The Meadow, Ray Bradbury

The Meadow

A wall collapses, followed by another and another; with dull thunder, a city falls into ruin.
The night wind blows.

The world lies silent.

London was torn down during the day. Port Said was destroyed. The nails were pulled out of San Francisco. Glasgow is no more.
They are gone, forever.

Boards clatter softly in the wind, sand whines and trickles in small storms upon the still air.
Along the road toward the colorless ruins comes the old night watchman to unlock the gate in the high barbed-wire fence and stand looking in.

There in the moonlight lie Alexandria and Moscow and New York. There in the moonlight lie Johannesburg and Dublin and Stockholm. And Clearwater, Kansas, and Provincetown, and Rio de Janeiro.

Just this afternoon the old man saw it happen, saw the car roaring outside the barbed-wire fence, saw the lean, sun-tanned men in that car, the men with their luxurious charcoal-flannel suits, and winking gold-mask cuff links, and their burning-gold wristwatches, and eye-blinding rings, lighting their cork-tipped cigarettes with engraved lighters. . . .

“There it is, gentlemen. What a mess. Look what the weather’s done to it.”

“Yes, sir, it’s bad, Mr. Douglas!”
“We just might save Paris.”
“Yes, sir!”

“But, hell! The rain’s warped it. That’s Hollywood for you! Tear it down! Clear it out! We can use that land. Send a wrecking crew in today!”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Douglas!”

The car roaring off and gone away.
And now it is night. And the old night watchman stands inside the gate.
He remembers what happened this same still afternoon when the wreckers came.
A hammering, ripping, clattering; a collapse and a roar. Dust and thunder, thunder and dust!

And the whole of the entire world shook loose its nails and lath and plaster and sill and celluloid window as town after town following town banged over flat and lay still.
A shuddering, a thunder fading away, and then, once more, only the quiet wind.

The night watchman now walks slowly forward along the empty streets.

And one moment he is in Baghdad, and beggars loll in wondrous filth, and women with clear sapphire eyes give veiled smiles from high thin windows.
The wind blows sand and confetti.
The women and beggars vanish.

And it is all strutworks again, it is all papier-mâché and oil-painted canvas and props lettered with the name of this studio, and there is nothing behind any of the building fronts but night and space and stars.

The old man pulls a hammer and a few long nails from his tool chest; he peers around in the junk until he finds a dozen good strong boards and some untorn canvas. And he takes the bright steel nails in his blunt fingers, and they are single-headed nails.

And he begins to put London back together again, hammering and hammering, board by board, wall by wall, window by window, hammering, hammering, louder, louder, steel on steel, steel in wood, wood against sky, working the hours toward midnight, with no end to his striking and fixing and striking again.

“Hey there, you!”
The old man pauses.
“You, night watchman!”
Out of the shadows hurries a stranger in overalls, calling:
“Hey, what’s-your-name!”

The old man turns. “The name’s Smith.”
“Okay, Smith, what in hell’s the idea!”
The watchman eyes the stranger quietly. “Who are you?”
“Kelly, foreman of the wrecking gang.”

The old man nods. “Ah. The ones who tear everything down. You’ve done plenty today. Why aren’t you home bragging about it?”

Kelly hawks and spits. “There was some machinery over on the Singapore set I had to check.” He wipes his mouth. . . . “Now, Smith, what in Christ’s name you think you’re doing? Drop that hammer. You’re building it all up again! We tear it down and you put it up. You crazy?”

The old man nods. “Maybe I am. But somebody has to put it up again.”
“Look, Smith. I do my work, you do yours, everyone’s happy. But I can’t have you messing, see? I’m turning you in to Mr. Douglas.”

The old man goes on with his hammering. “Call him up. Send him around. I want to talk to him. He’s the crazy one.”

Kelly laughs. “You kidding? Douglas don’t see nobody.” He jerks his hand, then bends to examine Smith’s newly finished work. “Hey, wait a minute! What kind of nails you using? Single-heads! Now, cut that! It’ll be hell to pay tomorrow, trying to pull ’em out!”

