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[Assistant] She'd wake up back in her little girl room on the farm near Battle Lake, Minnesota.


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[Assistant] There was a depression, things were a little rough, but big deal. What could beat a sun-kissed morning on Battle Lake, a robin song? There was an abundance of jays, larks, bluebirds, hardinals.


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[Assistant] Hummingbirds. Red-winged blackbirds in those days before acid rain and heavy metal poisoning.


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[Assistant] And they came to her yard to eat from the cherry, apple, plum, and pear trees. What they really went for were the mulberry. Ah, youth. Good looks. Clean complexion, muscle tones.


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[Assistant] A full head of lustrous hair, her best feature, although her legs were pretty good too. Strength. Vitality. A happy kid with a bright future. Cheerleader, her senior year. Pharmacy scholarship at the college in Fergus Falls. Geez, her dad hadn't died, she could have been a pharmacist. Her grades were good, but hard luck stories were the order of the day. It was a great depression.


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[Assistant] She would have to take her chances. Gosh, it had been a great, wide, wonderful world in those days. And no matter what, an adventure lay ahead. Something marvelous. A handsome prince and a life happily ever after. Luck was with her. Where had all the time gone? How had all the dreams fallen away? Now she was in the valley of the shadow.


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[Assistant] The morphine sulfate was like a warm and friendly heart.


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[Assistant] In Gloom City, her one and only consolation.


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[Assistant] He was supposed to be a good doctor, one of the best in the field, but he had absolutely no bedside manner.


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[Assistant] Then it began to sink in that things might presently go downhill in a hurry.


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[Assistant] If her brother was busy, her daughter drove her up to the clinic and then back down to the office and the thin oncologist is called away or he's running behind or he's something. Didn't they run a business, get their shit together? Why couldn't they anticipate? It was one thing to wait in line at a bank when you're well. When you've got cancer and you're this cancer patient, you wait an hour or two hours. They tell you to come back next week.


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[Assistant] Come back for something that's worse than anything? The very worst thing in the world? Hard to get up for that. Really had to brace yourself. It's just platen. Ah!


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[Assistant] Metal mouth, restlessness, pacing, plop on the couch, but that's no good. Get up and pace, but you can't handle that so you plop on the couch again. Get up and pace. Is this really happening to me? I can't believe this is really happening to me. How can such a thing be possible?


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[Assistant] Then there were the episodes of simultaneous diarrhea and vomiting that sprayed the bathroom from floor to ceiling. Dry heaves, and then dry heaves with bile, and then dry heaves with blood.


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[Assistant] You could drink a quart of tequila and then a quart of rum and have some slow gin too and eat pink birthday cakes and five pounds of licorice, epsom salts, a pint of kerosene.


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[Assistant] Some southern comfort and you're on a Sunday picnic compared to Cisplatin.


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[Assistant] Maybe get well. You first had to poison yourself within a whisker of death.


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[Assistant] And in fact, if you didn't die, you wished that you had. There were visitors in droves, flowers, various intrusions at all hours. Go away. Leave me alone, please. God, leave me alone. Oh, hi. Thanks for coming. Oh, what a lovely, such beautiful flowers.


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[Assistant] There were moments when she felt that if she had one more episode of diarrhea, she would jump out of the window. Five stories? Would that be high enough? Or would you lie there for a time and die slowly?


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[Assistant] Maybe if you took a header right onto the concrete, maybe then you wouldn't feel a thing. This platen, she had to pace.


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[Assistant] But she had to lie down, but she was squirrely as hell and she couldn't lie down. TV was no good, she had double vision.


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[Assistant] And it was all just a bunch of stupid shit anyhow. Soap operas? Good grief. What absolute crap. Even her old favorites.


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[Assistant] You only live once and to think of all the time she pissed away watching soap operas. If only she could sleep. God, didn't they give her Dilaudid? No, wait, hold that. Somehow Dilaudid would make it even worse. Ether then put her out. Wake me up in five days. Just let me sleep.


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[Assistant] The second treatment made the first treatment seem like a month in the country. The third treatment? Oh damn. The whole scenario had been underplayed. Those movie stars who got it and wrote books about it were stoics. Valiant warriors compared to her. She had no idea anything could be so horrible. Starving in Bangladesh? No problem. I'll trade. Here's my master card and the keys to the Buick. I'll pull a rickshaw. Anything.


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[Assistant] Why just sign right here on the dotted line and you got a deal. I'll trade with anybody. Anybody.


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[Assistant] The thin oncologist with the bug's bunny voice said the CA-125 number was still up in the stratosphere.


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[Assistant] He said it was up to her if she wanted to go on with this. What was holding her up?


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[Assistant] She didn't know and her own voice came from a can now. She heard herself say, Doctor, what would you do if you were me?


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[Assistant] He pulled off his wire rims and pinched his nose, world weary.


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[Assistant] I take the next treatment. It was worse by far. Square root to infinity.


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[Assistant] Five days, no sleep, pacing, lying down, pacing, puke and diarrhea, the phone.


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[Assistant] She wanted to tear it off the wall. After all these years, couldn't they make a quiet bell? Did they have shit for brains or what? Oh, hi. Well, just fine. Just dandy. Coming by on Sunday with the kids?


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[Assistant] Well, no, I feel great. No, no, no, no, I'd love to see you. And then one day the thin timber voice delivered good news.


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[Assistant] Your CA-125 is almost within normal limits. It's working!


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[Assistant] Your CA is down the rock bottom. I think we should do one, possibly two more treatments and then go back inside for a look.


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[Assistant] We do too few, we may not kill it all, but if we do too much, you see it's toxic to your healthy cells as well.


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[Assistant] You can get cardiomyopathy in one session of cisplatin and you can die.


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[Assistant] One more is all I can handle. Gotcha, Mrs. Wilson. One more and in for a look.


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[Assistant] I hate to tell you this, he said. Was he making the cartoons go away? I'll be upfront about it, Mrs. Wilson. We've still got a problem.


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[Assistant] The little grape nuts, fewer than in the beginning, but the remaining cells will be resistant to cisplatin, so our options are running thin. We could try a month of an experimental form of hard chemotherapy right here in the hospital. Very, very risky stuff.


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[Assistant] Or we could presume this is Splatton, not so much aiming for a cure, but rather as a holding action. Or we could not do anything at all.


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[Assistant] Her voice was flat, she said, what if I don't do anything? Dead in three months, maybe six. She said, dead how? Lungs, liver or bowel. Don't worry, Mrs. Wilson. There won't be a lot of pain. I'll see to that. Bingo. He flipped the charts shut and whiz, bang, he was out of there.


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[Assistant] She realized that when she got right down to it, she wanted to live more than anything on almost any terms. So she took more cisplatin.


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[Assistant] But the oncologist was right. He couldn't touch those resistant rogue cells.


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[Assistant] They were like roaches that could live through atomic warfare, grow, and thrive. Well then, screw it. At least there wouldn't be pain. What more can you do? She shouldn't have let him open her up again. That had been the worst sort of folly. She'd let him steamroll her with doctor-knows-best. Air had hit it. No wonder it was a wildfire, a conflagration. Her friends came by. It was an effort to make small talk.


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[Assistant] How could they know? How could they know what it was like? They loved who they said with liquor on their breath.


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[Assistant] They had to get juiced before they could stand to come by. They came with casseroles and cleaned for her, but she had to sweat out her nights alone.


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[Assistant] Dark Nights of the Soul on Tylenol 3 and Xanax. A lot of good that was.


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[Assistant] But then when she was in her loose, giddy, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose mood, about ten days after a treatment, he realized her friends weren't so dumb. They knew they couldn't really know. Bugs Bunny


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[Assistant] Told her there was no point in going on with a cisplatin. He told her she was a very brave lady. He said he was sorry.


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[Assistant] A month after she was off that poison to splatten, there was a little side benefit. She could see the colors of the earth again and taste food and smell flowers. It was a bittersweet pleasure to be sure.


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[Assistant] But her friends took her to Hawaii where they had this great friend. Got a meeting.


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[Assistant] And he made a play for her and brought her flowers every day, expensive roses, etc.


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[Assistant] She had never considered another man since John had died from cancer ten years before. How wonderful to forget it all for a moment here and there.


