Kitabı oku: «Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2», sayfa 2

‘There’s no charge on those peppermints,’ said the druggist, turning to shuffle some papers.

‘Well, I know what I’m going to do right now!’ Helen stalked out of the drugshop. ‘I’m calling a taxi to take us all home. I’ll be no part of a hunting party for you, Lavinia. That man was up to no good. Asking about you. You want to be dead in the ravine next?’

‘It was just a man,’ said Lavinia, turning in a slow circle to look at the town.

‘So is Frank Dillon a man, but maybe he’s the Lonely One.’

Francine hadn’t come out with them, they noticed, and turning, they found her arriving. ‘I made him give me a description – the druggist. I made him tell what the man looked like. A stranger,’ she said, ‘in a dark suit. Sort of pale and thin.’

‘We’re all overwrought,’ said Lavinia. ‘I simply won’t take a taxi if you get one. If I’m the next victim, let me be the next. There’s all too little excitement in life, especially for a maiden lady thirty-three years old, so don’t you mind if I enjoy it. Anyway it’s silly; I’m not beautiful.’

‘Oh, but you are, Lavinia; you’re the loveliest lady in town, now that Elizabeth is—’ Francine stopped. ‘You keep men off at a distance. If you’d only relax, you’d been married years ago!’

‘Stop sniveling, Francine! Here’s the theater box office, I’m paying forty-one cents to see Charlie Chaplin. If you two want a taxi, go on. I’ll sit alone and go home alone.’

‘Lavinia, you’re crazy; we can’t let you do that—’

They entered the theater.

The first showing was over, intermission was on, and the dim auditorium was sparsely populated. The three ladies sat halfway down front, in the smell of ancient brass polish, and watched the manager step through the worn red velvet curtains to make an announcement.

‘The police have asked us to close early tonight so everyone can be out at a decent hour. Therefore we are cutting our short subjects and running our feature again immediately. The show will be over at eleven. Everyone is advised to go straight home. Don’t linger on the streets.’

‘That means us, Lavinia!’ whispered Francine.

The lights went out. The screen leaped to life.

‘Lavinia,’ whispered Helen.

‘What?’

‘As we came in, a man in a dark suit, across the street, crossed over. He just walked down the aisle and is sitting in the row behind us.’

‘Oh, Helen!’

‘Right behind us?’

One by one the three women turned to look.

They saw a white face there, flickering with unholy light from the silver screen. It seemed to be all men’s faces hovering there in the dark.

‘I’m going to get the manager!’ Helen was gone up the aisle. ‘Stop the film! Lights!’

‘Helen, come back!’ cried Lavinia, rising.

They tapped their empty soda glasses down, each with a vanilla mustache on their upper lip, which they found with their tongues, laughing.

‘You see how silly?’ said Lavinia. ‘All that riot for nothing. How embarrassing.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Helen faintly.

The clock said eleven-thirty now. They had come out of the dark theater, away from the fluttering rush of men and women hurrying everywhere, nowhere, on the street while laughing at Helen. Helen was trying to laugh at herself.

‘Helen, when you ran up that aisle crying, “Lights!” I thought I’d die! That poor man!’

‘The theater manager’s brother from Racine!’

‘I apologized,’ said Helen, looking up at the great fan still whirling, whirling the warm late night air, stirring, restirring the smells of vanilla, raspberry, peppermint and Lysol.

‘We shouldn’t have stopped for these sodas. The police warned—’

‘Oh, bosh the police,’ laughed Lavinia. ‘I’m not afraid of anything. The Lonely One is a million miles away now. He won’t be back for weeks and the police’ll get him then, just wait. Wasn’t the film wonderful?’

‘Closing up, ladies.’ The druggist switched off the lights in the cool white-tiled silence.

Outside, the streets were swept clean and empty of cars or trucks or people. Bright lights still burned in the small store windows where the warm wax dummies lifted pink wax hands fired with blue-white diamond rings, or flourished orange wax legs to reveal hosiery. The hot blue-glass eyes of the mannequins watched as the ladies drifted down the empty river bottom street, their images shimmering in the windows like blossoms seen under darkly moving waters.

