{"id":19043,"date":"2025-02-01T17:55:48","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T21:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/?p=19043"},"modified":"2025-02-28T13:20:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T17:20:17","slug":"ray-bradbury-the-playground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/ray-bradbury-the-playground\/19043\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Bradbury: The Playground"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis: \u201cThe Playground<\/strong>,\u201d a short story by Ray Bradbury published in The Illustrated Man<\/em> in 1952, tells the story of Charles Underhill, a widowed man who lives with his son Jim and his sister Carol. Underhill had always ignored the playground near his house until Carol mentioned that she would take Jim there to play with other children. Intrigued and worried, Underhill visits the playground and is horrified by what he sees: children hurting each other in an environment that looks more like a battlefield than a place of fun. The smell of medication and the constant screams remind him of the brutalities of his childhood, filling him with terror. Despite her resistance, Carol insists that Jim needs to learn to be strong in the face of the harshness of life from an early age. Underhill, terrified of what might happen to his son, is willing to do anything to protect him.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Ray<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Playground<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Ray Bradbury
(Full story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A thousand times before and after his wife\u2019s death Mr Charles Underhill ignored the Playground on his way to and from his commuters\u2019 limited train. He neither liked nor disliked the Playground; he hardly knew it existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But only this morning his sister Carol, who had occupied the empty space across the breakfast table from him each day for six months, quietly broached the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Jim\u2019s almost three years old now,\u2019 she said. \u2018So tomorrow I\u2019m going to start him at the Playground.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Playground?\u2019 said Mr Underhill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At his office, he underlined a memorandum with black ink: Look at Playground<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That afternoon, the thunder of the train subsiding in his body, Underhill struck up through town on his usual path home, newspaper tucked crisply under arm to prevent reading himself past the park. So it was, at five-ten in the late day, that he came to the cool iron fence and the open gate of the Playground, and stood for a long, long time, frozen there, gazing in at it all\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first there seemed absolutely nothing whatever to see. And then as he adjusted his attention outward from his usual interior monologue, the scene before him, a gray, blurred television image, came to a slow focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primarily, he was aware of dim voices, faint underwater cries emerging from a series of vague streaks and zigzag lines and shadows. Then, as if someone had kicked the machine, screams jumped at him in full throat, visions leaped clear. Now he saw the children! They were dashing across the Playground meadow, fighting, pummeling, scratching, falling, every wound bleeding or about to bleed or freshly caked over. A dozen cats thrown among sleeping dogs could not have shrieked as loud. With incredible clarity, Mr Underhill saw the tiniest cuts and scabs on knees and faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>He weathered the first blast of sound, blinking. His nostrils took over when his eyes and ears retired in panic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He sniffed the cutting odors of salve, raw adhesive, camphor, and pink Mercurochrome, so strong it lay bitter on his tongue. An iodine wind blew through the steel fence wires which glinted dully in the gray light of the overcast day. The rushing children were hell cut loose in a vast pinball table, colliding, and banging, a totaling of hits and misses, thrusts and plungings to a grand and as yet unforeseen total of brutalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And was he mistaken or was the light within the Playground of a peculiar intensity? Every child seemed to possess four shadows: one dark, three faint penumbras which made it strategically impossible to tell which way their swift bodies were racing until they bashed their targets. Yes, the oblique, pressing light made the Playground seem deep, far away, and remote from his touching. Or perhaps it was the hard steel wire fence, not unlike those barriers in zoos, beyond which anything<\/em> might happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pen of misery, thought Underhill. Why do children insist on making life horrible for each other? Oh, the continual torture. He heard himself sigh with immense relief. Thank God, childhood was over and done for him. No more pinchings, bruisings, senseless passions and shattered dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A gust of wind tore the paper from his hand. He ran after it down the Playground steps. Clutching the paper, he retreated hastily. For in that one brief instant, stranded in the Playground\u2019s atmosphere, he had felt his hat grow too large, his coat too cumbersome, his belt too loose, his shoes too big; he had felt like a small boy playing businessman in his father\u2019s clothes; the gate behind him had loomed impossibly tall, while the sky pressed a huge weight of grayness at his eyes, and the scent of iodine, like a tiger\u2019s breath exhaled upon him, blew his hair. He tripped and almost fell, running back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stood outside the Playground, like someone who has just emerged, in shock, from a terrible cold sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Hello, Charlie!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He heard the voice and turned to see who had called him. There on top of a metal slide, a boy of some nine years was waving. \u2018Hello, Charlie\u2026!