Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

over me like
locusts. But they didn't know. And, I guess, it didn't show in my face.
                 "Stand
back!" I cried.
                 It
was that beautiful last scene from The
Phantom of the Opera where Loh Chaney, pursued
through midnight Paris , turns upon the mob, lifts his clenched
fist as if it contained an explosive, and holds the mob at bay for one terrific
instant. He laughs, opens his hand to show it empty, and then is driven to his
death in the river. . . . Only I had no intention of letting them see an empty
hand. I kept it close around El Cordoba's scrawny neck.
                 "Clear
a path to the door!" They cleared a path.
                 "Not
a move, not a breath. If anyone so much as swoons, this bird is dead forever
and no rights, no movies, no photos. Shelley, bring me the cage and the
shawl."
                 Shelley
Capon edged over and brought me the cage and its cover. "Stand off!"
I yelled.
                 Everyone
jumped back another foot.
                 "Now,
hear this," I said. "After I've got away and have hidden out, one by
one each of you will be called to have his chance to meet Papa's friend here
again and cash in on the headlines."
                 I
was lying. I could hear the lie. I hoped they couldn't. I spoke more quickly
now, to cover the lie: "I'm going to start walking now. Look. See? I have
the parrot by the neck. He'll stay alive as long as you play 'Simon says' my
way. Here we go, now. One, two. Halfway to the door." I walked among them
and they did not breathe. "One, two," I said, my heart beating in my
mouth. "At the door. Steady. No sudden moves. Cage in one hand. Bird in
the other—"
                 "The
lions ran along the beach on the yellow sand," said the parrot, his throat
moving under my fingers.
                 "Oh,
my God," said Shelley, crouched there by the table. Tears began to pour
down his face. Maybe it wasn't all money. Maybe some of it was Papa for him,
too. He put his hands out in a beckoning, come-back gesture to me, the parrot,
the cage. "Oh, God, oh, God." He wept.
                 "There
was only the carcass of the great fish lying by the pier, its bones picked
clean in the morning light," said the parrot.
                 "Oh,"
said everyone softly.
                 I
didn't wait to see if any more of them were weeping. I stepped out. I shut the
door. I ran for the elevator. By a miracle, it was there, the operator
half-asleep inside. No one tried to follow. I guess they knew it was no use.
                 On
the way down, I put the parrot inside the cage and put the shawl marked mother
over the cage. And the elevator moved slowly down through the years. I thought
of those years ahead and where I might hide the parrot and keep him warm
against any weather and feed him properly and once a day go in and talk through
the shawl, and nobody ever to see him, no papers, no magazines, no cameramen,
no Shelley Capon, not even Antonio from the Cuba Libre .
Days might go by or weeks and sudden fears might come over me that the parrot
had gone dumb. Then, in the middle of the night, I might wake and shuffle in
and stand by his cage and say:
                 " Italy , 1918 ... ?"
                 And
beneath the word mother, an old voice would say: "The snow drifted off the
edges of the mountain in a fine white dust that winter. . . ."
                 " Africa , 1932."
                 "We
got the rifles out and oiled the rifles and they were blue and fine and lay in
our hands and we waited in the tall grass and smiled—"
                 " Cuba . The Gulf Stream ."
                 "That
fish came out of the water and jumped as high as the sun. Everything I had ever
thought about a fish was in that fish. Everything I had ever thought about a
single leap was in that leap. All of my life was