‘Do you suppose if we screamed they’d do anything?’

‘Who?’

‘The dummies, the window people.’

‘Oh, Francine.’

‘Well …’

There were a thousand people in the windows, stiff and silent, and three people on the street, the echoes following like gunshots from store fronts across the way when they tapped their heels on the baked pavement.

A red neon sign flickered dimly, buzzed like a dying insect, as they passed.

Baked and white, the long avenues lay ahead. Blowing and tall in a wind that touched only their leafy summits, the trees stood on either side of the three small women. Seen from the courthouse peak, they appeared like three thistles far away.

‘First, we’ll walk you home, Francine.’

‘No, I’ll walk you home.’

‘Don’t be silly. You live way out at Electric Park. If you walked me home you’d have to come back across the ravine alone, yourself. And if so much as a leaf fell on you, you’d drop dead.’

Francine said, ‘I can stay the night at your house. You’re the pretty one!’

And so they walked, they drifted like three prim clothes forms over a moonlit sea of lawn and concrete, Lavinia watching the black trees flit by each side of her, listening to the voices of her friends murmuring, trying to laugh; and the night seemed to quicken, they seemed to run while walking slowly, everything seemed fast and the color of hot snow.

‘Let’s sing,’ said Lavinia.

They sang, ‘Shine On, Shine On, Harvest Moon …’

They sang sweetly and quietly, arm in arm, not looking back. They felt the hot sidewalk cooling underfoot, moving, moving.

‘Listen!’ said Lavinia.

They listened to the summer night. The summer-night crickets and the far-off tone of the courthouse clock making it eleven forty-five.

‘Listen!’

Lavinia listened. A porch swing creaked in the dark and there was Mr Terle, not saying anything to anybody, alone on his swing, having a last cigar. They saw the pink ash swinging gently to and fro.

Now the lights were going, going, gone. The little house lights and big house lights and yellow lights and green hurricane lights, the candles and oil lamps and porch lights, and everything felt locked up in brass and iron and steel, everything, thought Lavinia, is boxed and locked and wrapped and shaded. She imagined the people in their moonlit beds. And their breathing in the summer-night rooms, safe and together. And here we are, thought Lavinia, our footsteps on along the baked summer evening sidewalk. And above us the lonely street lights shining down, making a drunken shadow.

‘Here’s your house, Francine. Good night.’

‘Lavinia, Helen, stay here tonight. It’s late, almost midnight now. You can sleep in the parlor. I’ll make hot chocolate – it’ll be such fun!’ Francine was holding them both now, close to her.

‘No, thanks,’ said Lavinia.

And Francine began to cry.

‘Oh, not again, Francine,’ said Lavinia.

‘I don’t want you dead,’ sobbed Francine, the tears running straight down her cheeks. ‘You’re so fine and nice, I want you alive. Please, oh, please!’

‘Francine, I didn’t know how much this has done to you. I promise I’ll phone when I get home.’

‘Oh, will you?’

‘And tell you I’m safe, yes. And tomorrow we’ll have a picnic lunch at Electric Park. With ham sandwiches I’ll make myself, how’s that? You’ll see, I’ll live forever!’

‘You’ll phone, then?’

‘I promised, didn’t I?’

‘Good night, good night!’ Rushing upstairs, Francine whisked behind a door, which slammed to be snap-bolted tight on the instant.

‘Now,’ said Lavinia to Helen, ‘I’ll walk you home.’

The courthouse clock struck the hour. The sounds blew across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been. Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound faded.

‘Nine, ten, eleven, twelve,’ counted Lavinia, with Helen on her arm.

‘Don’t you feel funny?’ asked Helen.

‘How do you mean?’

‘When you think of us being out here on the sidewalks, under the trees, and all those people safe behind locked doors, lying in their beds. We’re practically the only walking people out in the open in a thousand miles, I bet.’