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Charles Underhill raised a hand. But I don\u2019t know<\/em> that boy, he thought. And why should he call me by my first name?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boy was smiling high in the misty air, and now, jostled by other yelling children, rushed shrieking down the slide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill stood bemused by what he saw. Now the Playground was an immense iron industry whose sole products were pain, sadism, and sorrow. If you watched half an hour there wasn\u2019t a face in the entire enclosure that didn\u2019t wince, cry, redden with anger, pale with fear, one moment or another. Really! Who said Childhood was the best time of life? when in <\/a>reality it was the most terrible, the most merciless era, the barbaric time when there were no police to protect you, only parents preoccupied with themselves and their taller world. No, if he had his way, he touched the cold fence with one hand, they\u2019d nail a new sign here: TORQUEMADA\u2019S GREEN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as for that boy, the one who had called out to him, who was he? There was something familiar there, perhaps in the hidden bones, an echo of some old friend; probably the son of a successfully ulcered father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this is the Playground where my son will play, thought Mr Underhill. So this is it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Hanging his hat in the hall, checking his lean image in the watery mirror, Underhill felt wintry and tired. When his sister appeared, and his son came tapping on mouse feet, he greeted them with something less than full attention. The boy clambered thinly over him, playing King of the Hill. And the father, fixing his gaze to the end of the cigar he was slowly lighting, finally cleared his throat and said, \u2018I\u2019ve been thinking about that Playground. Carol.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019m taking Jim over tomorrow.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Not really? That<\/em> Playground?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mind rebelled. The smell and look of the place were still vivid. That writhing world with its atmosphere of cuts and beaten noses, the air as full of pain as a dentist\u2019s office, and those horrid ticktacktoes and frightening hopscotches under his feet as he picked up his newspaper, horrid and frightening for no reason he could see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What\u2019s wrong with that<\/em> Playground?\u2019 asked Carol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Have you seen it?\u2019 He paused in confusion. \u2018Damn it, I mean, the children there. It\u2019s a Black Hole.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018All the children are from well-to-do families.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Well, they shove and push like little Gestapos,\u2019 said Underhill. \u2018It\u2019d be like sending a boy to a flour mill to be crushed into meal by a couple of two-ton grinders! Every time I think of Jim playing in that barbaric pit, I freeze.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You know very well it\u2019s the only convenient park for miles around.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I don\u2019t care about that. All I care is I saw a dozen kinds of bats and clubs and air guns. By the end of the first day, Jim would be in splinters. They\u2019d have him barbecued, with an orange in his mouth.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was beginning to laugh. \u2018How you exaggerate.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019m serious!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You can\u2019t live Jim\u2019s life for him. He has to learn the hard way. He\u2019s got to take a little beating and beat others up; boys are like that.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I don\u2019t like<\/em> boys like that.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It\u2019s the happiest time of life.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Nonsense. I used to look back on childhood with great nostalgia. But <\/a>now I realize I was a sentimental fool. It was nothing but screaming and running in a nightmare and coming home drenched with terror, from head to foot. If I could possibly save Jim from that, I would.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018That\u2019s impractical and, thank God, impossible.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I won\u2019t have him near that place, I tell you. I\u2019ll have him grow up a neurotic recluse first.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Charlie!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I will! Those little beasts, you should\u2019ve seen them. Jim\u2019s my<\/em> son, he is: he\u2019s not yours, remember.\u2019 He felt the boy\u2019s thin legs about his shoulders, the boy\u2019s delicate fingers rumpling his hair. \u2018I won\u2019t have him butchered.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018He\u2019ll get it in school. Better to let him take a little shoving about now, when he\u2019s three, so he\u2019s prepared for it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019ve thought of that, too.\u2019 Mr Underhill held fiercely to his son\u2019s ankles which dangled like warm, thin sausages on either lapel. \u2018I might even get a private tutor for him.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oh, Charles!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They did not speak during dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After dinner, he took Jim for a brief walk while his sister was washing the dishes. They strolled past the Playground under the dim street lamps. It was a cooling September night, with the first dry spice of autumn in it. Next week, and the children would be raked in off the fields like so many leaves and set to burning in the schools, using their fire and energy for more constructive purposes. But they would be here after school, ramming about, making projectiles of themselves, crashing and exploding, leaving wakes of misery behind every miniature war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Want to go in,\u2019 said Jim, leaning against the high wire fence, watching the late-playing children beat each other and run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018No, Jim, you don\u2019t want that.