Synopsis: “A Touch of Petulance” is a short story by Ray Bradbury, published in 1980 in the anthology Dark Forces. The story begins on an ordinary afternoon when Johnathen Hughes, a young, newlywed accountant, takes his usual train and sits next to an older man reading a newspaper with a future date. Intrigued, Hughes strikes up a conversation that leads him to discover disturbing details about his life, his marriage, and his destiny. What seemed like a chance encounter turns into a disturbing warning about a possible future.
A Touch of Petulance
By Ray Bradbury
(Full story)
On an otherwise ordinary evening in May, a week before his twenty-ninth birthday, Johnathen Hughes met his fate, commuting from another time, another year, another life.
His fate was unrecognizable at first, of course, and boarded the train at the same hour, in Pennsylvania Station, and sat with Hughes for the dinnertime journey across Long Island. It was the newspaper held by this fate disguised as an older man that caused Johnathen Hughes to stare and finally say:
“Sir, pardon me, your New York Times seems different from mine. The typeface on your front page seems more modern. Is that a later edition?”
“No!” The older man stopped, swallowed hard, and at last managed to say, “Yes. A very late edition.”
Hughes glanced around. “Excuse me, but—all the other editions look the same. Is yours a trial copy for a future change?”
“Future?” The older man’s mouth barely moved. His entire body seemed to wither in his clothes, as if he had lost weight with a single exhalation. “Indeed,” he whispered. “Future change. God, what a joke.”
Johnathen Hughes blinked at the newspaper’s dateline:
May 2nd, 1999
“Now, see here—” he protested, and then his eyes moved down to find a small story, minus picture, in the upper-left-hand corner of the front page:
WOMAN MURDERED.
POLICE SEEK HUSBAND.
“Body of Mrs. Alice Hughes found shot to death—”
The train thundered over a bridge. Outside the window, a billion trees rose up, flourished their green branches in convulsions of wind, then fell as if chopped to earth.
The train rolled into a station as if nothing at all in the world had happened.
In the silence, the young man’s eyes returned to the text:
“Johnathen Hughes, certified public accountant, of 112 Plandome Avenue, Plandome—”
“My God!” he cried. “Get away!”
But he himself rose and ran a few steps back before the older man could move. The train jolted and threw him into an empty seat where he stared wildly out at a river of green light that rushed past the windows.
Christ, he thought, who would do such a thing? Who’d try to hurt us—us? What kind of joke? To mock a new marriage with a fine wife?
Damn! And again, trembling, Damn, oh, damn!
The train rounded a curve and all but threw him to his feet. Like a man drunk with traveling, gravity, and simple rage, he swung about and lurched back to confront the old man, bent now into his newspaper, gone to earth, hiding in print. Hughes brushed the paper out of the way, and clutched the old man’s shoulder. The old man, startled, glanced up, tears running from his eyes. They were both held in a long moment of thunderous traveling. Hughes felt his soul rise to leave his body.
“Who are you!?”
Someone must have shouted that.
The train rocked as if it might derail.
The old man stood up as if shot in the heart, blindly crammed something in Johnathen Hughes’s hand, and blundered away down the aisle and into the next car.
The younger man opened his fist and turned a card over and read a few words that moved him heavily down to sit and read the words again:
JOHNATHEN HUGHES, CPA
679-4990. Plandome.
“No!” someone shouted.
Me, thought the young man. Why, that old man is… me.
There was a conspiracy, no, several conspiracies. Someone had contrived a joke about murder and played it on him. The train roared on with five hundred commuters who all rode, swaying like a team of drunken intellectuals behind their masking books and papers, while the old man, as if pursued by demons, fled off away from car to car. By the time Johnathen Hughes had rampaged his blood and completely thrown his sanity off balance, the old man had plunged, as if falling, to the farthest end of the commuter’s special.
The two men met again in the last car, which was almost empty. Johnathen Hughes came and stood over the old man, who refused to look up. He was crying so hard now that conversation would have been impossible.
Who, thought the young man, who is he crying for? Stop, please, stop.
The old man, as if commanded, sat up, wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and began to speak in a frail voice that drew Johnathen Hughes near and finally caused him to sit and listen to the whispers:
“We were born—”
“We?” cried the young man.
