Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

door colored in the east. A cold wind entered. And Timothy felt himself seized and settled in one body after another, felt Cecy press him into Uncle Fry’s head so he stared from the wrinkled leather face, then leaped in a flurry of leaves up over the house and awakening hills…
    Then, loping down a dirt path, he felt his red eyes burning, his fur pelt rimed with morning, as inside Cousin William he panted through a hollow and dissolved away…
    Like a pebble in Uncle Einar’s mouth, Timothy flew in a webbed thunder, filling the sky. And then he was back, for all time, in his own body.
    In the growing dawn, the last few were embracing and crying and thinking how the world was becoming less a place for them. There had been a time when they had met every year, but now decades passed with no reconciliation. ‘Don’t forget,’ someone cried, ‘we meet in Salem in 1970!’
    Salem. Timothy’s numbed mind turned the words over. Salem, 1970. And there would be Uncle Fry and a thousand-times-great Grandmother in her withered cerements, and Mother and Father and Ellen and Laura and Cecy and all the rest. But would he be there? Could he be certain of staying alive until then?
    With one last withering blast, away they all went, so many scarves, so many fluttery mammals, so many sere leaves, so many whining and clustering noises, so many midnights and insanities and dreams.
    Mother shut the door. Laura picked up a broom. ‘No,’ said Mother. ‘We’ll clean tonight. Now we need sleep.’ And the family vanished down cellar and upstairs. And Timothy moved in the crape-littered hall, his head down. Passing a party mirror, he saw the pale mortality of his face all cold and trembling.
    ‘Timothy,’ said Mother.
    She came to touch her hand on his face. ‘Son,’ she said, ‘we love you. Remember that. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if you leave us one day.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘And if and when you die, your bones will lie undisturbed, we’ll see to that. You’ll lie at ease forever, and I’ll come visit every Allhallows Eve and tuck you in the more secure.’
    The house was silent. Far away the wind went over a hill with its last cargo of dark bats, echoing, chittering.
    Timothy walked up the steps, one by one, crying to himself all the way.

Uncle Einar
    ‘It will take only a minute,’ said Uncle Einar’s sweet wife.
    ‘I refuse,’ he said. ‘And that takes but a second .’
    ‘I’ve worked all morning,’ she said, holding to her slender back, ‘and you won’t help? It’s drumming for a rain.’
    ‘Let it rain,’ he cried, morosely. ‘I’ll not be pierced by lightning just to air your clothes.’
    ‘But you’re so quick at it.’
    ‘Again, I refuse.’ His vast tarpaulin wings hummed nervously behind his indignant back.
    She gave him a slender rope on which were tied four dozen freshwashed clothes. He turned it in his fingers with distaste. ‘So it’s come to this,’ he muttered, bitterly. ‘To this, to this, to this.’ He almost wept angry and acid tears.
    ‘Don’t cry; you’ll wet them down again,’ she said. ‘Jump up, now, run them about.’
    ‘Run them about.’ His voice was hollow, deep, and terribly wounded. ‘I say: let it thunder, let it pour!’
    ‘If it was a nice, sunny day I wouldn’t ask,’ she said, reasonably. ‘All my washing gone for nothing if you don’t. They’ll hang about the house—’
    That did it. Above all, he hated clothes flagged and festooned so a man had to creep under on the way across a room. He jumped up. His vast green wings boomed. ‘Only so far as the pasture fence!’
    Whirl: up he jumped, his wings chewed and loved the cool air. Before you’d say Uncle Einar Has Green Wings he sailed low across his farmland, trailing the clothes in a vast fluttering loop through the pounding concussion and backwash of his wings!
    ‘Catch!’
    Back from the trip, he sailed the clothes, dry as popcorn, down on a series of clean