The last Labor Day fireworks were dying in the sky. Their light died in the lapis lazuli eyes of the mummy, which watched Colonel Stonesteel, even as did the boy, waiting.
“You want to know who he truly was, once upon a time?”
The colonel gathered a handful of dust in his lungs and softly let it forth.
“He was everyone, no one, someone.” A quiet pause. “You. Me.”
“Go on,” whispered Charlie.
Continue, said the mummy’s eyes.
“He was, he is,” murmured the colonel, “a bundle of old Sunday comic pages stashed in the attic to spontaneously combust from all those forgotten notions and stuns. He’s a stand of papyrus left in an autumn field long before Moses, a papier-mâché tumbleweed blown out of time, this way long-gone dusk, that way at come-again dawn... maybe a nightmare scrap of nicotine/dogtail flag up a pole high-noon, promising something, everything... a chart-map of Siam, Blue River Nile source, hot desert dust-devil, all the confetti of lost trolley transfers, dried-up yellow cross country road maps petering off in sand dunes, journey aborted, wild jaunts yet to night-dream and commence. His body?...Mmmm...made of...all the crushed flowers from brand new weddings, dreadful old funerals, ticker-tapes unraveled from gone-off-forever parades to Far Rockaway, punched tickets for sleepless Egyptian Pharaoh midnight trains. Written promises, worthless stocks, crumpled deeds. Circus posters—see there? Fart of his paper-wrapped ribcage? Fosters torn off seedbarns in North Storm, Ohio, shuttled south toward Fulfillment, Texas, or Promised Land, Calif-orn-I-aye! Commencement proclamations, wedding notices, birth announcements... all things that were once need, hope, first nickel in the pocket, framed dollar on the cafe wall. Wallpaper scorched by the burning look, the blueprint etched there by the hot eyes of boys, girls, foiled old men, time-orphaned women, saying: Tomorrow! Yes! It will happen! Tomorrow! Everything that died so many nights and was born again, glory human spirit, so many rare new daybreaks! All the dumb strange shadows you ever thought, boy, or I ever inked out inside my head at three a.m. All, crushed, stashed, and now shaped into one form under our hands and here in our gaze. That, that is what old King Pharaoh Seventh Dynasty Holy Dust Himself is.”
“Wow,” whispered Charlie.
The colonel sat back down to travel again in his rocker, eyes shut, smiling.
“Colonel.” Charlie gazed off into the future. “What if even in my old age, I don’t ever need my own particular mummy?”
“Eh?”
“What if I have a life chock full of things, never bored, find what I want to do, do it, make every day count, every night swell, sleep tight, wake up yelling, laugh lots, grow old still running fast, what then, colonel?”
“Why then, boy, you’ll be one of God’s luckiest people!”
“For you see, colonel.” Charlie looked at him with pure round, unblinking eyes. “I made up my mind. I’m going to be the greatest writer that ever lived.”
The colonel braked his rocker and searched the innocent fire in that small face.
“Lord, I see it. Yes. You will! Well, then Charles, when you are very old, you must find some lad, not as lucky as you, to give Osiris-Ra to. Your life may be full, but others, lost on the road, will need our Egyptian friend. Agreed? Agreed.”
The last fireworks were gone, the last fire balloons were sailing out among the gentle stars. Cars and people were driving or walking home, some fathers or mothers carrying their tired and already sleeping children. As the quiet parade passed Colonel Stonesteel’s porch, some folks glanced in and waved at the old man and the boy and the tall dim-shadowed servant who stood between. The night was over forever. Charlie said:
“Say some more, colonel.”
“No. I’m shut. Listen to what he has to say now. Let him tell your future, Charlie. Let him start you on stories. Ready...?”
A wind came up and blew in the dry papyrus and sifted the ancient wrappings and trembled the curious hands and softly twitched the lips of their old/new four-thousand-year nighttime visitor, whispering.
“What’s he saying, Charles?”
Charlie shut his eyes, waited, listened, nodded, let a single tear slide down his cheek, and at last said: “Everything. Just everything. Everything I always wanted to hear.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. His formal education ended there, but he furthered it by himself—at night in the library and by day at his typewriter. He sold newspapers on Los Angeles street comers from 1938 to 1942, a modest beginning for a man whose name would one day be synonymous with the best in science fiction. Ray Bradbury sold his first science fiction short story in 1941, and his early reputation is based on stories published in the budding science fiction magazines of that time. His work was chosen for best American short story collections in 1946, 1948 and 1952. His awards include The O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award in 1954 and The Aviation-Space Writer’s Association Award for best space article in an American magazine in 1967. Mr. Bradbury has written for television, radio, the theater and film, and he has been published in every major American magazine. Editions of his novels and shorter fiction span several continents and languages, and he has gained worldwide acceptance for his work. His tides include The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric, The Golden Apples of the Sun, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Illustrated Man, Long After Midnight, The Stories of Rayy Bradbury, Dinosaur Tales and The Toynbee Connector.
Table of Contents
The Toynbee Convector
Trapdoor
On the Orient, North
One Night in Your Life
West of October
The Last Circus
The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair
I Suppose You Are Wondering Why We Are Here?
Lafayette, Farewell
Banshee
Promises, Promises
The Love Affair
One for His Lordship, and One for the Road!
At Midnight, in the Month of June
Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned
By the Numbers!
A Touch of Petulance
Long Division
Come, and Bring Constance!
Junior
The Tombstone
The Thing at the Top of the Stairs
Colonel Stonesteel’s Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy
Ray Bradbury, The Toynbee Convector
(Series: # )
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