Рэй Брэдбери - The Jar

He strode angrily, grabbed the jar so it sloshed, and would have flung it on the floor, but he stopped trembling, and let it down softly on the spindly table. He leaned over it, sobbing. If he lost this, the world was gone. And he was losing Thedy, too. Every month that passed she danced further away, sneering at him, funning him. For too many years her hips had been the pendulum by which he reckoned the time of his living. But other men, Tom Carmody, for one, were reckoning time from the same source.

Thedy stood waiting for him to smash the jar. Instead, he petted and stroked and gradually quieted himself over it. He thought of the long, good evenings in the past month, those rich evenings of friends and talk, moving about the room. That, at least, was good, if nothing else.

He turned slowly to Thedy. She was lost forever to him.

«Thedy, you didn't go to the carnival.»

«Yes, I did.»

«You're lyin',» he said, quietly.

«No, I'm not!»

«This―this jar _has_ to have somethin' in it. Somethin' besides the junk you say. Too many people believe there's somethin' in it, Thedy. You can't change that. The carny-boss, if you talked with him, he lied.» Charlie took a deep breath and then said, «Come here, Thedy.»

«What you want?» she asked, sullenly.

«Come over here.»

He took a step toward her. «Come here.»

«Keep away from me, Charlie.»

«Just want to show you something, Thedy.» His voice was soft, low, and insistent. «Here, kittie. Here, kittie, kittie, kittie― HERE KITTIE!»

It was another night, about a week later. Gramps Medknowe and Granny Carnation came, followed by young Juke and Mrs. Tridden and Jahdoo, the colored man. Followed by all the others, young and old, sweet and sour, creaking into chairs, each with his or her thought, hope, fear, and wonder in mind. Each not looking at the shrine, but saying hello softly to Charlie.

They waited for the others to gather. From the shine of their eyes one could see that each saw something different in the jar, something of the life and the pale life after life, and the life in death and the death in life, each with his story, his cue, his lines, familiar, old but new.

Charlie sat alone.

«Hello, Charlie.» Somebody peered into the empty bedroom. «Your wife gone off again to visit her folks?»

«Yeah, she run for Tennessee. Be back in a couple weeks. She's the darndest one for runnin'. You know Thedy.»

«Great one for jumpin' around, that woman.»

Soft voices talking, getting settled, and then, quite suddenly, walking on the dark porch and shining his eyes in at the people-Tom Carmody.

Tom Carmody standing outside the door, knees sagging and trembling, arms hanging and shaking at his side, staring into the room. Tom Carmody not daring to enter. Tom Carmody with his mouth open, but not smiling. His lips wet and slack, not smiling. His face pale as chalk, as if it had been sick for a long time.

Gramps looked up at the jar, cleared his throat and said, «Why, I never noticed so definite before. It's got _blue_ eyes.»

«It always had blue eyes,» said Granny Carnation.

«No,» whined Gramps. «No, it didn't. They was brown last time we was here.» He blinked upward. «And another thing-it's got brown hair. Didn't have brown hair _before!_»

«Yes, yes, it did,» sighed Mrs. Tridden.

«No, it didn't!»

«Yes, it did!»

Tom Carmody, shivering in the summer night, staring in at the jar. Charlie, glancing up at it, rolling a cigarette, casually, all peace and calm, very certain of his life and thoughts. Tom Carmody, alone, seeing things about the jar he never saw before. _Everybody_ seeing what he wanted to see; all thoughts running in a fall of quick rain:

«My baby. My little baby,» thought Mrs. Tridden.

«A brain!» thought Gramps.

The colored man jigged his fingers. «Middibamboo Mama!»

A fisherman pursed his lips. «Jellyfish!»

«Kitten! Here kittie, kittie, kittie!» the thoughts drowned clawing in Juke's eyes. «Kitten!»

«Everything and anything!» shrilled Granny's weazened thought. «The night, the swamp, death, the pale things, the wet things from the sea!»

Silence. And then Gramps whispered, «I wonder. Wonder if it's a he―or a she―or just a plain old _it?_»

Charlie glanced up, satisfied, tamping his cigarette, shaping it to his mouth. Then he looked at Tom Carmody, who would never smile again, in the door. «I reckon we'll never know. Yeah, I reckon we won't.» Charlie shook his head slowly and settled down with his guests, looking, looking.

It was just one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you…