Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 by The Small Assassin (v2.1) Read Free Book Online Page B

man died of this, and that of that, and the third
from another thing, and the fourth was shot, and the fifth was stabbed and the
sixth fell straight down dead; and the seventh drank deep and died dead, and the
eighth died in love, and the ninth fell from his horse, and the tenth coughed
blood, and the eleventh stopped his heart, and the twelfth used to laugh much,
and the thirteenth was a dancing one, and the fourteenth was most beautiful of
all, the fifteenth had ten children and the sixteenth is one of those children
as is the seventeenth; and the eighteenth was Tomas and did well with his
guitar; the next three cut maize in their fields, had three lovers each; the
twenty-second was never loved; the twenty-third sold tortillas, patting and
shaping them each at the curb before the Opera House with her little charcoal
stove; and the twenty-fourth beat his wife and now she walks proudly in the
town and is merry with new men and here he stands bewildered by this unfair
thing, and the twenty-fifth drank several quarts of river with his lungs and
was pulled forth in a net, and the twenty-sixth was a great thinker and his
brain now sleeps like a burnt plum in his skull.
                 “I’d
like a color shot of each, and his or her name and how he or she died,” said
Joseph. “It would be an amazing, an ironical book to publish. The more you
think, the more it grows on you. Their life histories and
then a picture of each of them standing here.”
                 He
tapped each chest, softly. They gave off hollow sounds, like someone rapping on
a door.
                 Marie
pushed her way through screams that hung netwise across her path. She walked evenly, in the corridor center, not slow, but not
too fast, toward the spiral stair, not looking to either side. Click went the
camera behind her.
                 “You
have room down here for more?” said Joseph.
                 “ Si , senor. Many
more.”
                 “Wouldn’t want to be next in line, next on your waiting list.”
                 “Ah,
no, senor, one would not wish to be
next.”
                 “How
are chances of buying one of these?”
                 “Oh, no, no, senor. Oh, no, no. Oh no, senor.”
                 “I’ll
pay you fifty pesos.”
                 “Oh, no, senor, no, no, senor.”
                  
                 In
the market, the remainder of candy skulls from the Death
Fiesta were sold from flimsy little tables. Women hung with black rebozos sat quietly, now and then speaking one word to each
other, the sweet sugar skeletons, the saccharine corpses and white candy skulls
at their elbows. Each skull had a name on top in gold candy curlicue; Jose or
Carmen or Ramon or Ten a or Guiermo or Rosa. They sold cheap. The Death Festival was gone. Joseph paid a peso and
got two candy skulls.
                 Marie
stood in the narrow street. She saw the candy skulls and Joseph and the dark
ladies who put the skulls in a bag.
                 “Not really, ” said Marie.
                 “Why
not?” said Joseph.
                 “Not
after just now, ” she said.
                 “In the catacombs?”
                 She
nodded.
                 He
said, “But these are good.”
                 “They
look poisonous.”
                 “Just because they’re skull-shaped?”
                 “No.
The sugar itself looks raw, how do you know what kind of people made them, they
might have the colic.”
                 “My
dear Marie, all people in Mexico have colic,” he said.
                 “You
can eat them both,” she said.
                 “Alas,
poor Yorick ,” he said, peeking into the bag.
                 They
walked along a street that was held between high buildings in