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[Assistant] Qualify that. Make that 10, 15 seconds. How can you forget it? Ever since she got the news, she could not forget it.


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[Assistant] Maybe it was normal everyday stuff, amplified by the imagination, or maybe it was real.


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[Assistant] How fast would it move this wildfire brand? Better not to ask. Suddenly she was horrible again. Those nights alone. Killers. Finally one night she broke down and called her daughter. Hated to do it. Throw in the towel. But this was the 15th round and she didn't have a prayer. Oh ha, I'm just fine. Blah, blah, blah.


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[Assistant] But I was thinking maybe I could come down and stay just for a while. I'd like to see Janie and Will drive up in the morning.


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[Assistant] At least she was with blood. And her darling granddaughter. What a delight. Playing with the little girl she could forget. It was even better than Hawaii.


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[Assistant] After a year of sheer hell, in which all of the good stuff added up to less than an hour and four minutes total, there was a way to forget. She helped with the dishes, a little light cleaning, watched the game shows, worked the times crossward, but the pains grew worse.


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[Assistant] Damn it, it felt like nasty little yellow-toothed rodents or a horde of translucent termites, thousands of them, chewing her guts out. Final in all three couldn't touch it. The new doctor she had been passed who gave her Dilaudid, she was enormously relieved. But what she got?


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[Assistant] was the vial of little pink tablets and after the first dose she realized it wasn't much good in the pill form. You could squeeze by on it but they promised no pain. She was losing steam grinding down.


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[Assistant] They spent a couple of days on the Oregon coast, the son-in-law. Somehow it was easy to be with him. He didn't pretend that things were other than they were. He could be a pain in the bun, like everyone, itching over trivialities, smoking cool cigarettes, strong ones, jelters, pack a day easy.


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[Assistant] Although he was considerate enough to go outside and do it. She wanted to tell him, fool, your health is your greatest fortune.


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[Assistant] That she was the one who had let six months pass after that first discharge.


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[Assistant] The Oregon coast was lovely, although the surf was too cold for actual swimming.


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[Assistant] She sat in the hotel whirlpool and watched her granddaughter swim a whole length of the pool all on her own.


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[Assistant] They saw a show of shooting stars one night, but it was exhausting to keep up a good front and not be morbid, losing weight big time.


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[Assistant] After a shower, standing in the mirror, scars


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[Assistant] Zigzagging all over the joint like the bride of Frankenstein. It was just awful. She was bald, scrawny, ashen, yet with a bloated belly. He couldn't look.


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[Assistant] Sometimes she would sink to the floor and just lie there too sick to even cry. Too weak to even get dressed. Yet somehow she did get dressed. Slapped on that hot goddamn wig and shut up for dinner.


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[Assistant] She felt like a naughty little girl sitting before the table looking at meals her daughter was killing herself to make.


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[Assistant] Old favorites that now tasted like a combination of 40-weight pexical oil and sawdust.


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[Assistant] The son-in-law worked swing shift and he cheered her up in the morning when he got up and made coffee. He was full of life. He was real. He was authentic. He even interjected little pockets of hope. Not that he pushed macrobiotics or any of that foolishness, but it was a fact. If you are happy, if you had something to live for, if you love life, you live.


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[Assistant] It had been a mistake for her to hole up there in the mountains after John died. The will to live was more important than doctors and medicines. You had to reinvigorate the will to live. The granddaughter was good for that.


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[Assistant] He just couldn't go the meditation route, imagining microscopic ravenous good guy little sharks eating the bad cancer cells, etc.


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[Assistant] At least the son-in-law didn't suggest that or come on strong with a theology trip. She noticed he read the King James Bible, though. She couldn't eat. There was a milkshake diet she choked down.


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[Assistant] Vanilla, chocolate fudge, strawberry, your choice. Would the dam like a bottle of wine with dinner? Ha ha ha. Allotted. It wasn't working.


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[Assistant] She watched the clock like a hawk and had her pills out ready every four hours. And that last hour was getting to be murder.


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[Assistant] A morbid sweat began popping out on her in the last fifteen minutes.


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[Assistant] One morning she caved in and timidly asked the son-in-law, Can I take three? He said, Hell, take four. It's a safe drug. If you have bad pain, take four. Her eyes were popping out of her head. Here, drink it with coffee and it'll kick in faster. He was right. He knew more than the doctor. You just can't do everything by the book.


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[Assistant] Maybe that had been her trouble all along. She was too compliant. One of those cancer personalities. She believed in the rules.


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[Assistant] The next day over the phone, her son-in-law bullied a prescription methadone from the cancer doctor. She heard one side of a lengthy heated exchange.


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[Assistant] While the son-in-law made a persuasive case for methadone.


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[Assistant] He came on like Clarence Darrow or F. Lee Bailey. It was a commanding performance.


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[Assistant] She had never heard of anyone giving a doctor hell before. God bless him for not backing down.


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[Assistant] On methadone tablets a warm orange glow sprang forth and bloomed like a glorious time lapse rose in her abdomen.


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[Assistant] The sense of relief shattered all fear and doubt, though the pain was still there to some extent. It was still there, but so what?


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[Assistant] And the methadone tablets lasted a very long time. No more of that every four hours bullshit.


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[Assistant] Purple blotches all over her skin, swollen ankles, pain in her hips and joints, an ambulance trip to the emergency room. Oh, they said, it's nothing. Vascular purpura. Take aspirin. Who's next? Who's next?


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[Assistant] Why hadn't she taken John's old 38 revolver the very day she heard the voice in the can, stuck it in the back of her mouth, and pulled the trigger? She had no fear of hellfire. He was a decent moral person, but she did not believe. Neither was she the Hamlet type. What lies on the other side? It was probably the same thing that occurred before you were born. Zilch. And Zilch wasn't that bad. What was wrong with Zilch?


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[Assistant] One morning she waited over long for the son-in-law to get up.


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[Assistant] You probably have water in your lungs, the son-in-law said.


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[Assistant] He knew she didn't want to go to the clinic. We've got some diuretic.


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[Assistant] They were Shelby's when she got congestive heart failure, dog medicine, but it's the same thing they give humans.


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[Assistant] Shelby weighed 55 pounds. Let me see. Take four, no, take three. Be cautious. You feel like you have to cough? Yes. KESK!


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[Assistant] Try to eat a banana or a potato skin to keep up your potassium. If it doesn't work, we can go over to the clinic. How would he know something like that? But he was right.


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[Assistant] It worked like magic. She had to pee like crazy, but she could breathe. The panic to end all panics was over. Only she could go. Number two. Well, the methadone slows you down. Try some metamucil, the son-in-law said. It worked, kind of, but it sure wasn't anything to write home about. I can't breathe. The diuretics aren't working. The son-in-law said they could tap her lung.


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[Assistant] It would mean another drive to the clinic that the procedure was almost painless and provided instantaneous relief. It worked, but it was three days of exhaustion after that one. The waiting room? Why so long? Why couldn't they anticipate? You didn't have to be a genius to know which way the wildfire was spreading.


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[Assistant] Would the methadone keep that internal orange glow going? Or would they run out of ammo?


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[Assistant] Was methadone the ultimate or were there bigger guns? Street heroin?


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[Assistant] She'd have to put on her wig and go out and score China White. The little girl began to tune out.


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[Assistant] Grandma wasn't so much fun anymore, she just lay there and gave off this smell. There was no more dressing up, it was just the bathrobe. In fact, she felt the best in her old red and black tartan patterned, flannel, ratty ass bathrobe, not the good one. The crosswords? Forget it, too depressing. You could live the life of Cleopatra, but if it came down to this, what was the point? The son-in-law understood of all the people to come through.


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[Assistant] It's bad and it gets worse and so on until the worst of all. I don't know how you can handle this, he'd say. What does it feel like? Does it feel like a hangover? Worse than a hangover? Not like a hangover? Then what? Like drinking ten cups of boiled coffee like that, really? Jittery? Oh God, that must be awful. How can you stand it?


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[Assistant] Is it just like drinking too much coffee? Is there some other aspect? Your fingers are numb. Lured vision.


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[Assistant] It takes 8 years to watch the secondhand sweep from 12 to 1? Well, if it's like that...


