Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine by Dandelion wine

Author:Dandelion wine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ray, Bradbury, Dandelion, Wine

There she sat in her glass coffin, night after night, her body melted by the carnival blaze of summer, frozen in the ghost winds of winter, waiting with her sickle smile and carved, hooked, and wax-poured nose hovering above her pale pink and wrinkled wax hands poised forever above the ancient fanned-out deck of cards. The Tarot Witch. A delicious name. The Tarot Witch. You thrust a penny in the silver slot and far away below, behind, inside, machinery groaned and cogged, levers stroked, wheels spun. And in her case the witch raised up her glittery face to blind you with a single needle stare. Her implacable left hand moved down to stroke and fritter enigmatic tarot-card skulls, devils, hanging men, hermits, cardinals and clowns, while her head hung close to delve your misery or murder, hope or health, your rebirths each morning and death's renewals by night. Then she spidered a calligrapher's pen across the back of a single card and let it titter down the chute into your hands. Whereupon the witch, with a last veiled glimmer of her eyes, froze back in her eternal caul for weeks, months, years, awaiting the next

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Bradbury, Ray - Dandelion Wine

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copper penny to revive her from oblivion. Now, waxen dead, she suffered the two boys' approach.

Douglas fingerprinted the glass. "There she is."

"It's a wax dummy," said Tom. "Why do you want me to see her?"

"All the time asking why!" yelled Douglas. "Because, that's why, because!"

Because ... the arcade lights dimmed . . .because . . .

One day you discover you are alive.

Explosion! Concussion! Illumination! Delight!

You laugh, you dance around, you shout.

But, not long after, the sun goes out. Snow falls, but no one sees it, on an August noon.

At the cowboy matinee last Saturday a man had dropped down dead on the white-hot screen. Douglas had cried out. For years he had seen billions of cowboys shot, hung, burned, destroyed. But now, this one particular man . . .

He'll never walk, run, sit, laugh, cry, won't do anything ever, thought Douglas. Now he's turning cold. Douglas's teeth chattered, his heart pumped sludge in his chest. He shut his eyes and let the convulsion shake him.

He had to get away from these other boys because they weren't thinking about death, they just laughed and yelled at the dead man as if he still lived. Douglas and the dead man were on a boat pulling away, with all the others left behind on the bright shore, running, jumping, hilarious with motion, not knowing that the boat, the dead man and Douglas were going, going, and now gone into darkness. Weeping, Douglas ran to the lemon-smelling men's room where, sick, it seemed a fire hydrant churned three times from his throat.

And waiting for the sickness to pass he thought: All the people I know who died this summer! Colonel Freeleigh, dead! I didn't know it before; why? Great-grandma, dead, too. Really-truly. Not only that but. . .He paused. Me! No, they can't kill me!

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