Farewell Summer ~ Ray Bradbury - Marimarister

CHAPTER TEN
The green acreage of the old cemetery was filled with stones and names on stones. Not
only the names of the people earthed over with sod and flowers, but the names of seasons. Spring
rain had written soft, unseen messages here. Summer sun had bleached granite. Autumn wind
had softened the lettering. And snow had laid its cold hand on winter marble. But now what the
seasons had to say was only a cool whisper in the trembling shade, the message of names:
―TYSON! BOWMAN! STEVENS!‖
Douglas leap-frogged TYSON, danced on BOWMAN, and circled STEVENS.
The graveyard was cool with old deaths, old stones grown in far Italian mountains to be
shipped here to this green tunnel, under skies too bright in summer, too sad in winter.
Douglas stared. The entire territory swarmed with ancient terrors and dooms. The Great
Army stood around him and he looked to see if the invisible webbed wings in the rushing air ran
lost in the high elms and maples. And did they feel all that? Did they hear the autumn chestnuts
raining in cat-soft thumpings on the mellow earth? But now all was the fi xed blue lost twilight
which sparked each stone with light specules where fresh yellow butterflies had once rested to
dry their wings and now were gone.
Douglas led his suddenly disquieted mob into a further land of stillness and made them
tie a bandanna over his eyes; his mouth, isolated, smiled all to itself.
Groping, he laid hands on a tombstone and played it like a harp, whispering.
―Jonathan Silks. 1920. Gunshot.‖ Another: ―Will Colby. 1921. Flu.‖
He turned blindly to touch deep-cut green moss names and rainy years, and old games
played on lost Memorial Days while his aunts watered the grass with tears, their voices like
windswept trees.
He named a thousand names, fixed ten thousand flowers, flashed ten million spades.
―Pneumonia, gout, dyspepsia, TB. All of ‘em taught,‖ said Doug. ―Taught to learn how to die.
Pretty dumb lying here, doing nothing, yup?‖
―Hey Doug,‖ Charlie said, uneasily. ―We met here to plan our army, not talk about dying.
There‘s a billion years between now and Christmas. With all that time to fill, I got no time to die.
I woke this morning and said to myself, ‗Charlie, this is swell, living. Keep doing it!‘‖
―Charlie, that‘s how they want you to talk!‖
―Am I wrinkly, Doug, and dog-pee yellow? Am I fourteen, Doug, or fifteen or twenty?
Am I?‖