The Town Where No One Got Off - Ray Bradbury, ebook, Temp
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TheTHE TOWN WHERE NO ONE GOT OFFRay BradburyCrossing the oontinental United States by night, by day, on the train, you flashpast town after wilderness town where nobody ever gets off. Or rather, no personwho doesn't belong, no person who hasn't roots in these country graveyards everbothers to visit their lonely stations or attend their lonely views.I spoke of this to a fellow passenger, another salesman like myself, on theChicago-Los Angeles train as we crossed Iowa."True," he said. "People get off in Chicago; everyone gets off there. People getoff in New York, get off in Boston, get off in L.A. People who don't live therego there to see and come back to tell. But what tourist ever just got off at FoxHill, Nebraska, to look at it? You? Me? No! I don't know anyone, got no businessthere, it's no health resort, so why bother?""Wouldn't it be a fascinating change," I said, "some year to plan a reallydifferent vacation? Pick some village lost on the plains where you don't know asoul and go there for the hell of it?""You'd be bored stiff.""I'm not bored thinking of it!" I peered out the window. "What's the next towncoming up on this line?""Rampart Junction."I smiled. "Sounds good. I might get off there.""You're a liar and a fool. What you want? Adventure? Romance? Go ahead, jump offthe train. Ten seconds later you'll call yourself an idiot, grab a taxi, andrace us to the next town.""Maybe."I watched telephone poles flick by, flick by, flick by. Far ahead I could seethe first faint outlines of a town."But I don't think so," I heard myself say.The salesman across from me looked faindy surprised.For slowly, very slowly, I was rising to stand. I reached for my hat. I saw myhand fumble for my own suitcase. I was surprised myself."Hold on!" said the salesman. "What're you doing?"The train rounded a curve suddenly. I swayed. Far ahead I saw one church spire,a deep forest, a field of summer wheat."It looks like I'm getting off the train," I said."Sit down," he said."No," I said. "There's something about that town up ahead. I've got to go see.I've got the time. I don't have to be in L.A., really, until next Monday. If Idon't get off the train now, I'll always wonder what I missed, what I let slipby when I had the chance to see it.""We were just talking. There's nothing there.""You're wrong," I said. "There is."I put my hat on my head and lifted the suitcase in my hand."By God," said the salesman, "I think you're really going to do it."My heart beat quickly. My face was flushed.The train whistled. The train rushed down the track. The town was near!"Wish me luck," I said."Luck!" he cried.I ran for the porter, yelling.There was an ancient flake-painted chair tilted back against thestation-platform wall. In this chair, completely relaxed so he sank into hisclothes, was a man of some seventy years whose timbers looked as if he'd beennailed there since the station was built. The sun had burned his face dark andtracked his cheek with lizard folds and stitches that held his eyes in aperpetual squint. His hair smoked ash-white in the summer wind. His blue shirt,open at the neck to show white clock springs, was bleached like the staring lateafternoon sky. His shoes were blistered as if he had held them, uncaring, in themouth of a stove, motionless, forever. His shadow under him was stenciled apermanent black.As I stepped down the old man's eyes flicked every door on the train andstopped, surprised, at me.I thought he might wave.But there was only a sudden coloring of his secret eyes; a chemical change thatwas recognition. Yet he had not twitched so much as his mouth, an eyelid, afinger. An invisible bulk had shifted inside him.The moving train gave me an excuse to follow it with my eyes. There was no oneelse on the platform. No autos waited by the cobwebbed, nailed-shut office. Ialone had departed the iron thunder to set foot on the choppy waves of platformlumber.The train whistled over the hill.Fool! I thought. My fellow passenger had been right. I would panic at theboredom I already sensed in this place. All right, I thought, fool, yes, butrun, no!I walked my suitcase down the platform, not looking at the old man. As I passed,I heard his thin bulk shift again, this time so I could hear it. His feet werecoming down to touch and tap the mushy boards.I kept walking."Afternoon," a voice said faintly.I knew he did not look at me but only at that great cloudless spread ofshimmering sky."Afternoon," I said.I started up the dirt road toward the town. One hundred yards away, I glancedback.The old man, still seated there, stared at the sun, as if posing a question.I hurried on.I moved through the dreaming late afternoon town, utterly anonymous and alone, atrout going upstream, not touching