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[Assistant] How did you handle five days? I couldn't. I'd take a bottle of pills, shoot myself, something. What about the second week? Drain? Washed out? Oh brother.


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[Assistant] I had a three day hangover once. I'd rather die than do that again. I couldn't ride out that hangover again for any money. I know I couldn't handle chemo.


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[Assistant] Like tears that did their own disgrace to the whale, When I had at my pleasure taunted her,


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[Assistant] Not with salt tears, if so my eyes are often awash than hers. No. No. I am as ugly as a bear.


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[Assistant] A traveller, by my faith. You've great reason to be sad.


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[Assistant] Or I will care think you have swam in a gondola.


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[Assistant] Why horns, which such as you are fain to be beholding to your wives for, but he comes armed in his fortune and thus prevents the slander of his wife.


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[Assistant] And I am your Rosalind. It pleases him to call you so, but he has a Rosalind of a better layer than you. Come, rule me.


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[Assistant] Then, she puts Sue to entreaty, and there begins new matter.


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[Assistant] Well, time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let time try. Adieu.


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[Assistant] I'd know how many fathom deep I am in love, but it cannot be.


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[Assistant] Let him be judged how deep I am in love. I tell thee, Alena.


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[Assistant] Art thou god to shepherd turned, That a maiden's heart hath burned? Can a woman rail thus?


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[Assistant] Why thy godhead laid apart? Worse thou with a woman's heart? Did you ever hear of the trailing?


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[Assistant] Scorn of your bright eye, and have power to raise such love in mine. Alack in me, what strange effect would they work in mild respect? Whilst you chid me, I did love. How then might your prayers move?


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[Assistant] And then I'll study how to die.


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[Assistant] Unless thou entreat for her, if you be a true lover hence, and not a word, for here comes more company.


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[Assistant] Where being apprehended, his false cunning, not meaning to partake with me in danger, taught him to face me out of his acquaintance.


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[Assistant] And much it joys me too to see you all become so... penitent. Dressel and Barclay go along with me.


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[Assistant] Did more than you deserve, but since you teach me how to flatter you, imagine I have said farewell already.


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[Assistant] No more can you distinguish of a man than of his outward show, which God he knows seldom, or never jumpeth with the heart. Those uncles which you want were dangerous.


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[Assistant] Your grace attended to their sugar words, but look not on the poison of their hearts. God keep you from them, and from such false friends.


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[Assistant] Let us sub the times that afterwards we may digest our complots in some.


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[Assistant] Now will I go to take some pretty order to draw the breath of Clarence out of sight.


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[Assistant] And give notice that no man or person has any time recourse unto the princess.


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[Assistant] And we were half a mile from the eastern coast of the island. Although the sun shone bright and hot, I hated the thought of Treasure Island, afraid of what would happen there.


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[Assistant] Because there was no wind, the small boats pulled the ship three or four miles round the island to a safe place to drop the anchor. I went in one of them. It was hard work pulling the ship, and the men argued. Afterwards, they sat around the deck.


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[Assistant] And the smallest order was received with an angry look.


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[Assistant] If I give another order, said the captain, the whole crew will mutiny. Only one man can help us. And who is that? asked the squire. Silver, replied the captain.


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[Assistant] He wants to keep things calm as much as we do. He wants the men to wait.


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[Assistant] Silver will bring them back as gentle as sheep. Guns were given to all the honest men. Hunter, Joyce, and Redruth were told what was happening and were less surprised than we expected them to be. Then the captain went on deck to talk to the crew.


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[Assistant] Men, you've had a hot, tiring day, he said. The boats are still in the water. Any man who wants to can go ashore for the afternoon.


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[Assistant] You will hear a gun half an hour before the sun goes down to call you back.


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[Assistant] I think they thought they would find the treasure lying around on the beach.


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[Assistant] After some talk, six men stayed on board and the others, with silver, got into the small boats.


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[Assistant] I then had the first of the mad ideas that helped to save our lives. If six men were left, we could not take control of the ship. And because only six were left, the captain's men did not need my help. So I quickly went over the ship's side and into the nearest boat.


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[Assistant] No one took much notice of me. Only one man saying, is that you, Jim? But Silver called from the other boat, wanting to know if it was me. Then I began to worry if I had done the right thing.


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[Assistant] The cruise rowed to the beach, and our boat arrived first. I ran towards the trees.


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[Assistant] Silver and the rest were a hundred meters behind, and I heard him shouting, Jim! Jim! But I took no notice, pushing through trees and bushes, and ran until I could run no longer.


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[Assistant] And came to a long, open piece of sand.


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[Assistant] Then went on to a place where the trees had branches that were thick and close to the sand.


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[Assistant] Just then I heard distant voices, silvers among them, and hid behind a tree. Through the leaves I saw Long John Silver and another of the crew talking together.


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[Assistant] I'm warning you, because I'm your friend, Tom, Silver was saying. Silver, said Tom, you're old, and you're honest, or so men say, and you've money too, which lots of poor seamen haven't, and you're brave,


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[Assistant] Why let yourself be led away with that kind of scoundrel? I'd rather die than... Suddenly, there was a noise of distant shouting, then a long, horrible scream. I had found one honest man here, and that terrible, distant scream told me of another.


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[Assistant] His eyes shone like pieces of broken glass in the sun. That'll be Alan. Alan? cried poor Tom. An honest and true seaman. John Silver, you've been a friend of mine, but for no longer. You've killed Alan, have you? Then kill me too, if you can.


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[Assistant] The brave man turned his back on Silver and began to walk back to the beach. With a shout, Silver threw his crutch through the air. It hit poor Tom between the shoulders and he fell to the ground with a cry. Silver, as quick as a monkey, was on top of him in a moment.


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[Assistant] Twice, he dug his knife into that poor body.


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[Assistant] The whole world seemed to swim away before me in a mist. Silver. The birds above. The tall, spyglass hill.


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[Assistant] Silver was standing with his crutch under his arm.


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[Assistant] Cleaning the blood from his knife with some grass. As silently as I could, I began to move away. And as soon as I was clear of the trees, began to run, as I had never run before.


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[Assistant] And in the wood, where often you and I upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, emptying our bosoms at the council suite,


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[Assistant] This is Donald Hall reading The Second Tree from the Corner by E.B. White from The New Yorker.


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[Assistant] Ever have any bizarre thoughts? asked the doctor. Mr. Traxler failed to catch the word. What kind? he said. Bizarre, repeated the doctor, his voice steady.


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[Assistant] He watched his patient for any slight change of expression and he wince. It seemed to Trexler that the doctor was not only watching him closely, but was creeping slowly toward him like a lizard toward a bug.


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[Assistant] Traxler shoved his chair back an inch and gathered himself for a reply. He was about to say yes, when he realized that if he said yes, the next question would be unanswerable. Bizarre thoughts, bizarre thoughts. Ever have any bizarre thoughts? What kind of thoughts except bizarre? Had he had since the age of two? Traxler felt the time passing, the necessity for an answer. These psychiatrists were busy men, overloaded, not to be kept waiting.


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[Assistant] The next patient was probably already perched out there in the waiting room, lonely, worried, shifting around on the sofa.


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[Assistant] His mind stuffed with bizarre thoughts and amorphous fears. Poor bastard, thought Drexler, out there all alone in that misshapen antechamber staring at the filing cabinet and


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[Assistant] Wondering whether to tell the doctor about that day on the Madison Avenue bus. Let's see, bizarre thoughts.


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[Assistant] Trexler dodged back along the dreadful corridor of the years to see what he could find. He felt the doctor's eyes upon him and knew that time was running out. Don't be so conscientious, he said to himself. If a bizarre thought is indicated here, just reach into the bag and pick anything at all. A man as well supplied with bizarre thoughts as you are should have no difficulty producing one for the record. Trexler darted into the bag.


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[Assistant] Hung for a moment before one of his thoughts, as a hummingbird pauses in the delphinium, No, he said not that one. He darted to another, the one about the rhesus monkey. Paused, considered, No, he said not that. Traxtor knew he must hurry.


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[Assistant] Just one more lousy impossible situation such as he was always getting himself into. When, he asked himself, are you going to quit maneuvering yourself into a pocket? He made one more effort. This time he stopped at the asylum. Only the bars were lucid, fluted, retractable. Not here, he said, not this one.


