Farewell Summer. Ray Bradbury

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      Farewell Summer

      RAY BRADBURY

      With love to John Huff, alive many years after Dandelion Wine

      CONTENTS

       I

       Almost Antietam

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       II

       Shiloh and Beyond

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Chapter Thirty-Five

       III

       Appomattox

       Chapter Thirty-Six

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

       Afterword: The Importance of Being Startled

       About the Author

       Also by Ray Bradbury

       Copyright

       About The Publishers

       I.

Almost Antietam

       CHAPTER ONE

      There are those days which seem a taking in of breath which, held, suspends the whole earth in its waiting. Some summers refuse to end.

      So along the road those flowers spread that, when touched, give down a shower of autumn rust. By every path it looks as if a ruined circus had passed and loosed a trail of ancient iron at every turning of a wheel. The rust was laid out everywhere, strewn under trees and by riverbanks and near the tracks themselves where once a locomotive had gone but went no more. So flowered flakes and railroad track together turned to moulderings upon the rim of autumn.

      ‘Look, Doug,’ said Grandpa, driving into town from the farm. Behind them in the Kissel Kar were six large pumpkins picked fresh from the patch. ‘See those flowers?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Farewell summer, Doug. That’s the name of those flowers. Feel the air? August come back. Farewell summer.’

      ‘Boy,’ said Doug, ‘that’s a sad name.’

      Grandma stepped into her pantry and felt the wind blowing from the west. The yeast was rising in the bowl, a sumptuous head, the head of an alien rising from the yield of other years. She touched the swell beneath the muslin cap. It was the earth on the morn before the arrival of Adam. It was the morn after the marriage of Eve to that