Ray Bradbury
http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal
That Woman on the Lawn
1996
Very late at night he heard the weeping on the lawn in front of his house.
It was the sound of a woman crying. By its sound he knew it was not a girl or a
mature woman, but the crying of someone eighteen or nineteen years old. It went
on, then faded and stopped, and again started up, now moving this way or that on
the late-summer wind.
He lay in bed listening to it until it made his eyes fill with tears. He
turned over, shut his eyes, let the tears fall, but could not stop the sound.
Why should a young woman be weeping long after midnight out there?
He sat up and the weeping stopped.
At the window, he looked down. The lawn was empty but covered with dew.
There was a trail of footsteps across the lawn to the middle where someone had
stood turning, and another trail going off toward the garden around the house.
The moon stood full in the sky and filled the lawn with its light, but
there was no more sadness and only the footprints there.
He stepped back from the window, suddenly chilled, and went down to heat
and drink a cup of chocolate.
He did not think of the weeping again until dusk the next day, and even
then thought that it must be some woman from a house nearby, unhappy with life,
perhaps locked out and in need of a place to let her sadness go.
Yet . . .?
As the twilight deepened, coming home he found himself hurrying from the
bus, at a steady pace which astonished him. Why, why all this?
Idiot, he thought. A woman unseen weeps under your window, and here at
sunset the next day, you almost run.
Yes, he thought, but her _voice!_
Was it beautiful, then?
No. Only familiar.
Where had he heard such a voice before, wordless in crying?
Who could he ask, living in an empty house from which his parents had
vanished long ago?
He turned in at his front lawn and stood still, his eyes shadowed.
What had he expected? That whoever she was would be waiting here? Was he
that lonely that a single voice long after midnight roused all his senses?
No. Simply put: he must know who the crying woman was.
And he was certain she would return tonight as he slept.
He went to bed at eleven, and awoke at three, panicked that he had missed a
miracle. Lightning had destroyed a nearby town or an earthquake had shaken half
the world to dust, and he had slept through it!
Fool! he thought, and slung back the covers and moved to the window, to see
that indeed he had overslept.
For there on the lawn were the delicate footprints.
And he hadn't even _heard_ the weeping!
He would have gone out to kneel in the grass, but at that moment a police
car motored slowly by, looking at nothing and the night.
How could he run to prowl, to probe, to touch the grass if that car came by
again? What doing? Picking clover blossoms? Weeding dandelions? What, what?
His bones cracked with indecision. He would go down, he would not.
Already the memory of that terrible weeping faded the more he tried to make
it clear. If he missed her one more night, the memory itself might be gone.
Behind him, in his room, the alarm clock rang. Damn! he thought. What time
_did_ I set it for? He shut off the alarm and sat on his bed, rocking gently,
waiting, eyes shut, listening.
The wind shifted. The tree just outside the window whispered and stirred.
He opened his eyes and leaned forward. From far off, coming near, and now
down below, the quiet sound of a woman weeping.
She had come back to his lawn and was not forever lost. Be very quiet, he
thought.
And the sounds she made came up on the wind through the blowing curtains
into his room.
Careful now. Careful but quick.
He moved to the window and looked down.
In the middle of the lawn she stood and wept, her hair long and dark on her
shoulders, her face bright with tears.
And there was something in the way her hands trembled at her sides, the way
her hair moved quietly in the wind, that shook him so that he almost fell.
He knew her and yet did _not._ He had seen her before, but had never seen.
Turn your head, he thought.
Almost as if hearing this, the young woman sank to her knees to half kneel
on the grass, letting the wind comb her hair, head down and weeping so steadily
and bitterly that he wanted to cry out: Oh, no! It kills my heart!
And as if she had heard, quite suddenly her head lifted, her weeping grew
less as she looked up at the moon, so that he saw her face.
And it was indeed a face seen somewhere once, but _where?_
A tear fell. She blinked.
