Bradbury Stories (141 page)

Authors: Ray Bradbury

BOOK: Bradbury Stories

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That left only Mr. Britz and Mr. Jerrick, who lived upstairs across from Miss Welkes. You could hear them whistling idly at their mirrors, and through the open windows you could see them finger their ties.

Miss Welkes leaned over the porch geraniums to peer up at their windows, her heart pumping in her face, it seemed, making it heart-shaped and colorful. She was looking for the man who had left the gift.

And then Douglas smelled the odor. He almost fell from the tree.

Miss Welkes had tapped her ears and neck with drops of perfume, many, many bright drops of
Summer Night Odor
, 97 cents a bottle! And she was sitting where the warm wind might blow this scent to whoever stepped out upon the porch. This would be her way of saying, I got your gift!
Well?

“It was me, Miss Welkes!” screamed Douglas, silently, and hung in the tree, cold as ice.

“Good evening, Mr. Jerrick,” said Miss Welkes, half rising.

“Evening.” Mr. Jerrick sniffed in the doorway and looked at her. “Have a nice evening.” He went whistling down the steps.

That left only Mr. Britz, with his straw hat cocked over one eye, humming.

“Here I am,” said Miss Welkes, rising, certain that this must be the man, the last one in the house.

“There you are,” said Mr. Britz, blinking. “Hey, you smell good. I never knew you used scent.” He leered at her.

“Someone gave me a gift.”

“Well, that's fine.” And Mr. Britz did a little dance going down the porch steps, his cane jauntily flung over his shoulder. “See you later, Miss W.” He marched off.

Miss Welkes sat, and Douglas hung in the cooling tree. The kitchen sounds were fading. In a moment, Grandma would come out, bringing her pillow and a bottle of mosquito oil. Grandpa would cut the end off a long stogie and puff it to kill his own particular insects, and the aunts and uncles would arrive for the Independence Evening Event at the Spaulding House, the Festival of Fire, the shooting stars, the Roman Candles so diligently held by Grandpa, looking like Julius Caesar gone to flesh, standing with great dignity on the dark summer lawn, directing the setting off of fountains of red fire, and pinwheels of sizzle and smoke, while everyone, as if to the order of some celestial doctor, opened their mouths and said Ah! their faces burned into quick colors by blue, red, yellow, white flashes of sky bomb among the cloudy stars. The house windows would jingle with concussion. And Miss Welkes would sit among the strange people, the scent of perfume evaporating during the evening hours, until it was gone, and only the sad, wet smell of punk and sulfur would remain.

The children screamed by on the dim street now, calling for Douglas, but, hidden, he did not answer. He felt in his pocket for the remaining dollar and fifty cents. The children ran away into the night.

Douglas swung and dropped. He stood by the porch steps.

“Miss Welkes?”

She glanced up. “Yes?”

Now that the time had come he was afraid. Suppose she refused, suppose she was embarrassed and ran up to lock her door and never came out again?

“Tonight,” he said, “there's a swell show at the Elite Theater. Harold Lloyd in
WELCOME, DANGER
. The show starts at eight o'clock, and afterward we'll have a chocolate sundae at the Midnight Drug Store, open until eleven forty-five. I'll go change clothes.”

She looked down at him and didn't speak. Then she opened the door and went up the stairs.

“Miss Welkes!” he cried.

“It's all right,” she said. “Run and put your shoes on!”

It was seven thirty, the porch filling with people, when Douglas emerged, in his dark suit, with a blue tie, his hair wet with water, and his feet in the hot tight shoes.

“Why, Douglas!” the aunts and uncles and Grandma and Grandpa cried, “Aren't you staying for the fireworks?”

“No.” And he looked at the fireworks laid out so beautifully crisp and smelling of powder, the pinwheels and sky bombs, and the Fire Balloons, three of them, folded like moths in their tissue wings, those balloons he loved most dearly of all, for they were like a summer night dream going up quietly, breathlessly on the still high air, away and away to far lands, glowing and breathing light as long as you could see them. Yes, the Fire Balloons, those especially would he miss, while seated in the Elite Theater tonight.

There was a whisper, the screen door stood wide, and there was Miss Welkes.

