Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (1962)

Every October I think I can finally start reading (and appreciating) the fictions of Ray Bradbury.

A couple of years ago I finally read The October Country. I thought the gates had opened. 

For decades I dismissed Bradbury as too cute by half, a writer who became, over time, his admirers. Color-blind, tin-eared. This-is-how-a-Serious-Writer-writes.

*   *   *

I have had a rendezvous with Bradbury for about forty years. My mother once brought me an armload of deaccessioned library books from the school where she taught. This was the only time she ever brought me books; happily, her usual method was to ignore what I read. In the bag were novels by Thomas Wolfe and Ralph Ellison. And half a dozen Bradburys, the old red and white and black Bantam editions. They were read to tatters, enticing with their images of rockets, dinosaurs, and Bradbury himself.

*   *   *

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) will soon be six decades old. A tale too flippant and poetically sugary for young readers, it is best enjoyed (if that is the word) by dads who know they came at parenthood too late.

It is an old man's book, autumnal, deeply melancholy. In 1945 men who'd spent adult lives without a name, without money to afford marriage and family, came home to picket lines and made fo themselves a fighting chance. My father and father-in-law started their families in their thirtes, much like Bradbury's Charles William Halloway. Something Wicked This Way Comes takes place during Charles Holloway's fifty-fourth year.

Today I finished reading it in my fifty-fourth year.

Jay

13 October 2020

*   *   *

....while they should have gone upstairs, they could not depart this moment that promised others on not so distant nights when man and boy-becoming-man might almost sing. So Will at last said, carefully:

     'Dad? Am I a good person?'

     'I think so. I know so, yes.'

     'Will - will that help when things get really rough?'

     'It'll help.'

     'Will it save me if I need saving? I mean, if I'm around bad people and there's no one else good around for miles, what then?'

     'It'll help.'

     'That's not good enough, Dad!'

     'Good is no guarantee for your body. It's mainly for peace of mind - '

     'But sometimes, Dad, aren't you so scared that even - '

     ' - the mind isn't peaceful?' His father nodded, his face uneasy.

     'Dad,' said Will, his voice very faint. 'Are you a good person?'

     'To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself - '

     'And, adding it all up…?'

     'The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right.'

     'Then, Dad,' asked Will, 'why aren't you happy?'

     'The front lawn at let's see…one-thirty in the morning…is no place to start a philosophical…'

     'I just wanted to know is all.'

     There was a long moment of silence. Dad sighed.

     Dad took his arm, walked him over and sat him down on the porch steps, relit his pipe. Puffing, he said, 'All right. Your mother's asleep. She doesn't know we're out here with our tomcat talk. We can go on. Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?'

     'Since always.'

     'Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter half the time he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin. Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colours, and smells. Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites. Hear a man too loudly praising others, and look to wonder if he didn't just get up from the sty. On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that's your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two. I've known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog. I suppose it's thinking about trying to be good makes the crack run up the wall one night. A man with high standards, too, the least hair falls on him sometimes wilts his spine. He can't let himself alone, won't lift himself off the hook if he falls just a breath from grace.

     'Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time. But it's hard, right? with the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you he awake in a hot sweat for it, eh? Do I need tell you? Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and away off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall. Boys can hear clear water like that miles away. So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that's what the dock ticks, that's what it says in the ticks. Run swim, or stay hot, run eat or lie hungry. So you stay but once stayed, Will, you know the secret, don't you? don't think of the river again. Or the cake. Because if you do, you'll go crazy. Add up all the rivers never swum in, cakes never eaten, and by the time you get my age, Will, it's a lot missed out on. But then you console yourself, thinking, the more times in, the more times possibly drowned, or choken on lemon frosting. But then, through plain dumb cowardice, I guess, maybe you hold off from too much, wait, play it safe.

     'Look at me: married at thirty-nine, Will thirty-nine! But I was so busy wrestling myself two falls out of three, I figured I couldn't marry until I had licked myself good and forever. Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else. So at last I looked up from my great self-wrestling match one night when your mother came to the library for a book, and got me, instead. And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a women half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you, Will, for my money. And the strange thing is, son, and sad, too, though you're always racing out there on the rim of the lawn, and me on the roof using books for shingles, comparing life to libraries, I soon saw you were wiser, sooner and better, than I will ever be…'

     Dad's pipe was dead. He paused to tap it out and reload it.

     'No, sir,' Will said.

