The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

delegation to paint every streetcar in the next hour. Volunteers?”
    Hands leapt up.
    “Get going!”
    They went.
    “Let’s have a delegation to fix theater seats, roped off, the last two rows for whites.”
    More hands.
    “Go on!”
    They ran off.
    Willie peered around, bubbled with perspiration, panting with exertion, proud of his energy, his hand on his wife’s shoulder who stood under him looking at the ground with her downcast eyes. “Let’s see now,” he declared. “Oh yes. We got to pass a law this afternoon; no intermarriages!”
    “That’s right,” said a lot of people.
    “All shoeshine boys quit their jobs today.”
    “Quittin’ right now!” Some men threw down the rags they carried, in their excitement, all across town.
    “Got to pass a minimum wage law, don’t we?”
    “Sure!”
    “Pay them white folks at least ten cents an hour.”
    “That’s right!”
    The mayor of the town hurried up. “Now look here, Willie Johnson. Get down off that box!”
    “Mayor, I can’t be made to do nothing like that.”
    “You’re making a mob, Willie Johnson.”
    “That’s the idea.”
    “The same thing you always hated when you were a kid. You’re no better than some of those white men you yell about!”
    “This is the other shoe, Mayor, and the other  foot,”  said Willie, not even looking at the mayor, looking at the faces beneath him, some of them smiling, some of them doubtful, others bewildered, some of them reluctant and drawing away, fearful.
    “You’ll be sorry,” said the mayor.
    “We’ll have an election and get a new mayor,” said Willie. And he glanced off at the town where up and down the streets signs were being hung, fresh-painted: LIMITED CLIENTELE:  Right to serve customer revokable at any time.  He grinned and slapped his hands. Lord! And streetcars were being halted and sections being painted white in back, to suggest their future inhabitants. And theaters were being invaded and roped off by chuckling men, while their wives stood wondering on the curbs and children were spanked into houses to be hid away from this awful time.
    “Are we all ready?” called Willie Johnson, the rope in his hands with the noose tied and neat.
    “Ready!” shouted half the crowd. The other half murmured and moved like figures in a nightmare in which they wished no participation.
    “Here it comes!” called a small boy.
    Like marionette heads on a single string, the heads of the crowd turned upward.
    Across the sky, very high and beautiful, a rocket burned on a sweep of orange fire. It circled and came down, causing all to gasp. It landed, setting the meadow afire here and there; the fire burned out, the rocket lay a moment in quiet, and then, as the silent crowd watched, a great door in the side of the vessel whispered out a breath of oxygen, the door slid back and an old man stepped out.
    “A white man, a white man, a white man . . .” The words traveled back in the expectant crowd, the children speaking in each other’s ears, whispering, butting each other, the words moving in ripples to where the crowd stopped and the streetcars stood in the windy sunlight, the smell of paint coming out their opened windows. The whispering wore itself away and it was gone.
    No one moved.
    The white man was tall and straight but a deep weariness was m his face. He had not shaved this day, and his eyes were as old as the eyes of a man can be and still be alive. His eyes were colorless; almost white and sightless with things he had seen in the passing years. He was as thin as a winter bush. His hands trembled and he had to lean against the portway of the ship as he looked out over the crowd.
    He put out a hand and half smiled, but drew his hand back.
    No one moved.
    He looked down into their faces, and perhaps he saw but did not see the guns and the ropes, and perhaps he smelled the paint. No one ever asked him. He began to talk. He started very quietly and slowly, expecting no interruptions, and