“Good evening, Mr. Spaulding,” she said to Douglas.

“Good evening, Miss Welkes,” he said.

She was dressed in a gray suit no one had seen ever before, neat and fresh, with her hair up under a summer straw hat, and standing there in the dim porch light she was like the carved goddess on the great marble library clock come to life.

“Shall we go, Mr. Spaulding?” and Douglas walked her down the steps.

“Have a good time!” said everyone.

“Douglas!” called Grandfather.

“Yes, sir?”

“Douglas,” said Grandfather, after a pause, holding his cigar in his hand. “I'm saving one of the Fire Balloons. I'll be up when you come home. We'll light her together and send her up. How's that sound, eh?”

“Swell!” said Douglas.

“Good night, boy.” Grandpa waved him quietly on.

“Good night, sir.”

He took Miss Eleanora Welkes down the street, over the sidewalks of the summer evening, and they talked about Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier and Mr. Poe all the way to the Elite Theater .Â .Â .

About the Author

Tom Victor

The author of more than thirty books,
RAY BRADBURY
is one of the most celebrated fiction writers of our time. Among his best-known works are
Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine,
and
Something Wicked This Way Comes.
He has written for the theater and the cinema, including the screenplay for John Huston's classic film adaptation of
Moby-Dick
, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's
Ray Bradbury Theater
and won an Emmy for his teleplay of
The Halloween Tree
. In 2000, Bradbury was honored by the National Book Foundation with a medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He is the recipient of the 2004 National Medal of Arts, which is presented to those who have made extraordinary contributions to the arts in the United States. Among his most recent works are the novels
Let's All Kill Constance, From the Dust Returned
âselected as one of the Best Books of the Year by the
Los Angeles Times
âand
One More for the Road
, a new story collection. Bradbury lives in Los Angeles, California.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Also by Ray Bradbury

Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines

The Anthem Sprinters

A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers

Dandelion Wine

Dark Carnival

Death Is a Lonely Business

Driving Blind

Fahrenheit 451

From the Dust Returned

The Golden Apples of the Sun

A Graveyard for Lunatics

Green Shadows, White Whale

The Halloween Tree

The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope

I Sing the Body Electric!

The Illustrated Man

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

Quicker Than the Eye

R Is for Rocket

S Is for Space

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Stories of Ray Bradbury

Switch on the Night

They Have Not Seen the Stars

The Toynbee Convector

When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed

Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns

Witness and Celebrate

Yestermorrow

Zen in the Art of Writing

Credits

Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

Copyright

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2003 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

B
RADBURY STORIES
. Copyright Â© 2003 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 e-book 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 e-books.

F
IRST
P
ERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED
2005.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Bradbury, Ray

[Short stories. Selections]

Bradbury stories : 100 of h is most celebrated tales / Ray Bradbury.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-06-054242-X

EPub Edition JUNE 2013 ISBN 9780062302113

Â 1. Science fiction, American. 2. Fantasy fiction, American. I. Title.

PS3503.R167A6 2003

813â².54âdc21

2003042189

ISBN 0-06-054488-0 (pbk.)

05 06 07 08 09
/
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Additional Copyright Information

Copyright renewed 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2001 by Ray Bradbury.

“The Whole Town's Sleeping”â
McCalls
, September 1950.

“The Rocket” (“Outcast of the Stars”)â
Super Science Stories
, March 1950.

“Season of Disbelief”â
Colliers
, November 25, 1950.

“And the Rock Cried Out” (“The Millionth Murder”)â
Manhunt
, September 1953.

“The Drummer Boy of Shiloh”â
Saturday Evening Post
, April 30, 1960.

“The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge” (“The Beggar on the Dublin Bridge”)â
Saturday Evening Post
, June 14, 1961.

“The Flying Machine”â
Golden Apples of the Sun
, 1953.

“Heavy-Set”â
Playboy
, October 1964.

“The First Night of Lent”â
Playboy
, March 1956.

“Lafayette, Farewell”â
The Toynbee Convector
, 1988.

“Remember Sascha?”â
Quicker Than The Eye
, 1996.

“Junior”â
The Toynbee Convector
, 1988.