The Whole Town's Sleeping by Ray Bradbury TIMES. the Echoes of The
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The Whole Town’s Sleeping “Lavinia, you don’t believe all that about the by Ray Bradbury Lonely One, do you?” “Those women like to see their THE COURTHOUSE CLOCK CHIMED SEVEN tongues dance.” TIMES. The echoes of the chimes faded. “Just the same, Hattie McDollis was killed Warm summer twilight here in upper two months ago, Roberta Ferry the month before, Illinois country in this little town deep far away and now Elizabeth Ramsell’s disappeared. .” from everything, kept to itself by a river and a “Hattie McDollis was a silly girl, walked forest and a meadow and a lake. The sidewalks off with a traveling man, I bet.” still scorched. The stores closing and the streets shadowed. And there were two moons; the clock “But the others, all of them, strangled, their moon with four faces in four night directions tongues sticking out their mouths, they say.” above the solemn black courthouse, and the real They stood upon the edge of the ravine moon rising in vanilla whiteness from the dark that cut the town half in two. Behind them were the east. lit houses and music, ahead was deepness, In the drugstore fans whispered in the moistness, fireflies and dark. high ceiling. In the rococo shade of porches, a few invisible people sat. Cigars glowed pink, on “Maybe we shouldn’t go to the show tonight,” said Francine. “The Lonely One might occasion. Screen doors whined their springs and follow and kill us. I don’t like that ravine. Look at it, slammed. On the purple bricks of the summer-night will you!” streets, Douglas Spaulding ran; dogs and boys followed after. Lavinia looked and the ravine was a “Hi, Miss Lavinia!” dynamo that never stopped running, night or day; there was a great moving hum, a bumbling and The boys loped away. Waving after them murmuring of creature, insect, or plant life. It quietly, Lavinia Nebbs sat all alone with a tall cool smelled like a greenhouse, of secret vapors and lemonade in her white fingers, tapping it to her ancient, washed shales and quicksands. And lips, sipping, waiting. always the black dynamo humming, with sparkles like great electricity where fireflies moved on the air. “Here I am, Lavinia.” “It won’t be me coming back through this She turned and there was Francine, all old ravine tonight late, so darned late; it’ll be you, in snow white, at the bottom steps of the porch, Lavinia, you down the steps and over the bridge in the smell of zinnias and hibiscus. and maybe the Lonely One there.” “Bosh!” said Lavinia Nebbs locked her front door and, Lavinia Nebbs. leaving her lemonade glass half empty on the “It’ll be you alone on the path, listening to porch, said, “It’s a fine night for the movie.” your shoes, not me. You all alone on the way back They walked down the street. to your house. Lavinia, don’t you get lonely living in that house?” “Where you going, girls?” cried Miss Fern and Miss Roberta from their porch over the way. “Old maids love to live alone.” Lavinia pointed at the hot shadowy path leading down into Lavinia called back through the soft ocean the dark. “Let’s take the short cut.” “I’m afraid!” of darkness: “To the Elite Theater to see CHARLIE CHAPLIN!” “It’s early. Lonely One won’t be out till late.” Lavinia took the other’s arm and led her down “Won’t catch us out on no night like this,” and down the crooked path into the cricket warmth wailed Miss Fern. “Not with the Lonely One and frog sound and mosquito-delicate silence. strangling women. Lock ourselves up in our closet They brushed through summer-scorched grass, with a gun.” burs prickling at their bare ankles. “Oh, bosh!” Lavinia heard the old women’s “Let’s run!” gasped Francine. door bang and lock, and she drifted on, feeling the warm breath of summer night shimmering off the “No!” oven-baked sidewalks. It was like walking on a They turned a curve in the path—and hard crust of freshly warmed bread. The heat there it was. pulsed under your dress, along your legs, with a stealthy and not unpleasant sense of invasion. In the singing deep night, in the shade of warm trees, as if she had laid herself out to enjoy the soft stars and the easy wind, her hands at thirty. We’ll pick up Helen and get on to the either side of her like the oars of a delicate craft, lay show.” “The show!” Francine jerked. Elizabeth Ramsell! “It’s what we need. We’ve got to forget Francine screamed. this. It’s not good to remember. If we went home now