The Stories of Ray Bradbury

‘Fiddlesticks, he’s too darned curious. If he doesn’t behave he’ll be locked up.’

  Martin looked at this woman as if she were a stranger. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t do that! How would I learn anything? How would I find things out if Dog didn’t tell me?’

  Mom’s voice was quieter. ‘Is that what he does—tell you things?’

  ‘There’s nothing I don’t know when he goes out and around and back, nothing I can’t find out from him!’

  They both sat looking at Dog and the dry strewings of mold and seed over the quilt.

  ‘Well, if he’ll just stop digging where he shouldn’t, he can run all he wants,’ said Mother.

  ‘Here, boy, here!’

  And Martin snapped a tin note to the dog’s collar:

  MY OWNER IS MARTIN SMITH—TEN YEARS OLD—

  SICK IN BED—VISITORS WELCOME.

  Dog barked. Mother opened the downstairs door and let him out.

  Martin sat listening.

  Far off and away you could hear Dog run in the quiet autumn rain that was falling now. You could hear the barking-jingling fade, rise, fade again as he cut down alley, over lawn, to fetch back Mr Holloway and the oiled metallic smell of the delicate snowflake-interiored watches he repaired in his home shop. Or maybe he would bring Mr Jacobs, the grocer, whose clothes were rich with lettuce, celery, tomatoes, and the secret tinned and hidden smell of the red demons stamped on cans of deviled ham. Mr Jacobs and his unseen pink-meat devils waved often from the yard below. Or Dog brought Mr Jackson, Mrs Gillespie, Mr Smith, Mrs Holmes, any friend or near-friend, encountered, cornered, begged, worried, and at last shepherded home for lunch, or tea-and-biscuits.

  Now, listening, Martin heard Dog below, with footsteps moving in a light rain behind him. The downstairs bell rang, Mom opened the door, light voices murmured. Martin sat forward, face shining. The stair treads creaked. A young woman’s voice laughed quietly. Miss Haight, of course, his teacher from school!

  The bedroom door sprang open.

  Martin had company.

  Morning, afternoon, evening, dawn and dusk, sun and moon circled with Dog, who faithfully reported temperatures of turf and air, color of earth and tree, consistency of mist or rain, but—most important of all—brought back again and again and again—Miss Haight.

  On Saturday, Sunday and Monday she baked Martin orange-iced cupcakes, brought him library books about dinosaurs and cave men. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday somehow he beat her at dominoes, somehow she lost at checkers, and soon, she cried, he’d defeat her handsomely at chess. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday they talked and never stopped talking, and she was so young and laughing and handsome and her hair was a soft, shining brown like the season outside the window, and she walked clear, clean and quick, a heartbeat warm in the bitter afternoon when he heard it. Above all, she had the secret of signs, and could read and interpret Dog and the symbols she searched out and plucked forth from his coat with her miraculous fingers. Eyes shut, softly laughing, in a gypsy’s voice, she divined the world from the treasures in her hands.

  And on Monday afternoon, Miss Haight was dead.

  Martin sat up in bed, slowly.

  ‘Dead?’ he whispered.

  Dead, said his mother, yes, dead, killed in an auto accident a mile out of town. Dead, yes, dead, which meant cold to Martin, which meant silence and whiteness and winter come long before its time. Dead, silent, cold, white. The thoughts circled round, blew down, and settled in whispers.

  Martin held Dog, thinking; turned to the wall. The lady with the autumncolored hair. The lady with the laughter that was very gentle and never made fun and the eyes that watched your mouth to see everything you ever said. The-other-half-of-autumn-lady, who told what was left untold by Dog, about the world. The heartbeat at the still center of gray afternoon. The heartbeat fading…

  ‘Mom? What do they do in the graveyard, Mom, under the ground? Just lay there?’

  ‘Lie there.’

  ‘Lie there? Is that all they do? It doesn’t sound like much fun.’

  ‘For goodness sake, it’s not made out to be fun.’

  ‘Why don’t they jump up and run around once in a while if they get tired lying there? God’s pretty silly—’

  ‘Martin!’