“We,” whispered the old man, looking out at the gathering dusk that traveled like smoke and burnings past the window, “we, yes, we, the two of us, we were born in Quincy in 1950, August twenty-second—”
Yes, thought Hughes.
“—and lived at Forty-nine Washington Street and went to Central School and walked to that school all through first grade with Isabel Perry—”
Isabel, thought the young man.
“we…” murmured the old man. “our” whispered the old man. “us” And went on and on with it:
“Our woodshop teacher, Mr. Bisbee. History teacher, Miss Monks. We broke our right ankle, age ten, ice-skating. Almost drowned, age eleven; Father saved us. Fell in love, age twelve, Impi Johnson—”
Seventh grade, lovely lady, long since dead, Jesus God, thought the young man, growing old.
And that’s what happened. In the next minute, two minutes, three, the old man talked and talked and gradually became younger with talking, so his cheeks glowed and his eyes brightened, while the young man, weighted with old knowledge given, sank lower in his seat and grew pale so that both almost met in mid-talking, mid-listening, and became twins in passing. There was a moment when Johnathen Hughes knew for an absolute insane certainty, that if he dared glance up he would see identical twins in the mirrored window of a night-rushing world.
He did not look up.
The old man finished, his frame erect now, his head somehow driven high by the talking out, the long-lost revelations.
“That’s the past,” he said.
I should hit him, thought Hughes. Accuse him. Shout at him. Why aren’t I hitting, accusing, shouting?
Because…
The old man sensed the question and said, “You know I’m who I say I am. I know everything there is to know about us. Now—the future?”
“Mine?”
“Ours,” said the old man.
Johnathen Hughes nodded, staring at the newspaper clutched in the old man’s right hand. The old man folded it and put it away.
“Your business will slowly become less than good. For what reasons, who can say? A child will be born and die. A mistress will be taken and lost. A wife will become less than good. And at last, oh believe it, yes, do, very slowly, you will come to—how shall I say it—hate her living presence. There, I see I’ve upset you. I’ll shut up.”
They rode in silence for a long while, and the old man grew old again, and the young man along with him. When he had aged just the proper amount, the young man nodded the talk to continue, not looking at the other who now said:
“Impossible, yes, you’ve been married only a year, a great year, the best. Hard to think that a single drop of ink could color a whole pitcher of clear fresh water. But color it could and color it did. And at last the entire world changed, not just our wife, not just the beautiful woman, the fine dream.”
“You—” Johnathen Hughes started and stopped. “You—killed her?”
“We did. Both of us. But if I have my way, if I can convince you, neither of us will, she will live, and you will grow old to become a happier, finer me. I pray for that. I weep for that. There’s still time. Across the years, I intend to shake you up, change your blood, shape your mind. God, if people knew what murder is. So silly, so stupid, so—ugly. But there is hope, for I have somehow got here, touched you, begun the change that will save our souls. Now, listen. You do admit, do you not, that we are one and the same, that the twins of time ride this train this hour this night?”
The train whistled ahead of them, clearing the track of an encumbrance of years.
The young man nodded the most infinitely microscopic of nods. The old man needed no more.
“I ran away. I ran to you. That’s all I can say. She’s been dead only a day, and I ran. Where to go? Nowhere to hide, save Time. No one to plead with, no judge, no jury, no proper witnesses save—you. Only you can wash the blood away, do you see? You drew me, then. Your youngness, your innocence, your good hours, your fine life still untouched, was the machine that seized me down the track. All of my sanity lies in you. If you turn away, great God, I’m lost, no, we are lost. We’ll share a grave and never rise and be buried forever in misery. Shall I tell you what you must do?”
The young man rose.
“Plandome,” a voice cried. “Plandome.”
And they were out on the platform with the old man running after, the young man blundering into walls, into people, feeling as if his limbs might fly apart.
“Wait!” cried the old man. “Oh, please.”
The young man kept moving.
“Don’t you see, we’re in this together, we must think of it together, solve it together, so you won’t become me and I won’t have to come impossibly in search of you, oh, it’s all mad, insane, I know, I know, but listen!”
The young man stopped at the edge of the platform where cars werepulling in, with joyful cries or muted greetings, brief honkings, gunnings of motors, lights vanishing away. The old man grasped the young man’s elbow.