     'Yes,' said his father, 'I'd be a fool not to know I'm a fool. My one wisdom is: you're wise.'

     'Funny' Will said, after a long pause. 'You've told me more, tonight, than I've told you. I'll think some more. Maybe I'll tell you everything, at breakfast. Okay?'

     'I'll be ready, if you are.'

     'Because…I want you to be happy, Dad.'

     He hated the tears that sprang to his eyes.

     'I'll be all right, Will.'

     'Anything I could say or do to make you happy, I would.'

     'Willy, William.' Dad lit his pipe again and watched the smoke blow away in sweet dissolvings. 'Just tell me I'll live forever. That would do nicely.'

     His voice, Will thought, I never noticed. It's the same colour as his hair.

     'Pa,' he said, 'don't sound so sad.'

     'Me? I'm the original sad man. I read a book and it makes me sad. See a film: sad. Plays? they really work me over.'

     'Is there anything,' said Will, 'doesn't make you sad?'

     'One thing. Death.'

     'Boy!' Will started. 'I should think that would!'

     'No' said the man with the voice to match his hair. 'Death makes everything else sad. But death itself only scares. If there wasn't death, all the other things wouldn't get tainted.'

     And, Will thought, here comes the carnival, Death like a rattle in one hand, Life like candy in the other; shake one to scare you, offer one to make your mouth water. Here comes the side-show, both hands full!

     He jumped to his feet.

     'Dad oh, listen! You'll live forever! Believe me, or you're sunk! Sure, you were sick a few years ago - but that's over. Sure, you're fifty-four, but that's young! And another thing - '

     'Yes, Willy?'

     His father waited for him. He swayed. He bit his lips, then blurted out:

     'Don't go near the carnival.'

     'Strange,' his father said, 'that's what I was going to tell you.'

     'I wouldn't go back to that place for a billion dollars!'

     But, Will thought, that won't stop the carnival searching through town to visit me.

     'Promise, Dad?'

     'Why don't you want me to go there, Will?'

     'That's one of the things I'll tell tomorrow or next week or next year. You just got to trust me, Dad.'

     'I do, son.' Dad took his hand. 'It's a promise.'

     As if at a signal, both turned to the house. The time was up, the hour was late, enough had been said, they properly sensed they must go.

     'The way you came out,' said Dad, 'is the way you go in.'

     Will walked silently to touch the iron rungs hidden under the rustling ivy.

     'Dad. You won't pull these off…?'

     Dad probed one with his fingers.

     'Some day, when you're tired of them, you'll take them off yourself.'

     'I'll never be tired of them.'

     'Is that how it seems? Yes, to someone your age, you figure you'll never get tired of anything. All right, son, up you go.'

     He saw how his father looked up along the ivy and the hidden path.

     'You want to come up this way, too?'

     'No, no,' his father said, quickly.

     'Because,' said Will, 'you're welcome.'

     'That's all right. Go on.'

     But he still looked at the ivy stirring in the dark morning light.

     Will sprang up, grabbed the first, the second, the third rungs and looked down.

     From just this distance, Dad looked as if he were shrinking, there on the ground. Somehow he didn't want to leave him behind there in the night, like someone ditched by someone else, one hand up to move, but not moving.

     'Dad!' he whispered. 'You ain't got the stuff!'

     Who says!? cried Dad's mouth, silently.

     And he jumped.

     And laughing without sound, the boy, the man swung up the side of the house, unceasingly, hand over hand, foot after foot.

     He heard Dad slip, scrabble, grab.

     Hold tight! he thought.

     'Ah…!'

     The man breathed hard.

     Eyes tight, Will prayed: hold…there…now…!!

     The old man gusted out, sucked in, swore in a fierce whisper, then climbed again.

     Will opened his eyes and climbed and the rest was smooth, high, higher, fine, sweet, wondrous, done! They swung in and sat upon the sill, same size, same weight, coloured same by the stars, and sat embraced once more with grand fine exhaustion, gasping on huge ingulped laughs which swept their bones together, and for fear of waking God, country, wife, Mom, and hell, they snug-clapped hands to each other's mouths, felt the vibrant warm hilarity fountained there and sat one instant longer, eyes bright with each other and wet with love.

     Then, with a last strong clasp, Dad was gone, the bedroom door shut.

     Drunk on the long night's doings, lolled away from fear toward better, grander things found in Dad, Will slung off limp-falling clothes with tipsy arms and delightfully aching legs, and like a fall of timber chopped himself to bed…