Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury

hard to keep the child locked there forever. Give it another try.”
    “No, I’m done with it. I’m done with wars. Let them go. If they can earn a better life than I did, let them earn it. I wouldn’t be so cruel as to wish them my life now. I was in his face, remember, and I saw her. God, what a beautiful face! Suddenly I felt so young. Now, turn me around and roll me home. I want to think about the next year or so. I’ll have to start fi guring.”
    “Yes, Ebenezer.”
    “No, not Ebenezer, not Scrooge. I’m not anything. I haven’t decided to be anything. You can’t be anything that quickly. All I know is I’m not quite the same. I’ve got to figure what I want to be.”
    “You could give to charity.”
    “You know me better than that.”
    “You’ve got a brother.”
    “Lives in California.”
    “How long’s it been since you’ve seen him?”
    “Oh, God, thirty years.”
    “He has children, right?”
    “Yes, I think so. Two girls and a boy. Grown now. Got children of their own.”
    “You could write a letter.”
    “What kind?”
    “Invite them for a visit. You’ve got a big house. And one of those children, God help them, might seem like you. It struck me, if you can’t have any private sense of destiny, immortality, you name it—you could get it secondhand from your brother’s house. Seems to me you’d want to connect up with a thing like that.”
    “Foolish.”
    “No, common sense. You’re too old for marriage and children, too old for everything except experiments. You know how things work. Some children look like their fathers, or mothers, or grandfathers, and some take after a distant brother. Don’t you think you’d get a kick out of something like that?”
    “Too easy.”
    “Think on it, anyway. Don’t wait, or you’ll sink back into being nothing but a mean old son-of-abitch again.”
    “So that’s what I’ve been! Well, well. I didn’t start out intending to be mean, but I got there somehow. Are you mean, Bleak?”
    “No, because I know what I did to myself. I’m only mean in private. I don’t blame others for my own mis takes. I’m bad in a different way than you, of course, with a sense of humor developed out of necessity.” For a moment, Bleak’s eyes seemed to twinkle, but maybe it was only the passing sun.
    “I’ll need a sense of humor from here on out. Bleak, visit me more often.” Quartermain’s gnarled fingers grasped Bleak’s hand.
    “Why would I visit you, you sorry old bastard, ever again?”
    “Because we’re the Grand Army, aren’t we? You must help me think.”
    “The blind leading the sick,” said Bleak. “Here we are.”
    He paused at the walk leading up to the gray, fl akepainted house.
    “Is that my place?” said Quartermain. “My God, it’s ugly, ugly as sin. Needs paint.”
    “You can think about that, too.”
    “My God, what a Christ-awful ugly house! Wheel me in, Bleak.”
    And Bleak wheeled his friend up the walk toward his house.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
    Douglas stood with Tom and Charlie in the moist-smelling warm late-summer-green ravine. Mosquitoes danced their delicate dances upon the silence. A dancing idiot hum-tune.
    “Everyone’s gone,” said Tom . Douglas sat on a rock and took off his shoes . “Bang, you’re dead,” said Tom, quietly . “I wish I was, oh, I wish I was dead,” said Doug . Tom said, “Is the war over? Shall I take down the flag?” “What flag?”
    “Just the flag, that’s all.”
    “Yeah. Take it down. But I’m not sure if the war is really over yet . . . but it sure has changed. I’ve just got to figure out how.”
    Charlie said, “Yeah, well, you did give cake to the enemy. If that wasn’t the strangest thing . . .”
    “Ta-ta-tahhhh,” hummed Tom. He made furling motions in the warm empty silent air. He stood solemnly by the quiet creek in the summer evening with the sun fading. “Ta-ta-tahhhh. Ta-ta-tahhhh.” He hummed “Taps.” A tear fell off his cheek.
    “Oh,