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[Assistant] He looked straight at the doctor. No, he said quietly, I never have any bizarre thoughts. The doctor sucked in on his pipe, blew a plume of smoke toward the rows of medicine books. Trexler's gaze followed the smoke. He managed to make out one of the titles, The Genitourinary System. A bright wave of fear swept cleanly over him, and he winced under the first pain of kidney stones. He remembered when he was a child,


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[Assistant] The first time he ever entered a doctor's office, sninking a look at the titles of the books and the flush of fear.


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[Assistant] The shirt wet under the arms, the book on TB, the sudden knowledge that he was in the advanced stages of consumption, the quick vision of the hemorrhage. Trexler sighed wearily. Forty years, he thought, and I still get thrown by the title of a medical book. Forty years.


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[Assistant] And I still can't stay on life's little bucky horse. No wonder I'm sitting here in this dreary joint at the end of this woe-begone afternoon, lying about my bizarre thoughts to a doctor who looks, come to think of it, rather tired. The session dragged on. After about twenty minutes, the doctor rose and knocked his pipe out. Trexler got up, knocked the ashes out of his brain, and waited.


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[Assistant] The doctor smiled warmly and stuck out his hand. There's nothing the matter with you. You're just scared. Want to know how I know you're scared? How? asked Trexler. Look at the chair you've been sitting in. See how it has moved back away from my desk? You kept inching away from me while I asked you questions. That means you're scared. Does it? said Trexler, faking a grin. Yeah, I suppose it does. They finished shaking hands.


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[Assistant] Drexler turned and walked out, uncertainly, along the passage, then into the waiting room and out past the next patient, a ruddy, pinstriped man.


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[Assistant] He's going to die of heart disease by 12 o'clock next Thursday. It says that in the paper almost every morning. And he's probably also thinking about that day on the Madison Avenue bus.


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[Assistant] A week later Drexler was back in the patient's chair, and for several weeks thereafter he continued to visit the doctor always toward the end of the afternoon


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[Assistant] When the vapors hung thick above the pool of the mind and darkened the whole region of the East Seventies, he felt no better as time went on and he found it impossible to work. He discovered that the visits were becoming routine.


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[Assistant] And that although the routine was one to which he certainly did not look forward, at least he could accept it with cool resignation, as once, years ago, he had accepted a long spell with a dentist.


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[Assistant] Each session will begin with a resume of symptoms. Dizziness in the streets, the constricting pain in the back of the neck, the apprehensions, the tightness of the scalp, the inability to concentrate, the despondency and the melancholy times, the feeling of pressure and tension, the anger at not being able to work, the anxiety over work not done, the gas on the stomach. Dullest set of neurotic symptoms in the world.


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[Assistant] Fexler would think, as he obediently trudged back over them, for the doctor's benefit. And then, having listened attentively to the recital, the doctor would spring his question. Have you ever found anything that gives you belief? And Fexler would answer, yes, a drink. And the doctor would nod his head, knowingly.


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[Assistant] Trexler found that he increasingly tended to identify himself with the doctor, transferring himself into the doctor's seat. Probably, he thought, some rather slick form of escapism. At any rate, it was nothing new for Trexler to identify himself with other people. Whenever he got into a cab, he instantly became the driver, saw everything from the hackman's angle, and the reaching over with the right hand, the nudging of the flag,


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[Assistant] The pushing it down, all the way down along the side of the meter, saw everything, traffic, fare, everything, through the eyes of Anthony Rocco, or Isadora Friedman, or Matthew Scott. In a barber shop, Trexler was the barber, his fingers curled around the comb, his hand on the tonic.


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[Assistant] Perfectly natural then that Trexler should soon be occupying the doctor's chair, asking the questions, waiting for the answers. He got quite interested in the doctor in this way. He liked him and he found him a not too difficult patient. It was on the fifth visit, about halfway through, that the doctor turned to Trexler and said suddenly, what do you want? He gave the word want special emphasis. I don't know.


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[Assistant] replied Trexler uneasily. I guess nobody knows the answer to that one. Sure they do, replied the doctor. Do you know what you want? asked Trexler narrowly. Certainly, said the doctor.


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[Assistant] Trexler noticed that at this point the doctor's chair slid slightly backward, away from him. Trexler stifled a small, internal smile. Scared as a rabbit, he said to himself, look at him scoot. What do you want? continued Trexler, pressing his advantage, pressing it hard.


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[Assistant] The doctor glided back another inch away from his inquisitor. I want a wing on the small house I own in Westport. I want more money and more leisure to do the things I want to do. Trexler was just about to say, and what are those things you want to do, doctor? When he caught himself. Better not go too far, he mused. Better not lose possession of the ball. And besides, he thought, what the hell goes on here, anyway?


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[Assistant] Me paying fifteen bucks a throw for these seances, and then doing the work myself, asking the questions, weighing the answers, so he wants a new wing. There's a fine piece of theatrical gauze for you, a new wing.


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[Assistant] Treksner settled down again and resumed the role of patient for the rest of the visit. It ended on a kindly, friendly note.


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[Assistant] The doctor reassured him that his fears were the cause of his sickness and that his fears were unsubstantial. They shook hands, smiling.


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[Assistant] Trexler walked dizzily through the empty waiting room, and the doctor followed along to let him out. It was late. The secretary had shut up shop and gone home. Another day over the dam. Goodbye, said Trexler. He stepped into the street, turned west toward Madison, and thought of the doctor, all alone there, after hours, in that desolate hole. A man who worked longer hours than his secretary.


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[Assistant] Poor, scared, overworked bastard, thought Trexler, and that new wing. It was an evening of clearing weather.


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[Assistant] The park showing green and desirable in the distance.


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[Assistant] The last daylight applying a high lacquer to the brick and brownstone wall.


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[Assistant] And giving the street scene a luminous and intoxicating splendor, Trexler meditated as he walked on what he wanted. What do you want? He heard again. Trexler knew what he wanted and what in general all men wanted, and he was glad in a way that it was both inexpressible and unattainable and that it wasn't a wing. He was satisfied to remember that it was deep, formless, enduring,


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[Assistant] And impossible of fulfillment and that it made men sick.


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[Assistant] And that when you sauntered along Third Avenue and looked through the doorways into the dim saloons, you could sometimes pick out from the unregenerate ranks the ones who had not forgotten, gazing steadily into the bottoms of the glasses,


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[Assistant] On the long chance that they could get another little peek at it. Chexler found himself renewed by the remembrance that what he wanted was at once great and microscopic.


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[Assistant] And that although it borrowed from the nature of large deeds and of useful love and of old songs and early intimations, it was not any one of these things, and that it had not been isolated or pinned down, and that a man who attempted to define it in the privacy of a doctor's office would fall flat on his face. Drexler felt invigorated. Suddenly his sickness seemed health, his dizziness stability. A small tree


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[Assistant] Rising between him and the light, stood there, saturated with the evening.


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[Assistant] Each gilt-edged leaf perfectly drunk with excellence and delicacy, Trexler's spine registered an ever-so-slight tremor as it picked up this natural disturbance in the lovely scene. I want the second tree from the corner, just as it stands, he said.


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[Assistant] Answering an imaginary question from an imaginary physician and he felt a slow pride.


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[Assistant] In realizing that what he wanted none could bestow, and that what he had none could take away. He felt content to be sick, unembarrassed at being afraid, and in the jungle of his fear he glimpsed, as he had so often glimpsed them before, the flashy tail feathers of the bird courage. Then he thought once again of the doctor.


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[Assistant] And of his being left there, all alone, tired, frightened. The poor scared guy, thought Trexler. Trexler began humming moonshine lullaby, his spirit reacting instantly to the hypodermic of Merman's healthy voice. He crossed Madison, boarded a downtown bus, and rode all the way to 52nd Street.


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[Assistant] Before he had a thought that could rightly have been called bizarre.


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[Assistant] They said nothing on their way back to the firehouse. Nobody looked at anyone else. Montag sat in the front seat with Beatty and Black. They did not even smoke their pipes.


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[Assistant] They sat looking out the front of the great salamander as they turned a corner and went silently on. Master Ridley, said Monte at last. What? said Betty. She said.


