The Fireman Read online

  "I can't do it," he murmured. "I can't go in there. I can't rip another book."

  Leahy jumped from his throne, smelling of the wind that had hammered him about. "Okay, Montag, fetch the kerosene!"

  The hoses were snaked out. The men ran on soft boots, as clumsy as cripples, as quiet as deadly black spiders.

  Mr. Montag turned his head.

  "What's wrong, Montag?" Leahy asked, solicitously.

  "Why," protested Montag, "that is my house."

  "So it is," agreed Leahy, heartily.

  All the lights were lit. Down the street, more lights were flicking on, people were standing on porches, as the door of Montag's house opened. In it, with two suitcases in her hands, stood Mildred. When she saw her husband, she came down the steps quickly, with a dream-like rigidity, looking at the third button on his coat.

  "Mildred!"

  She said nothing.

  "Okay, Montag, up with the hose and ax."

  "Just a moment, Mr. Leahy. Mildred, you didn't telephone this call in, did you?"

  SHE walked past him with her arms stiff and at the ends of them, in the sharp, red-nailed fingers, the valise handles. Her mouth was bloodless.

  "You didn't!" he said.

  She shoved the valises into a waiting taxi-beetle and climbed in and sat there, staring straight ahead.

  Montag started toward her. Leahy caught his arm.

  "Come on, Montag."

  The cab drove away slowly down the lighted street.

  There was a crystal tinkling as Stoneman and Black chopped the windows to provide fine drafts for the fire.

  Mr. Montag walked but did not feel his feet touch the walk, nor the hose in his icy hands, nor did he hear. Leahy talking continually as they reached the door.

  "Pour the kerosene in, Montag."

  Montag stood gazing in at the queer house, made strange by the hour of the night, by the murmur of neighbor voices, by the littered glass, the lights blazing, and there on the floor, their covers plucked off, the pages spilled about like pigeon feathers, were his incredible books, and they looked so pitiful and silly and not worth bothering with, for they were nothing but type and paper and raveled binding.

  Montag stepped forward in a huge silence and picked up one of the pages of the books and read what it had to say.

  He had read only three lines when Leahy snatched the paper from him.

  "Oh, no," he said, smiling. "Because then we'd have to burn your mind, too. Mustn't have that." He stepped back. "Ready?"

  "Ready." Montag snapped the valve lock on the fire-thrower.

  "Aim," said Leahy.

  "Aim."

  "Fire!"

  He burned the television set first and then the radio and he burned the motion picture projector and he burned the films and the gossip magazines and the litter of cosmetics on a table, and he took pleasure in it all, and he burned the walls because he wanted to change everything, the chairs, the tables, the paintings.

  He didn't want to remember that he had lived here with some strange woman who would forget him tomorrow, who had gone and forgotten him already and was listening to a radio as she rode across town. So he burned the room with a precise fury.

  "The books, Montag, the books!"

  He directed the fire at the books. They leaped and danced, like roasted birds, their wings frantically ablaze in red and yellow feathers. They fell in charred lumps.

  "Get that one there, get it!" directed Leahy, pointing.

  Montag burned the indicated book.

  He burned books, he burned them by the dozen, he burned books with sweat pouring down his cheeks.

  "When you're all done, Montag," said Leahy behind him, "you're under arrest."

  III

  Water, Water, Quench Fire

  THE house fell into red ruin. It bedded itself down to sleepy pink ashes and a smoke pall hung over it, rising straight to the sky. It was ten minutes after one in the morning. The crowd drew back into their houses; the fun was over.

  Mr. Montag stood with the fire-thrower in his stiff hands, great islands of perspiration standing out under his arms, his face smeared with soot. The three other firemen waited behind him in the darkness, their faces illumined faintly by the burned house, by the house which Mr. Montag had just charred and crumpled so efficiently with kerosene, flame-gun, and deliberate aim.

  "All right, Montag," said Leahy. "Come along. You've done your duty. Now, you're in custody."

  "What've I done?"

  "You know what you did. Don't ask."

  "Why so much fuss over a few bits of paper?"

  "We won't stand here arguing; it's cold."

  "Was it my wife called you, or one of her friends?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  "Was it my wife?"

  Leahy nodded. "But her friends turned in an alarm earlier. I let it ride. One way or the other, you'd have got it. That was pretty silly, quoting poetry around free and easy, Montag. Very silly. Come on, now."

  "I think not," said Montag.

  He twitched the fire-trigger in his hand. Leahy glanced at Montag's fingers and saw what he intended before Montag himself had even considered it. In that instant, Montag was stunned by the thought of murder, for murder is always a new thing, and Montag knew nothing of murder; he knew only burning and burning things that people said were evil.

  "I know what's really wrong with the world," said Montag.

  "Look here, Montag — " cried Leahy.

