"Leo, how right you are," said Grandfather Spaulding, passing on his nightly stroll with his grandsons Douglas and Tom. "But, Leo, only you can shut these doom-talkers up. Invent something that will make the future brighter, well rounded, infinitely joyous. You've invented bicycles, fixed the penny-arcade contraptions, been our town movie projectionist, haven't you?"
"Sure," said Douglas. "Invent us a happiness machine!"
The men laughed.
"Don't," said Leo Auffmann. "How have we used machines so far, to make people cry? Yes! Every time man and the machine look like they will get on all right--boom! Someone adds a cog, airplanes drop bombs on us, cars run us off cliffs. So is the boy wrong to ask? No! No ..."
His voice faded as Leo Auffmann moved to the curb to touch his bicycle as if it were an animal.
"What can I lose?" he murmured. "A little skin off my fingers, a few pounds of metal, some sleep? I'll do it, so help me!"
"Leo," said Grandfather, "we didn't mean--"
But Leo Auffmann was gone, pedaling off through the warm summer evening, his voice drifting back. "... I'll do it. "
"You know," said Tom, in awe, "I bet he will."
Watching him cycle the brick streets of evening, you could see that Leo Auffmann was a man who coasted along, enjoying the way the thistles ticked in the hot grass when the wind blew like a furnace, or the way the electric power lines sizzled on the rain-wet poles. He was a man who did not suffer but pleasured in sleepless nights of brooding on the great clock of the universe running down or winding itself up, who could tell? But many nights, listening, he decided first one way and then the other ...
The shocks of life, he thought, biking along, what were they? Getting born, growing up, growing old, dying. Not much to do about the first. But--the other three?
The wheels of his Happiness Machine spun whirling golden light spokes along the ceiling of his head. A machine, now, to help boys change from peach fuzz to briar bramble, girls from toadstool to nectarine. And in the years when your shadow leaned clear across the land as you lay abed nights with your heartbeat mounting to the billions, his invention must let a man drowse easy in the falling leaves like the boys in autumn who, comfortably strewn in the dry stacks, are content to be a part of the death of the world....
"Papa!"
His six children, Saul, Marshall, Joseph, Rebecca, Ruth, Naomi, all ages from five to fifteen, came rushing across the lawn to take his bike, each touching him at once.
"We waited. We got ice cream!"
Moving toward the porch, he could feel his wife's smile there in the dark.
Five minutes passed in comfortable eating silence, then, holding a spoonful of moon-colored ice cream up as if it were the whole secret of the universe to be tasted carefully he said, "Lena? What would you think if I tried to invent a Happiness Machine?"
"Something's wrong?" she asked quickly.
Grandfather walked Douglas and Tom home. Halfway there, Charlie Woodman and John Huff and some other boys rushed by like a swarm of meteors, their gravity so huge they pulled Douglas away from Grandfather and Tom and swept him off toward the ravine.
"Don't get lost, son!"
"I won't ... I won't ..."
&n
bsp; The boys plunged into darkness.
Tom and Grandfather walked the rest of the way in silence, except when they turned in at home and Tom said, "Boy, a Happiness Machine--hot diggety!"
"Don't hold your breath," said Grandpa.
The courthouse clock struck eight.
The courthouse clock struck nine and it was getting late and it was really night on this small street in a small town in a big state on a large continent on a planet earth hurtling down the pit of space toward nowhere or somewhere and Tom feeling every mile of the long drop. He sat by the front-door screen looking out at that rushing blackness that looked very innocent, as if it was holding still. Only when you closed your eyes and lay down could you feel the world spinning under your bed and hollowing your ears with a black sea that came in and broke on cliffs that weren't there.
There was a smell of rain. Mother was ironing and sprinkling water from a corked ketchup bottle over the crackling dry clothes behind Tom.
One store was still open about a block away--Mrs. Singer's.
Finally, just before it was time for Mrs. Singer to close her store, Mother relented and told Tom, "Run get a pint of ice cream and be sure she packs it tight."