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[Assistant] Master Ridley, she said some crazy thing when we came in the door. Play the man, she said. Master Ridley, something, something, something.


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[Assistant] We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as thy trust shall never be put out, said Beatty. Stoneman glanced over at the captain, as did Montag, startled.


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[Assistant] Montag and Stoneman went back to looking at the street as it moved under the engine wheels.


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[Assistant] I'm full of bits and pieces, said Beatty. Most fire captains have to be. Sometimes I surprise myself. Watch it, Stoneman! Stoneman break the truck. Damn, said Beatty.


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[Assistant] You've gone right by the corner where we turned for the firehouse.


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[Assistant] Fifteen men on the dead man's chest.


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[Assistant] Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.


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[Assistant] Fifteen men on the dead man's chest.


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[Assistant] Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.


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[Assistant] Drink and the devil had killed off the rest.


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[Assistant] Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.


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[Assistant] He put his hand into the glove-hold of his front door and let it know his touch. The front door slid open. Of course I'm happy. What does she think? I'm not. He asked quiet rooms.


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[Assistant] He stood looking up at the ventilator grill in the hall and suddenly remembered that something lay hidden behind the grill, something that seemed to peer down at him now. He moved his eyes quickly away.


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[Assistant] What a strange meeting on a strange night. He remembered nothing like it save one afternoon a year ago when he'd met an old man in the park and they had talked.


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[Assistant] Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall.


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[Assistant] The girl's face was there really quite beautiful in memory. Astonishing, in fact.


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[Assistant] She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of the night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second with a white silence and a glowing all-certainty.


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[Assistant] And knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.


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[Assistant] What? asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times quite independent of will, habit, and conscience. He glanced back at the wall, hot like a mirror to her face. Impossible.


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[Assistant] For how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you? People were more often, he searched for a simile, found one in his work, torches, blazing away until they whipped out.


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[Assistant] How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought.


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[Assistant] What incredible power of identification the girl had. She was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began.


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[Assistant] How long did they walk together? Three minutes? Five?


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[Assistant] How large that time seemed now! How immense a figure she was on the stage before him! What a shadow she threw on the wall with her slender body!


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[Assistant] He felt that if his eye itched she might blink, and if the muscles of his jaws stretched imperceptibly she would yawn long before he would. Why, he thought, now that I think of it, she almost seemed to be waiting for me there, in the street, so damned late at night.


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[Assistant] Hoping the consequence will prove as bitter, black and tragical.


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[Assistant] It bedded itself down in sleepy pink-gray cinders, and a smoke plume blew over it, rising and waving slowly back and forth in the sky. It was three-thirty in the morning. The crowd drew back into the houses. The great tents of the circus had slumped into charcoal and rubble, and the show was well over. Montag stood with the flamethrower in his limp hands, great islands of perspiration


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[Assistant] Drenching his armpits, his face smeared with soot. The other firemen waited behind him in the darkness, their faces illumined faintly by the smoldering foundation. Montag started to speak twice, and then finally managed to put his thoughts together. "'Was it my wife?' turned in the alarm. Betty


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[Assistant] But her friends turned in an alarm earlier that I let rides. One way or the other, you'd have got it. It was pretty silly quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly damn snob.


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[Assistant] Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the lord of all creation. You think you can walk on water with your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them. Look where they got you in slime up to your lip. If I stir the slime with my little finger, you'll drown. Montag could not move. A great earthquake had come with fire and leveled the house and Meldred was under there somewhere.


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[Assistant] And his entire life under there, and he could not move. The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him, and he stood there, his knees half bent under the great load of tiredness and bewilderment and outrage, letting Beatty hit him without raising a hand. Montag, you idiot! Montag, you damn fool! Why did you really do it?


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[Assistant] Montag did not hear. He was far away. He was running with his mind. He was gone, leaving this dead soot-covered body to sway in front of another raving pool. Montag! Get out of there! said Faber. Montag listened. Beaty struck him a blow on the head that sent him reeling back.


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[Assistant] The green bullet in which Faber's voice whispered and cried fell to the sidewalk. Beatty snatched it up, grinning. He held it half in, half out of his ear. Montag heard the distant voice calling, Montag, you all right? Beatty switched the green bullet off and thrust it in his pocket. Well, so there's more here than I thought. I saw you tilt your head, listening. At first I thought you had a


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[Assistant] A seashell, but when you turn clever, later I wondered, we'll trace this and drop in on your friend. No, said Montag. He twitched the safety catch on the flamethrower.


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[Assistant] Betty glanced instantly at Montag's fingers, and his eyes widened the faintest bit. Montag saw the surprise there, and himself glanced to his hands to see what new things they had done. Thinking back later, he could never decide whether the hands or Betty's reactions to the hands gave him the final push toward murder. The last rolling thunder of the avalanche stoned down about his ears, not touching


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[Assistant] Go ahead now, you second-hand literature. Pull the trigger. He took one step toward Montag. Montag only said, We've never burned rice. Hand it over, Guy, said Basie, with a thick smile.


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[Assistant] And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering mannequin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him.


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[Assistant] There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove.


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[Assistant] A bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam. Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound. Bailey flopped over and over and over, and at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll, and lay silent.


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[Assistant] The other two firemen did not move. Montag kept his thickness down long enough to aim the flamethrowers. Turn around. They turned their faces at blanched meat, streaming sweat. He beat their heads, knocking off their helmets and bringing them down on themselves. They fell and lay without moving. The blowing of a single autumn leaf. He turned


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[Assistant] And the mechanical hound was there. He was half across the lawn, coming from the shadows, moving with such drifting ease that it was like a single solid cloud of black-grey smoke blown at him and


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[Assistant] Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue, and orange about the metal dog.


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[Assistant] Cladded in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ten feet back against the bolt of a tree, taking the flame gun with him. He felt it scrabble and seize his leg and stab the needle in for a moment before the fire snapped the hound up in the air, burst its metal bones at the joints, and blew out its interior in a single flushing of red color like a skyrocket fastened to the street.


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[Assistant] Montaguely watching the dead alive thing fiddle the air and die. Even now it seemed to want to get back at him and finish the injection which was now working through the flesh of his leg. He felt all the mingled relief and horror at having pulled back only in time to have just his knee slammed


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[Assistant] By the fender of a car hurtling by at ninety miles an hour. He was afraid to get up, afraid he might not be able to gain his feet at all, with an anesthetized leg. A numbness in a numbness hollowed into a numbness. And now, the street empty, the house burnt like an ancient bit of stage scenery, the other homes dark, the hound here, baby there,


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[Assistant] The other was like a chunk of burnt pine log he was carrying along as a penance for some obscure sin. When he put his weight on it, a shower of silver needles gushed up through the length of the calf and went off in the knee. He wept. Come on, come on, you, you can't stay here. A few house lights were going on again down the street. Whether from the incidents just past or because of the abnormal silence following the fight


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[Assistant] Montag did not know. He hobbled around the ruins, seizing at his bad leg when it had lagged, talking and whimpering and shouting directions at it and cursing it and pleading with it to work for him now when it was vital. He heard a number of people crying out in the darkness and shouting. He reached the back yard in the alley. Bady, he thought, you're not a problem now. You always said, don't face a problem.


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[Assistant] Well, now I've done both. Goodbye, Captain. And he stumbled along the alley in the dark. A shotgun blast went off in his leg every time he put it down, and he thought, you're a fool, a damn fool, an awful fool, an idiot, an awful idiot, a damn idiot, and a fool, a damn fool. Look at the mess, and where's the mop? Look at the mess, and what do you do? Pride, damn it, and temper,


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[Assistant] At the very start you vomit on everyone and on yourself, but everything at once.


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[Assistant] Put everything one on top of another. Beatty, the women, Mildred, Clarice, everything. No excuse though, no excuse. A fool, a damn fool. Go give yourself up. No. We'll save what we can. We'll do what there is left to do. If we have to burn, let's take a few more with us. Here. He remembered the books and turned back. Just on the off chance. He found a few books where he had left them.