we’d remember. We’ll go to the show as if “Don’t scream!” Lavinia put out her hands nothing happened.” to hold onto Francine, who was whimpering and choking. “Don’t! Don’t!” “Lavinia, you don’t mean it!” The woman lay as if she had floated there, “I never meant anything more in my life. her face moonlit, her eyes wide and like flint, her We need to laugh now and forget.” tongue sticking from her mouth. “But Elizabeth’s back there—your friend, “She’s dead!” said Francine. “Oh, she’s my friend—” “We can’t help her; we can only help dead, dead! She’s dead!” ourselves. Come on.” They started up the ravine side, on the stony path, in the dark. And suddenly Lavinia stood in the middle of a thousand there, barring their way, standing very still in warm shadows with the crickets screaming and the one spot, not seeing them, but looking on down frogs loud. at the moving lights and the body and listening to “We’d better get the police,” she said at last. the official voices, was Douglas Spaulding. “Hold me, Lavinia, hold me, I’m cold, oh, He stood there, white as a mushroom, I’ve never been so cold in all my life!” with his hands at his sides, staring down into the ravine. Lavinia held Francine and the policemen were brushing through the crackling grass, “Get home!” cried Francine. He did not flashlights ducked about, voices mingled, and the hear. night grew toward eight-thirty. “You!” shrieked Francine. “Get home, get “It’s like December. I need a sweater,” said out of this place, you hear? Get home, get home, Francine, eyes shut, against Lavinia. get home!” The policeman said, “I guess you can go Douglas jerked his head, stared at them now, ladies. You might drop by the station tomorrow as if they were not there. His mouth moved. He for a little more questioning.” gave a bleating sound. Then, silently, he whirled about and ran. He ran silently up the distant hills Lavinia and Francine walked away from the into the warm darkness. police and the sheet over the delicate thing upon the ravine grass. Francine sobbed and cried again and, doing this, walked on with Lavinia Nebbs. Lavinia felt her heart going loudly in her and she was cold, too, with a February cold; there “There you are! I thought you ladies’d were bits of sudden snow all over her flesh, and the never come!” Helen Greer stood tapping her foot moon washed her brittle fingers whiter, and she atop her porch steps. “You’re only an hour late, remembered doing all the talking while Francine that’s all. What happened?” just sobbed against her. “We—” started Francine. A voice called from far off, “You want an Lavinia clutched her arm tight. “There escort, ladies?” was a commotion. Somebody found Elizabeth “No, we’ll make it,” said Lavinia to nobody, Ramsell in the ravine.” and they walked on. They walked through the “Dead? Was she—dead?” nuzzling, whispering ravine, the ravine of whispers and clicks, the little world of Lavinia nodded. Helen gasped and put investigation growing small behind them with its her hand to her throat. “Who found her?” lights and voices. Lavinia held Francine’s wrist firmly. “We “I’ve never seen a dead person before,” don’t know.” The three young women stood in the said Francine. Lavinia examined her watch as if summer night looking at each other. “I’ve got a it was a thousand miles away on an arm and notion to go in the house and lock the doors,” said wrist grown impossibly distant. “It’s only eight- Helen at last. But finally she went to get a sweater, for “What a thing to do!” though it was still warm, she, too, complained of Francine began to cry hysterically. the sudden winter night. While she was gone Francine whispered frantically, “Why didn’t you Frank Dillon stopped smiling. “Say, I’m tell her?” sorry.” “Why upset her?” said Lavinia. “Tomorrow. “Go away!” said Lavinia. “Haven’t you heard Tomorrow’s plenty of time.” about Elizabeth Ramsell— found dead in the ravine? You running around scaring women! Don’t speak to The three women moved along the street us again!” under the black trees, past suddenly locked houses. How soon the news had spread outward “Aw, now—” from the ravine, from house to house, porch to They moved. He moved to follow. porch, telephone to telephone. Now, passing, the three women felt eyes looking out at them from “Stay right there, Mr. Lonely One, and scare curtained windows as locks rattled into place. yourself. Go take a look at Elizabeth Ramsell’s face How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the and see if it’s funny.