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Play,\u2019 said Jim, his eyes shining with fascination as he saw a large boy kick a small boy and the small boy kick a smaller boy to even things up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Play, Daddy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Come along. Jim, you\u2019ll never get in that mess if I<\/em> can help it.\u2019 Underhill tugged the small arm firmly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I want to play.\u2019 Jim was beginning to blubber now. His eyes were melting out of his face and his face was becoming a wrinkled orange of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the children heard the crying and glanced over. Underhill had the terrible sense of watching a den of foxes suddenly startled and looking up from the white, hairy ruin of a dead rabbit. The mean yellow-glass eyes, the conical chins, the sharp white teeth, the dreadful wiry hair, the brambly sweaters, the iron-colored hands covered with a day\u2019s battle stains. Their breath moved out to him, dark licorice and mint and Juicy Fruit so <\/a>sickeningly sweet, so combined as to twist his stomach. And over this the hot mustard smell of someone tolerating an early chest cold: the greasy stink of flesh smeared with hot camphorous salves cooking under a flannel sheath. All these cloying and somehow depressing odors of pencils, chalk, grass and slate-board erasers, real or imagined, summoned old memory in an instant. Popcorn mortared their teeth, and green jelly showed in their sucking, blowing nostrils. God! God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They saw Jim, and he was new to them. They said not a word, but as Jim cried louder and Underhill, by main force, dragged him like a cement bag along the walk, the children followed with their glowing eyes. Underhill felt like pushing his fist at them and crying, \u2018You little beasts, you won\u2019t get my<\/em> son!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, with beautiful irrelevance, the boy at the top of the blue metal slide, so high he seemed almost in a mist, far away, the boy with the somehow familiar face, called out to him, waving and waving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Hello, Charlie\u2026!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill paused and Jim stopped crying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018See you later, Charlie\u2026!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the face of the boy way up there on that high and very lonely slide was suddenly like the face of Thomas Marshall, an old business friend who lived just around the block, but whom he hadn\u2019t seen in months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018See you later, Charlie.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, later? What did the fool boy mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I know you<\/em>, Charlie!\u2019 called the boy. \u2018Hi!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What?\u2019 gasped Underhill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tomorrow night, Charlie, hey!\u2019 And the boy fell off the slide and lay choking for breath, face like a white cheese from the fall, while children jumped him and tumbled over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill stood undecided for five seconds or more, until Jim thought to cry again, and then, with the golden fox eyes upon them, in the first chill of autumn, he dragged Jim all the way home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The next afternoon Mr Underhill finished at the office early and took the three o\u2019clock train, arriving out in Green Town at three twenty-five, in plenty of time to drink in the brisk rays of the autumnal sun. Strange how one day it is suddenly autumn, he thought. One day it is summer and the next, how could you measure or tell it? Something about the temperature or the smell? Or the sediment of age knocked loose from your bones during the night and circulating in your blood and heart, giving you a slight tremble and a chill? A year older, a year dying, was that<\/em> it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He walked up toward the Playground, planning the future. It seemed you did more planning in autumn than any other season. This had to do <\/a>with dying, perhaps. You thought of death and you automatically planned. Well, then, there was to be a tutor for Jim, that<\/em> was positive; none of those horrible schools for him. It would pinch the bank account a bit, but Jim would at least grow up a happy boy. They would pick and choose his friends. Any slam-bang bullies would be thrown out as soon as they so much as touched Jim. And as for this Playground? Completely out of the question!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oh hello, Charles.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked up suddenly. Before him, at the entrance to the wire enclosure, stood his sister. He noted instantly that she called him Charles, instead of Charlie. Last night\u2019s unpleasantness had not quite evaporated. \u2018Carol, what\u2019re you doing here<\/em>?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She flushed guiltily and glanced in through the fence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You didn\u2019t,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His eyes sought among the scrabbling, running, screaming children. \u2018Do you mean to say\u2026?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His sister nodded, half amused. \u2018I thought I\u2019d bring him early\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Before I got home, so I wouldn\u2019t know, is that<\/em> it?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Good God, Carol, where is<\/em> he?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I just came to see.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You mean you left him there all afternoon?