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[Assistant] Near the garden fence, Mildred, God bless her, had missed a few. Four books still lay hidden where he had put them. Voices were wailing in the night, and flash beams swirled about. Other salamanders were roaring, their engines far away, and police were cutting their way across town with their sirens. Montag took the four remaining books, and hopped, jolted, hopped his way down the alley


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[Assistant] And suddenly he felt as if his head had been cut off and only his body lay there. Something inside had jerked him to a halt and flopped him down. He lay where he had fallen and sobbed. His legs folded, his face pressed blindly to the gravel. Beate wanted to die. In the middle of the crying Montag knew it for the truth. Beate had wanted to die. He had just


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[Assistant] He stood there, not really trying to save himself, just stood there joking, needling, thought Monte, and the thought was enough to stifle his sobbing and let him pause for air. How strange, strange to want to die so much that you let a man walk around armed and then instead of shutting up and staying alive, you go on yelling at people and making fun of them until you get them mad and then, at a distance,


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[Assistant] Running feet. Montag sat up. Let's get out of here. Come on, get up, get up. You just can't sit. But he was still crying, and that had to be finished. It was going away now. He, he hadn't wanted to kill anyone, not even Beatty. His flesh gripped him and shrank as if it had been plunged in acid. He gagged. He saw Beatty, a torch not moving, fluttering out of the grass.


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[Assistant] He bit at his knuckles. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh God, sorry. He tried to piece it all together, to go back to the normal pattern of life a few short days ago, before the, the stiff and the sand, venomous dentifaces, moth voices, fireflies, the alarms and excursions,


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[Assistant] The panes were spikes driven in the kneecap, and then only darning needles, and then only common ordinary safety pins, and after he had shagged along fifty more hops and jumps, filling his hand with slivers from the bored fence, the prickling was like someone blowing a spray of scalding water on that leg, and the leg was at last his own leg again.


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[Assistant] He'd been afraid that running might break the loose ankle. Now, sucking all the night into his open mouth and blowing it out pale with all the blackness left heavily inside himself, he set out in a steady jogging pace. He carried the books in his hands. He thought of Faber. Faber was back there in the steaming lump of tar that had no name or identity now.


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[Assistant] He had burnt Faber too. He said he felt so shocked by this that he felt Faber was really dead, baked like a roach in that small green capsule shoved and lost in the pocket of a man who was now nothing but a frame skeleton strung with asphalt tendons. You must remember, burn them or they'll burn you, he thought. Right now it's as simple as that. He searched his pockets


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[Assistant] The money was there, and in his other pocket he found the usual seashell upon which the city was talking to itself in the cold, black morning. Police alert! Wanted! Fugitive in city! Has committed murder and crimes against state! Name! Guy Montag! Occupation! Fireman! Last seen! He ran steadily for six blocks in the alley, and then the alley opened out


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[Assistant] On to a wide empty thoroughfare, ten lanes wide. It seemed like a boatless river frozen there in the raw light of the high white arc lamps. You could drown trying to cross it, he felt. It was too wide, it was too open.


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[Assistant] It was a vast stage without scenery, inviting him to run across, easily seen in the blazing illumination, easily caught, easily shot down. The seashell hummed in his ear. Watch for a man running. Watch for the running man. Watch for a man alone, on foot. Watch. Montag pulled back in the shadows. Directly ahead lay a gas station.


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[Assistant] A great chunk of porcelain snow shining there and two silver beetles pulling in to fill up. Now he must be clean and presentable if he wished to walk, not run, stroll calmly across that wide boulevard. It would give him an extra margin of safety if he washed up and combed his hair before he went on his way to get where. Yes, he thought, where am I running?


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[Assistant] Nowhere. There was nowhere to go. No friend to turn to, really. Except Faber. And then he realized that he was indeed running toward Faber's house, instinctively. But Faber couldn't hide him, and it would be suicide even to try. But he knew that he would go to see Faber anyway, for a few short minutes. Faber's would be the place where he might refuel his fast-draining belief in his own ability to survive.


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[Assistant] He just wanted to know that there was a man like Saber in the world. He wanted to see the man alive and not burnt back there like a body shelled in another body. And some of the money must be left with Saber, of course, to be spent after Montag ran on his way. Perhaps he could make the open country and live on or near the rivers and near the highways, in the fields and hills. A great whirling whisper


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[Assistant] Made him look to the sky. The police helicopters were rising so far away that it seemed someone had blown the gray head off a dry dandelion flower. Two dozen of them flurried wavering indecisive three miles off like butterflies puzzled by autumn


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[Assistant] And then they were plummeting down to land one by one. Here they're softly kneading the streets where turned back to beetles.


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[Assistant] The street along the boulevard's oar has suddenly left back into the air, continuing their search. And here was the gas station, its attendants busy now with customers. Approaching from the rear, Montag entered the men's washroom.


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[Assistant] Through the aluminum wall he heard a radio voice saying, War has been declared. The gas was being pumped outside. The men in the Beatles were talking, and the attendants were talking about the engines, the gas, the money owed. Montag stood trying to make himself feel the shock of the quiet statement from the radio, but nothing would happen.


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[Assistant] The war would have to wait for him to come to it in his personal file an hour, two hours from now. He washed his hands and face and toweled himself dry, making little sound. He came out of the washroom and shut the door carefully and walked into the darkness and at last stood again on the edge of the empty boulevard. There it lay, a game for him to win,


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[Assistant] Two minutes before the appearance of certain unnamed victims and certain unknown killers. The air over and above the vast concrete river trembled with the warmth of Montag's body alone. It was incredible how he felt his temperature could cause the whole immediate world to vibrate. He was a phosphorescent target. He knew it. He, he felt it. And now he must begin his little walk.


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[Assistant] Three blocks away, a few headlights glared. Montag drew a deep breath. His lungs were like burning brooms in his chest. His mouth was sucked dry from running. His throat tasted of bloody iron, and there was rusted steel in his feet. What about those lights there? Once you started walking, you'd have to gauge how fast those beetles could make it down here. Well, how far was it to the other


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[Assistant] It seemed like a hundred yards. Probably not a hundred, but figure for that anyway. Figure that.


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[Assistant] For him going very slowly at a nice stroll, it might take as much as 30 seconds, 40 seconds to walk all that way. The beetles, once started, they could leave three blocks behind them in about 15 seconds.


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[Assistant] So even if halfway across, he started to run.


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[Assistant] He put his right foot out, and then his left foot, and then his right. He walked on the empty avenue. Even if the street were entirely empty, of course, you couldn't be sure of a safe crossing, for a car could appear suddenly over the rise, four blocks farther on, and be on and past you before you had taken a dozen breaths. He decided not to count his steps. He looked neither to left nor right. The light from the overhead lamps


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[Assistant] Seemed as bright and revealing as the midday sun, and just as hot. He listened to the sound of the car picking up speed two blocks away on his right. His movable headlights jerked back and forth suddenly, and caught at Montag. Keep going. Montag faltered, got a grip on the books, and forced himself not to freeze. Instinctively he took a few quick running steps, then talked out loud to himself, and pulled up to stroll again.


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[Assistant] He was now half across the street, but the roar from the beetle's engines whined higher as it put on speed. The police, of course, they see me, but slow now, slow, quiet, don't turn, don't look, don't seem concerned, walk, that's it, walk, walk. The beetle was rushing, the beetle was roaring, the beetle raised its speed, the beetle was whining, the beetle was in high thunder, the beetle came skimming,


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[Assistant] The beetle came in a single whistling trajectory, fired from an invisible rifle. It was up to 120 miles per hour. It was up to 130 at least. Montag clamped his jaws. The heat of the racing headlights


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[Assistant] Burnt his cheeks it seems and jittered his eyelids.


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[Assistant] He put out his legs as far as they would go, and down, and then far out again, and down, and back, and out, and down, and back. God, God, he dropped a book.


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[Assistant] Broke pace, almost turned, changed his mind, plunged on, yelling in concrete emptiness.


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[Assistant] The beetle's scuffling after its running food. Two hundred, one hundred feet away. Ninety, eighty, seventy. Montag gasping, flailing his hands, legs up, down, out, up, down, out.


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[Assistant] Closer, closer, hooting, calling. His eyes burnt white now as his head jerked about to confront the flashing glare. Now the beetle swallowed in its own light. Now it was nothing but a torch.


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[Assistant] Hurtling upon him, all sound, all blare, now almost on top of him, he stumbled and fell. I'm done. It's over.


