That Bird that Comes out of the Clock, Ray Bradbury

That Bird that Comes out of the Clock

“You remember people by the things they do,” said Mrs. Coles, “rather than by how their face looks or what their tongues say, while they’re doing what they do. Now, if you ask me, this new woman across the street and down two houses, Kit Random, that her name? She is, to put it mildly, a woman of action.”

Everybody on the porch looked.

There was Kit Random with a flower in her hand, in the garden. There she was drawing the shade in the upstairs window. There fanning herself in the cool dark doorway of her front porch. There making mosquito-delicate etchings under a lemon-colored hurricane lamp at night. There throwing clay on a potter’s wheel early mornings, singing in a loud clear-water voice. There shoving dozens of ashtrays into a kiln she had built of bricks.

And again you saw her baking pies for God knows who in her empty house and setting them to cool in windowsills so men on the far side of the street crossed over, noses lifted, passing. Then, when the sun set, she swung in a great hairy hemp swing she had tied to the vast oak in her backyard.

About nine at night, carrying a crank phonograph like the white Victrola dog in her hands, she’d come out, crank up the machine, put on a record, and swing in the giant child’s swing, being a poor butterfly or a red red robin hop hop hoppingalong.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tiece. “She’s either a very shrewd woman up to her feminine tricks or—” And here she debated a moment. “She’s that little bird that comes out of the clock … that little bird that comes out of the clock … “

All along the street, women tapped their heads with knowing forefingers and looked over her fence, like women peering over a cliff, ready to scream at how high up they were, but all they saw was the nine o’clock backyard, as dim as a cavern full of sprouting leaves, starred with flowers, the phonograph hissing and clearing its throat before launching itself down the grooves of “June Night” or “Poor Butterfly.”

And there, with the regularity of an unseen, but nevertheless ticking pendulum, back and forth, one arm up to cushion her pink little pillow of cheek, sighing quietly to herself, was Kit Random, swinging in her swing, in rhythm to the things the phonograph said were poor about the butterfly or nice about the June night.

“Where’s she from?”
“No one knows.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“No one knows.”
“How long’s she going to stay?”
“Go askher!”

The facts were simple enough. The house had been unrented for a year, and then it was rented. One April afternoon a large moving van drove up and two men ran in and out, like Keystone Cops, the nearest thing to collision,but always skidding around each other witha fast-action routine of clocks, lamps, chairs, tables, and urns. In what seemed a minute they had driven away.

The house was left alone, unoccupied. Mrs. Coles had walked by it four times and peered in, and only seen that the moving men had hung the pictures, spread the rugs, adjusted the furniture, and made everything womanly and neat before they had come running out to go away. There was the nest, waiting for the bird.

And promptly at seven o’clock, just after supper, when everyone could see her, up drove Kit Random in a yellow taxicab, and moved into the waiting house, alone.

“Where’s Mr. Random?” asked everyone. “There isn’t any.”

“Divorced, that’s what she is, divorced. Or maybe her husband dead. A widow, that’s better. Poor thing.” But there was Kit Random smiling at every window and every porch, on her way to buy T-bone steaks, tomato soup, and dishwater soap, not looking tired, not looking sad, not looking alone, but looking as if a company of clowns lived with her by day, and a handsome film gentleman with a waxed mustache by night.

“But no one ever comesnearher place. At first I thought, well … ” Mrs. Coles hesitated. “A woman living alone. Oh,youknow. But there hasn’t even been an iceman close. So there’s only one thing to figure: as someone said, she’s that bird that comes out of the clock. Four times an hour,” she added.

At that very moment, Miss Kit Random called to the ladies, now her voice up in the soft green trees, now up in the blue sky on the opposite side of the yard. “Ladies?”

Their heads twisted. Their ears prickled.

“Ladies,” called Miss Kit Random, in flight. “I’ve come to get me a man. That’sit,ladies!”

All the ladies backed off to their houses.

It was the next afternoon that they found Mr. Tiece over in Miss Kit Random’s front yard playing marbles. Mrs. Tiece put up with it for about two minutes and thirty-five seconds and then came across the street, almost on roller skates.

“Well, what’re wedoing?” she demanded of the two hunched-down figures.

“Just a moment.” A marble spun bright under Henry Tiece’s thumb. Other marbles spat against each other and clacked away.
“Looks like you won,” said Kit Random. “You’re darned good at mibs, Hank.”