It was like the blinking of a camera and a picture taken.
"God save me!" he whispered. "No!"
He whirled and stumbled toward the closet to seize down an avalanche of
boxes and albums. In the dark he scrabbled, then pulled on the closet light,
tossed aside six albums until finally, dragging another forth and riffling
pages, he gave a cry, stopped, and held a photo close, then turned and moved
blindly to the window.
There he stared down at the lawn and then at the photograph, very old, very
yellowed with age.
Yes, yes, the same! The image struck his eyes and then his heart. His whole
body shook, made an immense pulsation, as he leaned at the album, leaned on the
window frame, and almost shouted:
You! How dare you come back! How dare you be young! How dare you be _what?_
A girl untouched, wandering late on my lawn!? You were _never_ that young!
Never! Damn, oh, damn your warm blood, damn your wild soul!
But this he did not shout or say.
For something in his eyes, like a beacon, must have flashed.
The crying of the young woman on the lawn stopped.
She looked up.
At which instant the album fell from his fingers, through the burst-wide
screen, and down like a dark bird fluttering to strike the earth.
The young man gave a muted cry, whirled, and ran. "No, no!" he cried aloud.
"I didn't _mean-come_ back!" He was down the stairs and out on the porch in a
matter of seconds. The door slammed behind him like a gunshot. The explosion
nailed him to the rail, half down to the lawn, where there was nothing to be
seen but footprints. Either way, up the street lay empty sidewalks and shadows
under trees. A radio played off in an upstairs window in a house behind trees. A
car passed, murmuring, at a far intersection.
"Wait," he whispered. "Come back. I shouldn't have _said-"_
He stopped. He had said nothing, but only _thought_ it. But his outrage,
his jealousy?
She had felt that. She had somehow heard. And now. ..?
She'll never come back, he thought. Oh God!
He sat on the porch steps for a while, quietly biting his knuckle.
At three in the morning, in bed, he thought he heard a sigh and soft
footsteps in grass, and waited. The photo album lay closed on the floor. Even
though it lay shut, he could see and know her face. And it was utterly
impossible, utterly insane.
His last thought before sleep was: ghost.
The strangest ghost that ever walked.
The ghost of someone dead.
The ghost of someone who died very old.
But somehow come back not as her old self.
But a ghost that was somehow young.
Weren't ghosts always, when they returned, the same age as when they died?
No.
Not this one anyway.
"Why . ..?" he whispered.
And dream took over the whisper.
One night passed and then another and another, and there was nothing on the
lawn but the light of a moon that changed its face from outright stare to half
grimace.
He waited.
The first night a more than ordinarily casual cat crossed the yard at two
a.m.
The second night a dog trotted by, wearing his tongue half out of his mouth
like a loosely tied red cravat, smiling at trees.
The third night a spider spent from twelve-twenty-five until four a.m.
building a baroque clockface on the air between lawn and trees, which a bird
broke in passing at dawn.
He slept most of Sunday and awoke with a fever that was not an illness at
dusk.
Late in the twilight of the fifth day, the color of the sky somehow
promised her return, as did the way the wind leaned against the trees and the
look of the moon when it finally rose to set the scene.
"All right," he said, half aloud. _"Now."_ But at midnight, nothing.
"Come on," he whispered.
One o'clock, nothing.
You must, he thought.
No, you _will._
He slept for ten minutes and woke suddenly at two-ten, knowing that when he
went to the window-
She would be there.
She was.
At first, he didn't see her, and groaned, and then, in the shadow of the
great oak far out on the edge of the lawn, he saw something move, and one foot
came out, and she took a step and stood very still.
He held his breath, quieted his heart, told himself to turn, walk, and take
each step down with precision, numbering them, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen,
moving in darkness with no rush, six, five, four, and at last one. He opened the
front screen door with only a whisper, and was on the porch without frightening
what might be out beyond waiting for him.
