Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (28 page)

 
          
“She’s
singing now,” I cried.

 
          
“You’re
not telling the truth!”

 
          
“Dad,”
I said. “She’s out there and she’ll be dead soon if you don’t listen to me.
She’s out there, singing, and this is what she’s singing.” I hummed the tune. I
sang a few of the words. “I loved you fair, I loved you well …”

 
          
Dad’s
face grew pale. He came and took my arm.

 
          
“What
did you say?” he said.

 
          
I
sang it again, “I loved you fair, I loved you well.”

 
          
“Where
did you
hear
that song?” he shouted.

 
          
“Out
in the empty lot, just now.”

 
          
“But
that’s
Helen’s
song, the one she
wrote, years ago, for
me!
” cried
Father. “You
can’t
know it.
Nobody
knew it, except Helen and me. I
never sang it to anyone, not you or anyone.”

 
          
“Sure,”
I said.

 
          
“Oh,
my God!” cried Father and ran out the door to get a shovel. The last I saw of
him he was in the empty lot, digging, and lots of other people with him,
digging.

 
          
I
felt so happy I wanted to cry.

 
          
I
dialed a number on the phone and when Dippy answered I said, “Hi, Dippy.
Everything’s fine. Everything’s worked out keen. The Screaming Woman isn’t
screaming any more.”

 
          
“Swell,”
said Dippy.

 
          
“I’ll
meet you in the empty lot with a shovel in two minutes,” I said.

 
          
“Last
one there’s a monkey! So long!” cried Dippy.

 
          
“So
long, Dippy!” I said, and ran.

 
          
I
n the town square the queue had formed
at five in the morning while cocks were crowing far out in the rimed country
and there were no fires. All about, among the ruined buildings, bits of mist
had clung at first, but now with the new light of seven o’clock it was
beginning to disperse. Down the road, in twos and threes, more people were
gathering in for the day of marketing, the day of festival.

 
          
The
small boy stood immediately behind two men who had been talking loudly in the
clear air, and all of the sounds they made seemed twice as loud because of the
cold. The small boy stomped his feet and blew on his red, chapped hands, and
looked up at the soiled gunny sack clothing of the men and down the long line
of men and women ahead.

 
          
“Here,
boy, what’re you doing out so early?” said the man behind him.

 
          
“Got
my place in line, I have,” said the boy.

 
          
“Whyn’t
you run off, give your place to someone who appreciates?”

 
          
“Leave
the boy alone,” said the man ahead, suddenly turning.

 
          
“I
was joking.” The man behind put his hand on the boy’s head. The boy shook it
away coldly. “I just thought it strange, a boy out of bed so early.”

 
          
“This
boy’s an appreciator of arts, I’ll have you know,” said the boy’s defender, a
man named Grigsby. “What’s your name, lad?”

 
          
“Tom.”

 
          
“Tom
here is going to spit clean and true, right, Tom?”

 
          
“I
sure am!”

 
          
Laughter
passed down the line.

 
          
A
man was selling cracked cups of hot coffee up ahead. Tom looked and saw the
little hot fire and the brew bubbling in a rusty pan. It wasn’t really coffee.
It was made from some berry that grew on the meadowlands beyond town, and it
sold a penny a cup to warm their stomachs; but not many were buying, not many
had the wealth.

 
          
Tom
stared ahead to the place where the line ended, beyond a bombed-out stone wall.

 
          
“They
say she
smiles
,” said the boy.

 
          
“Aye,
she does,” said Grigsby.

 
          
“They
say she’s made of oil and canvas.”

 
          
“True.
And that’s what makes me think she’s not the original one. The original, now,
I’ve heard, was painted on wood a long time ago.”

 
          
“They
say she’s four centuries old.”

 
          
“Maybe
more. No one knows what year this is, to be sure.”

 
          
“It’s
2061!”

 
          
“That’s
what they say, boy, yes. Liars. Could be 3000 or 5000, for all we know. Things
were in a fearful mess there for a while. All we got now is bits and pieces.”

 
          
They
shuffled along the cold stones of the street.

 
          
“How
much longer before we see her?” asked Tom uneasily.

 
          
“Just
a few more minutes. They got her set up with four brass poles and velvet rope,
all fancy, to keep folks back. Now mind, no rocks, Tom; they don’t allow rocks
thrown at her.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.”

 
          
The
sun rose higher in the heavens, bringing heat which made the men shed their
grimy coats and greasy hats.

 
          
“Why’re
we all here in line?” asked Tom at last. “Why’re we all here to spit?”

 
          
Grigsby
did not glance down at him, but judged the sun. “Well, Tom, there’s lots of
reasons.” He reached absently for a pocket that was long gone, for a cigarette
that wasn’t there. Tom had seen the gesture a million times. “Tom, it has to do
with hate. Hate for everything in the past. I ask you, Tom, how did we get in
such a state, cities all junk, roads like jigsaws from bombs, and half the
cornfields glowing with radioactivity at night? Ain’t that a lousy stew, I ask
you?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir, I guess so.”

 
          
“It’s
this way, Tom. You hate whatever it was that got you all knocked down and ruined.
That’s human nature. Unthinking, maybe, but human nature anyway.”

 
          
“There’s
hardly nobody or nothing we don’t hate,” said Tom.

