Free A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories by Ray Bradbury

head. Maria’s finger tips began to tap a little dance on the gleaming harp strings, on the shimmering brass pipes of the ancient bed. The music was—yes, of course: “Santa Lucia!” His lips moved to it in a warm whisper. Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia.
    It was very beautiful.

The Town Where No One Got Off
    C rossing the continental United States by night, by day, on the train, you flash past town after wilderness town where nobody ever gets off. Or rather, no person who doesn’t belong , no person who hasn’t roots in these country graveyards ever bothers to visit their lonely stations or attend their lonely views.
    I spoke of this to a fellow passenger, another salesman like myself, on the Chicago-Los Angeles train as we crossed Iowa.
    â€œTrue,” he said. “People get off in Chicago; everyone gets off there. People get off in New York, get off in Boston, get off in L.A. People who don’t live there go there to see and come back to tell. But what tourist ever just got off at Fox Hill, Nebraska, to look at it? You? Me? No! I don’t know anyone, got no business there, it’s no health resort, so why bother?”
    â€œWouldn’t it be a fascinating change,” I said, “some year to plan a really different vacation? Pick some village lost on the plains where you don’t know a soul and go there for the hell of it?”
    â€œYou’d be bored stiff,”
    â€œI’m not bored thinking of it!” I peered out the window. “What’s the next town coming up on this line?”
    â€œRampart Junction.”
    I smiled. “Sounds good. I might get off there.”
    â€œYou’re a liar and a fool. What you want? Adventure? Romance? Go ahead, jump off the train. Ten seconds later you’ll call yourself an idiot, grab a taxi, and race us to the next town.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    I watched telephone poles flick by, flick by, flick by. Far ahead I could see the first faint outlines of a town.
    â€œBut I don’t think so,” I heard myself say.
    The salesman across from me looked faintly surprised.
    For slowly, very slowly, I was rising to stand. I reached for my hat. I saw my hand fumble for my own suitcase. I was surprised myself.
    â€œHold on!” said the salesman. “What’re you doing?”
    The train rounded a curve suddenly. I swayed. Far ahead I saw one church spire, a deep forest, a field of summer wheat.
    â€œIt looks like I’m getting off the train,” I said.
    â€œSit down,” he said.
    â€œNo,” I said. “There’s something about that town up ahead. I’ve got to go see. I’ve got the time. I don’t have to be in L.A., really, until next Monday. If I don’t get off the train now, I’ll always wonder what I missed, what I let slip by when I had the chance to see it.”
    â€œWe were just talking. There’s nothing there.”
    â€œYou’re wrong,” I said. “There is.”
    I put my hat on my head and lifted the suitcase in my hand.
    â€œBy God,” said the salesman, “I think you’re really going to do it.”
    My heart beat quickly. My face was flushed.
    The train whistled. The train rushed down the track. The town was near!
    â€œWish me luck,” I said.
    â€œLuck!” he cried.
    I ran for the porter, yelling.
    Â 
    There was an ancient flake-painted chair tilted back against the station-platform wall. In this chair, completely relaxed so he sank into his clothes, was a man of some seventy years whose timbers looked as if he’d been nailed there since the station was built. The sun had burned his face dark and tracked his cheek with lizard folds and stitches that held his eyes in a perpetual squint. His hair smoked ash-white in the summer wind. His blue shirt, open at the neck to show white clock springs, was bleached like the staring late afternoon sky. His shoes were blistered as if he had held them, uncaring, in the