Free Driving Blind by Ray Bradbury Page B

at last and mix with honest-to-goodness people, make friends, maybe get someone to like me or at least put up with me. You understand, Quint?”
    “I’m trying.”
    “What good will all this do, living in Green Town and thriving at your supper table and viewing the treetops in my cupola tower room?
Ask
.”
    “What good?” I asked.
    “What I’m hoping for, Quint, what I’m praying for, son, is that if I delve in the river again, wade in the stream, become part of the flow of folks, people, strangers even, some sort of kind attention, friendship, some sort of half-love will begin to melt and change my face. Over six or eight months or a year, to let life shift my mask without lifting it, so that the wax beneath moves and becomes something more than a nightmare at threea.m. or just nothing at dawn. Any of this make sense, Quint?”
    “Yeah. I guess.”
    “For people
do
change us, don’t they? I mean you run in and out of this house and your grandpa changes you and your grandpa shapes you with words or a hug or your hair tousled or maybe once a year, a slap where it hurts.”
    “
Twice
.”
    “Twice, then. And the boarders and roomers talk and you listen and that goes in your ears and out your fingers and that’s change, too. We’re all in the wash, all in the creeks, all in the streams, taking in every morsel of gab, every push from a teacher, every shove from a bully, every look and touch from those strange creatures, for
you
called women. Sustenance. It’s all breakfast tea and midnight snacks and you grow on it or you don’t grow, laugh or scowl or don’t have any features one way or the other, but
you’re
out there, melting and freezing, running or holding still. I haven’t done that in years. So just this week I got up my courage—knew how to sell cars but didn’t know how to put
me
on sale. I’m taking a chance, Quint, that by next year, this face under the Hood will make itself over, shift at noon or twilight, and I’ll feel it changing because I’m out wading in the stream again and breathing the fresh air and letting people get at me, taking a chance, not hiding behind the windshield of this or that Studebaker. And at the end of that next year, Quint, I’ll take off my Hood forever.”
    At which point, turned away from me, he made a gesture. I saw the dark velvet in his hand as he dropped it in the grass.
    “Do you want to see what’s here, Quint?” he asked, quietly.
    “No, sir, if you don’t mind.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’m scared,” I said, and shivered.
    “That figures,” he said, at last. “I’ll just stand here a moment and then hide again.”
    He took three deep breaths, his back to me, head high, face toward the fireflies and a few constellations. Then the Hood was back in place.
    I’m glad, I thought, there’s no moon tonight.
    Five days and five Studebakers later (one blue, one black, two tans, and one sunset-red) Mr. Mysterious was sitting out in what he said was his final car, a sun-yellow open roadster, so bright it was a canary with its own cage, when I came strolling out, hands in overall pockets, watching the sidewalk for ants or old unused firecrackers. When Mr. M. saw me he moved over and said, “Try the driver’s seat.”
    “Boy!
Can
I?”
    I did, and twirled the wheel and honked the horn, just once, so as not to wake any late-sleepers.
    “ ‘Fess up, Quint,” said Mr. Mysterious, his Hood pointed out through the windshield.
    “Do I look like I need ‘fessing’?”
    “You’re ripe-plumful. Begin.”
    “I been thinking,” I said.
    “I could tell by the wrinkles in your face,” said Mr. M., gently.
    “I been thinking about a year from now, and you.”
    “That’s mighty nice, son. Continue.”
    “I thought, well, maybe next year if you felt you were cured, under that Hood, that your nose was okay and your eyebrows neat, and your mouth good and your complexion—”
    I hesitated. The Hood nodded me on.
    “Well, I was thinking if you got up one