

 
          
Then,
as the sun was rising, he began to walk very fast, so as to keep warm, down
into the new town.

 
          
S
he took the great iron spoon and the
mummified frog and gave it a bash and made dust of it, and talked to the dust
while she ground it in her stony fists quickly. Her beady gray bird-eyes
flickered at the cabin. Each time she looked, a head in the small thin window
ducked as if she’d fired off a shotgun.

 
          
“Charlie!”
cried Old Lady. “You come outa there! I’m fixing a lizard magic to unlock that
rusty door! You come out now and I won’t make the earth shake or the trees go
up in fire or the sun set at high noon!”

 
          
The
only sound was the warm mountain light on the high turpentine trees, a tufted
squirrel chittering around and around on a green-furred log, the ants moving in
a fine brown line at Old Lady’s bare, blue-veined feet.

 
          
“You
been starving in there two days, darn you!” she panted, chiming the spoon
against a flat rock, causing the plump gray miracle bag to swing at her waist.
Sweating sour, she rose and marched at the cabin, bearing the pulverized flesh.
“Come out, now!” She flicked a pinch of powder inside the lock. “All right,
I’ll come get you!” she wheezed.

 
          
She
spun the knob with one walnut-colored hand, first one way, then the other. “O
Lord,” she intoned “fling this door wide!”

 
          
When
nothing flung, she added yet another philter and held her breath. Her long blue
untidy skirt rustled as she peered into her bag of darkness to see if she had
any scaly monsters there, any charm finer than the frog she’d killed months ago
for such a crisis as this.

 
          
She
heard Charlie breathing against the door. His folks had pranced off into some
Ozark town early this week, leaving him, and he’d run almost six miles to Old
Lady for company—she was by way of being an aunt or cousin or some such, and he
didn’t mind her fashions.

 
          
But
then, two days ago, Old Lady, having gotten used to the boy around, decided to
keep him for convenient company. She pricked her thin shoulder bone, drew out
three blood pearls, spat wet over her right elbow, tromped on a crunch-cricket,
and at the same instant clawed her left hand at Charlie, crying, “My son you
are, you are my son, for all eternity!”

 
          
Charlie,
bounding like a startled hare, had crashed off into the bush, heading for home.

 
          
But
Old Lady, skittering quick as a gingham lizard, cornered him in a dead end, and
Charlie holed up in this old hermit’s cabin and wouldn’t come out, no matter
how she whammed door, window, or knothole with amber-colored fist or trounced
her ritual fires, explaining to him that he was certainly her son
now
, all right.

 
          
“Charlie,
you
there?
” she asked, cutting holes
in the door planks with her bright little slippery eyes.

 
          
“I’m
all of me here,” he replied finally, very tired.

 
          
Maybe
he would fall out on the ground any moment. She wrestled the knob hopefully.
Perhaps a pinch too much frog powder had grated the lock wrong. She always
overdid or underdid her miracles, she mused angrily, never doing them just
exact
, Devil take it!

 
          
“Charlie,
I only wants someone to night-prattle to, someone to warm hands with at the
fire. Someone to fetch kindling for me mornings, and fight off the spunks that
come creeping of early fogs! I ain’t got no fetchings on you for myself, son,
just for your company.” She smacked her lips. “Tell you what, Charles, you come
out and I
teach
you things!”

 
          
“What
things?” he suspicioned.

 
          
“Teach
you how to buy cheap, sell high. Catch a snow weasel, cut off its head, carry
it warm in your hind pocket. There!”

 
          
“Aw,”
said Charlie.

 
          
She
made haste. “Teach you to make yourself shot-proof. So if anyone bangs at you
with a gun, nothing happens.”

 
          
When
Charlie stayed silent, she gave him the secret in a high, fluttering whisper.
“Dig and stitch mouse-ear roots on Friday during full moon, and wear ’em around
your neck in a white silk.”

 
          
“You’re
crazy
,” Charlie said.

 
          
“Teach
you how to stop blood or make animals stand frozen or make blind horses see,
all them things I’ll teach you! Teach you to cure a swelled-up cow and
unbewitch a goat. Show you how to make yourself invisible!”

 
          
“Oh,”
said Charlie.

 
          
Old
Lady’s heart beat like a Salvation tambourine.

 
          
The
knob turned from the other side.

 
          
“You,”
said Charlie, “are funning me.”

 
          
“No,
I’m not,” exclaimed Old Lady. “Oh, Charlie, why, I’ll make you like a window,
see right through you. Why, child, you’ll be surprised!”

 
          
“Real
invisible?”

 
          
“Real
invisible!”

 
          
“You
won’t fetch onto me if I walk out?”

 
          
“Won’t
touch a bristle of you, son.”

 
          
“Well,”
he drawled reluctantly, “all right.”

 
          
The
door opened. Charlie stood in his bare feet, head down, chin against chest.
“Make me invisible,” he said.

 
          
“First
we got to catch us a bat,” said Old Lady. “Start lookin’!”