Smith turns his head and looks for a moment at the other man swaying there. “Well, it stands to reason you can’t put the world together with double-headed nails. They’re too easy to yank out. You got to use single-headed nails and hammer ’em way in. Like this!”

He gives a steel nail one tremendous blow that buries it completely in the wood.

Kelly works his hands on his hips. “I’ll give you one more chance. Quit putting things back together and I’ll play ball with you.”

“Young man,” says the night watchman, and keeps on hammering while he talks, and thinks about it, and talks some more, “I was here long before you were born. I was here when all this was only a meadow. And there was a wind set the meadow running in waves. For more than thirty years I watched it grow, until it was all of the world together. I lived here with it. I lived nice. This is the real world to me now.

That world out there, beyond the fence, is where I spend time sleeping. I got a little room on a little street, and I see headlines and read about wars and strange, bad people. But here? Here I have the whole world together and it’s all peace. I been walking through the cities of this world since 1920.

Any night I feel like it, I have a one-o’clock snack at a bar on the Champs Élysées! I can get me some fine amontillado sherry at a sidewalk café in Madrid, if I want. Or else me and the stone gargoyles, high up there—you see them, on top Notre Dame?—we can turn over great state matters and reach big political decisions!”

“Yeah, Pop, sure.” Kelly waves impatiently.

“And now you come and kick it down and leave only that world out there which hasn’t learned the first thing about peace that I know from seeing this land here inside the barbed wire. And so you come and rip it up and there’s no peace anymore, anywhere. You and your wreckers so proud of your wrecking. Pulling down towns and cities and whole lands!”
“A guy’s got to live,” says Kelly. “I got a wife and kids.”

“That’s what they all say. They got wives and kids. And they go on, pulling apart, tearing down, killing. They had orders! Somebody told them. They had to do it!”
“Shut up and gimme that hammer!”

“Don’t come any closer!”
“Why, you crazy old—”

“This hammer’s good for more than nails!” The old man whistles the hammer through the air; the wrecker jumps back.

“Hell,” says Kelly, “you’re insane! I’m putting a call through to the main studio; we’ll get some cops here quick. My God, one minute you’re building things up and talking crazy, but how do I know two minutes from now you won’t run wild and start pouring kerosene and lighting matches!”

“I wouldn’t harm the smallest piece of kindling in this place, and you know it,” says the old man.
“Might burn the whole goddam place down, hell,” says Kelly. “Listen, old man, you just wait right there!”

The wrecker spins about and runs off into the villages and the ruined cities and the sleeping two-dimensional towns of this night world, and after his footsteps fade there is a music that the wind plays on the long silver barbed wires of the fence, and the old man hammering and hammering and selecting long boards and rearing walls until a time finally comes when his mouth is gasping, his heart is exploding; the hammer drops from his open fingers, steel nails tinkle like coins on the pavement, and the old man cries out to himself alone:
“It’s no use, no use. I can’t put it all back up before they come. I need so very much help I don’t know what to do.”

The old man leaves his hammer lying on the road and begins to walk with no direction, with no purpose, it seems, save that he is thinking to make one last round and take one last look at everything and say good-bye to whatever there is or was in this world to say good-bye to.

And so he walks with the shadows all around and the shadows all through this land where time has grown late indeed, and the shadows are of all kinds and types and sizes, shadows of buildings, and shadows of people.

And he doesn’t look straight at them, no, because if he looked at them straight, they would all blow away. No, he just walks, down the middle of Piccadilly Circus . . .the echo of his steps . . . or the Rue de la Paix . . . the sound of him clearing his throat . . . or Fifth Avenue… and he doesn’t look right or left. And all around him, in dark doorways and empty windows, are his many friends, his good friends, his very good friends.

Far away there are the hiss and steam and soft whispering of a caffè espresso machine, all silver and chrome, and soft Italian singing . . . the flutter of hands in darkness over the open mouths of balalaikas, the rustle of palm trees, a touching of drums with the chimes chiming and small bells belling, and a sound of summer apples dropped in soft night grass which are