The sound of the deep warm dark ravine came near.

In a minute they stood before Helen’s house, looking at each other for a long time. The wind blew the odor of cut grass between them. The moon was sinking in a sky that was beginning to cloud. ‘I don’t suppose it’s any use asking you to stay, Lavinia?’

‘I’ll be going on.’

‘Sometimes—’

‘Sometimes what?’

‘Sometimes I think people want to die. You’ve acted odd all evening.’

‘I’m just not afraid,’ said Lavinia. ‘And I’m curious, I suppose. And I’m using my head. Logically, the Lonely One can’t be around. The police and all.’

‘The police are home with their covers up over their ears.’

‘Let’s just say I’m enjoying myself, precariously, but safely. If there was any real chance of anything happening to me, I’d stay here with you, you can be sure of that.’

‘Maybe part of you doesn’t want to live anymore.’

‘You and Francine. Honestly!’

‘I feel so guilty. I’ll be drinking some hot cocoa just as you reach the ravine bottom and walk on the bridge.’

‘Drink a cup for me. Good night.’

Lavinia Nebbs walked alone down the midnight street, down the late summer-night silence. She saw houses with the dark windows and far away she heard a dog barking. In five minutes, she thought, I’ll be safe at home. In five minutes I’ll be phoning silly little Francine. I’ll—’

She heard the man’s voice.

A man’s voice singing far away among the trees.

‘Oh, give me a June night, the moonlight and you …’

She walked a little faster.

The voice sang, ‘In my arms … with all your charms …’

Down the street in the dim moonlight a man walked slowly and casually along.

I can run knock on one of these doors, thought Lavinia, if I must.

‘Oh, give me a June night,’ sang the man, and he carried a long club in his hand. ‘The moonlight and you. Well, look who’s here! What a time of night for you to be out, Miss Nebbs!’

‘Officer Kennedy!’

And that’s who it was, of course.

‘I’d better see you home!’

‘Thanks, I’ll make it.’

‘But you live across the ravine.…’

Yes, she thought, but I won’t walk through the ravine with any man, not even an officer. How do I know who the Lonely One is? ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ll hurry.’

‘I’ll wait right here,’ he said. ‘If you need any help, give a yell. Voices carry good here. I’ll come running.’

‘Thank you.’

She went on, leaving him under a light, humming to himself, alone.

Here I am, she thought.

The ravine.

She stood on the edge of the one hundred and thirteen steps that went down the steep hill and then across the bridge seventy yards and up the hills leading to Park Street. And only one lantern to see by. Three minutes from now, she thought, I’ll be putting my key in my house door. Nothing can happen in just one hundred eighty seconds.

She started down the long dark-green steps into the deep ravine.

‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten steps,’ she counted in a whisper.

She felt she was running, but she was not running.

‘Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty steps,’ she breathed.

‘One fifth of the way!’ she announced to herself.

The ravine was deep, black and black, black! And the world was gone behind, the world of safe people in bed, the locked doors, the town, the drugstore, the theater, the lights, everything was gone. Only the ravine existed and lived, black and huge, about her.

‘Nothing’s happened, has it? No one around, is there? Twenty-four, twenty-five steps. Remember that old ghost story you told each other when you were children?’

She listened to her shoes on the steps.

‘The story about the dark man coming in your house and you upstairs in bed. And now he’s at the first step coming up to your room. And now he’s at the second step. And now he’s at the third step and the fourth step and the fifth! Oh, how you used to laugh and scream at that story! And now the horrid dark man’s at the twelfth step and now he’s opening the door of your room and now he’s standing by your bed. “I GOT YOU!”’

She screamed. It was like nothing she’d ever heard, that scream. She had never screamed that loud in her life. She stopped, she froze, she clung to the wooden banister. Her heart exploded in her. The sound of the terrified beating filled the universe.

‘There, there!’ she screamed to herself. ‘At the bottom of the steps. A man, under the light! No, now he’s gone! He was waiting there!’

