"Farewell Summer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

CHAPTER Twenty-Three

THE COURTHOUSE CLOCK SOMEHOW KNEW THEY were coming to kill it.

It loomed high above the town square with its great marble facade and sun-blazed face, a frozen avalanche, waiting to bury the assassins. Simultaneously, it allowed the leaders of its religion and philosophy, the ancient gray-haired messengers of Time and dissolution, to pass through the thundering bronze doors below.

Douglas, watching the soldiery of death and mummification slip calmly through the dark portals, felt a stir of panic. There, in the shellac-smelling, paper-rustling rooms of Town Hall, the Board of Education slyly unmade destinies, pared calendars, devoured Saturdays in torrents of homework, instigated reprimands, tortures, and criminalities. Their dead hands pulled streets straighter, loosed rivers of asphalt over soft dirt to make roads harder, more confining, so that open country and freedom were pushed further and further away, so that one day, years from now, green hills would be a distant echo, so far off that it would take a lifetime of travel to reach the edge of the city and peer out at one lone small forest of dying trees.

Here in this one building, lives were slotted, alphabetized in files and fingerprints; the children's destinies put under seal! Men with blizzard faces and lightning-colored hair, carrying Time in their briefcases, hurried by to serve the clock, to run it with great sprockets and gears. At twilight they stepped out, all smiles, having found new ways to constrict, imprison, or entangle lives in fees and licenses. You could not even prove your death without these men, this building, this clock, and a certificate duly inked, stamped, and signed.

"Here we are," whispered Douglas, all his pals clustered around him. "It's almost quittin' time. We gotta be careful. If we wait too long it'll be so shut up there'll be no way to get in. Right at twilight, when the last doors are being locked, that's when we make our move, right? As they come out, we go in."

"Right," said everyone.

"So," said Douglas. "Hold your breath."

"It's held," said Tom. "But Doug, I got something to say."

"What?" said Doug.

"You know that no matter when we go in, if we go in all together, someone's going to see us and they're going to remember our faces and we're going to get in trouble. It was bad enough with the chess pieces out front of the courthouse. We were seen, and we had to give everything back. So, why don't we wait until it's all locked up?"

"We can't do that. I just said why."

"Tell you what," said Tom. "Why don't I go in now and hide in the men's until everyone's gone home? Then I'll sneak upstairs and let you in one of the windows near the clock tower. Up there, on the third floor." He pointed to a spot high up the ancient brick walls.

"Hey!" said all the gang.

"That won't work," said Doug.

"Why not?" said Tom.

Before Doug had time to think of a reason, Charlie piped up.

"Sure it'll work," said Charlie. "Tom's right. Tom, you want to go in and hide now?"

"Sure," said Tom.

Everyone was looking at Doug, still their general, and he had to give his approval.

"What I don't like," said Doug, "is smart alecks who think they know everything. Okay, go in and hide. When it gets dark, let us in."

"Okay," said Tom.

And he was gone.

People were coming out through the big bronze doors and Doug and the others pulled back around the corner of the building and waited for the sun to go down.