The October Country by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online

plaza.
    "Give me a few pesos," she said, and he gave her some. "Teach me to say about magazines in Spanish," she said.
    " Quiero una publicación Americano ," he said, walking swiftly.
    She repeated it, stumblingly, and laughed. "Thanks."
    He went on ahead to the mechanic's shop, and she turned in at the nearest Farmacia Botica , and all the magazines racked before her there were alien colors and alien names. She read the titles with swift moves of her eyes and looked at the old man behind the counter. "Do you have American magazines?" she asked in English, embarrassed to use the Spanish words.
    The old man stared at her.
    " Habla Inglés? " she asked.
    "No, señorita ."
    She tried to think of the right words. "Quiero--no!" She stopped. She started again. " Americano --uh-- magg-ah-zeen-as? "
    "Oh, no, señorita! "
    Her hands opened wide at her waist, then closed, like mouths. Her mouth opened and closed. The shop had a veil over it, in her eyes. Here she was and here were these small baked adobe people to whom she could say nothing and from whom she could get no words she understood, and she was in a town of people who said no words to her and she said no words to them except in blushing confusion and bewilderment. And the town was circled by desert and time, and home was far away, far away in another life.
    She whirled and fled.
    Shop following shop she found no magazines save those giving bullfights in blood on their covers or murdered people or laceconfection priests. But at last three poor copies of the Post were bought with much display and loud laughter and she gave the vendor of this small shop a handsome tip.
    Rushing out with the Posts eagerly on her bosom in both hands she hurried along the narrow walk, took a skip over the gutter, ran across the street, sang la-la, jumped onto the further walk, made another little scamper with her feet, smiled an inside smile, moving along swiftly, pressing the magazines tightly to her, half-closing her eyes, breathing the charcoal evening air, feeling the wind watering past her ears.
    Starlight tinkled in golden nuclei off the highly perched Greek figures atop the State Theatre. A man shambled by in the shadow, balancing upon his head a basket. The basket contained bread loaves.
    She saw the man and the balanced basket and suddenly she did not move and there was no inside smile, nor did her hands clasp tight the magazines. She watched the man walk, with one hand of his gently poised up to tap the basket any time it unbalanced, and down the Street he dwindled, while the magazines slipped from Marie's fingers and scattered on the walk.
    Snatching them up, she ran into the hotel and almost fell going upstairs.
    She sat in the room. The magazines were piled on each side of her and in a circle at her feet. She had made a little castle with portcullises of words and into this she was withdrawn. All about her were the magazines she had bought and bought and looked at and looked at on other days, and these were the outer barrier, and upon the inside of the barrier, upon her lap, as yet unopened, but her hands were trembling to open them and read and read and read again with hungry eyes, were the three battered Post magazines. She opened the first page. She would go through them page by page, line by line, she decided. Not a line would go unnoticed, a comma unread, every little ad and every color would be fixed by her. And--she smiled with discovery--in those other magazines at her feet were still advertisements and cartoons she had neglected--there would be little morsels of stuff for her to reclaim and utilize later.
    She would read this first Post tonight, yes tonight she would read this first delicious Post . Page on page she would eat it and tomorrow night, if there was going to be a tomorrow night, but maybe there wouldn't be a tomorrow night here, maybe the motor would start and there'd be odors of exhaust and round hum of rubber tire on road and wind riding in the window and