  ‘Well, you’d think He’d treat people better than to tell them to lie still for keeps. That’s impossible. Nobody can do it! I tried once. Dog tries. I tell him. “Dead Dog!” He plays dead awhile, then gets sick and tired and wags his tail or opens one eye and looks at me, bored. Boy, I bet sometimes those graveyard people do the same, huh, Dog?’

  Dog barked.

  ‘Be still with that kind of talk!’ said Mother.

  Martin looked off into space.

  ‘Bet that’s exactly what they do,’ he said.

  Autumn burnt the trees bare and ran Dog still farther around, fording creek, prowling graveyard as was his custom, and back in the dusk to fire off volleys of barking that shook windows wherever he turned.

  In the late last days of October, Dog began to act as if the wind had changed and blew from a strange country. He stood quivering on the porch below. He whined, his eyes fixed at the empty land beyond town. He brought no visitors for Martin. He stood for hours each day, as if leashed, trembling, then shot away straight, as if someone had called. Each night he returned later, with no one following. Each night, Martin sank deeper and deeper in his pillow.

  ‘Well, people are busy,’ said Mother. ‘They haven’t time to notice the tag Dog carries. Or they mean to come visit, but forget.’

  But there was more to it than that. There was the fevered shining in Dog’s eyes, and his whimpering tic late at night, in some private dream. His shivering in the dark, under the bed. The way he sometimes stood half the night, looking at Martin as if some great and impossible secret was his and he knew no way to tell it save by savagely thumping his tail, or turning in endless circles, never to lie down, spinning and spinning again.

  On October thirtieth, Dog ran out and didn’t come back at all, even when after supper Martin heard his parents call and call. The hour grew late, the streets and sidewalks stood empty, the air moved cold about the house and there was nothing, nothing.

  Long after midnight, Martin lay watching the world beyond the cool, clear glass windows. Now there was not even autumn, for there was no Dog to fetch it in. There would be no winter, for who could bring the snow to melt in your hands? Father? Mother? No, not the same. They couldn’t play the game with its special secrets and rules, its sounds and pantomimes. No more seasons. No more time. The go-between, the emissary, was lost to the wild throngings of civilization, poisoned, stolen, hit by a car, left somewhere in a culvert…

  Sobbing, Martin turned his face to his pillow. The world was a picture under glass, untouchable. The world was dead.

  Martin twisted in bed and in three days the last Hallowe’en pumpkins were rotting in trash cans, papier-mâché skulls and witches were burnt on bonfires, and ghosts were stacked on shelves with other linens until next year.

  To Martin, Hallowe’en had been nothing more than one evening when tin horns cried off in the cold autumn stars, children blew like goblin leaves along the flinty walks, flinging their heads, or cabbages, at porches, soap-writing names or similar magic symbols on icy windows. All of it as distant, unfathomable, and nightmarish as a pupper show seen from so many miles away that there is no sound or meaning.

  For three days in November, Martin watched alternate light and shadow sift across his ceiling. The fire-pageant was over forever; autumn lay in cold ashes. Martin sank deeper, yet deeper in white marble layers of bed, motionless, listening always listening…

  Friday evening, his parents kissed him goodnight and walked out of the house into the hushed cathedral weather toward a motion-picture show. Miss Tarkin from next door stayed on in the parlor below until Martin called down he was sleepy, then took her knitting off home.

  In silence, Martin lay following the great move of stars down a clear and mo
onlit sky, remembering nights such as this when he’d spanned the town with Dog ahead, behind, around about, tracking the green-plush ravine, lapping slumbrous streams gone milky with the fullness of the moon, leaping cemetery tombstones while whispering the marble names; on, quickly on, through shaved meadows where the only motion was the off-on quivering of stars, to streets where shadows would not stand aside for you but crowded all the sidewalks for mile on mile. Run now run! chasing, being chased by bitter smoke, fog, mist, wind, ghost of mind, fright of memory; home, safe, sound, snug-warm, asleep…

  Nine o’clock.

  Chime. The drowsy clock in the deep stairwell below. Chime.

  Dog, come home, and run the world with you. Dog, bring a thistle with frost on it, or bring nothing else but the wind. Dog, where are you? Oh, listen, now, I’ll call.

  Martin held his breath.

  Way off somewhere—a sound.

  Martin rose up, trembling.

  There, again—the sound.

  So small a sound, like a sharp needle-point brushing the sky long miles and many miles away.

