Farewell Summer. Ray Bradbury

down in the center of the ravine, the boys listened for that great stroke of wind to come again.

      They stood on the creek–bank making water in the cool sunlight and among them, preoccupied, stood Douglas. They all smiled as they spelled their names in the creek sand with the steaming lemon water. CHARLIE, wrote one. WILL, another. And then: BO, PETE, SAM, HENRY, RALPH, and TOM.

      Doug inscribed his initials with flourishes, took a deep breath, and added a postscript: WAR.

      Tom squinted at the sand. ‘What?’

      ‘War of course, dummy. War!’

      ‘Who’s the enemy?’

      Douglas Spaulding glanced up at the green slopes above their great and secret ravine.

      Instantly, like clockwork, in four ancient gray–flaked mansion houses, four old men, shaped from leaf–mold and yellowed dry wicker, showed their mummy faces from porches or in coffin–shaped windows.

      ‘Them,’ whispered Doug. ‘Oh, them!’

      Doug whirled and shrieked, ‘Charge!’

      ‘Who do we kill?’ said Tom.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      Above the green ravine, in a dry room at the top of an ancient house, old Braling leaned from a window like a thing from the attic, trembling. Below, the boys ran.

      ‘God,’ he cried. ‘Make them stop their damned laughing!’

      He clutched faintly at his chest as if he were a Swiss watchmaker concerned with keeping something running with that peculiar self–hypnosis he called prayer.

      ‘Beat, now; one, two!’

      Nights when he feared his heart might stop, he set a metronome ticking by his bed, so that his blood would continue to travel on toward dawn.

      Footsteps scraped, a cane tip tapped, on the downstairs porch. That would be old Calvin C. Quartermain come to argue school board policy in the husking wicker chairs. Braling half fell down the stairs, emerging onto the porch.

      ‘Quartermain!’

      Calvin C. Quartermain sat like a wild mechanical toy, oversized, rusty, in a reed easy chair.

      Braling laughed. ‘I made it!’

      ‘Not forever,’ Quartermain observed.

      ‘Hell,’ said Braling. ‘Some day they’ll bury you in a California dried–fruit tin. Christ, what’re those idiot boys up to?’

      ‘Horsing around. Listen!’

      ‘Bang!’

      Douglas ran by the porch.

      ‘Get off the lawn!’ cried Braling.

      Doug spun and aimed his cap–pistol.

      ‘Bang!’

      Braling, with a pale, wild look, cried, ‘Missed!’

      ‘Bang!’ Douglas jumped up the porch steps.

      He saw two panicked moons in Braling’s eyes.

      ‘Bang! Your arm!’

      ‘Who wants an arm?’ Braling snorted.

      ‘Bang! Your heart!’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Heart – bang!’

      ‘Steady … One, two!’ whispered the old man.

      ‘Bang!’

      ‘One, two!’ Braling called to his hands clutching his ribs. ‘Christ! Metronome!’

       ‘What?’

      ‘Metronome!’

      ‘Bang! You’re dead!’

      ‘One, two!’ Braling gasped.

      And dropped dead.

      Douglas, cap–gun in hand, slipped and fell back down the steps onto the dry grass.

       CHAPTER SIX

      The hours burned in cold white wintry flashes, as people scuttled in and out of Braling’s mansion, hoping against hope that he was Lazarus.

      Calvin C. Quartermain careened about Braling’s porch like the captain of a wrecked ship.

      ‘Damn! I saw the boy’s gun!’

      ‘There’s no bullet–hole,’ said Dr. Lieber, who’d been called.

      ‘Shot dead, he was! Dead!’

      The house grew silent as the people left, bearing away the husk that had been poor Braling. Calvin C. Quartermain abandoned the porch, mouth salivating.

      ‘I’ll find the killer, by God!’

      Propelling himself with his cane, he turned a corner.

      A cry, a concussion! ‘No, by God, no!’ He flailed at the air and fell.

      Some ladies rocking on the nearest porch leaned out. ‘Is that old Quartermain?’

      ‘Oh, he can’t be dead, too – can he?’

      Quartermain’s eyelids twitched.

      Far off, he saw a bike, and a boy racing away.

      Assassin, he thought. Assassin!

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      When Douglas walked, his mind ran, when he ran, his mind walked. The houses fell aside, the sky blazed.

      At the rim of the ravine, he threw his cap–pistol far out over the gulf. An avalanche buried it. The echoes died.

      Suddenly, he needed the gun again, to touch the shape of killing, like touching that wild old man.

      Launching himself down the side of the ravine, Doug scrambled among the weeds, eyes wet, until he found the weapon. It smelled of gunpowder, fire, and darkness.

      ‘Bang,’ he whispered, and climbed up to find his bike abandoned across the street from where old Braling had been killed. He led the bike away like a blind beast and at last got on and wobbled around the block, back toward the scene of awful death.

      Turning a corner, he heard ‘No!’ as his bike hit a nightmare scarecrow that was flung to the ground as he pumped off, wailing, staring back at one more murder strewn on the walk. Someone cried, ‘Is that old Quartermain?!’

      ‘Can’t be,’ Douglas moaned.

      Braling fell, Quartermain fell. Up, down, up, down, two thin hatchets sunk in hard porch and sidewalk, frozen, never to rise.

      Doug churned his bike through town. No mobs rushed after him.

      It seemed the town did not even know that someone had been shot, another struck. The town poured tea and murmured, ‘Pass the sugar.’

      Doug slam–braked at his front porch. Was his mother waiting in tears, his father wielding the razor strop …?

      He opened the kitchen door.

      ‘Hey. Long time no see.’ Mother kissed his brow. ‘They always come home when they’re hungry.’

      ‘Funny,’ said Doug. ‘I’m not hungry at all.’

       CHAPTER