Montag put his cards down.
"Tired, Montag? Going out of this game?"
"Yes."
"Hold on. Well, come to think of it, we can finish this hand later. Just leave your cards face down and hustle the equipment. On the double now." And Beatty rose up again. "Montag, you don't look well? I'd hate to think you were coming down with another fever . . ."
"I'll be all right."
"You'll be fine. This is a special case. Come on, jump for it!"
They leapt into the air and clutched the brass pole as if it were the last vantage point above a tidal wave passing below, and then the brass pole, to their dismay, slid them down into darkness, into the blast and cough and suction of the gaseous dragon roaring to life!
"Hey!"
They rounded a corner in thunder and siren, with concussion of tires, with scream of rubber, with a shift of kerosene bulk in the glittery brass tank, like the food in the stomach of a giant, with Montag's fingers jolting off the silver rail, swinging into cold space, with the wind tearing his hair back from his head, with the wind whistling in his teeth, and him all the while thinking of the women, the chaff women in his parlor tonight, with the kernels blown out from under them by a neon wind, and his silly damned reading of a book to them. How like trying to put out fires with water pistols, how senseless and insane. One rage turned in for another. One anger displacing another. When would he stop being entirely mad and be quiet, be very quiet indeed?
"Here we go!"
Montag looked up. Beatty never drove, but he was driving tonight, slamming the Salamander around corners, leaning forward high on the driver's throne, his massive black slicker flapping out behind so that he seemed a great black bat flying above the engine, over the brass numbers, taking the full wind.
"Here we go to keep the world happy, Montag!"
Beatty's pink, phosphorescent cheeks glimmered in the high darkness, and he was smiling furiously.
"Here we are!"
The Salamander boomed to a halt, throwing men off in slips and clumsy hops. Montag stood fixing his raw eyes to the cold bright rail under his clenched fingers.
I can't do it, he thought. How can I go at this new assignment, how can I go on burning things? I can't go in this place.
Beatty, smelling of the wind through which he had rushed, was at Montag's elbow. "All right, Montag."
The men ran like cripples in their clumsy boots, as quietly as spiders.
At last Montag raised his eyes and turned.
Beatty was watching his face.
"Something the matter, Montag?"
"Why," said Montag slowly, "we've stopped in front of my house."
three
Burning Bright
Lights flicked on and house doors opened all down the street, to watch the carnival set up. Montag and Beatty stared, one with dry satisfaction, the other with disbelief, at the house before them, this main ring in which torches would be juggled and fire eaten.
"Well," said Beatty, "now you did it. Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why. Didn't I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place?"
Montag's face was entirely numb and featureless; he felt his head turn like a stone carving to the dark place next door, set in its bright border of flowers.
Beatty snorted. "Oh, no! You weren't fooled by that little idiot's routine, now, were you? Flowers, butterflies, leaves, sunsets, oh, hell! It's all in her file. I'll be damned. I've hit the bull's-eye. Look at the sick look on your face. A few grass blades and the quarters of the moon. What trash. What good did she ever do with all that?"
Montag sat on the cold fender of the Dragon, moving his head half an inch to the left, half an inch to the right, left, right, left, right, left. . . .
"She saw everything. She didn't do anything to anyone. She just let them alone."