She listened.

Silence.

The bridge was empty.

Nothing, she thought, holding her heart. Nothing. Fool! That story I told myself. How silly. What shall I do?

Her heartbeats faded.

Shall I call the officer – did he hear me scream?

She listened. Nothing. Nothing.

I’ll go the rest of the way. That silly story.

She began again, counting the steps.

‘Thirty-five, thirty-six, careful, don’t fall. Oh, I am a fool. Thirty-seven steps, thirty-eight, nine and forty, and two makes forty-two – almost halfway.’

She froze again.

Wait, she told herself.

She took a step. There was an echo.

She took another step.

Another echo. Another step, just a fraction of a moment later.

‘Someone’s following me,’ she whispered to the ravine, to the black crickets and dark-green hidden frogs and the black stream. ‘Someone’s on the steps behind me. I don’t dare turn around.’

Another step, another echo.

‘Every time I take a step, they take one.’

A step and an echo.

Weakly she asked of the ravine, ‘Officer Kennedy, is that you?’

The crickets were still.

The crickets were listening. The night was listening to her. For a change, all of the far summer-night meadows and close summer-night trees were suspending motion; leaf, shrub, star, and meadow grass ceased their particular tremors and were listening to Lavinia Nebbs’s heart. And perhaps a thousand miles away, across locomotive-lonely country, in an empty way station, a single traveler reading a dim newspaper under a solitary naked bulb, might raise up his head, listen, and think, What’s that? and decide, Only a woodchuck, surely, beating on a hollow log. But it was Lavinia Nebbs, it was most surely the heart of Lavinia Nebbs.

Silence. A summer-night silence which lay for a thousand miles, which covered the earth like a white and shadowy sea.

Faster, faster! She went down the steps.

Run!

She heard music. In a mad way, in a silly way, she heard the great surge of music that pounded at her, and she realized as she ran, as she ran in panic and terror, that some part of her mind was dramatizing, borrowing from the turbulent musical score of some private drama, and the music was rushing and pushing her now, higher and higher, faster, faster, plummeting and scurrying, down, and down into the pit of the ravine.

Only a little way, she prayed. One hundred eight, nine, one hundred ten steps! The bottom! Now, run! Across the bridge!

She told her legs what to do, her arms, her body, her terror; she advised all parts of herself in this white and terrible moment, over the roaring creek waters, on the hollow, thudding, swaying almost alive, resilient bridge planks she ran, followed by the wild footsteps behind, behind, with the music following, too, the music shrieking and babbling.

He’s following, don’t turn, don’t look, if you see him, you’ll not be able to move, you’ll be so frightened. Just run, run!

She ran across the bridge.

Oh, God, God, please, please let me get up the hill! Now up the path, now between the hills, oh God, it’s dark, and everything so far away. If I screamed now it wouldn’t help; I can’t scream anyway. Here’s the top of the path, here’s the street, oh, God, please let me be safe, if I get home safe I’ll never go out alone; I was a fool, let me admit it, I was a fool, I didn’t know what terror was, but if you let me get home from this I’ll never go without Helen or Francine again! Here’s the street. Across the street!

She crossed the street and rushed up the sidewalk.

Oh God, the porch! My house! Oh God, please give me time to get inside and lock the door and I’ll be safe!

And there – silly thing to notice – why did she notice, instantly, no time, no time – but there it was anyway, flashing by – there on the porch rail, the half-filled glass of lemonade she had abandoned a long time, a year, half an evening ago! The lemonade glass sitting calmly, imperturbably there on the rail … and …

She heard her clumsy feet on the porch and listened and felt her hands scrabbling and ripping at the lock with the key. She heard her heart. She heard her inner voice screaming.

The key fit.

Unlock the door, quick, quick!

The door opened.

Now, inside. Slam it!

She slammed the door.

‘Now lock it, bar it, lock it!’ she gasped wretchedly.

‘Lock it, tight, tight!’