  And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering thing, all aflame, writhing on the grass as Montag shot three more blazing pulses of liquid fire over him. There was a hissing and bubbling like a snail upon which salt has been poured. There was a sound like spittle on a red-hot stove. Montag shut his eyes and yelled and tried to get his hands to his ears to cut away the sounds. Leahy twisted in upon himself like a ridiculous black wax doll and lay silent.

  The other two firemen stood appalled. "Montag!"

  Montag jerked the weapon at them. "Turn around!"

  They turned stiffly. He beat them over the heads with the gun shaft; he didn't want to burn any other thing ever again. They fell. Then Montag turned the fire-thrower on the fire engine itself, set the trigger, and ran. Voices screamed in several houses. The engine blew up, hundreds of gallons of kerosene in one great flower of heat.

  Montag ran away down the street and into an alley, thinking, "That's the end of you, Leahy! That's the end of you and what you were!"

  He kept running.

  HE REMEMBERED the books and turned back.

  "You're a fool, a damned fool, an awful fool, an idiot, but most of all a fool." He stumbled and fell. He got up. "You blind idiot, you and your pride and your stinking temper and your righteousness, you've ruined it all, at the very start, you fumbler. But those women, those stupid women, they drove me to it with their nonsense!" he protested to himself.

  "A fool, nevertheless, no better than they!"

  "We'll save what we can. We'll do what has to be done. We'll take a few more firemen with us if we burn!"

  He found the books where he had left them, beyond the garden fence. He heard voices yelling in the night and flash-beams were swirling about. Other fire engines wailed from far off and police cars were arriving.

  Mr Montag took as many books as he could carry under one arm and staggered down the alley. He hadn't realized what a shock the evening had been to him, but suddenly he fell and lay sobbing, weak, his legs folded, his face in the gravel. At a distance he heard running feet.

  Get up, he told himself. But he lay there. Get up, get up! But he cried like a child. He hadn't wanted to kill anyone, not even Leahy. Killing did nothing but kill something of yourself when you did it, and suddenly he saw Leahy again, a torch, screaming, and he shut his hand over his wet face, gagging. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

  Everything at once. In twenty-four hours the burning of a woman, the burning of books, the trip to the Professor's, Leahy, the Bible, memorizing, the sieve, and the
sand, the bank money, the printing press, the plan, the rage, the alarm, Mildred's departure, the fire, Leahy into a torch — too much for any one day in any one life.

  At last he was able to get to his feet, but the books seemed impossibly heavy. He fumbled along the alley and the voices and sirens faded behind him. He moved in darkness, panting.

  "You must remember," he said, "that you've got to burn them or they'll burn you. Burn them or they'll burn you."

  He searched his pockets. The money was there. In his shirt pocket he found the Seashell radio and slapped it to his ear.

  "Attention! Attention, all police alert. Special alarm. Wanted: Leonard Montag, fugitive, for murder and crimes against the State. Description..."

  Six blocks away the alley opened out onto a wide empty thoroughfare. It looked like a clean stage, so bored, so quiet, so well lit, and him alone, running across it, easily seen, easily shot down.

  "Beware of the pedestrian, watch for the pedestrian!" The Seashell stung his ear.

  Montag hid back in the shadows. He must use only the alleys. There was a gas station nearby. It might give him the slightest extra margin of safety if he were clean and presentable. He must get to the station rest room and wash up, comb his hair, then, with books under arm, stroll calmly across that wide boulevard to get where he was going.

  "Where am I going?"

  NOWHERE. There was nowhere to go, no friend to turn to. Faber couldn't take him in; it would be murder to even try; but he had to see Faber for a minute or two, to give him this money. Whatever happened, he wanted the money to go on after him. Perhaps he could make it to open country, live on the rivers and near highways, in the meadows and hills, the sort of life he had often thought about but never tried.

  Something caught at one corner of his vision and he turned to look at the sky.

  The police helicopters were rising, far away, like a flight of gray moths, spreading out, six of them. He saw them wavering, indecisive, a half mile off, like butterflies puzzled by autumn, dying with winter, and then they were landing, one by one, dropping softly to the streets where, turned into cars, they would shriek along the boulevards or, just as suddenly, hop back into the air, continuing their search.

  And here was the gas station. Approaching from the rear, Mr. Montag entered the men's wash room.

  Through the tin wall he heard a radio voice crying, "War has been declared! Repeat — war has been declared! Ten minutes ago — " But the sound of washing his hands and rinsing his face and toweling himself dry cut the announcer's voice away. Emerging from the wash-room a cleaner, newer man, less suspect, Mr. Montag walked as casually as a man looking for a bus, to the edge of the empty boulevard.

  There it lay, a game for him to win, a vast bowling alley in the dark morning. The boulevard was as clean as a pinball machine, but underneath, somewhere, one could feel the electrical energy, the readiness to dart lights, flash red and blue, and out of nowhere, rolling like a silver ball, might thunder the searchers!

