Silence. A summer-night silence which lay for a thousand miles, which covered the earth like a white and shadowy sea.
Faster, faster! She went down the steps.
Run!
She heard music. In a mad way, in a silly way, she heard the great surge of music that pounded at her, and she realized as she ran, as she ran in panic and terror, that some part of her mind was dramatizing, borrowing from the turbulent musical score of some private drama, and the music was rushing and pushing her now, higher and higher, faster, faster, plummeting and scurrying, down, and down into the pit of the ravine.
Only a little way, she prayed. One hundred eight, nine, one hundred ten steps! The bottom! Now, run! Across the bridge!
She told her legs what to do, her arms, her body, her terror; she advised all parts of herself in this white and terrible moment, over the roaring creek waters, on the hollow, thudding, swaying almost alive, resilient bridge planks she ran, followed by the wild footsteps behind, behind, with the music following, too, the music shrieking and babbling.
He’s following, don’t turn, don’t look, if you see him, you’ll not be able to move, you’ll be so frightened. Just run, run!
She ran across the bridge.
Oh, God, God, please, please let me get up the hill! Now up the path, now between the hills, oh God, it’s dark, and everything so far away. If I screamed now it wouldn’t help; I can’t scream anyway. Here’s the top of the path, here’s the street, oh, God, please let me be safe, if I get home safe I’ll never go out alone; I was a fool, let me admit it, I was a fool, I didn’t know what terror was, but if you let me get home from this I’ll never go without Helen or Francine again! Here’s the street. Across the street!
She crossed the street and rushed up the sidewalk.
Oh God, the porch! My house! Oh God, please give me time to get inside and lock the door and I’ll be safe!
And there—silly thing to notice—why did she notice, instantly, no time, no time—but there it was anyway, flashing by—there on the porch rail, the half-filled glass of lemonade she had abandoned a long time, a year, half an evening ago! The lemonade glass sitting calmly, imperturbably there on the rail . . . and . . .
She heard her clumsy feet on the porch and listened and felt her hands scrabbling and ripping at the lock with the key. She heard her heart. She heard her inner voice screaming.
The key fit.
Unlock the door, quick, quick!
The door opened.
Now, inside. Slam it!
She slammed the door.
“Now lock it, bar it, lock it!” she gasped wretchedly.
“Lock it, tight, tight!”
The door was locked and bolted tight.
The music stopped. She listened to her heart again and the sound of it diminishing into silence.
Home! Oh God, safe at home! Safe, safe and safe at home! She slumped against the door. Safe, safe. Listen. Not a sound. Safe, safe, oh thank God, safe at home. I’ll never go out at night again. I’ll stay home. I won’t go over that ravine again ever. Safe, oh safe, safe home, so good, so good, safe! Safe inside, the door locked. Wait.
Look out the window.
She looked.
Why, there’s no one there at all! Nobody. There was nobody following me at all. Nobody running after me. She got her breath and almost laughed at herself. It stands to reason If a man had been following me, he’d have caught me! I’m not a fast runner. . . . There’s no one on the porch or in the yard. How silly of me. I wasn’t running from anything. That ravine’s as safe as anyplace. Just the same, it’s nice to be home. Home’s the really good warm place, the only place to be.
She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped.
“What?” she asked. “What, what?”
Behind her in the living room, someone cleared his throat.
The Rocket
Many nights fiorello bodoni would awaken to hear the rockets sighing in the dark sky. He would tiptoe from bed, certain that his kind wife was dreaming, to let himself out into the night air. For a few moments he would be free of the smells of old food in the small house by the river. For a silent moment he would let his heart soar alone into space, following the rockets.
Now, this very night, he stood half naked in the darkness, watching the fire fountains murmuring in the air. The rockets on their long wild way to Mars and Saturn and Venus!
“Well, well, Bodoni.”
Bodoni started.
On a milk crate, by the silent river, sat an old man who also watched the rockets through the midnight hush.
“Oh, it’s you, Bramante!”
“Do you come out every night, Bodoni?”
“Only for the air.”
“So? I prefer the rockets myself,” said old Bramante. “I was a boy when they started. Eighty years ago, and I’ve never been on one yet.”
“I will ride up in one someday,” said Bodoni.
