Raymond Bradbury: Farewell Summer

Grandpa, in his grave of sleep, whispered a call.

Doug was out the midnight door so fast he almost forgot to catch the screen before it slammed.

Ignoring the elephant trumpet behind, he barefooted into his grandparents' house.

There in the library slept Grandpa, awaiting the breakfast resurrection, open for suggestions.

Now, at midnight, it was the unlit time of the special school, so Doug leaned forward and whispered in Grandpa's ear, "1899."

And Gramps, lost in another time, murmured of that year and how the temperature was and what the people were like moving in that town.

Then Douglas said, "1869."

And Grandpa was lost four years after Lincoln was shot.

Standing there, watching, Douglas realized that if he visited here night after night and spoke to Grandpa, Grandpa, asleep, would be his teacher and that if he spent six months or a year or two years coming to this special long-after-midnight school, he would have an education that nobody else in the world would have. Grandpa would give his knowledge as a teacher, without knowing it, and Doug would drink it in and not tell Tom or his parents or anybody.

"That's it,"whispered Doug. "Thank you, Grandpa, for all you say, asleep or awake. And thanks again for today and your advice on the purloineds. I don't want to say any more. I don't want to wake you up."

So Douglas, his ears full up and his mind full brimmed, left his grandpa sleeping there and crept toward the stairs and the tower room because he wanted to have one more encounter with the night town and the moon.

Just then the great clock across town, an immense moon, a full moon of stunned sound and round illumination, cleared its ratchety throat and let free a midnight sound.

One.

Douglas climbed the stairs.

Four. Five.

Reaching the tower window, Douglas looked out upon an ocean of rooftops and the great monster clock tower as time summed itself up.

Six. Seven.

His heart floundered.

Eight. Nine.

His flesh turned to snow.

Ten. Eleven.

A shower of dark leaves fell from a thousand

Twelve!

Oh my God, yes, he thought.

The clock! Why hadn't he thought of that?

The clockl

THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE GREAT CLOCK BELL faded.

A wind swayed the trees outside and the pekoe curtain hung out on the air, a pale ghost.

Douglas felt his breath siphon.

You, he thought. How come I never noticed?

The great and terrible courthouse clock.

Just last year, hadn't Grandpa laid out the machinery's blueprint, lecturing?

The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill, he'd said. Shake down all the grains of Time-the big grains

of centuries, and the small grains of years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes-and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all directions in a fine pollen, carried by cold winds to blanket the town like dust, everywhere. Spores from that clock lodged in your flesh to wrinkle it, to grow bones to monstrous size, to burst feet from shoes like turnips. Oh, how that great machine at the town's center dispensed Time in blowing weathers.

The clock!

That was the thing that bleached and ruined life, jerked people out of bed, hounded them to schools and graves! Not Quartermain and his band of old men, or Braling and his metronome; it was the clock that ran this town like a church.

Even on the clearest of nights it was misted, glowing, luminous, and old. It rose above town like a great dark burial mound, drawn to the skies by the summoning of the moon, calling out in a grieved voice of days long gone, and days that would come no more, whispering of other autumns when the town was young and all was beginning and there was no end.

"So it's you," whispered Douglas.

Midnight, said the clock. Time, it said, Darkness. Flights

of night birds flew up to carry the final peal away, out over the lake and into the night country, gone.

Doug yanked down the shade so Time could not blow through the screen.

The clock light shone on the sidings of the house like a mist breathing on the windows.

"BOY, I JUST HEARD THE CRAZIEST THINGS." Charlie strolled up, chewing on a clover-blossom. "I got me a secret report from some girls."

"Girls!"

Charlie smiled at how his ten-inch firecracker had blown the laziness off his pals' faces. "My sister said way back last July they got old lady Bentley to admit she never was young. I thought you'd like that news."

"Charlie, Charlie!"

"Burden of proof," said Charlie. "The girls told me that old lady Bentley showed some pictures, junk and stuff, which didn't prove nothin'. Fact is, when you think on it, fellas, none of these old ginks look like they were ever young."

"Why didn't you think of that, Doug?" said Tom.

"Why don't you shut up?" said Douglas.

"I guess this makes me a lieutenant," said Charlie.

"You just moved up to sergeant yesterday !"

Charlie stared hard at Douglas for a long moment."

"Okay, okay, you're a lieutenant," said Douglas.

"Thanks," said Charlie. "What'll we do about my sister? She wants to be part of our army-a special spy."

"To heck with her!"

"You got to admit that's great secret stuff she turned in."

"Boy, Charlie, you sure think of things," said Tom. "Doug, why don't you think of things?"

"Darn it!" cried Douglas. "Whose idea was the graveyard tour, the candy, the food, the chess pieces, all that?"

"Hold on," said Tom. "The graveyard tour, I said that. The candy, yeah, was yours, but I gotta tell ya, the food experiment was a failure. Heck, you haven't said anything new in a coupla hours. And all the chessboards are full of chess pieces again and those old men are busy pushing the pieces-us-around. Any moment now we'll feel ourselves grabbed and moved and we won't be able to live our own lives any-

Douglas could feel Charlie and Tom creeping up on him, taking the war out of his hands like a ripe plum. Private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant. Today, lieutenant; tomorrow captain. And the day after?

"It's not just ideas that count." Douglas wiped his brow. "It's how you stick 'em together. Take this fact of Charlie's-it's secondhand. Heck, girls thought of it first!"

Everybody's eyebrows went up.

Charlie's face fell.

"And anyway," Douglas went on, "I'm puttin' ideas together for a real bang-up revelation."

They all looked at him, waiting.

"Okay, Doug, go on," said Charlie.

Douglas shut his eyes. "And the revelation is: Since old people don't look like they were ever kids, they never were! So they're not humans at all!"

"What are they, Doug?"

Everybody sat, stunned by the vast sunburst caused by this explosion, this incredible revelation. It rained upon them in fire and flames.

"Yes, another race," said Douglas. "Aliens. Evil. And we, we're the slaves they keep for nefarious odd jobs and punishments!"

Everybody melted with the after-effects of this announcement.

Charlie stood up solemnly and announced: "Doug, old pal, see this beanie on my head? I'm taking my beanie off to you! " Charlie raised his beanie to applause and laughter.

They all smiled at Doug, their general, their leader, who took out his pocketknife and casually started a philosophical game of one-finger mumblety-peg.

"Yeah, but…" said Tom, and went on. "The last thing you said didn't work out. It's okay to say the old people are from another planet, but what about Grandpa and Grandma? We've known them all our lives. Are you saying that they're aliens, too?"