Driving Blind, Ray Bradbury

Driving Blind

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Why, hell, lookthere!”

But the big six-passenger 1929 Studebaker was already gone.

One of the men standing in front of Fremley’s Hardware had stepped down off the curb to stare after the vehicle.
“That guy was driving with a hood over his head. Like a hangman’s hood, black, over his head, driving blind!”

“I saw it, I saw it!” said a boy standing, similarly riven, nearby. The boy was me, Thomas Quincy Riley, better known as Tom or Quint and mighty curious. I ran. “Hey, wait up! Gosh! Drivingblind!”

I almost caught up with the blind driver at Main and Elm where the Studebaker turned off down Elm followed by a siren. A town policeman on his motorcycle, stunned with the traveling vision, was giving pursuit.

When I reached the car it was double-parked with the officer’s boot up on the running board and Willy Crenshaw, the officer, scowling in at the black Hood and someone under the Hood.
“Would you mind taking that thing off?” he said.

“No, but here’s my driver’s license,” said a muffled voice. A hand with the license sailed out the window.
“I want to see your face,” said Willy Crenshaw.

“It’s right there on the license.”
“I want to check and see if the two compare,” said Willy Crenshaw.

“The name is Phil Dunlop,” said the Hooded voice. “121 Desplaines Street, Gurney. Own the Studebaker Sales at 16 Gurney Avenue. It’s all there if you can read.”
Willy Crenshaw creased his forehead and inched his eyesight along the words.

“Hey, mister,” I said. “This is real neat!”
“Shut up, son.” The policeman ground his boot on the running board. “What youupto?”
I stood arching my feet, peering over the officer’s shoulder as he hesitated to write up a ticket or jail a crook.
“What youupto?” Willy Crenshaw repeated.

“Right now,” said the Hooded voice, “I’d like a place to stay overnight so I can prowl your town a few days.”
Willy Crenshaw leaned forward. “Whatkindof prowling?”
“In this car, as you see, making people sit up and notice.”

“They done that,” the policeman admitted, looking at the crowd that had accumulated behind Thomas Quincy Riley, me.
“Is it a big crowd, boy?” said the man under the Hood.

I didn’t realize he was addressing me, then I quickened up. “Sockdolager!” I said.
“You think if I drove around town twenty-four hours dressed like this, people might listen for one minute and hear what Isay?”

“All ears,” I said.
“There you have it, Officer,” said the Hood, staring straight ahead, or what seemed like. “I’ll stay on, ’cause the boy says. Boy,” said the voice, “you know a good place for me to shave my unseen face and rest my feet?”

“My grandma, she—”
“Sounds good. Boy—”
“Name’s Thomas Quincy Riley.”
“Call you Quint?”
“How’d you guess?”

“Quint, jump in, show the way. But don’t try to peek under my cover-up.”
“No,sir!”

And I was around the car and in the front seat, my heart pure jackrabbit.
“Excuse us, Officer. Any questions, I’ll be sequestered at this child’s place.”
“Six one nine Washington Street—” I began.

“I know, I know!” cried the officer. “Damnation.”
“You’ll let me go in this boy’s custody?”

“Hell!” The policeman jerked his boot off the running board which let the car bang away.
“Quint?” said the voice under the dark Hood, steering. “What’smyname?”
“You said—”

“No, no. What doyouwant to call me?”
“Hmm. Mr. Mysterious?”

“Bull’s-eye. Where do I turn left, right, right, left, and right again?”
“Well,” I said.

And we motored off, me terrified of collisions and Mr. Mysterious, real nice and calm, made a perfect left.

Some people knit because their fingers need preoccupations for their nerves.

Grandma didn’t knit, but plucked peas from the pod. We had peas just about most nights in my life. Other nights she plucked lima beans. String beans? She harped on those, too, but they didn’t pluck as easy or as neat as peas. Peas were it. As we came up the porch steps, Grandma eyed our arrival and shelled the little greens.

“Grandma,” I said. “This is Mr. Mysterious.”
“I couldseethat.” Grandma nodded and smiled at she knew not what.
“He’s wearing a Hood,” I said.

“I noticed.” Grandma was still unaffected and amiable.
“He needs a room.”

“To need, the Bible says, is to have. Can he find his way up? Excuse the question.”
“Andboard,” I added.

“Beg pardon, how’s he going to eat through thatthing?”
“Hood,” I said.
“Hood?”

“I can manage,” Mr. Mysterious murmured.
“He can manage,” I translated.

“That’ll be worth watching.” Grandma stitched out more green peas. “Sir, do you have a name?”
“I justtoldyou,” I said.

“So you did.” Grandma nodded. “Dinner’s at six,” she said, “sharp.”

The supper table, promptly at six, was loud with roomers and boarders. Grandpa having come home from Goldfield and Silver Creek, Nevada, with neither gold nor silver, and hiding out in the library parlor behind his books, allowed Grandma to room three bachelors and two bachelor ladies upstairs, while three boarders came in from various neighborhoods a few blocks away.