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Just for five minutes while I shopped.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And you left<\/em> him. Good God!\u2019 Underhill seized her wrist. \u2018Well, come on, find him, get him out of there!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They peered in together past the wire to where a dozen boys charged about, girls slapped each other, and a squabbling heap of children took turns at getting off, making a quick run, and crashing one against another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018That\u2019s where he is, I know<\/em> it!\u2019 said Underhill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just then, across the field, sobbing and wailing. Jim ran, six boys after him. He fell, got up, ran, fell again, shrieking, and the boys behind shot beans through metal blowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019ll stuff those blowers up their noses!\u2019 said Underhill. \u2018Run, Jim! Run!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim made it to the gate. Underhill caught him. It was like catching a rumpled, drenched wad of material. Jim\u2019s nose was bleeding, his pants were ripped, he was covered with grime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There\u2019s<\/em> your Playground,\u2019 said Underhill, on his knees, staring up from his son, holding him, at his sister. \u2018There<\/em> are your sweet, happy innocents, your well-to-do piddling Fascists. Let me catch this boy here again and there\u2019ll be hell to pay. Come on, Jim. All right, you little bastards, get back there!\u2019 he shouted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We didn\u2019t do nothing,\u2019 said the children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What\u2019s the world coming to?\u2019 Mr Underhill questioned the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>\u2018Hi! Charlie!\u2019 said the strange boy, standing to one side. He waved casually and smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Who\u2019s that?\u2019 asked Carol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How in hell do I<\/em> know?\u2019 said Underhill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Be seeing you, Charlie. So long,\u2019 called the boy, fading off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Underhill marched his sister and his son home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Take your hand off my elbow!\u2019 said Carol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


He was trembling, absolutely, continually trembling with rage when he got to bed. He had tried some coffee, but nothing stopped it. He wanted to beat their pulpy little brains out, those gross Cruikshank children, yes, that phrase fit them, those fox-fiend, melancholy Cruikshank children, with all the guile and poison and slyness in their cold faces. In the name of all that was decent, what manner of child was this new generation! A bunch of cutters and hangers and bangers, a drove of bleeding, moronic thumbscrewers, with the sewage of neglect running in their veins? He lay violently jerking his head from one side of his hot pillow to the other, and at last got up and lit a cigarette, but it wasn\u2019t enough. He and Carol had had a huge battle when they got home. He had yelled at her and she had yelled back, peacock and peahen shrieking in a wilderness where law and order were insanities laughed at and quite forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was ashamed. You didn\u2019t fight violence with violence, not if you were a gentleman. You talked very calmly. But Carol didn\u2019t give you a chance, damn it! She wanted the boy put in a vise and squashed. She wanted him reamed and punctured and given the laying on of hands. To be beaten from playground to kindergarten, to grammar school, to junior high, to high school. If he was lucky, in high school, the beatings and sadisms would refine themselves, the sea of blood and spittle would drain back down the shore of years and Jim would be left upon the edge of maturity, with God knows what outlook to the future, with a desire, perhaps, to be a wolf among wolves, a dog among dogs, a fiend among fiends. But there was enough of that in the world, already. The very thought of the next ten or fifteen years of torture was enough to make Mr Underhill cringe; he felt his own flesh impaled with BB shot, stung, burned, fisted, scrounged, twisted, violated, and bruised. He quivered, like a jellyfish hurled violently into a concrete mixer. Jim would never survive it. Jim was too delicate for this horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill walked in the midnight rooms of his house thinking of all this, of himself, of the son, the Playground, the fear; there was no part of it he did not touch and turn over with his mind. How much, he asked himself, how much of this is being alone, how much due to Ann\u2019s dying, how much to my need, and how much is the reality of the Playground itself, and the children? How much rational and how much nonsense? He <\/a>twitched the delicate weights upon the scale and watched the indicator glide and fix and glide again, back and forth, softly, between midnight and dawn, between black and white, between raw sanity and naked insanity. He should not hold so tight, he should let his hands drop away from the boy. And yet\u2014there was no hour that looking into Jim\u2019s small face he did not see Ann there, in the eyes, in the mouth, in the turn of the nostrils, in the warm breathing, in the glow of blood moving just under the thin shell of flesh, I have a right, he thought, to be afraid. I have every right. When you have two precious bits of porcelain and one is broken and the other, the last one, remains, where can you find the time to be objective, to be immensely calm, to be anything else but concerned?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, he thought, walking slowly in the hall, there seems to be nothing I can do except go on being afraid and being afraid of being afraid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You needn\u2019t prowl the house all night,\u2019 his sister called from her bed, as she heard him pass her open door. \u2018You needn\u2019t be childish, I\u2019m sorry if I seem dictatorial or cold. But you\u2019ve got to make up your mind. Jim simply cannot have a private tutor. Ann would have wanted him to go to a regular school. And he\u2019s got to go back to that Playground tomorrow and keep going back until he\u2019s learned to stand on his own two feet and until he\u2019s familiar to all the children; then they won\u2019t pick on him so much.