Ray Bradbury. The Other Highway

Даниил Серебряный
                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                The Other Highway
                1994

     They  drove  into  green Sunday-morning country, away from the hot aluminum
city,  and  watched as the sky was set free and moved over them like a lake they
had  never known was there, amazingly blue and with white breakers above them as
they traveled.
     Clarence  Travers  slowed the car and felt the cool wind move over his face
with  the  smell  of  cut  grass.  He  reached over to grasp his wife's hand and
glanced at his son and daughter in the backseat, not fighting, at least for this
moment, as the car moved through one quiet beauty after another in what might be
a Sunday so lush and green it would never end.
     "Thank  God  we're  doing this," said Cecelia Travers. "It's been a million
years  since  we  got away." He felt her hand hug his and then relax completely.
"when  I  think  of all those ladies dropping dead from the heat at the cocktail
parry this afternoon, _welt"_
     "Well, indeed," said Clarence Travers. "Onward!"
     He  pressed  the gas pedal and they moved faster. Their progress out of the
city  had  been  mildly  hysterical, with cars shrieking and shoving them toward
islands  of  wilderness praying for picnics that might not be found. Seeing that
he had put the car in the fast lane, he slowed to gradually move himself and his
family  through  the  banshee  traffic until they were idling along at an almost
reasonable fifty miles an hour. The scents of flowers and trees that blew in the
window made his move worthwhile. He laughed at nothing at all and said:
     "Sometimes, when I get this far out, I think let's just keep driving, never
go back to the damned city."
     "Let's drive a hundred miles," shouted his son.
     "A thousand!" cried his daughter.
     "A  thousand!"  said  Clarence  Travers. "But one slow mile at a time." And
then said, softly, "Hey!"
     And  as  suddenly  as if they had dreamed it up, the lost highway came into
view. "Wonderful!" said Mr. Clarence Travers.
     "What?" asked the children.
     "Look!" said Clarence Travers, leaning over his wife, pointing. "That's the
_Old_ road. The one they used a long time ago."
     _"That?"_ said his wife.
     "It's awfully small," said his son.
     "Well, there weren't many cars then, they didn't need much."
     "It looks like a big snake," said his daughter.
     "Yeah, the old roads used to twist and turn, all right. Remember?"
     Cecelia  Travers  nodded.  The  car  had slowed and they gazed over at that
narrow  concrete strip with the green grass buckling it gently here or there and
sprays  of wildflowers nestling up close to either side and the morning sunlight
coming  down  through  the high elms and maples and oaks that led the way toward
the forest.
     "I know it like the nose on my face," said Clarence Travers. "How would you
like to ride on it?"
     "Oh, Clarence, now
     "I _mean_ it."
     "Oh, Daddy, _could_ we?"
     "All right, we'll do it," he said decisively.
     "We  can't!" said Cecelia Travers. "It's probably against the law. It can't
be safe."
     But before his wife could finish, he turned off the freeway and let all the
swift  cars  rush  on  while  he  drove, smiling at each bump, down over a small
ditch, toward the old road.
     "Clarence, please! we'll be arrested!"
     "For  going  ten  miles an hour on a highway nobody uses anymore? Let's not
kick  over  any beehives, it's too nice a day. I'll buy you all soda pops if you
behave."
     They reached the old road.
     "See how simple? Now which way, kids?"
     "That way, _that_ way!"
     "Easy as pie!"
     And  he let the car take them away on the old highway, the great white-gray
boa  constrictor  that  lashed now slowly this way in green moss-velvet meadows,
looped  over  gentle  hills,  and  lowered  itself  majestically  into  caves of
moist-smelling  trees,  through  the  odor  of cricks and spring mud and crystal
water  that rustled like sheets of cellophane over small stone falls. They drove
slow  enough  to  see the waterspiders' enigmatic etchings on quiet pools behind
dams of last October's leaves.
     "Daddy, what are those?"
     "What, the water-skaters? No one has ever caught one. You wait and wait and
put  your hand out and bang! The spider's gone. They're the first things in life
you can't grab onto. The list gets bigger as you grow old, so start small. Don't
believe in them. They're not really there."
     "It's fun _thinking_ they are."
     "You  have  just  stated  a  deep  philosophical  truth. Now, drive on, Mr.
Travers." And obeying his own command with good humor, he drove on.
