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Driving Blind
Ray Douglas Bradbury
One of Ray Bradbury’s classic short story collections, available in ebook for the first time.Over the course of a long and celebrated career, Ray Bradbury has traveled many roads: cruising down country highways that wound through the unseen heart of small-town America; exploring rutted backwoods paths that led to dark and dangerous places; racing at mach-speed along shimmering celestial turnpikes as limitless and exciting as the unbound imagination.DRIVING BLIND is a stunning collection of short fiction. With a steady hand on the wheel, the master once again transports us to remarkable places – and to warm and achingly familiar destinations of the heart, revealed as we've never seen them before in the brilliance of day or gloom of night. Here are unforgettable excursions to the fantastic, glorious grand tours through time and memory – interspersed with strange, unexpected side trips to the disturbing and eerie – where surprises are waiting around every curve and just beyond each mile marker.These are new roads we have never ridden before – sprawling interstates and lush, twisting rural routes fraught with dangers and delights of all manner, shape and substance. With Ray Bradbury in the driver's seat, the journey promises to be a memorable one. Come along and enjoy the ride.
Ray Bradbury
DRIVING BLIND
STORIES
Copyright (#u30e4601b-d37e-5713-8335-da252d46b327)
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)
“Night Train to Babylon” copyright © 1997 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the September/October issue of Ellery Queen. “Grand Theft” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the July 1995 issue of Ellery Queen. “Fee Fie Foe Fum” copyright © 1993 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in Monsters in Our Midst, edited by Robert Bloch, Tor Books. “That Old Dog Lying in the Dust” copyright © 1974 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the October 1974 issue of Westways magazine, under the title “Mexicali Mirage.” All other stories are original to this collection, copyright © 1997 by Ray Bradbury.
Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1959
Cover design by Mike Topping.
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Ray Bradbury asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN:9780007541744
Version: 2014–07–21
Dedication (#u30e4601b-d37e-5713-8335-da252d46b327)
With undying love to
the early-arriving granddaughters,
JULIA, CLAIRE, GEORGIA
and MALLORY.
And to
the late-arriving grandsons,
DANIEL, CASEY-RAY, SAMUEL
and THEODORE.
Live forever!
Contents
Cover (#uf0eaa6b5-c764-52c9-b011-62014c66f762)
Title Page (#u16f80621-6bfa-5e50-adf4-7fb40278de5b)
Copyright
Dedication
Night Train to Babylon
If MGM is Killed, Who Gets the Lion?
Hello, I Must Be Going
House Divided
Grand Theft
Remember Me?
Fee Fie Foe Fum
Driving Blind
I Wonder What’s Become of Sally
Nothing Changes
That Old Dog Lying in the Dust
Someone in the Rain
Madame et Monsieur Shill
The Mirror
End of Summer
Thunder in the Morning
The Highest Branch on the Tree
A Woman is a Fast-Moving Picnic
Virgin Resusitas
Mr. Pale
That Bird That Comes Out of the Clock
A Brief Afterword
Keep Reading (#u2a5049cc-a8e2-5d85-8e0c-75614a4106dd)
About the Author
Praise
Also by the Author
About the Publisher
Night Train to Babylon (#u30e4601b-d37e-5713-8335-da252d46b327)
James Cruesoe was in the club car of a train plummeting out of Chicago, rocking and swaying as if it were drunk, when the conductor, lurching by, glanced at the bar, gave Cruesoe a wink, and lurched on. Cruesoe listened.
Uproars, shouts and cries.
That is the sound, he thought, of sheep in panic, glad to be fleeced, or hang gliders, flung off cliffs with no wings.
He blinked.
For there at the bar, drawn to a blind source of joyous consternation, stood a cluster of men glad for highway robbery, pleased to have wallets and wits purloined.
That is to say: gamblers.
Amateur gamblers, Cruesoe thought, and rose to stagger down the aisle to peer over the shoulders of businessmen behaving like high school juniors in full stampede.
“Hey, watch! The Queen comes! She goes. Presto! Where?”
“There!” came the cry.
“Gosh,” cried the dealer. “Lost my shirt! Again! Queen up, Queen gone! Where?”
He’ll let them win twice, Cruesoe thought. Then spring the trap.
“There!” cried all.
“Good gravy!” shouted the unseen gambler. “I’m sunk!”
Cruesoe had to look, he yearned to see this agile vaudeville magician.
On tiptoe, he parted a few squirming shoulders, not knowing what to expect.
But there sat a man with no fuzzy caterpillar brows or waxed mustaches. No black hair sprouted from his ears or nostrils. His skull did not poke through his skin. He wore an ordinary dove-gray suit with a dark gray tie tied with a proper knot. His fingernails were clean but unmanicured. Stunning! An ordinary citizen, with the serene look of a chap about to lose at cribbage.
Ah, yes, Cruesoe thought, as the gambler shuffled his cards slowly. That carefulness revealed the imp under the angel’s mask. A calliope salesman’s ghost lay like a pale epidermis below the man’s vest.
“Careful, gents!” He fluttered the cards. “Don’t bet too much!”
Challenged, the men shoveled cash into the furnace.
“Whoa! No bets above four bits! Judiciously, sirs!”
The cards leapfrogged as he gazed about, oblivious of his deal.
‘‘Where’s my left thumb, my right? Or are there three thumbs?”
They laughed. What a jokester!
“Confused, chums? Baffled? Must I lose again?”
“Yes!” all babbled.
“Damn,” he said, crippling his hands. “‘Damn! Where’s the Red Queen? Start over!”
“No! The middle one! Flip it!”
The card was flipped.
“Ohmigod,” someone gasped.
“Can’t look.” The gambler’s eyes were shut. “How much did I lose this time?”
“Nothing,” someone whispered.
“Nothing?” The gambler, aghast, popped open his eyes.
They all stared at a black card.
“Gosh,” said the gambler. “I thought you had me!”
His fingers spidered to the right, another black card, then to the far left. The Queen!
“Hell,” he exhaled, “why’s she there? Christ, guys, keep your cash!”
“No! No!” A shaking of heads. “You won. You couldn’t help it. It was just—”