The door was locked and bolted tight.

The music stopped. She listened to her heart again and the sound of it diminishing into silence.

Home! Oh God, safe at home! Safe, safe and safe at home! She slumped against the door. Safe, safe. Listen. Not a sound. Safe, safe, oh thank God, safe at home. I’ll never go out at night again. I’ll stay home. I won’t go over that ravine again ever. Safe, oh safe, safe home, so good, so good, safe! Safe inside, the door locked. Wait.

Look out the window.

She looked.

Why, there’s no one there at all! Nobody. There was nobody following me at all. Nobody running after me. She got her breath and almost laughed at herself. It stands to reason. If a man had been following me, he’d have caught me! I’m not a fast runner.… There’s no one on the porch or in the yard. How silly of me. I wasn’t running from anything. That ravine’s as safe as anyplace. Just the same, it’s nice to be home. Home’s the really good warm place, the only place to be.

She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘What, what?’

Behind her in the living room, someone cleared his throat.

The Rocket

Many nights Fiorello Bodoni would awaken to hear the rockets sighing in the dark sky. He would tiptoe from bed, certain that his kind wife was dreaming, to let himself out into the night air. For a few moments he would be free of the smells of old food in the small house by the river. For a silent moment he would let his heart soar alone into space, following the rockets.

Now, this very night, he stood half naked in the darkness, watching the fire fountains murmuring in the air. The rockets on their long wild way to Mars and Saturn and Venus!

‘Well, well, Bodoni.’

Bodoni started.

On a milk crate, by the silent river, sat an old man who also watched the rockets through the midnight hush.

‘Oh, it’s you, Bramante!’

‘Do you come out every night, Bodoni?’

‘Only for the air.’

‘So? I prefer the rockets myself,’ said old Bramante. ‘I was a boy when they started. Eighty years ago, and I’ve never been on one yet.’

‘I will ride up in one someday,’ said Bodoni.

‘Fool!’ cried Bramante. ‘You’ll never go. This is a rich man’s world.’ He shook his gray head, remembering. ‘When I was young they wrote it in fiery letters: THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE! Science, Comfort, and New Things for All! Ha! Eighty years. The Future becomes Now! Do we fly rockets? No! We live in shacks like our ancestors before us.’

‘Perhaps my sons—’ said Bodoni.

‘No, nor their sons!’ the old man shouted. ‘It’s the rich who have dreams and rockets!’

Bodoni hesitated. ‘Old man, I’ve saved three thousand dollars. It took me six years to save it. For my business, to invest in machinery. But every night for a month now I’ve been awake. I hear the rockets. I think. And tonight I’ve made up my mind. One of us will fly to Mars!’ His eyes were shining and dark.

‘Idiot,’ snapped Bramante. ‘How will you choose? Who will go? If you go, your wife will hate you, for you will be just a bit nearer God, in space. When you tell your amazing trip to her, over the years, won’t bitterness gnaw at her?’

‘No, no!’

‘Yes! And your children? Will their lives be filled with the memory of Papa, who flew to Mars while they stayed here? What a senseless task you will set your boys. They will think of the rocket all their lives. They will lie awake. They will be sick with wanting it. Just as you are sick now. They will want to die if they cannot go. Don’t set that goal, I warn you. Let them be content with being poor. Turn their eyes down to their hands and to your junkyard, not up to the stars.’

‘But—’

‘Suppose your wife went? How would you feel, knowing she had seen and you had not? She would become holy. You would think of throwing her in the river. No, Bodoni, buy a new wrecking machine, which you need, and pull your dreams apart with it, and smash them to pieces.’

The old man subsided, gazing at the river in which, drowned, images of rockets burned down the sky.

‘Good night,’ said Bodoni.

‘Sleep well,’ said the other.

When the toast jumped from its silver box, Bodoni almost screamed. The night had been sleepless. Among his nervous children, beside his mountainous wife, Bodoni had twisted and stared at nothing. Bramante was right. Better to invest the money. Why save it when only one of the family could ride the rocket, while the others remained to melt in frustration?