Quietly, he moved down the porch steps to the edge of the lawn, like one
who stands on the rim of a pond. Out in the center of that pond, the young woman
stood, trapped like someone on thin ice that might at any moment break and drop
her through.
She did not see him. And then ...
She did a thing that was a signal. Tonight her hair was fixed in a knot at
the back of her head. She lifted her white arms in a gesture and with one touch
of her fingers, a touch of snow, loosened her hair.
It fell in a dark banner, to blow and repattern itself across her
shoulders, which trembled with their shadows.
The wind stirred her hair in the night and moved it about her face and on
her uplifted hands.
The shadows laid down by the moon under every tree leaned as if called by
the motion.
The entire world shifted in its sleep.
The wind blew as the young woman waited.
But no footsteps sounded along the white sidewalks. No front doors opened
far down the street. No windows were raised. No motion caused front porches to
creak and shift.
He took another step out onto the small meadow of night.
"Who are you-?" she gasped, and stepped back. "No, no," he said softly.
"It's all right." Another trembling had taken over her body. Where before it had
been some hope, some anticipation, now it was fear. One hand stopped her hair
from blowing; the other half shielded her face.
''I'll stand right here,'' he said. ''Believe me.'' She waited a long
while, staring at him until her shoulders
relaxed and the lines around her mouth vanished. Her whole body sensed the
truth of his words.
"I don't understand," she said.
"I don't either." "What are you doing here?"
"I don't know." "What am I doing here?"
"You came to meet someone," he said.
"Did I?"
The town clock struck three in the morning far away. She listened to it,
her face shadowed by the sound.
"But it's so late. People don't walk around late on front lawns!"
"They do if they _must,"_ he said.
"But why?"
"Maybe we can find out, if we talk."
"About what, _what?!"_
"About why you're here. If we talk long enough, we may know. I know why I'm
here, of course. I heard you crying."
"Oh, I'm so ashamed."
"Don't be. Why are people ashamed of tears? I cry often. Then I start
laughing. But the crying must come first. Go ahead."
"What a strange man you are."
Her hand fell away from her hair. Her other hand moved away so her face was
illuminated by a small and growing curiosity.
"I thought I was the only one who knew about crying," she said.
"Everyone thinks that. It's one of those little secrets we keep from each
other. Show me a serious man and I'll show you a man who has never wept. Show me
a madman and I'll show you a man who dried his tears a long time ago. Go ahead."
"I think I'm done," she said.
"Any time, start over."
She burst out a tiny laugh. "Oh, you _are_ strange. Who are you?"
"We'll come to that."
She peered across the lawn at his hands, his face, his mouth, and then at
his eyes.
"Oh, I _know_ you. But from _where?!"_
"That would spoil it. You wouldn't believe, anyway."
"I would!"
Now it was his turn to laugh quietly. "You're very young."
"No, nineteen! _Ancient!"_
"Girls, by the time they go from twelve to nineteen, are full of years,
yes. I don't know; but it must be so. Now, please, why are you out here in the
middle of the night?"
"I-" She shut her eyes to think in on it. "I'm waiting."
"Yes?"
"And I'm sad."
"It's the waiting that makes you sad, yes?"
"I think, no, yes, no."
"And you don't quite know what you're waiting for?"
"Oh, I wish I could be sure. All of me's waiting. I don't know, _all_ of
me. I don't understand. I'm impossible!"
"No, you're everyone that ever grew up too fast and wanted too much. I
think girls, women, like you have slipped out at night since time began. If it
wasn't here in Green Town, it was in Cairo or Alexandria or Rome or Paris in
summer, anywhere there was a private place and late hours and no one to see, so
they just rose up and out, as if someone had called their name-"
"I was called, yes! That's it! Someone _did_ call my name! It's _true._ How
did you know? Was it _you!"_
"No. But someone we both know. You'll know his name when you go back to bed
tonight, wherever that is."
"Why, in that house, behind you," she said. "That's my house. I was born in
it."
