Now and Forever. Рэй Брэдбери

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       TEN

      Claude jogged at a goodly pace for two blocks and turned sweetly to the right.

      His eyes twitched toward a front yard mailbox: Abercrombie.

      Cardiff checked his list.

      Abercrombie!

      ‘Damn!’

      He jumped from the wagon, loaf in hand, when a woman’s voice called, ‘Thank you, Claude.’

      A woman of some forty years stood at the gate to take the bread. ‘You, too, of course,’ she said. ‘Mister …?’

      ‘Cardiff, ma’m.’

      ‘Claude,’ she called, ‘take good care of Mr Cardiff. And Mr Cardiff, you take good care of Claude. Morning!’

      And the wagon jounced along the bricks under a congress of trees that laced themselves to lattice out the sun.

      ‘Fillmore’s next.’ Cardiff eyed the list, ready to pull on the reins when the horse stopped at a second gate.

      Cardiff popped the bread in the Fillmore mailbox and raced to catch up with Claude, who had resumed his route without waiting for his driver.

      So it went. Bramble. Jones. Williams. Isaacson. Meredith. Bread. Cake. Bread. Muffins. Bread. Cake. Bread.

      Claude turned a final corner.

      And there was a school.

      ‘Hold up, Claude!’

      Cardiff alighted and walked into the schoolyard to find a teeter-totter, its old blue paint flaking, next to an old swingset, its splintery wooden seats suspended from rusted iron chains.

      ‘Well, now,’ whispered Cardiff.

      The school was two stories high. Its double doors were shut, and all eight of its windows were crusted with dust.

      Cardiff rattled the front doors. Locked tight.

      ‘It’s only May,’ Cardiff said to himself. ‘School’s not out yet.’

      Claude whinnied irritably, and perhaps out of pique, began a slow glide away from the school.

      ‘Claude!’ Cardiff put iron in it. ‘Stay!’

      Claude stayed, drumming the bricks with both forefeet.

      Cardiff turned back to the building. Carved in the lintel, above the main door were the words: SUMMERTON GRAMMAR SCHOOL, DEDICATED JANUARY 1ST, 1888.

      ‘Eighteen eighty-eight,’ Cardiff muttered. ‘Well, now.’

      He gave one last look at the dust-caked windows and the rusted swing chains and said, ‘One last go-round, Claude.’

      Claude did not move.

      ‘We’re all out of bread and names, is that it? You only take bakery orders, nothing else?’

      Even Claude’s shadow did not move.

      ‘Well, we’ll just stand here until you do me a favor. Your new star boarder wants to cross-section the whole blasted town. What’s it to be? No water, no oats, without a full trot.’

      Water and oats did it.

      Full trot.

      They sailed down Clover Avenue and up Hibiscus Way and over on to Rosewood Place and right on Juneglade and left again on Sandalwood then Ravine, which ran off the edge of a shallow ravine cut by ancient rains. He stared at lawn after lawn after lawn, all of them lush, green, perfect. No baseball bats. No baseballs. No basketball hoops. No basketballs. No tennis rackets. No croquet mallets. No hopscotch chalk marks on sidewalks. No tire swings on trees.

      Claude trotted him back to the Egyptian View Arms, where Elias Culpepper was waiting.

      Cardiff climbed down from the bread wagon.

      ‘Well?’

      Cardiff looked back at the summer drift of green lawns and green hedges and golden sunflowers and said, ‘Where are the children?’