Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury Page A

down?”
    â€œFifteen.”
    â€œFifteen years of people stomping across it; I see every shoe print,” gasped Tom.
    â€œLand, boy, you got a tongue,” said Great-grandma.
    â€œI see all the things happened in that house in all those years right here!” Bang! “All the past, sure, but I can see the future, too. Just squinch up my eyes and peek around at the patterns, there, to see where we’ll be walking, running around, tomorrow.”
    Douglas stopped swinging the beater. “What else you see in the rug?”
    â€œThreads mostly,” said Great-grandma. “Not much left but the underskin. See how the manufacturer wove the thing.”
    â€œRight!” said Tom mysteriously. “Threads one way, threads another. I see it all. Dire fiends. Deadly sinners. There’s bad weather, there’s good. Picnics. Banquets. Strawberry festivals.” He tapped the beater from place to place portentously.
    â€œThat’s some boardinghouse you got me running,” said Grandma, glowing with exertion.
    â€œIt’s all there, fuzzylike. Hold your head on one side, Doug, get one eye almost shut. It’s better at night, of course, inside, the rug on the floor, lamplight and all. Then you get shadows all shapes, light and dark, and watch the threads running off, feel the nap, run your hand around on the fur. Smells just like a desert, I bet. All hot and sandy, like inside a mummy case, maybe. Look, that red spot, that’s the Happiness Machine burning up!”
    â€œCatsup from somebody’s sandwich, no doubt,” said Mom.
    â€œNo, Happiness Machine,” said Douglas, and was sad to see it burning there. He had been counting on Leo Auffmann to keep things in order, keep everybody smiling, keep the small gyroscope he often felt inside himself tilting toward the sun every time the earth tilted toward outer space and darkness. But no, there was Auffmann’s folly, ashes and cinders. Bang! Bang! Douglas struck.
    â€œLook, there’s the green electric runabout! Miss Fern! Miss Roberta!” said Tom. “Honk, Honk!” Bang!
    They all laughed.
    â€œThere’s your life-strings, Doug, running along in knots. Too many sour apples. Pickles at bedtime!”
    â€œWhich one, where?” cried Douglas, peering.
    â€œThis one, one year from now, this one, two years from now, and this one, three, four, five years from now!”
    Bang! The wire beater hissed like a snake in the blind sky.
    â€œAnd one to grow on!” said Tom.
    He hit the rug so hard all the dust of five thousand centuries jumped from the shocked texture, paused on the air a terrible moment, and even as Douglas stood, eyes squinted to see the warp, the woof, the shivering pattern, the Armenian avalanche of dust roared soundless upon, over, down and around, burying him forever before their eyes....

H ow it began with the children, old Mrs. Bentley never knew. She often saw them, like moths and monkeys, at the grocer’s, among the cabbages and hung bananas, and she smiled at them and they smiled back. Mrs. Bentley watched them making footprints in winter snow, filling their lungs with autumn smoke, shaking down blizzards of spring apple-blossoms, but felt no fear of them. As for herself, her house was in extreme good order, everything set to its station, the floors briskly swept, the foods neatly tinned, the hatpins thrust through cushions, and the drawers of her bedroom bureaus crisply filled with the paraphernalia of years.
    Mrs. Bentley was a saver. She saved tickets, old theater programs, bits of lace, scarves, rail transfers; all the tags and tokens of existence.
    â€œI’ve a stack of records,” she often said. “Here’s Caruso. That was in 1916, in New York; I was sixty and John was still alive. Here’s June Moon, 1924, I think, right after John died.”
    That was the huge regret of her life, in a way. The one thing she had most enjoyed touching and