“Fool!” cried Bramante. “You’ll never go. This is a rich man’s world.” He shook his gray head, remembering. “When I was young they wrote it in fiery letters: THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE! Science, Comfort, and New Things for All! Ha! Eighty years. The Future becomes Now! Do we fly rockets? No! We live in shacks like our ancestors before us.”
“Perhaps my sons—” said Bodoni.
“No, nor their sons!” the old man shouted. “It’s the rich who have dreams and rockets!”
Bodoni hesitated. “Old man, I’ve saved three thousand dollars. It took me six years to save it. For my business, to invest in machinery. But every night for a month now I’ve been awake. I hear the rockets. I think. And tonight I’ve made up my mind. One of us will fly to Mars!” His eyes were shining and dark.
“Idiot,” snapped Bramante. “How will you choose? Who will go? If you go, your wife will hate you, for you will be just a bit nearer God, in space. When you tell your amazing trip to her, over the years, won’t bitterness gnaw at her?”
“No, no!”
“Yes! And your children? Will their lives be filled with the memory of Papa, who flew to Mars while they stayed here? What a senseless task you will set your boys. They will think of the rocket all their lives. They will lie awake. They will be sick with wanting it. Just as you are sick now. They will want to die if they cannot go. Don’t set that goal, I warn you. Let them be content with being poor. Turn their eyes down to their hands and to your junkyard, not up to the stars.”
“But—”
“Suppose your wife went? How would you feel, knowing she had seen and you had not? She would become holy. You would think of throwing her in the river. No, Bodoni, buy a new wrecking machine, which you need, and pull your dreams apart with it, and smash them to pieces.”
The old man subsided, gazing at the river in which, drowned, images of rockets burned down the sky.
“Good night,” said Bodoni.
“Sleep well,” said the other.
When the toast jumped from its silver box, Bodoni almost screamed. The night had been sleepless. Among his nervous children, beside his mountainous wife, Bodoni had twisted and stared at nothing. Bramante was right. Better to invest the money. Why save it when only one of the family could ride the rocket, while the others remained to melt in frustration?
“Fiorello, eat your toast,” said his wife, Maria.
“My throat is shriveled,” said Bodoni.
The children rushed in, the three boys fighting over a toy rocket, the two girls carrying dolls which duplicated the inhabitants of Mars, Venus, and Neptune, green mannequins with three yellow eyes and twelve fingers.
“I saw the Venus rocket!” cried Paolo.
“It took off, whoosh!” hissed Antonello.
“Children!” shouted Bodoni, hands to his ears.
They stared at him. He seldom shouted.
Bodoni arose. “Listen, all of you,” he said. “I have enough money to take one of us on the Mars rocket.”
Everyone yelled.
“You understand?” he asked. “Only one of us. Who?”
“Me, me, me!” cried the children.
“You,” said Maria.
“You,” said Bodoni to her.
They all fell silent.
The children reconsidered. “Let Lorenzo go—he’s oldest.”
“Let Miriamne go—she’s a girl!”
“Think what you would see,” said Bodoni’s wife to him. But her eyes were strange. Her voice shook. “The meteors, like fish. The universe. The Moon. Someone should go who could tell it well on returning. You have a way with words.”
“Nonsense. So have you,” he objected.
Everyone trembled.
“Here,” said Bodoni unhappily. From a broom he broke straws of various lengths. “The short straw wins.” He held out his tight fist. “Choose.”
Solemnly each took his turn.
“Long straw.”
“Long straw.”
Another.
“Long straw.”
The children finished. The room was quiet.
Two straws remained. Bodoni felt his heart ache in him. “Now,” he whispered. “Maria.”
She drew.
“The short straw,” she said.
“Ah,” sighed Lorenzo, half happy, half sad. “Mama goes to Mars.”
Bodoni tried to smile. “Congratulations. I will buy your ticket today.”
“Wait, Fiorello—”
“You can leave next week,” he murmured.
She saw the sad eyes of her children upon her, with the smiles beneath their straight, large noses. She returned the straw slowly to her husband. “I cannot go to Mars.”
“But why not?”
“I will be busy with another child.”
“What!”
She would not look at him. “It wouldn’t do for me to travel in my condition.”
He took her elbow. “Is