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill said nothing. He got dressed quietly, in the dark, and, downstairs, opened the front door. It was about five minutes to midnight as he walked swiftly down the street in the shadows of the tall elms and oaks and maples, trying to outdistance his rage and outrage. He knew Carol was right, of course. This was the world, you lived in it, you accepted it. But that was the very trouble! He had been through the mill already, he knew what it was to be a boy among lions; his own childhood had come rushing back to him in the last few hours, a time of terror and violence, and now he could not bear to think of Jim\u2019s going through it all, those long years, especially if you were a delicate child, through no fault of your own, your bones thin, your face pale, what could you expect but to be harried and chased?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stopped by the Playground, which was still lit by one great overhead lamp. The gate was locked for the night, but that one light remained on until twelve. He wanted to tear the contemptible place down, rip up the steel fences, obliterate the slides, and say to the children, \u2018Go home! Play in your back yards!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How ingenious, the cold, deep Playground. You never knew where anyone lived. The boy who knocked your teeth out, who was he<\/em>? Nobody knew. Where did he live? Nobody knew. How to find him? Nobody knew. Why, you could come here one day, beat the living tar out of some smaller child, and run on the next day to some other<\/em> Playground. They would never find you. From Playground to Playground, you could take your <\/a>criminal tricks, with everyone forgetting you, since they never knew you. You could return to this Playground a month later, and if the little child whose teeth you knocked out was there and recognized you, you could deny it. \u2018No, I\u2019m not the one. Must be some other kid. This is my first time here! No, not me!\u2019 And when his back is turned, knock him over. And run off down nameless streets, a nameless person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can I possibly do? thought Underhill. Carol\u2019s been more than generous with her time; she\u2019s been good for Jim, no doubt of it. A lot of the love she would have put into a marriage has gone to him this year. I can\u2019t fight her forever on this, and I can\u2019t tell her to leave. Perhaps moving to the country might help. No, no, impossible; the money. But I can\u2019t leave Jim here, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Hello, Charlie,\u2019 said a quiet voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill snapped about. Inside the Playground fence, seated in the dirt, making diagrams with one finger in the cool dust, was the solemn nine-year-old boy. He didn\u2019t glance up. He said. \u2018Hello Charlie,\u2019 just sitting there, easily, in that world beyond the hard steel fence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill said, \u2018How do you know my name?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I know it.\u2019 The boy crossed his legs, comfortably, smiling quietly. \u2018You\u2019re having lots of trouble.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How\u2019d you get in there so late? Who are you?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018My name\u2019s Marshall.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Of course! Tom Marshall\u2019s son Tommy! I thought<\/em> you looked familiar.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018More familiar than you think.\u2019 The boy laughed gently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How\u2019s your father. Tommy?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Have you seen him lately?\u2019 the boy asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018On the street, briefly, two months ago.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How did he look?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How did Mr Marshall look<\/em>?\u2019 asked the boy. It seemed strange he refused to say \u2018my father.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018He looked all right. Why?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I guess he\u2019s happy,\u2019 said the boy. Mr Underhill saw the boy\u2019s arms and legs and they were covered with scabs and scratches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Aren\u2019t you going home, Tommy?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I sneaked out to see you. I just knew you\u2019d come. You\u2019re afraid.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Underhill didn\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Those little monsters,\u2019 he said at last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Maybe I can help you.\u2019 The boy made a dust triangle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was ridiculous. \u2018How?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You\u2019d give anything, wouldn\u2019t you, if you could spare Jim all this? You\u2019d trade places with him if you could?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Underhill nodded, frozen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>\u2018Well, you come down here tomorrow afternoon at four. Then I can help you.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How do you mean, help?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I can\u2019t tell you outright,\u2019 said the boy. \u2018It has to do with the Playground. Any place where there\u2019s lots of evil, that makes power. You can feel it, can\u2019t you?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A kind of warm wind stirred off the bare field under the one high light. Underhill shivered. Yes, even now, at midnight, the Playground seemed evil, for it was used for evil things. \u2018Are all Playgrounds like this?