‘Fiorello, eat your toast,’ said his wife, Maria.

‘My throat is shriveled,’ said Bodoni.

The children rushed in, the three boys fighting over a toy rocket, the two girls carrying dolls which duplicated the inhabitants of Mars, Venus, and Neptune, green mannequins with three yellow eyes and twelve fingers.

‘I saw the Venus rocket!’ cried Paolo.

‘It took off, whoosh!’ hissed Antonello.

‘Children!’ shouted Bodoni, hands to his ears.

They stared at him. He seldom shouted.

Bodoni arose. ‘Listen, all of you,’ he said. ‘I have enough money to take one of us on the Mars rocket.’

Everyone yelled.

‘You understand?’ he asked. ‘Only one of us. Who?’

‘Me, me, me!’ cried the children.

‘You,’ said Maria.

‘You,’ said Bodoni to her.

They all fell silent.

The children reconsidered. ‘Let Lorenzo go – he’s oldest.’

‘Let Miriamne go – she’s a girl!’

‘Think what you would see,’ said Bodoni’s wife to him. But her eyes were strange. Her voice shook. ‘The meteors, like fish. The universe. The Moon. Someone should go who could tell it well on returning. You have a way with words.’

‘Nonsense. So have you,’ he objected.

Everyone trembled.

‘Here,’ said Bodoni unhappily. From a broom he broke straws of various lengths. ‘The short straw wins.’ He held out his tight fist. ‘Choose.’

Solemnly each took his turn.

‘Long straw.’

‘Long straw.’

Another.

‘Long straw.’

The children finished. The room was quiet.

Two straws remained. Bodoni felt his heart ache in him. ‘Now,’ he whispered. ‘Maria.’

She drew.

‘The short straw,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ sighed Lorenzo, half happy, half sad. ‘Mama goes to Mars.’

Bodoni tried to smile. ‘Congratulations. I will buy your ticket today.’

‘Wait, Fiorello—’

‘You can leave next week,’ he murmured.

She saw the sad eyes of her children upon her, with the smiles beneath their straight, large noses. She returned the straw slowly to her husband. ‘I cannot go to Mars.’

‘But why not?’

‘I will be busy with another child.’

‘What!’

She would not look at him. ‘It wouldn’t do for me to travel in my condition.’

He took her elbow. ‘Is this the truth?’

‘Draw again. Start over.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he said incredulously.

‘I didn’t remember.’

‘Maria, Maria,’ he whispered, patting her face. He turned to the children. ‘Draw again.’

Paolo immediately drew the short straw.

‘I go to Mars!’ He danced wildly. ‘Thank you, Father!’

The other children edged away. ‘That’s swell, Paolo.’

Paolo stopped smiling to examine his parents and his brothers and sisters. ‘I can go, can’t I?’ he asked uncertainly.

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ll like me when I come back?’

‘Of course.’

Paolo studied the precious broomstraw on his trembling hand and shook his head. He threw it away. ‘I forgot. School starts. I can’t go. Draw again.’

But no one would draw. A full sadness lay on them.

‘None of us will go,’ said Lorenzo.

‘That’s best,’ said Maria.

‘Bramante was right,’ said Bodoni.

With his breakfast curdled within him, Fiorello Bodoni worked in his junkyard, ripping metal, melting it, pouring out usable ingots. His equipment flaked apart; competition had kept him on the insane edge of poverty for twenty years.

It was a very bad morning.

In the afternoon a man entered the junkyard and called up to Bodoni on his wrecking machine. ‘Hey, Bodoni, I got some metal for you!’

‘What is it, Mr Mathews?’ asked Bodoni, listlessly.

‘A rocket ship. What’s wrong? Don’t you want it?’

‘Yes, yes!’ He seized the man’s arm, and stopped, bewildered.

