Ray Bradbury - I Sing the Body Electric

Then he walked over and did an unexpected thing. He reached out and…touched…my Machine.

He laid his hand on it and left it there, as if feeling for the life, and approving what he sensed beneath his hand. He stood that way for a long time.

Then he turned without a word, not looking at me, and went back into the bar and sat drinking alone, his back turned toward the door.

I didn’t want to break the silence. It seemed a good time to go, to try.

I got in the truck and started the motor.

What kind of mileage? What kind of fuel? I thought. And drove away.

I kept on the road and didn’t look right or left and I drove for what must have been an hour, first this direction and then that, part of the time my eyes shut for full seconds, taking a chance I might go off and get hurt or killed.

And then, just before noon, with the clouds over the sun, suddenly I knew it was all right.

I looked up at the hill and I almost yelled.

The grave was gone.

I drove down into a little hollow just then and on the road ahead, wandering along by himself, was an old man in a heavy sweater.

I idled the safari truck along until I was pacing him as he walked. I saw he was wearing steel-rimmed glasses and for a long moment we moved together, each ignoring the other until I called his name.

He hesitated, and then walked on.

I caught up with him in the truck and said again, “Papa.”

He stopped and waited.

I braked the car and sat there in the front seat.

“Papa,” I said.

He came over and stood near the door.

“Do I know you?”

“No. But I know you.”

He looked me in the eyes and studied my face and mouth. “Yes. I think you do.”

“I saw you on the road. I think I’m going your way. Want a lift?”

“It’s good walking this time of day,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Let me tell you where I’m going,” I said.

He had started off but now stopped and, without looking at me, said, “Where?”

“A long way,” I said.

“It sounds long, the way you tell it. Can’t you make it shorter?”

“No. A long way,” I said. “About two thousand six hundred days, give or take some days, and half an afternoon.”

He came back and looked into the car.

“Is that how far you’re going?”

“That’s how far.”

“In which direction? Ahead?”

“Don’t you want to go ahead?”

He looked at the sky. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“It’s not ahead,” I said. “It’s back.”

His eyes took on a different color. It was a subtle shift, a flex, like a man stepping out from the shade of a tree into sunlight on a cloudy day.

“Back.”

“Somewhere between two thousand and three thousand days, split half a day, give or take an hour, borrow or loan a minute, haggle over a second,” I said.

“You really talk,” he said.

“Compulsive,” I said.

“You’d make a lousy writer,” he said. “I never knew a writer yet was a good talker.”

“That’s my albatross,” I said.

“Back?” He weighed the word.

“I’m turning the car around,” I said. “And I’m going back down the road.”

“Not miles but days?”

“Not miles but days.”

“Is it that kind of car?”

“That’s how it’s built.”

“You’re an inventor then?”

“A reader who happens to invent.”

“If the car works, that’s some car you got there.”

“At your service,” I said.

“And when you get where you’re going,” said the old man, putting his hand on the door and leaning and then, seeing what he had done, taking his hand away and standing taller to speak to me, “where will you be?”

“January 10, 1954.”

“That’s quite a date,” he said.

“It is, it was. It can be more of a date.”

Without moving, his eyes took another step out into fuller light.

“And where will you be on that day?”

“Africa,” I said.

He was silent. His mouth did not work. His eyes did not shift.

“Not far from Nairobi,” I said.

He nodded, once, slowly.

“Africa, not far from Nairobi.”

I waited.

“And when we get there, if we go?” he said.

“I leave you there.”

“And then?”

“You stay there.”

“And then?”

“That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“Forever,” I said.

The old man breathed out and in, and ran his hand over the edge of the doorsill.

“This car,” he said, “somewhere along the way does it turn into a plane?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Somewhere along the way do you turn into my pilot?”

“It could be. I’ve never done this before.”

“But you’re willing to try?”

I nodded.

“Why?” he said, and leaned in and stared me directly in the face with a terrible, quietly wild intensity. “Why?”

Old man, I thought, I can’t tell you why. Don’t ask me.

He withdrew, sensing he had gone too far.

“I didn’t say that,” he said.

“You didn’t say it,” I said.

“And when you bring the plane in for a forced landing,” he said, “will you land a little differently this time?”

“Different, yes.”

“A little harder?”

“I’ll see what can be done.”

“And will I be thrown out but the rest of you okay?”

“The odds are in favor.”

He looked up at the hill where there was no grave. I looked at the same hill. And maybe he guessed the digging of it there.

He gazed back down the road at the mountains and the sea that could not be seen beyond the mountains and a continent beyond the sea. “That’s a good day you’re talking about.”

“The best.”

“And a good hour and a good second.”

“Really, nothing better.”

“Worth thinking about.”

His hand lay on the doorsill, not leaning, but testing, feeling, touching, tremulous, undecided. But his eyes came full into the light of African noon.

“Yes.”

“Yes?” I said.

“I think,” he said, “I’ll grab a lift with you.”

I waited one heartbeat, then reached over and opened the door.

Silently he got in the front seat and sat there and quietly shut the door without slamming it. He sat there, very old and very tired. I waited. “Start her up,” he said.

I started the engine and gentled it.

“Turn her around,” he said.

I turned the car so it was going back on the road.

“Is this really,” he said, “that kind of car?”

“Really, that kind of car.”

He looked out at the land and the mountains and the distant house.

I waited, idling the motor.

“When we get there,” he said, “will you remember something…?”

“I’ll try.”

“There’s a mountain,” he said, and stopped and sat there, his mouth quiet, and he didn’t go on.

But I went on for him. There is a mountain in Africa named Kilimanjaro, I thought. And on the western slope of that mountain was once found the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has ever explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

We will put you up on that same slope, I thought, on Kilimanjaro, near the leopard, and write your name and under it say nobody knew what he was doing here so high, but here he is. And write the date born and died, and go away down toward the hot summer grass and let mainly dark warriors and white hunters and swift okapis know the grave.

The old man shaded his eyes, looking at the road winding away over the hills. He nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Yes, Papa,” I said.

And we motored away, myself at the wheel, going slow, and the old man beside me, and as we went down the first hill and topped the next, the sun came out full and the wind smelled of fire. We ran like a lion in the long grass. Rivers and streams flashed by. I wished we might stop for one hour and wade and fish and lie by the stream frying the fish and talking or not talking. But if we stopped we might never go on again. I gunned the engine. It made a great fierce wondrous animal’s roar. The old man grinned.