“Good God, your wife, mine, will be here in a moment, there’s so much to tell, you can’t know what I know, there’s twenty years of unfound information lost between which we must trade and understand! Are you listening? God, you don’t believe!”
Johnathen Hughes was watching the street. A long way off a final car was approaching. He said: “What happened in the attic at my grandmother’s house in the summer of 1958? No one knows that but me. Well?”
The old man’s shoulders slumped. He breathed more easily, and as if reciting from a promptboard said: “We hid ourselves there for two days, alone. No one ever knew where we hid. Everyone thought we had run away to drown in the lake or fall in the river. But all the time, crying, not feeling wanted, we hid up above and… listened to the wind and wanted to die.”
The young man turned at last to stare fixedly at his older self, tears in his eyes. “You love me, then?”
“I had better,” said the old man. “I’m all you have.”
The car was pulling up at the station. A young woman smiled and waved behind the glass.
“Quick,” said the old man, quietly. “Let me come home, watch, show you, teach you, find where things went wrong, correct them now, maybe hand you a fine life forever, let me—”
The car horn sounded, the car stopped, the young woman leaned out.
“Hello, lovely man!” she cried.
Johnathen Hughes exploded a laugh and burst into a manic run. “Lovely lady, hi—”
“Wait.”
He stopped and turned to look at the old man with the newspaper, trembling there on the station platform. The old man raised one hand, questioningly.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
Silence. At last: “You,” said Johnathen Hughes. “You.”
****
The car rounded a turn in the night. The woman, the old man, the young, swayed with the motion.
“What did you say your name was?” the young woman said, above the rush and run of country and road.
“He didn’t say,” said Johnathen Hughes quickly.
“Weldon,” said the old man, blinking.
“Why,” said Alice Hughes. “That’s my maiden name.”
The old man gasped inaudibly, but recovered. “Well, is it? How curious!”
“I wonder if we’re related? You—”
“He was my teacher at Central High,” said Johnathen Hughes, quickly.
“And still am,” said the old man. “And still am.”
And they were home.
He could not stop staring. All through dinner, the old man simply sat with his hands empty half the time and stared at the lovely woman across the table from him. Johnathen Hughes fidgeted, talked much too loudly to cover the silences, and ate sparsely. The old man continued to stare as if a miracle was happening every ten seconds. He watched Alice’s mouth as if it were giving forth fountains of diamonds. He watched her eyes as if all the hidden wisdoms of the world were there, and now found for the first time. By the look of his face, the old man, stunned, had forgotten why he was there.
“Have I a crumb on my chin?” cried Alice Hughes, suddenly. “Why is everyone watching me?”
Whereupon the old man burst into tears that shocked everyone. He could not seem to stop, until at last Alice came around the table to touch his shoulder.
“Forgive me,” he said. “It’s just that you’re so lovely. Please sit down. Forgive.”
They finished off the dessert and with a great display of tossing down his fork and wiping his mouth with his napkin, Johnathen Hughes cried, “That was fabulous. Dear wife, I love you!” He kissed her on the cheek, thought better of it, and rekissed her, on the mouth. “You see?” He glanced at the old man. “I very much love my wife.”
The old man nodded quietly and said, “Yes, yes, I remember.”
“You remember?” said Alice, staring.
“A toast!” said Johnathen Hughes, quickly. “To a fine wife, a grand future!”
His wife laughed. She raised her glass.
“Mr. Weldon,” she said, after a moment. “You’re not drinking…?”
****
It was strange seeing the old man at the door to the living room.
“Watch this,” he said, and closed his eyes. He began to move certainly and surely about the room, eyes shut. “Over here is the pipe-stand, over here the books. On the fourth shelf down a copy of Eiseley’s The Star Thrower. One shelf up H. G. Wells’s Time Machine, most appropriate, and over here the special chair, and me in it.”
He sat. He opened his eyes.
Watching from the door, Johnathen Hughes said, “You’re not going to cry again, are you?”
“No. No more crying.”
There were sounds of washing up from the kitchen. The lovely woman out there hummed under her breath. Both men turned to look out of the room toward that humming.