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Some. Maybe this is the only one like this. Maybe it\u2019s just how you<\/em> look at it, Charlie. Things are<\/em> what you want<\/em> them to be. A lot of people think this is a swell<\/em> Playground. They\u2019re right, too. It\u2019s how you look at it, maybe. What I wanted to say, though, is that Tom Marshall was like you. He worried about Tommy Marshall and the Playground and the kids, too. He wanted to save Tommy the trouble and the hurt, also.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This business of talking about people as if they were remote made Mr Underhill uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018So we made a bargain,\u2019 said the boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Who with?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018With the Playground. I guess, or whoever runs it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Who runs it?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019ve never seen him. There\u2019s an office over there under the grandstand. A light burns in it all night. It\u2019s a bright, blue light, kind of funny. There\u2019s a desk there with no papers in it and an empty chair. The sign says MANAGER, but nobody ever sees the man.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018He must be around.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018That\u2019s right,\u2019 said the boy. \u2018Or I wouldn\u2019t be where I am, and someone else wouldn\u2019t be where they are.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You certainly talk grown-up.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boy was pleased. \u2018Do you want to know who I really am? I\u2019m not Tommy Marshall at all. I\u2019m Tom Marshall, the father.\u2019 He sat there in the dust, not moving, late at night, under the high and faraway light, with the late wind blowing his shirt collar gently under his chin, blowing the cool dust. \u2018I\u2019m Tom Marshall, the father. I know it\u2019ll be hard for you to believe. But it is<\/em> true. I was afraid for Tommy. I was the way you are now about Jim. So I made this deal with the Playground. Oh, there are others who did the same, here. If you look close, you\u2019ll see them among the other children, by the expression in their eyes.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill blinked. \u2018You\u2019d better run home to bed.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You want to believe me. You want it to be true. I saw your eyes just then! If you could trade places with Jim, you would. You\u2019d like to save him all that torture, let him be in your place, grown-up, the real work over and done.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>\u2018Any decent parent sympathizes with his children.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You, more than most. You feel every bite and kick. Well, you come here tomorrow. You can make a deal, too.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Trade places?\u2019 It was an incredible, an amusing, but an oddly satisfying thought. \u2018What would I have to do?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Just make up your mind.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill tried to make his next question sound very casual, a joke, but his mind was in a rage again. \u2018What would I pay?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Nothing. You\u2019d just have to play in the Playground.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018All day?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And go to school, of course.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And grow up again?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes, and grow up again. Be here at four tomorrow afternoon.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I have to work in the city tomorrow.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tomorrow,\u2019 said the boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You\u2019d better get home to bed, Tommy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018My name is Tom<\/em> Marshall.\u2019 The boy sat there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Playground lights went out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mr Underhill and his sister did not speak at breakfast. He usually phoned her at noon to chat about this or that, but he did not phone. But at onethirty, after a bad lunch, he dialed the house number. When Carol answered he hung up. Five minutes later he phoned again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Charlie, was that you called five minutes ago?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I thought I heard you breathing before you hung up. What\u2019d you call about, dear?\u2019 She was being sensible again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oh, just called.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It\u2019s been a bad two days, hasn\u2019t it? You do<\/em> see what I mean, don\u2019t you, Charlie? Jim must<\/em> go to the Playground and get a few knocks.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A few knocks, yes.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He saw the blood and the hungry foxes and the torn rabbits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And learn to give and take,\u2019 she was saying, \u2018and fight if he has to.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Fight if he has to,\u2019 he murmured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I knew you\u2019d come around.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Around,\u2019 he said. \u2018You\u2019re right. No way out. He must be sacrificed.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oh, Charlie, you are<\/em> odd.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He cleared his throat. \u2018Well, that\u2019s settled.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder what it would be like? he thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Everything else okay?\u2019 he asked the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He thought of the diagrams in the dust, the boy seated there with the hidden bones in his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>\u2018Yes,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019ve been thinking,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Speak up.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019ll be home at three,\u2019 he said, slowly, piecing out the words like a man hit in the stomach, gasping for breath. \u2018We\u2019ll take a walk, you and Jim and I,\u2019 he said, eyes shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Wonderful!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018To the Playground,\u2019 he said and hung up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


