Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online

when the wind blew like a furnace, or the way the electric power lines sizzled on the rain-wet poles. He was a man who did not suffer but pleasured in sleepless nights of brooding on the great clock of the universe running down or winding itself up, who could tell? But many nights, listening, he decided first one way and then the other …
    The shocks of life, he thought, biking along, what were they? Getting born, growing up, growing old, dying. Not much to do about the first. But—the other three?
    The wheels of his Happiness Machine spun whirling golden light spokes along the ceiling of his head. A machine, now, to help boys change from peach fuzz to briar bramble, girls from toadstool to nectarine. And in the years when your shadow leaned clear across the land as you lay abed nights with your heartbeat mounting to the billions, his invention must let a man drowse easy in the falling leaves like the boys in autumn who, comfortably strewn in the dry stacks, are content to be a part of the death of the world....
    â€œPapa!”
    His six children, Saul, Marshall, Joseph, Rebecca, Ruth, Naomi, all ages from five to fifteen, came rushing across the lawn to take his bike, each touching him at once.
    â€œWe waited. We got ice cream!”
    Moving toward the porch, he could feel his wife’s smile there in the dark.
    Five minutes passed in comfortable eating silence, then, holding a spoonful of moon-colored ice cream up as if it were the whole secret of the universe to be tasted carefully he said, “Lena? What would you think if I tried to invent a Happiness Machine?”
    â€œSomething’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

G randfather walked Douglas and Tom home. Halfway there, Charlie Woodman and John Huff and some other boys rushed by like a swarm of meteors, their gravity so huge they pulled Douglas away from Grandfather and Tom and swept him off toward the ravine.
    â€œDon’t get lost, son!”
    â€œI won’t … I won’t …”
    The boys plunged into darkness.
    Tom and Grandfather walked the rest of the way in silence, except when they turned in at home and Tom said, “Boy, a Happiness Machine—hot diggety!”
    â€œDon’t hold your breath,” said Grandpa.
    The courthouse clock struck eight.
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    T he courthouse clock struck nine and it was getting late and it was really night on this small street in a small town in a big state on a large continent on a planet earth hurtling down the pit of space toward nowhere or somewhere and Tom feeling every mile of the long drop. He sat by the front-door screen looking out at that rushing blackness that looked very innocent, as if it was holding still. Only when you closed your eyes and lay down could you feel the world spinning under your bed and hollowing your ears with a black sea that came in and broke on cliffs that weren’t there.
    There was a smell of rain. Mother was ironing and sprinkling water from a corked ketchup bottle over the crackling dry clothes behind Tom.
    One store was still open about a block away—Mrs. Singer’s.
    Finally, just before it was time for Mrs. Singer to close her store, Mother relented and told Tom, “Run get a pint of ice cream and be sure she packs it tight.”
    He asked if he could get a scoop of chocolate on top, because he didn’t like vanilla, and Mother agreed. He clutched the money and ran barefooted over the warm evening cement sidewalk, under the apple and oak trees, toward the store. The town was so quiet and far off you could hear only the crickets sounding in the spaces beyond the hot indigo trees that hold back the stars.
    His bare feet slapped the pavement. He crossed the street and found Mrs. Singer moving ponderously about her store, singing Yiddish melodies.
    â€œPint ice cream?” she said. “Chocolate on top? Yes!”
    He watched her fumble the metal top off the ice-cream freezer and manipulate the scoop, packing the cardboard