     And  they  came  to  a  forest  that had been like November all through the
winter  and now, reluctantly, was putting out green flags to welcome the season.
Butterflies  in  great tosses of confetti leaped from the deeps of the forest to
ramble  drunkenly  on  the air, their thousand torn shadows following over grass
and water.
     "Let's go back now," said Cecelia Travers.
     "Aw, Mom," said the son and daughter.
     "Why?"  said  Clarence  Travers. "My God, how many kids back in that damned
hot  town  can  say  they  drove  on a road _nobody else_ has used in years? Not
_one!_  Not  one  with a father brave enough to cross a little grass to take the
old way. Right?"
     Mrs. Travers lapsed into silence.
     "Right  there,"  said  Clarence Travers, "over that hill, the highway turns
left, then right, then left again, an S curve, and another S. Wait and see."
     "Left."
     "Right."
     "Left."
     "An S curve."
     The car purred.
     _"Another_ S!"
     "Just like you _said!"_
     "Look." Clarence Travers pointed. A hundred yards across the way from them,
the  freeway  suddenly  appeared  for  a few yards before it vanished, screaming
behind  stacks of playing-card billboards. Clarence Travers stared fixedly at it
and  the  grass  between  it  and this shadowed path, this silent place like the
bottom  of  an  old  stream where tides used to come but came no more, where the
wind ran through nights making the old sound of far traffic.
     "You know something," said the wife. "That freeway over there scares me."
     "Can we drive home on this old road instead, Dad?" said the son.
     "I wish we could."
     "I've  always  been  scared,"  said  the  wife, watching that other traffic
roaring by, gone before it arrived.
     "We're  _all_  afraid,"  said Clarence Travers. "But you pay your money and
take your chance. _Well?"_
      His wife sighed. "Damn, get back on that dreadful thing."
     "Not  quite  yet,"  said  Clarence Travers and drove to reach a small, very
small  village,  all  quite  unexpected, a settlement no more than a dozen white
clapboard houses mossed under giant trees, dreaming in a green tide of water and
leaf-shadow,  with wind shaking the rocking chairs on weathered porches and dogs
sleeping  in  the cool nap of grass-carpeting at noon, and a small general store
with a dirty red gas pump out front.
     They  drew  up  there  and  got out and stood, unreal in the sudden lack of
motion, not quite accepting these houses lost in the wilderness.
     The  door  to  the  general store squealed open and an old man stepped out,
blinked at them, and said, "Say, did you folks just come down that old road?"
     Clarence Travers avoided his wife's accusing eyes. "Yes, sir.
     "No one on that road in twenty years."
     "We  were  out  for  a  lark,"  said Mr. Travers. "And found a peacock," he
added.
     "A sparrow," said his wife.
     "The freeway passed us by, a mile over there, if you want it," said the old
man.  "When the new road opened, this town just died on the vine. We got nothing
here now but people like me. That is: old."
     "Looks like there'd be places here to rent."
     "Mister, just walk in, knock out the bats, stomp the spiders, and any place
is yours for thirty bucks a month. I own the whole town."
     "Oh, we're not _really_ interested," said Cecelia Travers.
     "Didn't  think  you  _would_  be,"  said the old man. "Too far out from the
city,  too  far  off  the  freeway.  And that dirt road there slops over when it
rains,  all  muck and mud. And, heck, it's against the law to use that path. Not
that  they ever patrol it." The old man snorted, shaking his head. "And not that
I'll  turn  you  in. But it gave me a nice start just now to see you coming down
that  rut.  J  had to give a quick look at my calendar, by God, and make sure it
wasn't 1929!"