It was really autumn now, the real chill, the real snap; overnight the trees burnt red and snapped free of their leaves, which spiraled about Mr Underhill\u2019s face as he walked up the front steps, and there were Carol and Jim bundled up against the sharp wind, waiting for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Hello!\u2019 they cried to one another, with much embracing and kissing. \u2018There\u2019s Jim down there!\u2019 \u2018There\u2019s Daddy up there!\u2019 They laughed and he felt paralyzed and in terror of the late day. It was almost four. He looked at the leaden sky, which might pour down molten silver any moment, a sky of lava and soot and a wet wind blowing out of it. He held his sister\u2019s arm very tightly as they walked. \u2018Aren\u2019t you friendly, though?\u2019 she smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It\u2019s ridiculous, of course,\u2019 he said, thinking of something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were at the Playground gate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Hello, Charlie. Hi!\u2019 Far away, atop the monstrous slide stood the Marshall boy, waving, not smiling now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You wait here,\u2019 said Mr Underhill to his sister. \u2018I\u2019ll be only a moment. I\u2019ll just take Jim in.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018All right.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He grasped the small boy\u2019s hand. \u2018Here we go, Jim. Stick close to Daddy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They stepped down the hard concrete steps and stood in the flat dust. Before them, in a magical sequence, stood the diagrams, the gigantic ticktacktoes, the monstrous hopscotches, the amazing numerals and triangles and oblongs the children had scrabbled in the incredible dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sky blew a huge wind upon him and he was shivering. He grasped the little boy\u2019s hand still tighter and turned to his sister. \u2018Good-by,\u2019 he said. For he was believing it. He was in the Playground and believing it, and it was for the best. Nothing too good for Jim. Nothing at all in this outrageous world! And now his sister was laughing back at him. \u2018Charlie, you idiot!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then they were running, running across the dirt Playground floor, at the bottom of a stony sea that pressed and blew upon them. Now Jim was crying, \u2018Daddy, Daddy!\u2019 and the children racing to meet them, the boy on the slide yelling, the ticktacktoe and the hopscotchers whirling, a sense of bodiless terror gripping him, but he knew what he must do and what <\/a>must be done and what would happen. Far across the field footballs sailed, baseballs whizzed, bats flew, fists flashed up, and the door of the Manager\u2019s office stood open, the desk empty, the seat empty, a lone light burning over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underhill stumbled, shut his eyes and fell, crying out, his body clenched by a hot pain, mouthing strange words, everything in turmoil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There you are, Jim,\u2019 said a voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he was climbing, climbing, eyes closed, climbing metal-ringing ladder rungs, screaming, yelling, his throat raw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Underhill opened his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was on top of the slide. The gigantic, blue metal slide which seemed ten thousand feet high. Children crushed at his back, children beat him to go on, slide! Slide!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he looked, and there, going off across the field, was a man in a black overcoat. And there, at the gate, was a woman waving and the man standing there with the woman, both of them looking in at him, waving, and their voices calling. \u2018Have a good time! Have a good time, Jim!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He screamed. He looked at his hands, in a panic of realization. The small hands, the thin hands. He looked at the earth far below. He felt his nose bleeding and there was the Marshall boy next to him. \u2018Hi!\u2019 cried the other, and bashed him in the mouth. \u2018Only twelve years here!\u2019 cried the other in the uproar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelve years! thought Mr Underhill, trapped. And time is different to children. A year is like ten years. No, not twelve years of childhood ahead of him, but a century, a century of this<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Slide!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind him the stink of Musterole, Vicks VapoRub, peanuts, chewed hot tar, spearmint gum and blue fountain-pen ink, the smell of kite twine and glycerin soap, a pumpkin smell of Halloween and a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 fragrance of skull masks, and the smell of dry scabs, as he was pinched, pummeled, shoved. Fists rose and fell, he saw the fox faces and beyond, at the fence, the man and woman standing there, waving. He shrieked, he covered his face, he felt himself pushed, bleeding, to the rim of nothingness. Headfirst, he careened down the slide, screeching, with ten thousand monsters behind. One thought jumped through his mind a moment before he hit bottom in a nauseous mound of claws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is hell<\/em>, he thought, this is hell!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And no one in the hot, milling heap contradicted him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE END<\/p>\n\n\n