It made for a lively breakfast, lunch, and dinner and Grandma made enough from this to keep our ark from sinking. Tonight there was five minutes of uproar concerning politics, three minutes on religion, and then the best talk about the food set before them, just as Mr. Mysterious arrived and everyone shut up. He glided among them, nodding his Hood right and left, and as he sat I yelled:
“Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mr.—”

“Just call me Phil,” murmured Mr. Mysterious.
I sat back, somewhat aggrieved.
“Phil,” said everyone.

They all stared at him and couldn’t tell if he saw their stares through the black velvet. How’s he going to eat, hid like that, they thought. Mr. Mysterious picked up a big soup spoon.
“Pass the gravy, please,” he whispered.

“Pass the mashed potatoes,” he added quietly.
“Pass the peas,” he finished.

“Also, Mrs. Grandma … ” he said. Grandma, in the doorway, smiled. It seemed a nice touch: “Mrs.” He said, ” … please bring me my blue-plate special.”

Grandma placed what was indeed a Chinese garden done in blue ceramics but containing what looked to be a dog’s dinner. Mr. Mysterious ladled the gravy, the mashed potatoes, and the peas on and mashed and crushed it shapeless as we watched, trying not to bug our eyes.

There was a moment of silence as the voice under the dark Hood said, “Anyone mind if I say grace?”
Nobody would mind.

“O Lord,” said the hidden voice, “let us receive those gifts of love that shape and change and move our lives to perfection. May others see in us only what we see in them, perfection and beauty beyond telling. Amen.”

“Amen,” said all as Mr. M. snuck from his coat a thing to astonish the boarders and amaze the rest.
“That,” someone said (me), “is the biggest darn soda fountain straw I ever seen!”

“Quint!” said Grandma.
“Well, it is.'”

And it was. A soda fountain straw two or three times larger than ordinary which vanished up under the Hood and probed down through the mashed potatoes, peas, and gravy dog’s dinner which silently ascended the straw to vanish in an unseen mouth, silent and soundless as cats at mealtime.

Which made the rest of us fall to, self-consciously cutting, chewing, and swallowing so loud we all blushed.

While Mr. Mysterious sucked his liquid victuals up out of sight with not even so much as a purr. From the corners of our eyes we watched the victuals slide silently and invisibly under the Hood until the plate was hound’s-tooth clean. And all this done with Mr. M.’s fingers and hands fixed to his knees.

“I—” said Grandma, her gaze on that straw, “hope you liked your dinner, sir.”
“Sockdolager,” said Mr. Mysterious.
“Ice cream’s for dessert,” said Grandma. “Mostly melted.”
“Melted!” Mr. M. laughed.

It was a fine summer night with three cigars, one cigarette, and assorted knitting on the front porch and enough rocking chairs going somewhere-in-place to make dogs nervous and cats leave.

In the clouds of cigar smoke and a pause in the knitting, Grandpa, who always came out after dark, said:
“If you don’t mind my infernal nerve, now that you’re settled in, what’snext?”
Mr. Mysterious, leaning on the front porch rail, looking, we supposed, out at his shiny Studebaker, put a cigarette to his Hood and drew some smoke in, then out without coughing. I stood watching, proudly.

“Well,” said Mr. M., “I got several roads to take. See that car out there?”
“It’s large and obvious,” said Grandpa.

“That is a brand-new class-A Studebaker Eight, got thirty miles on it, which is as far from Gurney to here and a few runaround blocks. My car salesroom is just about big enough to hold three Studebakers and four customers at once. Mostly dairy farmers pass my windows but don’t come in. I figured it was time to come to a live-wire place, where if I shouted ‘Leap’ you might at least hop.”

“We’re waiting,” said Grandpa.
“Would you like a small demonstration of what I pray for andwillrealize?” said the cigarette smoke wafting out through the fabric in syllables. “Someone say ‘Go.'”
Lots of cigar smoke came out in an explosion.

“Go!”
“Jump, Quint!”
I reached the Studebaker before him and Mr. Mysterious was no sooner in the front seat than we took off.
“Right and then left and then right, correct, Quint?”

And right, left, right it was to Main Street and us banging away fast.
“Don’t laugh so loud, Quint.”
“Can’t help it! This ispeacherino!”
“Stop swearing. Anyone following?”

“Three young guys on the sidewalk here. Three old gents off the curb there!”
He slowed. The six following us soon became eight.

“Are we almost at the cigar-store corner where the loudmouths hang out, Quint?”
“Youknowwe are.”
“Watch this!”

As we passed the cigar store he slowed and choked the gas. The most terrific Fourth of July BANG fired out the exhaust. The cigar-store loudmouths jumped a foot and grabbed their straw hats. Mr. M. gave them