     Lord,  I  remember,  thought Clarence Travers. This is Fox Hill. A thousand
people  lived  here. I was a kid, we passed through on summer nights. We used to
stop  here  _late  late,_  and  me sleeping in the backseat in the moonlight. My
grandmother and grandfather in back with me. It's nice to sleep in a car driving
late  and  the  road  all white, watching the stars turn as you take the curves,
listening  to  the  grown-ups'  voices  underwater,  remote,  talking,  talking,
laughing,  murmuring,  whispering.  My  father  driving,  so  stolid. Just to be
driving in the summer dark, up along the lake to the Dunes, where the poison ivy
grew  out  on  the  lonely beach and the wind stayed all the time and never went
away.  And  us  driving by that lonely graveyard place of sand and moonlight and
poison  ivy  and  the  waves  tumbling  in like dusty ash on the shore, the lake
pounding  like  a locomotive on the sand, coming and going. And me crumpled down
and  smelling  Grandmother's  wind-cooled  coat  and  the  voices comforting and
blanketing  me  with  their  solidity  and their always-will-be-here sounds that
would  go on forever, myself always young and us always riding on a summer night
in our old Kissel with the side flaps down. And stopping here at nine or ten for
Pistachio  and  Tutti-frutti  ice  cream  that  tasted, faintly, beautifully, of
gasoline.  All  of us licking and biting the cones and smelling the gasoline and
driving on, sleepy and snug, toward home, Green Town, thirty years ago.
     He caught himself and said:
     "About  these houses, would it be much trouble fixing them up?" He squinted
at the old man.
     "Well,  yes  and  no,  most  of 'em over fifty years old, lots of dust. You
could  buy one off me for ten thousand, a real bargain now, you'll admit. If you
were an artist, now, a painter, or something like that."
     "I write copy in an advertising firm."
     "Write stories, too, no doubt? Well, now, you get a writer out here, quiet,
no neighbors, you'd do lots of writing."
     Cecelia  Travers  stood  silently  between  the  old  man  and her husband.
Clarence Travers did not look at her, but looked at the cinders around the porch
of the general store. "I imagine I _could_ work here."
     "Sure," said the old man.
     "I've  often  thought,"  said  Mr. Travers, "it's time we got away from the
city and took it a little easy."
     "Sure," said the old man.
     Mrs. Travers said nothing but searched in her purse and took out a minor.
     "Would  you  like  some  drinks?"  asked  Clarence Travers with exaggerated
concern.  "Three Orange Crushes, make it four," he told the old man. The old man
moved inside the store, which smelled of nails and crackers and dust.
     When  the  old  man  was gone, Mr. Travers turned to his wife, and his eyes
were shining. "We've always wanted to do it! Let's!"
     "Do _what?"_ she said.
     "Move out here, snap decision, why not? Why? We've promised ourselves every
year:  get  away  from  the  noise, the confusion, so the kids'd have a place to
play. And . .
     "Good grief" the wife cried.
     The old man moved inside the store, coughing. "Ridiculous." She lowered her
voice.  "We've  got  the apartment paid up, you've got a fine job, the kids have
school  with friends, I belong to some fine clubs. And we've just spent a bundle
redecorating. We-"
     "Listen,"  he  said,  as  if  she  were  really listening. " None of that's
important. Out here, we can breathe. Back in town, hell, _you_ complain ..."
     "Just to have something to _complain_ about."
     "Your clubs can't be that important."
     "It's not clubs, it's _friends!"_
       "How many would care if we dropped dead tomorrow?" he said. "If I got hit
in  that traffic, how many thousand cars would run over me before one stopped to
see if I was a man or dog left in the road?"
     "Your job . . ." she started to say.
     "My  God,  ten years ago we said, in two more years we'll have enough money
to  quit and write my novel! But each year we've said _next_ year! and next year
and _next_ year!"
     "We've _had_ fun, haven't we?"
     "Sure!  Subways  are  fun,  buses are fun, martinis and drunken friends are
fun.  Advertising? Yeah! But I've _used_ all the fun there is! I want to _write_
about  what  I've  seen now, and there's no better place than this. Look at that
house over there! Can't you just see me in the front window banging the hell out
of my typewriter?"
     "Stop hyperventilating!"
     "Hyperventilate?  God,  I'd jump for joy to quit. I've gone as far as I can
go.  Come  on, Cecelia, let's get back some of the spunk in our marriage, take a
chance!"
     "The children
     "We'd _love_ it here!" said the son.
     "I _think,"_ said the daughter.
     "I'm not getting any younger," said Clarence Travers.
     "Nor  am  I," she said, touching his arm. "But we can't play hopscotch now.
When the children leave, yes, we'll think about it."
     "Children, hopscotch, my God, I'll take my typewriter to the grave!"
     "It won't be long. We-"
     The shop door squealed open again and whether the old man had been standing
in  the screen shadow for the last minute, there was no telling. It did not show
in  his  face.  He stepped out with four lukewarm bottles of Orange Crush in his
rust-spotted hands.