the banks of a clear-running river of lifethat drifted all about me.My suspicions were confirmed: it was a town where nothing happened, whereoccurred only the following events:At four o'clock sharp, the Honneger Hardware door slammed as a dog came out todust himself in the road. Four-thirty, a straw sucked emptily at the bottom of asoda glass, making a sound like a great cataract in the drugstore silence. Fiveo'clock, boys and pebbles plunged in the town river. Five-fifteen, ants paradedin the slanting light under some elm trees.And yet - I turned in a slow circle - somewhere in this town there must besomething worth seeing. I knew it was there. I knew I had to keep walking andlooking. I knew I would find it.I walked. I looked.All through the afternoon there was only one constant and unchanging factor: theold man in the bleached blue pants and shirt was never far away. When I sat inthe drugstore he was out front spitting tobacco that rolled itself intotumblebugs in the dust. When I stood by the river be was crouched downstreammaking a great thing of washing his hands.Along about seven-thirty in the evening, I was walking for the seventh or eighthtime through the quiet streets when I heard footsteps beside me.I looked over, and the old man was pacing me, looking straight ahead, a piece ofdried grass in his stained teeth."It's been a long time," he said quietly.We walked along in the twilight."A long time," he said, "waitin' on that station platform.""You?" I said."Me." He nodded in the tree shadows."Were you waiting for someone at the station?""Yes," he said. "You.""Me?" The surprise must have shown in my voice. "But why . . . ? You never sawme before in your life.""Did I say I did? I just said I was waitin'."We were on the edge of town now. He had turned and I had turned with him alongthe darkening riverbank toward the trestle where the night trains ran over goingeast, going west, but stopping rare few times."You want to know anything about me?" I asked, suddenly. "You the sheriff?""No, not the sheriff. And no, I don't want to know nothing about you." He puthis hands in his pockets. The sun was set now. The air was suddenly cool. "I'mjust surprised you're here at last, is all.""Surprised?""Surprised," he said, "and . . . pleased."I stopped abruptly and looked straight at him."How long have you been sitting on that station platform?""Twenty years, give or take a few."I knew he was telling the truth; his voice was as easy and quiet as the river."Waiting for me?" I said."Or someone like you," he said.We walked on in the growing dark."How you like our town?""Nice, quiet." I said."Nice, quiet." He nodded. "Like the people?""People look nice and quiet.""They are," he said. "Nice, quiet."I was ready to turn back but the old man kept talking and in order to listen andbe polite I had to walk with him in the vaster darkness, the tides of field andmeadow beyond town."Yes," said the old man, "the day I retired, twenty years ago, I sat down onthat station platform and there I been, sittin', doin' nothin', waitin' forsomething to happen, I didn't know what, I didn't know, I couldn't say. But whenit finally happened, I'd know it, I'd look at it and say, yes, sir, that's whatI was waitin' for. Train wreck? No. Old woman friend come back to town afterfifty years? No. No. It's hard to say. Someone. Something. And it seems to havesomething to do with you. I wish I could say-""Why don't you try?" I said.The stars were coming out. We walked on."Well," he said slowly, "you know much about your own insides?""You mean my stomach or you mean psychologically?""That's the word. I mean your head, your brain, you know much about that ?"The grass whispered under my feet. "A little.""You hate many people in your time?""Some.""We all do. It's normal enough to hate, ain't it, and not only hate but, whilewe don't talk about it, don't we sometimes want to hit people who hurt us, evenkill them?""Hardly a week passes we don't get that feeling," I said, "and put it away.""We put away all our lives," he said. "The town says thus and so, Mom and Dadsay this and that, the law says such and such. So you put away one killing andanother and two more after that. By the time you're my age, you got lots of thatkind of stuff between your ears. And unless you went to war, nothin' everhappened to get rid of it.""Some men trapshoot or hunt ducks," I said. "Some men box or wrestle.""And some don't. I'm talkin' about them that don't. Me. All my life I've beensaltin' down those bodies, puttin' em away on ice in my head. Sometimes you getmad at a town and the people in it for makin' you put things aside like that.You like the old cave men who just gave a hell of a yell and whanged someone onthe head with a club.""Which all leads up to . . .?""Which all leads u...
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