  The dreamy echo of a dog—barking.

  The sound of a dog crossing fields and farms, dirt roads and rabbit paths, running, running, letting out great barks of steam, cracking the night. The sound of a circling dog which came and went, lifted and faded, opened up, shut in, moved forward, went back, as if the animal were kept by someone on a fantastically long chain. As if the dog were running and someone whistled under the chestnut trees, in mold-shadow, tar-shadow, moon-shadow, walking, and the dog circled back and sprang out again toward home.

  Dog! Martin thought. Oh Dog, come home, boy! Listen, oh, listen, where you been? Come on, boy, make tracks!

  Five, ten, fifteen minutes; near, very near, the bark, the sound. Martin cried out, thrust his feet from the bed, leaned to the window. Dog! Listen, boy! Dog! Dog! He said it over and over. Dog! Dog! Wicked Dog, run off and gone all these days! Bad Dog, good Dog, home, boy, hurry, and bring what you can!

  Near now, near, up the street, barking, to knock clapboard housefronts with sound, whirl iron cocks on rooftops in the moon, firing off volleys—Dog! now at the door below…

  Martin shivered.

  Should he run—let Dog in, or wait for Mom and Dad? Wait? Oh, God, wait? But what if Dog ran off again? No, he’d go down, snatch the door wide, yell, grab Dog in, and run upstairs so fast, laughing, crying, holding tight, that…

  Dog stopped barking.

  Hey! Martin almost broke the window, jerking to it.

  Silence. As if someone had told Dog to hush now, hush, hush.

  A full minute passed. Martin clenched his fists.

  Below, a faint whimpering.

  Then, slowly, the downstairs front door opened. Someone was kind enough to have opened the door for Dog. Of course! Dog had brought Mr Jacobs or Mr Gillespie or Miss Tarkin, or…

  The downstairs door shut.

  Dog raced upstairs, whining, flung himself on the bed.

  ‘Dog, Dog, where’ve you been, what’ve you done! Dog, Dog!’

  And he crushed Dog hard and long to himself, weeping. Dog, Dog. He laughed and shouted. Dog! But after a moment he stopped laughing and crying, suddenly.

  He pulled back away. He held the animal and looked at him, eyes widening.

  The odor coming from Dog was different.

  It was a smell of strange earth. It was a smell of night within night, the smell of digging down deep in shadow through earth that had lain cheek by jowl with things that were long hidden and decayed. A stinking and rancid soil fell away in clods of dissolution from Dog’s muzzle and paws. He had dug deep. He had dug very deep indeed. That was it, wasn’t it? wasn’t it? wasn’t it!

  What kind of message was this from Dog? What could such a message mean? The stench—the ripe and awful cemetery earth.

  Dog was a bad dog, digging where he shouldn’t. Dog was a good dog, always making friends. Dog loved people. Dog brought them home.

  And now, moving up the dark hall stairs, at intervals, came the sound of feet, one foot dragged after the other, painfully, slowly, slowly, slowly.

  Dog shivered. A rain of strange night earth fell seething on the bed.

  Dog turned.

  The bedroom door whispered in.

  Martin had company.

  The Jar

  It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled, dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you. It went with the noiselessness of late night, and only the crickets chirping, the frogs sobbing off in the moist swampland. One of those things in a big jar that makes your stomach jump as it does when you see a preserved arm in a laboratory vat.

  Charlie stared back at it for a long time.

  A long time, his big, raw hands, hairy on the roofs of them, clenching the rope that kept back curious people. He had paid his dime and now he stared.

  It was getting late. The merry-go-round drowsed down to a lazy mechanical tinkle. Tent-peggers back of a canvas smoked and cursed over a poker game. Lights switched out, putting a summer gloom over the carnival. People streamed homeward in cliques and queues. Somewhere, a radio flared up, then cut, leaving the Louisiana sky wide and silent with stars.

  There was nothing in the world for Charlie but that pale thing sealed in its universe of serum. Charlie’s loose mouth hung open in a pink weal, teeth showing; his eyes were puzzled, admiring, wondering.

  Someone walked in the shadows behind him, small beside Charlie’s gaunt tallness. ‘Oh,’ said the shadow, coming into the light-bulb glare. ‘You still here, bud?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, like a man in his sleep.

