Page 22 of Dandelion Wine


  He blinked. And the town winked out its lights, sleepily, here, there, as the courthouse clock struck ten, ten-thirty, eleven, and drowsy midnight.

  "The last ones now ... there ... there ..."

  He lay in his bed and the town slept around him and the ravine was dark and the lake was moving quietly on its shore and everyone, his family, his friends, the old people and the young, slept on one street or another, in one house or another, or slept in the far country churchyards.

  He shut his eyes.

  June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear....

  So thinking, he slept.

  And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.

  Books by Ray Bradbury

  Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines

  Bradbury Speaks

  Bradbury Stories

  The Cat's Pajamas

  Dandelion Wine

  Dark Carnival

  Death Is a Lonely Business

  Driving Blind

  Fahrenheit 451

  Farewell Summer

  From the Dust Returned

  The Golden Apples of the Sun

  A Graveyard for Lunatics

  Green Shadows, White Whale

  The Halloween Tree

  I Sing the Body Electric!

  The Illustrated Man

  Journey to Far Metaphor

  Kaleidoscope

  Let's All Kill Constance

  Long After Midnight

  The Machineries of Joy

  The Martian Chronicles

  A Medicine for Melancholy

  The October Country

  One More for the Road

  One Timeless Spring

  Quicker Than the Eye

  R Is for Rocket

  S Is for Space

  Something Wicked This Way Comes

  The Stories of Ray Bradbury

  The Toynbee Convector

  When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed

  Yestermorrow

  Zen in the Art of Writing

  Copyright

  Small portions of this book have appeared as follows: "Season of Sitting" in Charm, copyright 1951 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.; "A Story About Love" in McCalls's; "The Swan" in Cosmopolitan; "The Magical Kitchen" in Everywoman's.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book was previously published by Avon Books in 1999, reprinted by William Morrow in 2006.

  DANDELION WINE. Copyright (c) 1946, 1947, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957 by Ray Bradbury. Copyright (c) 1956,1957 by The Curtis Publishing Company. Introduction copyright (c) 1975 by Ray Bradbury. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

  HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-93914

  ISBN-13: 978-0-380-97726-0

  ISBN-10: 0-380-97726-5

  Epub Edition (c) May 2013 ISBN: 9780062242273

  10 QUM 20 19 18 17 16

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  Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

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