"Well"-he laughed-"so was _I."_
"You? How can that be? Are you sure?"
"Yes. Anyway, you heard someone calling. You had to come out-"
"I did. Many nights now. But, always, no one's here. They _must_ be there,
or why would I hear them?"
"One day there'll be someone to fit the voice."
"Oh, don't joke with me!"
"I'm not. Believe. There will be. That's what all those other women heard
in other years and places, middle of summer, dead of winter, go out and risk
cold, stand warm in snow banks, and listen and look for strange footprints on
the midnight snow, and only an old dog trotting by, all smiles. Damn, damn."
"Oh, yes, damn, damn." And her smile showed for a moment, even as the moon
came out of the clouds and went away. "Isn't it silly?"
"No. Men do the same. They take long walks when they're sixteen, seventeen.
They don't stand on lawns, waiting, no. But, my God, how they _walk!_ Miles and
miles from midnight until dawn and come home exhausted and explode and die in
bed."
"What a shame that those who stand and wait and those who walk all night
can't-"
"Meet?"
"Yes; don't you think it's a shame?"
"They _do,_ finally."
"Oh, no, I shall never meet anyone. I'm old and ugly and terrible and I
don't know how many nights I've heard that voice making me come here and there's
nothing and I just want to die."
"Oh, lovely young girl," he said gently. "Don't die. The cavalry is on its
way. You will be saved."
There was such certainty in his voice that it made her glance up again, for
she had been looking at her hands and her own soul in her hands.
"You _know,_ don't you?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You truly _know?_ You tell the _truth?"_
"Swear to God, swear by all that's living."
"Tell me more!"
"There's little more to tell."
"Tell me!"
"Everything will be all right with you. Some night soon, or some day,
someone will call and they'll really be there when you come to find. The game
will be over."
"Hide-and-seek, you mean? But it's gone on too long!"
"It's almost over, Marie."
"You know my name!"
He stopped, confused. He had not meant to speak it.
"How did you know, who are you?" she demanded.
"When you get back to sleep tonight, you'll know. If we say too much,
you'll disappear, or I'll disappear. I'm not quite sure which of us is real or
which is a ghost."
"Not me! Oh, surely not me. I can feel myself. I'm here. Why, look!" And
she showed him the remainder of her tears brushed from her eyelids and held on
her palms.
"Oh, that's real, all right. Well, then, dear young woman, I must be the
visitor. I come to tell you it will all go right. Do you believe in special
ghosts?"
"Are you _special?"_
"One of us is. Or maybe both. The ghost of young love or the ghost of the
unborn."
"Is that what _I_ am, _you_ are?"
"Paradoxes aren't easy to explain."
"Then, depending on how you look at it, you're impossible, and so am I."
"If it makes it easier, just think I'm not really here. Do you believe in
ghosts?"
"I think I do."
"It comes to me to imagine, then, that there are special ghosts in the
world. Not ghosts of dead people. But ghosts of want and need, or I guess you
might say desire."
"I don't understand."
"Well, have you ever lain in bed late afternoons, late nights and dreamed
something so much, awake, you felt your soul jump out of your body as if
something had yanked a long, pure white sheet straight out the window? You want
something so much, your soul leaps out and follows, my God, fast?"
"Why . . . yes. Yes!"
"Boys do that, men do that. When I was twelve I read Burroughs' Mars
novels. John Carter used to stand under the stars, hold up his arms to Mars, and
ask to be taken.
And Mars grabbed his soul, yanked him like an aching tooth across space,
and landed him in dead Martian seas. That's boys, that's men."
"And girls, women?"
_"They_ dream, yes. And their ghosts come out of their bodies. Living
ghosts. Living wants. Living needs."
"And go to stand on lawns in the middle of winter nights?"
"That's about it."
"Am I a ghost, then?"
"Yes, the ghost of _wanting_ so much it kills but doesn't kill you, shakes
and almost breaks you."