  Three blocks away, there were a few headlights. Montag drew a deep breath. His lungs were like burning brooms in his chest; his mouth was sucked dry from running. All of the iron in the world lay in his dragging feet.

  He began to walk across the empty avenue.

  A hundred yards across. He estimated. A hundred yards in the open, more than plenty of time for a police car to appear, see him, and run him down.

  He listened to his own loud footsteps.

  A car was coming. Its headlights leaped and caught Montag in full stride.

  "Keep going."

  Montag faltered, got a new hold on his books, and forced himself not to freeze. Nor should he draw suspicion to himself by running. He was now one-third of the way across. There was a growl from the car's motor as it put on speed.

  THE police, thought Montag. They see me, of course. But walk slowly, quietly, don't turn, don't look, don't seem concerned. Walk, that's it, walk, walk.

  The car was rushing at a terrific speed. A good one hundred miles an hour. Its horn blared. Its light flushed the concrete. The heat of the lights, it seemed, burned Montag's cheeks and eyelids and brought the sweat coursing from his body.

  He began to shuffle idiotically, then broke and ran. The horn hooted. The motor sound whined higher. Montag sprinted. He dropped a book, whirled, hesitated, left it there, plunged on, yelling to himself, in the middle of concrete emptiness, the car a hundred feet away, closer, closer, hooting, pushing, rolling, screeching, the horn hunting, himself running, his legs up, down, out, back, his eyes blind in the flashing glare, the horn nearer, now on top of him!

  They'll run me down, they know who I am, it's all over, thought Montag, it's done!

  He stumbled and fell. An instant before reaching him, the wild car swerved around him and was gone. Falling had saved him.

  Mr. Montag lay flat, his head down. Wisps of laughter trailed back with the blue car exhaust.

  That wasn't the police, thought Mr. Montag.

  It was a carful of high-school children, yelling, whistling, hurrahing. And they had seen a man, a pedestrian, a rarity, and they had yelled "Let's get him!" They didn't know he was the fugitive Mr. Montag; they were simply out for a night of roaring five hundred miles in a few moonlit hours, their faces icy with wind.

  "They would have killed me," whispered Montag to the shaking concrete under his bruised cheek. "For no reason at all in the world, they would have killed me."

  He got up and walked unsteadily to the far curb. Somehow, he had remembered to pick up the spilled books. He shuffled them, oddly, in his numb hands.

  "I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarisse."

  His eyes watered.

  The thing that had saved him was falling flat. The driver of that car, seeing Montag prone, considered the possibility that running over a body at one hundred miles an hour might turn the car over and spill them all out. Now, if Montag had remained upright, things would have been far different...

  Montag gasped. Far down the empty avenue, four blocks away, the car of laughing children had turned. Now it was racing back, picking up speed.

  Montag dodged into an alley and was gone in the shadow long before the car returned.

  THE house was silent. Mr. Montag approached it from the back, creeping through the scent of daffodils and roses and wet grass. He touched the screen door, found it open, slipped in, tiptoed across the porch, and, behind the refrigerator in the kitchen, deposited three of the books. He waited, listening to the house.

  "Mrs. Black, are you asleep up there?" he asked of the second floor in a whisper. "I hate to do this to you, but your husband did just as bad to others, never asking, never wondering, never worrying. You're a fireman's wife, Mrs. Black, and now it's your house, and you will be in jail a while, for all the houses your husband has burned and people he's killed."

  The ceiling did not reply.

  Quietly, Montag slipped from the house and returned to the alley. The house was still dark; no one had heard him come or go.

  He walked casually down the alley, and came to an all-night, dimly lighted phone booth. He closed himself in the booth and dialed a number.

  "I want to report an illegal ownership of books," he said.

  The voice sharpened on the other end. "The address?"

  He gave it and added, "Better get there before they burn them. Check the kitchen."

  Montag stepped out and stood in the cold night air, waiting. At a great distance he heard the fire sirens coming, coming to burn Mr. Black's house while he was away at work, and make his wife stand shivering in the morning air while the roof dropped down. But now she was upstairs, deep in sleep.

  "Good night, Mrs. Black," said Mr. Montag. "You'll excuse me — I have several other visits to make."

  A RAP at the door. "Professor Faber!"

  Another rap and a long waiting. Then, from within, lights flickered on about the small house. After another pause, the front door opened.

  "Who is it?" Faber cried, for the
man who staggered in was in the dark for a moment and then rushing past. "Oh, Montag!"

  "I'm going away," said Montag, stumbling to a chair. "I've been a fool."

  Professor Faber stood at the door listening to the distant sirens wailing off like animals in the morning. "Someone's been busy."

  "It worked."

  "At least you were a fool about the right things." Faber shut the door, came back, and poured a drink for each of them. "I wondered what had happened to you."