Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

town.

CHAPTER 24

    They were passing the graveyard.
    I have committed murder, Cardiff thought.
    And, impulsively, he cried, “Claude!”
    Claude froze and Cardiff jumped out of the wagon and rushed into the graveyard.
    Swaying over the grave, he reached down in a terrible panic to lift the lid.
    McCoy was there, not dead but sleeping, having given up, and was now taking a snooze.
    Exhaling, Cardiff spoke down at his terrible enemy, glad that he was alive.
    “Stay there,” he said. “You don’t know it, but you’re going home.” He dropped the lid gently, taking care to insert a twig in the gap between top and bottom to allow for air.
    He ran back to Claude, who, sensing the visit was over, started off again at a good clop.
    All around them the yards and porches were empty.
    Where, Cardiff wondered, has everyone gone?
    He had his answer when Claude stopped.
    They stood before a large, rather handsome brick building, its entrance flanked by two Egyptian sphinxes lying supine, half-lioness and half-god, with faces he could almost name.
    Cardiff read these words: HOPE MEMORIAL LIBRARY.
    And in small letters beneath that: KNOW HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
    He climbed the library steps to find Elias Culpepper standing before the great double front doors. Culpepper behaved as if he’d been expecting the younger man, and motioned at him to sit down on the library steps.
    “We’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
    “We?” said Cardiff.
    “The whole town, or most of it,” said Culpepper. “Where have you been?”
    “The graveyard,” said Cardiff.
    “You spend too much time there. Is there a problem?”
    “Not anymore, if you can help me mail something home. Is there a train expected anytime soon?”
    “Should be one passing through sometime today,” said Elias Culpepper. “Doubt it’ll stop. That hasn’t happened in…”
    “ Can it be stopped?”
    “Could try flares.”
    “I’ve got a package I want sent, if you can stop it.”
    “I’ll light the flares,” said Culpepper. “Where’s this package going?”
    “Home,” Cardiff said again. “Chicago.”
    He wrote a name and address on a page ripped from his notepad, and handed the piece of paper to Culpepper.
    “Consider it done,” said Culpepper. He rose and said, “Now I think you ought to go inside.”
    Cardiff turned and pushed the great library doors and stepped in.
    He read a sign above the front counter: CARPE DIEM. SEIZE THE DAY. It could have also read: SEIZE A BOOK. FIND A LIFE. BIRTH A METAPHOR.
    His gaze drifted to find a large part of the town’s population seated at two dozen tables, books open, reading, and keeping the SILENCE that other signs suggested.
    As if pulled by a single string, they turned, nodded at Cardiff, and turned back to their books.
    The young woman behind the library front desk was an incredible beauty.
    “My God,” he whispered. “Nef!”
    She raised her hand and pointed, then beckoned for him to follow.
    She walked ahead of him and she might well have had a lantern in her hand to light the dim stacks, for her face was illumination. Wherever she glanced, the darkness failed and a faint light touched the gold lettering along the shelves.
    The first stack was labeled: ALEXANDRIA ONE .
    And the second: ALEXANDRIA TWO.
    And the last: ALEXANDRIA THREE.
    “Don’t say it,” he said, quietly. “Let me. The libraries at Alexandria, five hundred or a thousand years before Christ, had three fires, maybe more, and everything burned.”
    “Yes,” Nef said. “This first stack contains all or most of the books burned in the first fire, an accident.
    “This second stack from the second burning, also an accident, has all the lost books and destroyed texts of that terrible year.
    “And the last, the third, contains all the books from the third conflagration—a burning by mobs, the purposeful destruction of history, art, poetry, and plays in 455 B.C.
    “In 455 B.C. ,” she repeated quietly.
    “My God,” he said,