"And you?"
"I must be the answer-ghost."
"The answer-ghost. What a funny name!"
"Yes. But you've _asked_ and I know the _answer."_
"Tell me!"
"All right, the answer is this, young girl, young woman. The time of
waiting is almost over. Your time of despair will soon be through. Very soon,
now, a voice will call and when you come out, both of you, your ghost of want
and your body with it, there will be a man to go with the voice that calls."
"Oh, please don't tell me that if it isn't true!" Her voice trembled. Tears
flashed again in her eyes. She half raised her arms again in defense.
"I wouldn't dream to hurt you. I only came to tell." The town clock struck
again in the deep morning. "It's late," she said.
"Very late. Get along, now." "Is that all you're going to say?" "You don't
need to know any more." The last echoes of the great clock faded.
"How strange," she murmured. "The ghost of a question, the ghost of an
answer."
"What better ghosts can there be?"
"None that I ever heard of. We're twins."
"Far nearer than you think."
She took a step, looked down, and gasped with delight. "Look, oh, look. I
_can_ move!"
"Yes."
"What was it you said, boys walk all night, miles and miles?"
"Yes."
"I could go back in, but I can't sleep now. I must walk, too."
"Do that," he said gently.
"But where shall I _go?"_
"Why," he said, and he suddenly knew. He knew where to send her and was
suddenly angry with himself for knowing, angry with her for asking. A burst of
jealousy welled in him. He wanted to race down the street to a certain house
where a certain young man lived in another year and break the window, burn the
roof. And yet, oh, yet, if he _did_ that!?
"Yes?" she said, for he had kept her waiting.
Now, he thought, you must tell her. There's no escape.
For if you don't tell her, angry fool, you yourself will never be born.
A wild laugh burst from his mouth, a laugh that accepted the entire night
and time and all his crazed thinking.
"So you want to know where to go?" he said at last.
"Oh, yes!"
He nodded his head. "Up to that corner, four blocks to the right, one block
to the left."
She repeated it quickly. "And the final number?!"
"Eleven Green Park."
"Oh, thank you, thank you!" She ran a few steps, then stopped, bewildered.
Her hands were helpless at her throat. Her mouth trembled. "Silly. I hate to
leave."
"Why?"
"Why, because . . . I'm afraid I'll never see _you_ again!"
"You will. Three years from now."
"Are you sure?"
"I won't look quite the same. But it'll be me. And you'll know me forever."
"Oh, I'm glad for that. Your face _is_ familiar. I somehow know you well."
She began to walk slowly, looking over at him as he stood near the porch of
the house.
"Thanks," she said. "You've saved my life."
"And my own along with it."
The shadows of a tree fell across her face, touched her cheeks, moved in
her eyes.
"Oh, Lord! Girls lie in bed nights listing the names for their future
children. Silly. Joe. John. Christopher. Samuel. Stephen. And right now, Will."
She touched the gentle rise of her stomach, then lifted her hand out halfway to
point to him in the night. "Is your name Will?"
"Yes."
Tears absolutely burst from her eyes. He wept with her.
"Oh, that's fine, fine," she said at last. "I can go now. I won't be out
here on the lawn anymore. Thank God, thank _you._ Good night."
She went away into the shadows across the lawn and along the sidewalk down
the street. At the far corner he saw her turn and wave and walk away.
"Good night," he said quietly.
I am not born yet, he thought, or she has been dead many years, which is
it? which?
The moon sailed into clouds.
The motion touched him to step, walk, go up the porch stairs, wait, look
out at the lawn, go inside, shut the door.
A wind shook the trees.
The moon came out again and looked upon a lawn where two sets of
footprints, one going one way, one going another in the dew, slowly, slowly, as
the night continued, vanished.
By the time the moon had gone down the sky there was only an empty lawn and
no sign, and much dew.
The great town clock struck six in the morning. Fire showed in the east. A
cock crowed.