“It’s been years.” Mr. Tiece glanced uneasily at his wife’s ankle. She had veins like runners of light blue ink on her legs. It looked like the map of Illinois. Desplaines River here, Mississippi there. He scanned up as far as Rock Island when his wife said:
“Isn’t it a little strange playing marbles?”

“Strangething?” Mr. Tiece dusted himself off. “Iwon!”
“What you going to do with them marbles?”

“It’s not what Idowith them, it’s victory thatcounts.”

Mrs. Tiece glared at them as if they were toadstools. “Thanks for giving Henry a game.”

“Anytime, Clara, anytime,” said Kit Random.

“I’ll just leave these with you.” Henry handed over the marbles hastily. “No room at my place.”
“I want you to cut the grass,” said Mrs. Tiece.

He and Mrs. Tiece sort of walked across the street, he not looking at her, she keeping up so he walked faster, she increasing her pace, he increasing his until they almost leaped up the porch steps. He ran to the door first, she tailed after. The door-slam was such that birds abandoned their nests three houses down.

The next incident occurred exactly an hour later. Mr. Tiece was out mowing the lawn, his eyes fixed to the rotating machine and each of one hundred clover blossoms, all with tiny heads like Mrs. Tiece.

He cut furiously east, west, north, south, perspiring and wiping his brow as Mrs. Tiece shouted, “Don’t miss the outer drive! And down the middle, you missed a ridge. Watch that stone, you’ll ruin the cutter!”

Exactly at two o’clock two trucks drove up in front of Miss Kit Random’s house and a couple of laborers began tossing dirt out of Miss Random’s lawn. By four o’clock they poured a solid sheet of cement all over Miss Random’s yard.

At five o’clock, the truck drove off, taking Miss Kit Random’s lawn with it, at which point Miss Kit Random waved over to Mr. Tiece. “Won’t have to mow this lawn again for a couple years I guess!” She laughed.

Mr. Tiece started to laugh back when he sensed someone hidden inside the dark screen door. Mr. Tiece ducked inside. This time, with the door-slam, two potted geraniums fell off the porch rail.

“The nerve of that woman.”
“Did it on purpose.”

“Trying to make us look like slave drivers. Putting cement over her lawn. Giving Mr. Tiece ideas. Well, we’re not cementingourlawn, he’ll cut it every week, or my name isn’t Clara Moon Tiece!”

The three ladies snorted over their knitting.

“Seems like some sort of plot to me,” said Mrs. Coles. “Look at her backyard, a jungle, nothing in its right place.”
“Tell us about the marble game again, Clara.”

“Good grief. There he was down on his knees, both laughing. I—wait a minute. Youhearsomething?”

It was twilight, just after supper, and the three women on Mrs. Coles’ porch right next door. “That Clock Woman’s out in her backyard again, laughing.”
“Swinging in her swing?”

“Listen. Shh!”
“I haven’t done this inyears!” a man’s voice laughed. “Always wanted to, but folks think you’re crazy! Hey!”
“Who’s that?” cried Mrs. Coles.

The three women clapped their hands to their thumping chests and lurched to the far end of the porch, panicked excursioners on a sinking ship.
“Here you go!” cried Kit Random, giving a push.

And there in her backyard going up in the green leaves one way, then down and swooping up on the other, in the twilight air was a laughing man.

“Don’t that sound a bit like your Mr. Coles?” one of the ladies wondered.

“The idea!”
“Oh, Fanny.”
“Theidea!”

“Oh, Fanny, go to sleep,” said Mr. Coles in bed. The room was warm and dark. She sat like a great lump of ice cream glowing in the dim room at eleven o’clock.
“Ought to be run out of town.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He punched his pillow. “It was just a backyard swing, haven’t swung in years. Big damn swing, plenty hefty to ride a man. You left me to finish the dishes so you could go out and blather with those hens, I went to toss out the garbage and there she was swinging in the swing and I said how nice it looked and she said did I want to try? So, by God, I just climbed over to pump myself up for a ride.”

“And cackling like an idiot rooster.”

“Not cackling, damn it, but laughing. I wasn’t pinching her behind, was I?” He punched his pillow twice more and rolled over.

In his sleep she heard him mumble, “Best damn swing I ever swung,” which set her