The Day it Rained Forever (30 page)

They moved through the deserted streets of the town and listened to the echoes of their walking feet.

‘And this morning?' said Carrie.

‘I'm coming to this morning,' he said. ‘Part of
me
wants to go home, too. But the other part says if we go, everything's lost. So I thought, what bothers us most? Some of the things we once had. Some of the boys' things, your things, mine. And I thought, if it takes an old thing to get a new thing started, by God, I'll use the old thing. I remember from history books that a thousand years ago they put charcoals in a hollowed-out cow-horn, blew on them during the day, so they carried their fire on marches from place to place, to start a fire every night from the sparks left over from morning. Always a new fire, but always something of the old in it. So I weighed and balanced it off. Is the Old worth all our money? I asked. No! It's only the things we
did
with the Old that have any worth. Well, then, is the New worth
all
our money? I asked. Do you feel like investing in the day after the middle of next week? Yes! I said. If I can fight this thing that makes us want to go back to Earth, I'd dip my money in kerosene and strike a match!'

Carrie and the two boys did not move. They stood on the street, looking at him as if he were a storm that had passed over and around, almost blowing them from the ground, a storm that was now dying away.

‘The freight rocket came in this morning,' he said, quietly. ‘Our delivery's on it. Let's go and pick it up.'

They walked slowly up the three steps into the rocket depot and across the echoing floor towards the freight room that was just sliding back its doors, opening for the day.

‘Tell us again about the salmon,' said one of the boys.

In the middle of the warm morning they drove out of town in a rented truck filled with great crates and boxes and parcels and packages, long ones, tall ones, short ones, flat ones, all numbered and neatly addressed to one William Prentiss, New Toledo, Mars.

‘Will,' said Carrie, over and over again. ‘Will.'

They stopped the truck by the quonset hut and the boys jumped down and helped their mother out. For a moment Will sat behind the wheel, and then slowly got out himself, to walk around and look into the back of the truck at the crates.

And by noon all but one of the boxes were opened and their contents placed on the sea-bottom where the family stood among them.

‘Carrie …'

And he led her up the old porch steps that now stood uncrated on the edge of town.

‘Listen to 'em, Carrie.'

The steps squeaked and whispered underfoot.

‘What do they say, tell me what they say?'

She stood on the ancient wooden steps, holding to herself, and could not tell him.

He waved his hand. ‘Front porch here, living-room there, dining-room, kitchen, three bedrooms. Part we'll build new, part we'll bring. Of course all we got here now is the front porch, some parlour furniture and the old bed.'

‘All that money, Will!'

He turned, smiling. ‘You're not mad, now, look at me! You're not mad. We'll bring it all up, next month, next year. The cut-glass vases, that Armenian carpet your mother gave us in 1961! Just
let
the sun explode!'

They looked at the other crates, numbered and lettered: Front-porch swing, front-porch wicker rocker, hanging Chinese crystals …

‘I'll blow them myself to make them ring.'

They set the front door on the top of the stairs, with its little panes of coloured glass, and Carrie looked through the strawberry window.

‘What do you see?'

But he knew what she saw, for he gazed through the coloured glass, too. And there was Mars, with its cold sky warmed and its dead seas fired with colour, with its hills like mounds of strawberry ice, and its sand like burning charcoals sifted by wind. The strawberry window, the strawberry window, breathed soft rose colours on the land and filled the mind and the eye with the light of a never-ending dawn. Bent there, looking through, he heard himself say:

‘The town'll be out this way in a year. This'll be a shade street, you'll have your porch, and you'll have friends. You won't need all this much, then. But starting right here, with this little bit that's familiar, watch it spread, watch Mars change so you'll know it as if you'd known it all your life.'

He ran down the steps to the last and as-yet unopened canvas-covered crate. With his pocket knife he cut a hole in the canvas. ‘Guess!' he said.

‘My kitchen stove? My furnace?'

‘Not in a million years.' He smiled very gently. ‘Sing me a song,' he said.

‘Will, you're clean off your head.'

‘Sing me a song worth all the money we had in the bank and now don't have, but who gives a blast in hell,' he said.

‘I don't know anything but "Genevieve, Sweet Genevieve"!'

‘Sing that,' he said.

But she could not open her mouth and start the song. He saw her lips move and try, but there was no sound.

He ripped the canvas wider and shoved his hand into the crate and touched around for a quiet moment, and started to sing the words himself until he moved his hand a last time and then a single clear piano chord sprang out on the morning air.

‘There,' he said. ‘Let's take it right on to the end. Everyone! Here's the harmony.'

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Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920–June 5, 2012) published some 500 short stories, novels, plays and poems since his first story appeared in Weird Tales when he was twenty years old. Among his many famous works are
Fahrenheit 451
,
The Illustrated Man
, and
The Martian Chronicles
.

FAHRENHEIT 451

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS

QUICKER THAN THE EYE

I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC

GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN

THE OCTOBER COUNTRY

FROM THE DUST RETURNED

DRIVING BLIND

GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALES

THE GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS

LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE

THE TOYNBEE CONVECTOR

LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT

THE MACHINERIES OF JOY

SUMMER MORNING, SUMMER NIGHT

S IS FOR SPACE

R IS FOR ROCKET

DARK CARNIVAL

THE HALLOWEEN TREE

THE HAUNTED COMPUTER AND THE ANDROID POPE

WHEN ELEPHANTS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED

WHERE ROBOT MICE AND ROBOT MEN RUN ROUND IN ROBOT TOWNS

SWITCH ON THE NIGHT

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