“Some day,” said Johnathen Hughes, “I will hate her? Some day, I will kill her?”
“It doesn’t seem possible, does it? I’ve watched her for an hour and found nothing, no hint, no clue, not the merest period, semicolon or exclamation point of blemish, bump, or hair out of place with her. I’ve watched you, too, to see if you were at fault, we were at fault, in all this.”
“And?” The young man poured sherry for both of them, and handed over a glass.
“You drink too much is about the sum. Watch it.”
Hughes put his drink down without sipping it. “What else?”
“I suppose I should give you a list, make you keep it, look at it every day. Advice from the old crazy to the young fool.”
“Whatever you say, I’ll remember.”
“Will you? For how long? A month, a year, then, like everything else, it’ll go. You’ll be busy living. You’ll be slowly turning into… me. She will slowly be turning into someone worth putting out of the world. Tell her you love her.”
“Every day.”
“Promise! It’s that important! Maybe that’s where I failed myself, failed us. Every day, without fail!” The old man leaned forward, his face taking fire with his words. “Every day. Every day!”
Alice stood in the doorway, faintly alarmed.
“Anything wrong?”
“No, no.” Johnathen Hughes smiled. “We were trying to decide which of us likes you best.”
She laughed, shrugged, and went away.
“I think,” said Johnathen Hughes, and stopped and closed his eyes, forcing himself to say it, “it’s time for you to go.”
“Yes, time.” But the old man did not move. His voice was very tired, exhausted, sad. “I’ve been sitting here feeling defeated. I can’t find anything wrong. I can’t find the flaw. I can’t advise you, my God, it’s so stupid, I shouldn’t have come to upset you, worry you, disturb your life, when I have nothing to offer but vague suggestions, inane cryings of doom. I sat here a moment ago and thought: I’ll kill her now, get rid of her now, take the blame now, as an old man, so the young man there, you, can go on into the future and be free of her. Isn’t that silly? I wonder if it would work? It’s that old time-travel paradox, isn’t it? Would I foul up the time flow, the world, the universe, what? Don’t worry, no, no, don’t look that way. No murder now. It’s all been done up ahead, twenty years in your future. The old man having done nothing whatever, having been no help, will now open the door and run away to his madness.”
He arose and shut his eyes again.
“Let me see if I can find my way out of my own house, in the dark.”
He moved, the young man moved with him to find the closet by the front door and open it and take out the old man’s overcoat and slowly shrug him into it.
“You have helped,” said Johnathen Hughes. “You have told me to tell her I love her.”
“Yes, I did do that, didn’t I?”
They turned to the door.
“Is there hope for us?” the old man asked, suddenly, fiercely.
“Yes. I’ll make sure of it,” said Johnathen Hughes.
“Good, oh, good. I almost believe!”
The old man put one hand out and blindly opened the front door.
“I won’t say good-bye to her. I couldn’t stand looking at that lovely face. Tell her the old fool’s gone. Where? Up the road to wait for you. You’ll arrive someday.”
“To become you? Not a chance,” said the young man.
“Keep saying that. And —my God— here—” The old man fumbled in his pocket and drew forth a small object wrapped in crumpled newspaper. “You’d better keep this. I can’t be trusted, even now. I might do something wild. Here. Here.”
He thrust the object into the young man’s hands. “Good-bye. Doesn’t that mean: God be with you? Yes. Good-bye.”
The old man hurried down the walk into the night. A wind shook the trees. A long way off, a train moved in darkness, arriving or departing, no one could tell.
Johnathen Hughes stood in the doorway for a long while, trying to see if there really was someone out there vanishing in the dark. “Darling,” his wife called.
He began to unwrap the small object.
She was in the parlor door behind him now, but her voice sounded as remote as the fading footsteps along the dark street.
“Don’t stand there letting the draft in,” she said.
He stiffened as he finished unwrapping the object. It lay in his hand, a small revolver.
Far away the train sounded a final cry which failed in the wind. “Shut the door,” said his wife.
His face was cold. He closed his eyes.
Her voice. Wasn’t there just the tiniest touch of petulance there? He turned slowly, off-balance. His shoulder brushed the door. It drifted. Then:
The wind, all by itself, slammed the door with a bang.
THE END