     "Here you are," he said.
     Clarence  and  Cecelia  Travers  turned  to  stare  at  him as if he were a
stranger come out to bring them drinks. They smiled and took the bottles.
     The  four  of  them  stood  drinking the soda pop in the warm sunlight. The
summer  wind  blew  through the grottoes of trees in the old, shady town. It was
like  being  in  a  great  green church, a cathedral, the trees so high that the
people  and  cottages were lost far down below. All night long you would imagine
those  trees  rustling  Their  leaves  like  an ocean on an unending shore. God,
thought Clarence Travers, you could really sleep here, the sleep of the dead and
the peace-fill-of-heart.
     He  finished  his  drink and his wife half finished hers and gave it to the
children  to  argue  over,  inch  by  compared  inch.  The old man stood silent,
embarrassed by the thing he may have stirred up among them.
     "Well,  if  you're  ever  out this way, drop in," he said. Clarence Travers
reached for his wallet.
     "No, no!" said the old man. "It's on the house."
     "Thank you, thank you very much."
     "A pleasure."
     They climbed back into their car.
     "If  you want to get to the freeway," said the old man, peering through the
front  window  into  the cooked-upholstery smell of the car, "just take your old
dirt road back. Don't rush, or you'll break an axle."
     Clarence  Travers  looked straight ahead at the radiator fixture on the car
front and started the motor.
     "Good-bye," said the old man.
     "Good-bye,"  the children yelled, and waved. The car moved away through the
town.
     "Did you hear what the old man said?" asked the wife.
     "What?"
     "Did you hear him say which way to the freeway?"
     "I heard."
     He  drove  through  the  cool,  shady  town, staring at the porches and the
windows  with  the colored glass fringing them. If you looked from the inside of
those  windows  out, people had different-colored faces for each pane you looked
through.  They  were  Chinese if you looked through one, Indian through another,
pink,   green,  violet,  burgundy,  wine,  chartreuse,  the  candy  colors,  the
lemon-lime cool colors, the water colors of the windows looking out on lawns and
trees and this car slowly driving past.
     "Yes, I heard him," said Clarence Travers.
     They  left  the  town  behind  and  took the dirt road to the freeway. They
waited their chance, saw an interval between floods of cars hurtling by, swerved
out  into the stream, and, at fifty miles an hour, were soon hurtling toward the
city.
     "That's  better,"  said  Cecelia Travers brightly. She did not look over at
her husband. _"Now_ I know where we are."
     Billboards  flashed  by;  a  mortuary,  a  pie crust, a cereal, a garage, a
hotel.  A hotel in the tar pits of the city, where one day is the pitiless glare
of  the  noon  sun, thought Mr. Travers, all of the great Erector-set buildings,
like  prehistoric  dinosaurs,  will  sink down into the bubbling tar-lava and be
encased,  bone  by  bone,  for  future civilizations. And in the stomachs of the
electric  lizards, inside the iron dinosaurs, the probing scientists of A.D. One
Million  will  find  the little ivory bones, the thinly articulated skeletons of
advertising  executives  and  clubwomen  and children. Mr. Travers felt his eyes
flinch, watering. And the scientists will say, so _this_ is what the iron cities
fed  on,  is  it?  and  give  the  bones a kick. So _this_ is what kept the iron
stomachs  full,  eh?  Poor things, they never had a chance. Probably kept by the
iron  monsters  who  needed  them  in  order  to  survive,  who  needed them for
breakfast,  lunch,  and  dinner. Aphids, in a way, aphids, kept in a great metal
cage.
     "Look, Daddy, look, _look,_ before it's too late!"
     The  children  pointed,  yelling.  Cecelia  Travers  did not look. Only the
children saw it.
     The  old  highway,  two hundred yards away, at their left, sprang back into
sight  for  an  instant,  wandered  aimlessly through field, meadow, and stream,
gentle and cool and quiet.
     Mr. Travers swung his head sharply to see, but in that instant it was gone.
Billboards,  trees,  hills  rushed it away. A thousand cars, honking, shrieking,
shouldered  them,  and  bore  Clarence  and  Cecelia  Travers  and their captive
children  stunned  and silent down the concourse, onward ever onward into a city
that had not seen them leave and did not look to see them return
     "Let's see if this car will do sixty or sixty-five," said Clarence Travers.
     It could and did.