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[Assistant] But the falling made a difference, and instant before reaching him the wild beetle cut and swerved out. It was gone. Montag lay flat his head down. Wisps of laughter trailed back to him with the blue exhaust from the beetle. His right hand was extended above him flat. Across the extreme tip of his middle finger he saw now, as he lifted that hand, a faint sixteenth of an inch of black tread where the tire had touched


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[Assistant] In passing he looked at that black line with disbelief, getting to his feet. It wasn't the police, he thought. He looked down the boulevard, it was clear now.


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[Assistant] A car full of children, all ages, God knew from twelve to sixteen, out whistling, yelling, hurrawing, had seen a man, a very extraordinary sight, a man strolling, a rarity, and simply said, Let's get him, not knowing he was the fugitive Mr. Montag.


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[Assistant] Simply a number of children out for a long night of roaring five or six hundred miles in a few moonlit hours.


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[Assistant] Their faces icy with wind, and coming home or not coming at dawn, alive or not alive, that made the adventure. They would have killed me, thought Montag, swaying, the air still torn and stirring about him in dust, touching his bruised cheek. For no reason at all in the world, they would have killed me. He walked toward the far curb, telling each foot to go and keep going.


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[Assistant] He had picked up the spilled books. He didn't remember bending or touching them. He kept moving them from hand to hand, as if they were a poker hand he could not figure. I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarice. He stopped, and his mind said it again very loud. I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarice. He wanted to run after them, yelling. His eyes watered.


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[Assistant] The thing that had saved him was falling flat. The driver of that car, seeing Montag down, instinctively considered the probability that running over a body at such a high speed might turn the car upside down and spill them out. If Montag had remained an upright target, Montag gasped. Far down the boulevard, four blocks away, the beetle had slowed, spun about on two wheels


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[Assistant] And was now racing back, slanting over the wrong side of the street, picking up speed. But Montag was gone, hidden in the safety of the dark alley for which he had set out on a long journey an hour, or was it a minute ago. He stood shivering in the night, looking back out as the beetle ran by and skidded back to the center of the avenue, whirling laughter in the air, all about, gone.


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[Assistant] Farther on, as Montag moved in darkness, he could see the helicopters falling, falling, like the first flakes of snow in the long winter to come.


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[Assistant] Later, the men around Montag could not say if they had really seen anything.


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[Assistant] Perhaps the mirrors flourish of lights and motion in the sky. Perhaps the bombs were there, and the jets ten miles, five miles, one mile up, for the merest instant, like grain thrown over the heavens by a great sowing hand, and the bombs drifting with dreadful swiftness, yet sudden slowness, downed upon the morning city they had left behind. The bombardment was, to all intents and purposes, finished once the jets


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[Assistant] Alerted their bombardier at five thousand miles an hour, as quick as the whisper of a scythe, the war was finished. Once the bomb release was yanked, it was over. Now, a full three seconds all the time in history, before the bomb struck, the enemy ships themselves were gone half around the visible world, like bullets in which a savage islander might not believe because they were invisible.


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[Assistant] Yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions, and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air. The brain squanders its few precious memories, and, puzzled, dies. This was not to be believed. It was merely a gesture. Montag saw the flirt of a great metal fist over the far city, and he knew the scream of the jets that would follow.


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[Assistant] Montag held the bombs in the sky for a single moment, with his mind and his hands reaching helplessly up at them.


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[Assistant] Run! He cried the favor. To Clarice, run! To Mildred, get out! Get out of there! But Clarice, he remembered, was dead.


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[Assistant] And Faber was out there in the deep valleys of the country, somewhere the 5 a.m. bus was on its way from one desolation to another. Though the desolation had not yet arrived, was still in the air, it was certain as man could make it.


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[Assistant] Before the bus had run another fifty yards on the highway, its destination would be meaningless, and its point of departure changed from metropolis to junkyard. And Mildred? Get out! Run! He saw her in her hotel room somewhere now, in the half-second remaining, with a bomb's a yard, a foot, an inch from her building.


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[Assistant] He saw her leaning toward the great shimmering walls of color and motion, where the family talked and talked and talked to her, where the family prattled and chatted and said her name and smiled at her and said nothing of the bum that was an inch, now a half inch, now a quarter inch from the top of the hotel.


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[Assistant] Leaning into the wall as if all the hunger of looking would find the secret of her sleepless unease there. Mildred leaning anxiously, nervously as if to plunge drop-fall


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[Assistant] The great broadcasting stations where there are beams of color and light and talk and chatter went first into oblivion. Montag, falling flat, going down, saw or felt or imagined he saw or felt the walls go dark in Millie's face, heard her screaming because in the millionth part of time left she saw her own face reflected there in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face all by itself in the room


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[Assistant] Touching nothing starved, and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own, and looked quickly up at the ceiling, as it and the entire structure of the hotel blasted down upon her, carrying her with a million pounds of brick, metal, plaster and wood, to meet other people in the hives below, all on the quick way down,


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[Assistant] To the cellar where the explosion rid itself of them in its own unreasonable way. I remember Montag clung to the earth. I remember Chicago. Yes, Chicago, a long time ago. Millie and I, that's where we met. I remember now, Chicago, a long time ago. The concussion knocked the air across and down the river.


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[Assistant] Turned the men over like dominoes in a line, Blew the water in lifting sprays, And blew the dust and made the trees above them, Mourn with a great wind passing away south.


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[Assistant] Montag crushed himself down, squeezing himself small, eyes tight. He blinked once, and in that instant saw the city, instead of the bombs, in the air. They had displaced each other. For another of those impossible instances


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[Assistant] The city stood rebuilt and unrecognizable.


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[Assistant] Taller than it had ever hoped or strived to be, taller than man had built it, erected at last,


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[Assistant] In gouts of shattered concrete and sparkles of torn metal into a mural hung like a reversed avalanche, a million colors, a million oddities, a door where a window should be, a top for a bottom, a side for a back, and then the city rolled over and fell down dead. The sound of its death came after.


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[Assistant] This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.


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[Assistant] Sun Tzu said the control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men. It is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.


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[Assistant] Fighting with a large army under your command is no wise different from fighting with a small one. It is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.


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[Assistant] To ensure that your whole host may withstand the brunt of the enemy's attack and remain unshaken.


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[Assistant] This is affected by maneuvers direct and indirect.


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[Assistant] That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone dashed against an egg.


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[Assistant] This is affected by the science of weak points and strong.


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[Assistant] In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle.


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[Assistant] but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory


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[Assistant] Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as heaven and earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams, like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew.


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[Assistant] Like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.


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[Assistant] There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors, blue, yellow, red, white, and black.


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[Assistant] There are not more than five cardinal tastes, sour, acrid, salt, sweet, bitter, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.


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[Assistant] In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack, the direct and the indirect.


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[Assistant] Yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.


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[Assistant] The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle. You never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?


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[Assistant] The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent which will even roll stones along in its course.


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[Assistant] The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon, which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.


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[Assistant] Therefore the good fighter will be terrible in his onset and prompt in his decision. Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow decision to the releasing of a trigger. Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle


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[Assistant] There may be seeming disorder, and yet no real disorder at all.


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[Assistant] Amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.


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[Assistant] Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline, simulated fear postulates courage, simulated weakness postulates strength.


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[Assistant] Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision. Concealing courage under their show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy.


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[Assistant] Masking strength with weakness is to be affected by tactical dispositions.


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[Assistant] Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances according to which the enemy will act. He sacrifices something that the enemy may snatch at it.


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[Assistant] By holding out baits he keeps him on the march. Then, with a body of picked men, he lies in wait for him.


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[Assistant] The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy and does not require too much from individuals.


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[Assistant] Hence his ability to pick out the right men and utilize combined energy.


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[Assistant] When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones, for it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground and to move when on a slope, if four-cornered to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped to go rolling down. Thus the energy developed by good fighting men


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[Assistant] Sansu said, whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy will be fresh for the fight.


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[Assistant] Whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.


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[Assistant] Therefore, the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy.


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[Assistant] If the enemy is taking his ease he can harass him. If well supplied with food he can starve him out. If quietly encamped he can force him to move.


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[Assistant] Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend. March swiftly to places where you are not expected. An army may march great distances without distress, if it marches through country where the enemy is not.


