Illusions by Richard Bach Read Free Book Online Page B

crowds that wear me, its the kind of crowd that doesn't care at all about what I came to say. You can walk from
New York
to London on the ocean, you can pull gold coins out of forever and still not make them care, you know?"
                 When he said that, he looked lonelier than I had ever seen a man still alive. He didn't need food or shelter or money or fame. He was dying of his need to say what he knew, and nobody cared enough to listen.
                   I frowned at him, so as not to cry. "Well you asked for it," I said. "If your happiness depends on what somebody else, I guess you do have a problem."
                 He jerked his head up and his eyes blazed as though I had hit him with the wrench. I thought all at once that I would not be wise to get this guy mad at me. A man fries quick, struck by lightning.
                 Then he smiled that half-second smile. "You know what, Richard ?" he said slowly. "You . . . are . . . right!"
                 He was quiet again, tranced, almost, by what I had said. Not noticing, I went on talking to him for hours about how we had met and what there was to learn, all these ideas firing through my head like morning comets and daylight meteors. He lay very still in the grass, not moving, not saying a word. By
noon
I finished my version of the universe and all things that dwelled therein.
                 ". . . and I feel I've barely begun, Don, there's so much to say. How do I know all this - How come is that?"
                 He didn't answer.
                 "If you expect me to answer my own question, I confess that I do not know. Why can I say all these things now, when I've never even tried, before? What has happened to me ?"
                 No answer.
                 "Don ? It's OK for you to talk now, please."
                 He didn't say a word. I had explained the panorama of life to him, and my messiah, as though he had heard all he needed in that one chance word about his happiness, had fallen fast asleep.
     
    7
     
                 Wednesday morning, it's
six o'clock
, I'm not awake and WHOOM!! there's this enormous noise sudden and violent as some high explosive symphony; instant thousand voice choirs, words in Latin, violins and typani and trumpets to shatter glass. The ground shuddered, the Fleet rocked on her wheels and I came out from under the wing like a 400-volt cat, fur straight-out exclamation points.
                 The sky was cold-fire sunrise, the clouds alive in wild paint, but all of it blurred in the dynamite crescendo.
                 "STOP IT! STOP IT! OFF THE MUSIC, OFF IT!!"
                 Shimoda yelled so loud and so furious I could hear him over the din, and the sound stopped at once, echoes rolling off and away and away and away. Then it was a gentle holy song, quiet as the breeze, Beethoven in a dream.
                 He was unimpressed. "LOOK, I SAID OFF IT!!"
                 The music stopped.
                 "Whuf!" he said.
                 I just looked at him.
                 "There is a time and a place for everything, right ?" he said.
                 "Well, time and place, well . . ."
                 "A little celestial music is fine, in the privacy of your own mind, and maybe on special occasions, but the first thing in the morning, and turned up that loud ? What are you doing?"
                 "What am I doing ? Don, I was sound asleep . . . what do you mean, what am I doing?"
                 He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders helplessly, snorted and went back to his sleeping bag under the wing.
                 The handbook was upside down in the grass where it had fallen. I turned it over carefully, and read.