The October Country

Homesteading the October Country

An Introduction

Well, now, how do you do that—homestead an autumn landscape that won’t stand still, all whispers, shadows, and dousing rains?

It all began the day I was born. Oh my god, I can hear you say, here comes the flim-flam. No, no, I say, here comes a consequential truth: I remember being born.

Can’t be done, you counter. Never happened.

Did, is my response.

I found out many, many years later the reason for my remembrance: I was a ten-month baby. Which means what? That snugged away for an extra twenty-eight or thirty days I had a serene opportunity to develop my sight, hearing, and taste. I came forth wide-eyed, aware of everything I saw and felt. Especially the dreadful shock of being propelled out into a cooler environment, leaving my old home forever, to be surrounded by strangers.

All because I had lingered for that extra month and sharpened my senses.

You must admit that gave me an advantage few other humans have had, to emerge with my retina in full register to recall from Instant One a lifetime of metaphors, large and small.

From that moment on I can recollect my life.

When I was three my mother, a maniac for silent movies, toted me to the cinema to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney riding the bells and raining hot liquid lead on the villains below the church.

I did not encounter the Hunchback again until I was seventeen, when some unholy friends took me to a theatre in Hollywood for a late-on-in-life review. Before we entered I told my friends I remembered the entire film, last seen when I was three. They snorted and laughed. I described the most important scenes. We then went in and there were all the scenes I had described.

The Phantom of the Opera. Same experience. 1925. Imbedded in the dark place at the back of my head.

The Lost World. Same year. The dinosaurs lingered into my thirties when I wrote them down and did a film with the fabulous animator of dinosaurs, Ray Harryhausen, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Add them all up, being born aware, climbing Notre Dame with the Hunchback, shadowing the Opera with the Phantom, falling off prehistoric cliffs with brontosaurs, and you arrive at the age of twelve to begin writing.

Along the way you illustrate skeletons for your school because skeletons are wondrous ramshackle items that birth themselves when the humans they wore go away.

Along the way you discover you are alive—age twelve. Discover you can die—age fourteen. Plus the funerals of your grandfather and sister and a few friends, waking you up midnight.

And THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is inevitable.

When I finished my first short story in the seventh grade I knew I was on the right path to immortality. Or the sort of immortality that counts, being remembered here and there in your time while alive, existing a few years after your death beyond all that.

From the age of twelve I knew I was in a life and death match, winning every time I finished a new story, threatened with extinction on those days I did not write. The only answer, then, was: write. I have written every day of my life since my twelfth year. Death has not caught me yet. He will, eventually, of course, but for the time being the sound of my IBM Wheelwriter Number Ten electric typewriter puts him off his feed.

There you have the noon at midnight platform for a writing life. Once established hiding behind the towering bastion of my IBM machine, I hurled fireballs at the Dark Presence, daring him to try again.

The contest has resulted in all that you will read here. “The Small Assassin” is, of course, me. “The Homecoming” family is my Waukegan hometown family, surrounding me in my youth, prolonging themselves into shadows and haunts when I reached maturity. “Skeleton” resulted from my discovering the bones within my flesh, plus seeing the pale skull ghost of myself in an X-ray film.

“Uncle Einar” is a love story. I so loved my favorite loud, brash Swedish uncle that I named and wrote a story about him, adding wings.

“The Next in Line” recites my terror of being trapped in Mexico, in a corridor of mummies I hope never to see again.

“The Jar” was a display I witnessed at a seaside carnival when I was fourteen. A whole series of jars, in which mysterious objects floated, haunted me for years until I wrote about them.

Finally, on the threshold of puberty, “Mr. Electrico,” the carnival magician, summoned me away from graveyards and funerals, touched me with the St. Elmo’s fire sword and shouted sound advice: “Live forever!”

I did just that.

And here I am.

And here it is.

THE OCTOBER COUNTRY.

I bid you welcome.

RAY BRADBURY

Los Angeles, California

January 1999