‘Of course,’ said Mathews, ‘it’s only a mockup. You know. When they plan a rocket they build a full-scale model first, of aluminum. You might make a small profit boiling her down. Let you have her for two thousand—’

Bodoni dropped his hand. ‘I haven’t the money.’

‘Sorry. Thought I’d help you. Last time we talked you said how everyone outbid you on junk. Thought I’d slip this to you on the q.t. Well—’

‘I need new equipment. I saved money for that.’

‘I understand.’

‘If I bought your rocket, I wouldn’t even be able to melt it down. My aluminum furnace broke down last week—’

‘Sure.’

‘I couldn’t possibly use the rocket if I bought it from you.’

‘I know.’

Bodoni blinked and shut his eyes. He opened them and looked at Mr Mathews. ‘But I am a great fool. I will take my money from the bank and give it to you.’

‘But if you can’t melt the rocket down—’

‘Deliver it,’ said Bodoni.

‘All right, if you say so. Tonight?’

‘Tonight,’ said Bodoni, ‘would be fine. Yes, I would like to have a rocket ship tonight.’

There was a moon. The rocket was white and big in the junkyard. It held the whiteness of the moon and the blueness of the stars. Bodoni looked at it and loved all of it. He wanted to pet it and lie against it, pressing it with his cheek, telling it all the secret wants of his heart.

He stared up at it. ‘You are all mine,’ he said. ‘Even if you never move or spit fire, and just sit there and rust for fifty years, you are mine.’

The rocket smelled of time and distance. It was like walking into a clock. It was finished with Swiss delicacy. One might wear it on one’s watch fob. ‘I might even sleep here tonight,’ Bodoni whispered excitedly.

He sat in the pilot’s seat.

He touched a lever.

He hummed in his shut mouth, his eyes closed.

The humming grew louder, louder, higher, higher, wilder, stranger, more exhilarating, trembling in him and leaning him forward and pulling him and the ship in a roaring silence and in a kind of metal screaming, while his fists flew over the controls, and his shut eyes quivered, and the sound grew and grew until it was a fire, a strength, a lifting and a pushing of power that threatened to tear him in half. He gasped. He hummed again and again, and did not stop, for it could not be stopped, it could only go on, his eyes tighter, his heart furious. ‘Taking off!’ he screamed. The jolting concussion! The thunder! ‘The Moon!’ he cried, eyes blind, tight. ‘The meteors!’ The silent rush in volcanic light. ‘Mars. Oh, yes! Mars! Mars!’

He fell back, exhausted and panting. His shaking hands came loose of the controls and his head tilted wildly. He sat for a long time, breathing out and in, his heart slowing.

Slowly, slowly, he opened his eyes.

The junkyard was still there.

He sat motionless. He looked at the heaped piles of metal for a minute, his eyes never leaving them. Then, leaping up, he kicked the levers. ‘Take off, blast you!’

The ship was silent.

‘I’ll show you!’ he cried.

Out in the night air, stumbling, he started the fierce motor of his terrible wrecking machine and advanced upon the rocket. He maneuvered the massive weights into the moonlit sky. He readied his trembling hands to plunge the weights, to smash, to rip apart this insolently false dream, this silly thing for which he had paid his money, which would not move, which would not do his bidding. ‘I’ll teach you!’ he shouted.

But his hand stayed.

The silver rocket lay in the light of the Moon. And beyond the rocket stood the yellow lights of his home, a block away, burning warmly. He heard the family radio playing some distant music. He sat for half an hour considering the rocket and the house lights, and his eyes narrowed and grew wide. He stepped down from the wrecking machine and began to walk, and as he walked he began to laugh, and when he reached the back door of his house he took a deep breath and called, ‘Maria, Maria, start packing. We’re going to Mars!’

‘Oh!’

‘Ah!’

‘I can’t believe it!’

‘You will, you will.’

The children balanced in the windy yard, under the glowing rocket, not touching it yet. They started to cry.

Maria looked at her husband. ‘What have you done?’ she said. ‘Taken our money for this? It will never fly.’