 
          
“Right!
The whole blooming kaboodle of them people in the past who run the world. So
here we are on a Thursday morning with our guts plastered to our spines, cold,
live in caves and such, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t nothing except have our
festivals, Tom, our festivals.”

 
          
And
Tom thought of the festivals in the past few years. The year they tore up all
the books in the square and burned them and everyone was drunk and laughing.
And the festival of science a month ago when they dragged in the last motorcar
and picked lots and each lucky man who won was allowed one smash of a
sledge-hammer at the car.

 
          
“Do
I remember
that
, Tom? Do I
remember?
Why, I got to smash the front
window, the window, you hear? My Lord, it made a lovely sound!
Crash!
”

 
          
Tom
could hear the glass fall in glittering heaps.

 
          
“And
Bill Henderson, he got to bash the engine. Oh, he did a smart job of it, with
great efficiency. Wham!

 
          
“But
best of all,” recalled Grigsby, “there was the time they smashed a factory that
was still trying to turn out airplanes.

 
          
“Lord,
did we feel good blowing it up!” said Grigsby. “And then we found that
newspaper plant and the munitions depot and exploded them together. Do you
understand, Tom?”

 
          
Tom
puzzled over it. “I guess.”

 
          
It
was high noon. Now the odors of the ruined city stank on the hot air and things
crawled among the tumbled buildings.

 
          
“Won’t
it ever come back, mister?”

 
          
“What,
civilization? Nobody wants it. Not me!”

 
          
“I
could stand a bit of it,” said the man behind another man. “There were a few
spots of beauty in it.”

 
          
“Don’t
worry your heads,” shouted Grigsby. “There’s no room for that, either.”

 
          
“Ah,”
said the man behind the man. “Someone’ll come along someday with imagination
and patch it up. Mark my words. Someone with a heart.”

 
          
“No,”
said Grigsby.

 
          
“I
say yes. Someone with a soul for pretty things. Might give us back a kind of
limited
sort of civilization, the kind
we could live in in peace.”

 
          
“First
thing you know there’s war!”

 
          
“But
maybe next time it’d be different.”

 
          
At
last they stood in the main square. A man on horseback was riding from the
distance into the town. He had a piece of paper in his hand. In the center of
the square was the roped-off area. Tom, Grigsby, and the others were collecting
their spittle and moving forward—moving forward prepared and ready, eyes wide.
Tom felt his heart beating very strongly and excitedly, and the earth was hot
under his bare feet.

 
          
“Here
we go, Tom, let fly!”

 
          
Four
policemen stood at the corners of the roped area, four men with bits of yellow
twine on their wrists to show their authority over other men. They were there
to prevent rocks being hurled.

 
          
“This
way,” said Grigsby at the last moment, “everyone feels he’s had his chance at
her, you see, Tom? Go on, now!”

 
          
Tom
stood before the painting and looked at it for a long time.

 
          
“Tom,
spit!”

 
          
His
mouth was dry.

 
          
“Get
on, Tom! Move!”

 
          
“But,”
said Tom, slowly, “she’s
beautiful!
”

 
          
“Here,
I’ll spit for you!” Grigsby spat and the missile flew in the sunlight. The
woman in the portrait smiled serenely, secretly, at Tom, and he looked back at
her, his heart beating, a kind of music in his ears.

 
          
“She’s
beautiful,” he said.

 
          
“Now
get on, before the police—”

 
          
“Attention!”

 
          
The
line fell silent. One moment they were berating Tom for not moving forward, now
they were turning to the man on horseback.

 
          
“What
do they call it, sir?” asked Tom, quietly.

 
          
“The
picture?
Mona Lisa
, Tom, I think.
Yes, the
Mona Lisa
.”

 
          
“I
have an announcement,” said the man on horseback. “The authorities have decreed
that as of high noon today the portrait in the square is to be given over into
the hands of the populace there, so they may participate in the destruction
of—”

 
          
Tom
hadn’t even time to scream before the crowd bore him, shouting and pummeling
about, stampeding toward the portrait. There was a sharp ripping sound. The
police ran to escape. The crowd was in full cry, their hands like so many
hungry birds pecking away at the portrait. Tom felt himself thrust almost
through the broken thing. Reaching out in blind imitation of the others, he
snatched a scrap of oily canvas, yanked, felt the canvas give, then fell, was
kicked, sent rolling to the outer rim of the mob. Bloody, his clothing torn, he
watched old women chew pieces of canvas, men break the frame, kick the ragged
cloth, and rip it into confetti.

 
          
Only
Tom stood apart, silent in the moving square. He looked down at his hand. It
clutched the piece of canvas close to his chest, hidden.

 
          
“Hey
there, Tom!” cried Grigsby.

 
          
Without
a word, sobbing, Tom ran. He ran out and down the bomb-pitted road, into a
field, across a shallow stream, not looking back, his hand clenched tightly,
tucked under his coat.

 
          
At
sunset he reached the small village and passed on through. By nine o’clock he
came to the ruined farm dwelling. Around back, in the half silo, in the part
that still remained upright, tented over, he heard the sounds of sleeping, the
family—his mother, father, and brother. He slipped quickly, silently, through
the small door and lay down, panting.

 
          
“Tom?”
called his mother in the dark.

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“Where’ve
you been?” snapped his father. “I’ll beat you in the morning.”

 
          
Someone
kicked him. His brother, who had been left behind to work their little patch of
ground.