 
          
She
gave him some jerky beef for his hunger and watched him climb a tree. He went
high up and high up and it was nice seeing him there and it was nice having him
here and all about after so many years alone with nothing to say good morning
to but bird-droppings and silvery snail tracks.

 
          
Pretty
soon a bat with a broken wing fluttered down out of the tree. Old Lady snatched
it up, beating warm and shrieking between its porcelain white teeth, and
Charlie dropped down after it, hand upon clenched hand, yelling.

 
          
That
night, with the moon nibbling at the spiced pine cones, Old Lady extracted a
long silver needle from under her wide blue dress. Gumming her excitement and
secret anticipation, she sighted up the dead bat and held the cold needle
steady-steady.

 
          
She
had long ago realized that her miracles, despite all perspirations and salts
and sulphurs, failed. But she had always dreamt that one day the miracles might
start functioning, might spring up in crimson flowers and silver stars to prove
that God had forgiven her for her pink body and her pink thoughts and her warm
body and her warm thoughts as a young miss. But so far God had made no sign and
said no word, but nobody knew this except Old Lady.

 
          
“Ready?”
she asked Charlie, who crouched cross-kneed, wrapping his pretty legs in long
goose-pimpled arms, his mouth open, making teeth. “Ready,” he whispered,
shivering.

 
          
“There!”
She plunged the needle deep in the bat’s right eye. “So!”

 
          
“Oh!”
screamed Charlie, wadding up his face.

 
          
“Now
I wrap it in gingham, and here, put it in your pocket, keep it there, bat and
all. Go on!”

 
          
He
pocketed the charm.

 
          
“Charlie!”
she shrieked fearfully. “Charlie, where
are
you? I can’t
see
you, child!”

 
          
“Here!”
he jumped so the light ran in red streaks up his body. “I’m here, Old Lady!” He
stared wildly at his arms, legs, chest, and toes. “I’m here!”

 
          
Her
eyes looked as if they were watching a thousand fireflies crisscrossing each
other in the wild night air.

 
          
“Charlie,
oh, you went
fast!
Quick as a
hummingbird! Oh, Charlie, come
back
to me!”

 
          
“But
I’m
here!
” he wailed.

 
          
“Where?”

 
          
“By
the fire, the fire! And—and I can see myself. I’m not invisible at all!”

 
          
Old
Lady rocked on her lean flanks. “Course
you
can see
you!
Every invisible person
knows himself. Otherwise, how could you eat, walk, or get around places?
Charlie, touch me. Touch me so I
know
you.”

 
          
Uneasily
he put out a hand.

 
          
She
pretended to jerk, startled, at his touch. “
Ah!
”

 
          
“You
mean to say you can’t
find
me?” he
asked. “Truly?”

 
          
“Not
the least half rump of you!”

 
          
She
found a tree to stare at, and stared at it with shining eyes, careful not to
glance at him. “Why, I sure
did
a
trick
that
time!” She sighed with
wonder. “Whooeee. Quickest invisible I
ever
made! Charlie. Charlie, how you
feel?
”

 
          
“Like
creek water—all stirred.”

 
          
“You’ll
settle.”

 
          
Then
after a pause she added, “Well, what you going to do now, Charlie, since you’re
invisible?”

 
          
All
sorts of things shot through his brain, she could tell. Adventures stood up and
danced like fire in his eyes, and his mouth, just hanging, told what it meant
to be a boy who imagined himself like the mountain winds. In a cold dream he
said, “I’ll run across wheat fields, climb snow mountains, steal white chickens
off’n farms. I’ll kick pink pigs when they ain’t looking. I’ll pinch pretty
girls’ legs when they sleep, snap their garters in schoolrooms.” Charlie looked
at Old Lady, and from the shiny tips of her eyes she saw something wicked shape
his face. “And other things I’ll do, I’ll do, I will,” he said.

 
          
“Don’t
try nothing on me,” warned Old Lady. “I’m brittle as spring ice and I don’t
take handling.” Then: “What about your folks?”

 
          
“My
folks?”

 
          
“You
can’t fetch yourself home looking like that. Scare the inside ribbons out of
them. Your mother’d faint straight back like timber falling. Think they want
you about the house to stumble over and your ma have to call you every three
minutes, even though you’re in the room next her elbow?”

 
          
Charlie
had not considered it. He sort of simmered down and whispered out a little
“Gosh,” and felt of his long bones carefully.

 
          
“You’ll
be mighty lonesome. People looking through you like a water glass, people
knocking you aside because they didn’t reckon you to be underfoot. And women,
Charlie,
women
—”

 
          
He
swallowed. “What about women?”

 
          
“No
woman will be giving you a second stare. And no woman wants to be kissed by a
boy’s mouth they can’t even
find!
”

 
          
Charlie
dug his bare toe in the soil contemplatively. He pouted. “Well, I’ll stay
invisible, anyway, for a spell. I’ll have me some fun. I’ll just be pretty careful,
is all. I’ll stay out from in front of wagons and horses and Pa. Pa shoots at
the nariest sound.” Charlie blinked. “Why, with me invisible, someday Pa might
just up and fill me with buckshot, thinkin’ I was a hill squirrel in the
dooryard. Oh …”