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[Assistant] You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.


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[Assistant] You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.


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[Assistant] Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend, and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack. O divine art of subtlety and secrecy!


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[Assistant] Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible, and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.


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[Assistant] You may advance and be absolutely irresistible if you make for the enemy's weak points. You may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid than those of the enemy.


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[Assistant] If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement


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[Assistant] Even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch.


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[Assistant] We can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground.


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[Assistant] Is throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.


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[Assistant] By discovering the enemy's dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated while the enemy's must be divided.


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[Assistant] We can form a single, united body while the enemy must split up into fractions.


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[Assistant] Hence, there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few.


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[Assistant] And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits.


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[Assistant] The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known, for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points.


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[Assistant] And his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.


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[Assistant] For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear. Should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van. Should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right. Should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.


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[Assistant] Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks.


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[Assistant] Numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us.


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[Assistant] Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight. But if neither time nor place be known, then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right.


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[Assistant] The right, equally impotent to secure the left. The van, unable to relieve the rear or the rear to support the van.


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[Assistant] How much more so if the furtherest proportions of the army are anything under a hundred li apart, and even the nearest are separated by several li?


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[Assistant] Though according to my estimate the soldiers of Yue exceed our own in number, that shall advantage them nothing in the matter of victory. I say then that victory can be achieved.


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[Assistant] Though the enemy be stronger in numbers, we may prevent him from fighting.


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[Assistant] Scheme so as to discover his plans and the likelihood of their success. Rouse him and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself so as to find out his vulnerable spots. Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient.


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[Assistant] In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them.


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[Assistant] Conceal your dispositions and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains.


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[Assistant] How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy's own tactics, that is what the multitude cannot comprehend. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.


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[Assistant] Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.


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[Assistant] The way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.


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[Assistant] Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows. The soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, in warfare there are no constant conditions.


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[Assistant] He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning may be called a heaven-born captain.


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[Assistant] The five elements, water, fire, wood, metal, earth, are not always equally predominant. The four seasons make way for each other in turn.


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[Assistant] The hound, he thought. It's out there tonight. It's out there now. If I open the window.


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[Assistant] For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. Chapter 43. The Reformation.


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[Assistant] You think of a small but courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the ocean to have freedom of religious worship. Vaguely, in the course of time, and more especially in our Protestant countries, the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of liberty of thought.


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[Assistant] But when history is something more than a series of flattering speeches addressed to our own glorious ancestors, when, to use the words of the German historian Ranke, we try to discover what actually happened


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[Assistant] It is very difficult to do this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes, but we ought to try and be as fair as we can be.


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[Assistant] When the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real to me.


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[Assistant] Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Catholic country. I found the people much pleasanter and much more tolerant and quite as intelligent as my former countrymen.


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[Assistant] To my great surprise I began to discover that there was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a Protestant. Of course the good people of the 16th and 17th centuries


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[Assistant] Who actually lived through the Reformation did not see things that way. They were always right, and their enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging.


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[Assistant] Which was no more than human, and for which they deserve no blame. When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500, an easy date to remember.


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[Assistant] The most powerful of all sovereigns is the great Charles, then a baby in a cradle. He is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Maximilian of Habsburg, the last of the medieval knights, and of his wife Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold,


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[Assistant] The ambitious Burgundian Duke, who had made successful war upon France, but had been killed by the independent Swiss peasants.


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[Assistant] The child Charles, therefore, has fallen heir to the greater part of the map, to all the lands of his parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, and aunts in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in Belgium, in Italy, and in Spain.


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[Assistant] Which the Germans used as a prison during their recent occupation of Belgium. And although a Spanish king and a German emperor, he receives the training of a Fleming.


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[Assistant] As his father is dead, poisoned, so people say, but this is never proved, and his mother has lost her mind,


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[Assistant] Forced to rule Germans and Italians and Spaniards and a hundred strange races, Charles grows up a Fleming, a faithful son of the Catholic Church, but quite averse to religious intolerance.


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[Assistant] At the age of 55 we see him turn his back upon the human race in utter disgust at so much hate and so much stupidity. Three years later he dies, a very tired and disappointed man. So much for Charles the Emperor. How about the Church, the second great power in the world?


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[Assistant] The church has changed greatly since the early days of the middle ages when it started out to conquer the heathen.


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[Assistant] And show them the advantages of a pious and righteous life. In the first place the church has grown too rich.


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[Assistant] He lives in a vast palace and surrounds himself with artists and musicians and famous literary men.


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[Assistant] He divides his time unevenly between affairs of state and art. The affairs of state take ten percent of his time.


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[Assistant] The other ninety percent goes to an active interest in Roman statues, recently discovered Greek vases, plans for a new summer home, the rehearsal of a new play.


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[Assistant] The village priests, however, have remained faithful to their duties. They keep themselves aloof from the wicked world and the heathenish love of beauty and pleasure.


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[Assistant] They stay away from the monasteries where the monks seem to have forgotten their ancient vows of simplicity and poverty, and live as happily as they dare, without causing too much of a public scandal.


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[Assistant] Finally there are the common people. They are much better off than they have ever been before. They are more prosperous. They live in better houses. Their children go to better schools. Their cities are more beautiful than before.


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[Assistant] Who for centuries have levied such heavy taxes upon their trade. So much for the chief actors in the Reformation. Now let us see what the Renaissance has done to Europe.


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[Assistant] And then you will understand how the revival of learning and art was bound to be followed by a revival of religious interests. The Renaissance began in Italy. From there it spread to France. It was not quite successful in Spain.


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[Assistant] The Italians lived out in the open, under a sunny sky. It was easy for them to laugh and to sing and to be happy. The Germans, the Dutch, the English, the Swedes spent most of their time indoors


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[Assistant] But the general returned to the old pagan civilization of Greece and Rome, which was one of the chief results of the Renaissance in Italy, filled their hearts with horror.


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[Assistant] But the papacy and the College of Cardinals was almost entirely composed of Italians, and they had turned the church into a pleasant club where people discussed art and music and the theatre, but rarely mentioned religion. Hence the split between the serious north


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[Assistant] And nobody seemed to be aware of the danger that threatened the church.


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[Assistant] There were a few minor reasons which will explain why the Reformation took place in Germany rather than in Sweden or England. The Germans bore an ancient grudge against Rome.


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[Assistant] The ruler had often been able to protect his subjects against the greed of the priests.


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[Assistant] For the benefit of those enormous churches, which were a hobby of the popes of the Renaissance. The Germans felt that they were being mulked, and quite naturally they did not like it.


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[Assistant] And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany was the home of the printing press. In Northern Europe, books were cheap.


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[Assistant] And the Bible was no longer a mysterious manuscript owned and explained by the priest.


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[Assistant] It was a household book of many families where Latin was understood by the father and by the children. Whole families began to read it, which was against the law of the church.


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[Assistant] In their heart of hearts, they still had too much respect and reverence for the pope to direct their sallies against his most holy person. But the lazy, ignorant monks


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[Assistant] Or Desiderius Erasmus, as he is usually called, was a poor boy, born in Rotterdam in Holland.


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[Assistant] He had traveled a great deal, and knew whereof he wrote. When he began his career as a public pamphleteer, he would have been called an editorial writer in our day.


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[Assistant] The world was greatly amused at an anonymous series of letters which had just appeared under the title of Letters of Obscure Men.


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[Assistant] Erasmus himself was a very learned and serious scholar who knew both Latin and Greek.


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[Assistant] And gave us the first reliable version of the New Testament, which he translated into Latin.


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[Assistant] Together with a corrected edition of the original Greek text. But he believed with Horace, the Roman poet, that nothing prevents us from stating the truth with a smile upon our lips.


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[Assistant] In the year 1500, while visiting Sir Thomas More in England,


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[Assistant] He took a few weeks off and wrote a funny little book called The Praise of Folly.


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[Assistant] In which he attacked the monks and their credulous followers with that most dangerous of all weapons, humor.


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[Assistant] It was translated into almost every language and it made people pay attention to those other books of Erasmus, in which he advocated reform of the many abuses of the Church.


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[Assistant] And appealed to his fellow humanists to help him in his task of bringing about a great rebirth of the Christian faith. But nothing came of these excellent plans.