  The carny-boss appreciated Charlie’s curiosity. He nodded at his old acquaintance in the jar. ‘Everybody likes it; in a peculiar kinda way, I mean.’

  Charlie rubbed his long jawbone. ‘You—uh—ever consider sellin’ it?’

  The carny-boss’s eyes dilated, then closed. He snorted. ‘Naw. It brings customers. They like seeing stuff like that. Sure.’

  Charlie made a disappointed, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well,’ considered the carny-boss, ‘If a guy had money, maybe—’

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘If a guy had—’ The carny-boss estimated, counting fingers, watching Charlie as he tacked it out one finger after another. ‘If a guy had three, four, say, maybe seven or eight—’

  Charlie nodded with each motion, expectantly. Seeing this, the carnyboss raised his total, ‘—maybe ten dollars or maybe fifteen—’

  Charlie scowled, worried. The carny-boss retreated. ‘Say a guy has twelve dollars—’

  Charlie grinned. ‘Why he could buy that thing in that jar,’ concluded the carny-boss.

  ‘Funny thing,’ said Charlie. ‘I got just twelve bucks in my denims. And I been reckoning how looked-up-to I’d be back down at Wilder’s Hollow if I brung home something like this to set on my shelf over the table. The folks would sure look up to me then, I bet.’

  ‘Well, now, listen here—,’ said the carny-boss

  The sale was completed with the jar put on the back seat of Charlie’s wagon. The horse skittered his hoofs when he saw the jar, and whinnied.

  The carny-boss glanced up with an expression of, almost, relief. ‘I was tired of seeing that damn thing around, anyway. Don’t thank me. Lately I been thinking things about it, funny things—but, hell, I’m a big-mouthed so-and-so. S’long, farmer!’

  Charlie drove off. The naked blue light bulbs withdrew like dying stars, the open, dark country night of Louisiana swept in around wagon and horse. There was just Charlie, the horse timing his gray hoofs, and the crickets.

  And the jar behind the high seat.

  It sloshed back and forth, back and forth. Sloshed wet. And the cold gray thing drowsily slumped against the glass, looking out, looking out, but seeing nothing, nothing.

  Char
lie leaned back to pet the lid. Smelling of strange liquor his hand returned, changed and cold and trembling, excited. Yes, sir! he thought to himself, Yes, sir!

  Slosh, slosh, slosh…

  In the Hollow, numerous grass-green and blood-red lanterns tossed dusty light over men huddled, murmuring, spitting, sitting on General Store property.

  They knew the creak-bumble of Charlie’s wagon and did not shift their raw, drab-haired skulls as he rocked to a halt. Their cigars were glowworms, their voices were frog mutterings on summer nights.

  Charlie leaned down eagerly, ‘Hi, Clem! Hi, Milt!’

  ‘’Lo, Charlie. ’Lo, Charlie,’ they murmured. The political conflict continued. Charlie cut it down the seam:

  ‘I got somethin’ here. I got somethin’ you might wanna see!’

  Tom Carmody’s eyes glinted, green in the lamplight, from the General Store porch. It seemed to Charlie that Tom Carmody was forever installed under porches in shadow, or under trees in shadow, or if in a room, then in the farthest niche shining his eyes out at you from the dark. You never knew what his face was doing, and his eyes were always funning you. And every time they looked at you they laughed a different way.

  ‘You ain’t got nothin’ we wants to see, baby-doll.’

  Charlie made a fist and looked at it. ‘Somethin’ in a jar,’ he went on. ‘Looks kine a like a brain, kine a like a pickled jellyfish, kine a like—well, come see yourself!’

  Someone snicked a cigar into a fall of pink ash and ambled over to look. Charlie grandly elevated the jar lid, and in the uncertain lantern light the man’s face changed. ‘Hey, now, what in hell is this—?’

  It was the first thaw of the evening. Others shifted lazily upright, leaned forward; gravity pulled them into walking. They made no effort, except to put one shoe before the other to keep from collapsing upon their unusual faces. They circled the jar and contents. And Charlie, for the first time in his life, seized on some hidden strategy and crashed the glass lid shut.

  ‘You want to see more, drop aroun’ my house! It’ll be there,’ he declared, generously.