Part 6 (2/2)
RAY BRADBURY.
THE JAR.
It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you. It went with the noiselessness of late night, and only the crickets chirping, the frogs sobbing off in the moist swampland. One of those things in a big jar that makes your stomach jump like it does when you see an amputated arm in a laboratory vat.
Charlie stared back at it for a long time.
A long time, his big raw hands, hairy on the roofs of them, clenching the rope that kept back curious people. He had paid his dime and now he stared.
It was getting late. The merry-go-round drowsed down to a lazy mechanical tinkle. Tent peggers back of a canvas smoked and cursed over a poker game. Lights switched out, putting a summer gloom over the carnival. People streamed homeward in cliques and queues. Somewhere, a radio flared up, then cut, leaving Louisiana sky wide and silent with stars peppering it.
There was nothing in the world for Charlie but that pale thing sealed in its universe of serum. Charlie's loose mouth hung open in a pink weal, teeth showing, eyes puzzled, admiring, wondering.
Someone trotted in the shadows behind him, small beside Charlie's giant tallness. ”Oh,” said the shadow, coming into the light-bulb glare. ”You still here, bud?”
”Yeah,” said Charlie, irritated; his thoughts were touched.
The carny-boss appreciated Charlie's curiosity. He nodded at his old acquaintance in the jar. ”Everybody likes it; in a peculiar kinda way, I mean.”
Charlie rubbed his long jawbone. ”You - uh - ever consider selling it?”
The carny-boss's eyes dilated, then closed. He snorted. ”Naw. It brings customers. They like seeing stuff like that. Sure.”
Charlie made a disappointed, ”Oh.”
”Well,” consider the carny-boss, ”if a guy had money, maybe -”
”How much money?”
”If a guy had -” the carny-boss estimated, squinting eyes, counting on fingers, watching Charlie as he tacked it out one finger after another. ”If a guy had three, four, say, maybe seven or eight -”
Charlie nodded with each motion, expectantly. Seeing this, the carny-boss raised his total, ” - maybe ten dollars, or maybe fifteen -”
Charlie scowled, worried. The carny-boss retreated, ”Say a guy has twelve dollars -” Charlie grinned. ”Why, he could buy that thing in that jar,” concluded the carny-boss.
”Funny thing,” said Charlie, ”I got just twelve bucks in my denims. And I been reckoning how looked up to I'd be back down at Wilder's Hollow if I brung home something like this to set on my shelf over the table. The guys would sure look up to me than, I bet.”
”Well, now, listen here -” said the carny-boss.
The sale was completed with the jar put on the back seat of Charlie's wagon. The horse skittered its hoofs when it saw it, and whinnied.
The carny-boss glanced up with an expression of, almost, relief. ”I was tired of seeing the thing around. Don't thank me. Lately ,I been thinking things about it, funny things - don't mind me, I'm just a big-mouth. S'long, farmer!”
Charlie drove off. The naked blue light bulbs withdrew like dying stars, the open dark country night of Louisiana swept in around the wagon and horse. The bra.s.s merry-go-round clanking faded. There was just Charlie, the horse timing its gray hoofs, and the crickets.
And the jar behind the high seat.
It sloshed back and forth, back and forth. Sloshed wet. And the cold gray thing drowsily slumped against the gla.s.s, looking out, looking out, but seeing nothing, nothing, nothing.
Charlie leaned back to pet the lid. Smelling of strange liquor, his hand returned, changed and cold and trembling, excited. He was bright-scarlet happy about this. Yes, sir!
Slosh, slosh, slosh - In the Hollow numerous gra.s.s-green and blood-red lanterns tossed dusty light over men huddled, changing, spitting, sitting on General Store property.
They knew the creak-b.u.mble of Charlie's vehicle and did not s.h.i.+ft their raw, drab-haired skulls as he rocked to a halt. Their cigars were nicotine glowworms crawling from political lips to knee-perches and return-trip. Their voices were frog mutterings in summer night.
Charlie leaned at an eager angle. ”Hi, Clem. Hi, Milt.”
”Lo, Charlie. Lo, Charlie,” they murmured. The political conflict continued. Charlie cut it down the seam.
”I got somethin' here. I got somethin' you might wanna see!”
Tom Carmody's eyes glinted, green in the lamplight, from the General Store porch. It seemed to Charlie that Tom Carmody was forever installed under porches in shadow, or under trees in shadow, or if in a room in the farthest niche, showing his eyes out at you from his dark. You never knew what his face was doing, and his eyes were always funning you. And every time they looked at you they laughed a different way.
”You ain't got nothin' we wants ta see, you dumb sheebaw!”
Charlie made a fist with a blunt-knuckle fringe. ”Somethin' in a jar,” he went on. ”Looks kine a like a brain, kine a like a pickled wolf, kine a like - well come look yourself!”
Somebody snicked his cigar into a fall of pink ash and ambled over to look. Charlie grandly elevated the jar lid, and in the uncertain lantern light the man's face changed. ”Hey, now, what in h.e.l.l is this -”
It was the first thaw of the night. Others s.h.i.+fted lazily upright, leaned forward; gravity pulled them into walking. They made no effort, except to keep one shoe before the other, to keep from collapsing upon their unusual faces. They circled the jar and contents. And Charlie, first time in his life, seized upon some strategy and clapped the lid down with a gla.s.s clatter.
”You want to see more, drop around to my house. It'll be there,” he declared generously.
Tom Carmody spat from out his porch eyrie. ”Ha!”
”Lemme see thet again,” cried Gramps Medknowe. ”Is it a brain?”
Charlie flapped the reins and the horse stumbled into action.
”Come on around! You're welcome!”
”What'll your wife say?”
”She'll kick the tar off our heels!”
But Charlie and the wagon were gone over the hill. They stood around, all of them, chewing tongues, squinting after. Tom Carmody swore softly from the porch - As Charlie climbed the steps of his shack, carrying the jar to its throne in the living-room, he thought that from now on the place would be a palace. The inc.u.mbent king swam without moving in his private pool, raised, elevated upon his shelf over the table. This jar was the one thing that dispelled the gray sameness that hung over the place on the swamp rim.
”What've you got there?”
Thedy's thin soprano turned him from his admiration. She stood in the bedroom door glaring out, her thin body clothed in faded blue gingham, her hair drawn to a drab knot behind red ears. Her eyes were faded like the gingham.
”Well,” she repeated. ”What is it?”
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