The Day it Rained Forever by Ray Bradbury

did not cry out happily or turn to him or seize him. Her silence was a thinking silence.
    He was forced to continue. ‘This bed is nothing but a pipe organ, a calliope.’
    â€˜It is a bed,’ she said.
    â€˜A herd of camels sleep under it.’
    â€˜No,’ she said quietly, ‘from it will come precincts of honest voters, captains enough for three armies, two ballerinas, a famous lawyer, a very tall policeman, and seven basso profundos, altos, and sopranos.’
    He squinted across the dimly lighted room at the receipt upon the bureau. He touched the worn mattress under him. The springs moved softly to recognize each limb, each tired muscle, each aching bone.
    He sighed. ‘I never argue with you, little one.’
    â€˜Mama,’ she said.
    â€˜Mama,’ he said.
    And then as he closed his eyes and drew the covers to his chest and lay in the darkness by the great fountain, in the sight of a jury of fierce metal lions and amber goats and smiling gargoyles, he listened. And he heard it. It was very far away at first, very tentative, but it came clearer as he listened.
    Softly, her arm back over her head, Maria’s finger-tips began to tap a little dance on the gleaming harp strings, on the shimmering brass pipes of the ancient bed. The music was – yes, of course: Santa Lucia! His lips moved to it in a warm whisper. Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia!
    It was very beautiful.

The Town Where No One Got Off
    C ROSSING the continental United States by night, by day, on the train, you flash past town after wilderness town where nobody ever gets off. Or rather, no person who doesn’t belong , no person who hasn’t roots in these country graveyards ever bothers to visit their lonely stations or attend their lonely views.
    I spoke of this to a fellow-passenger, another salesman like myself, on the Chicago-Los Angeles train as we crossed Iowa.
    â€˜True,’ he said. ‘People get off in Chicago, everyone gets off there. People get off in New York, get off in Boston, get off in L.A. People who don’t live there go there to see and come back to tell. But what tourist ever just got off at Fox Hill, Nebraska, to look at it? You? Me? No! I don’t know anyone, got no business there, it’s no health resort, so why bother?’
    â€˜Wouldn’t it be a fascinating change,’ I said, ‘some year to plan a really different vacation? Pick some village lost on the plains where you don’t know a soul and go there for the hell of it?’
    â€˜You’d be bored stiff.’
    â€˜I’m not bored, thinking of it!’ I peered out of the window. ‘What’s the next town coming up on this line?’
    â€˜Rampart Junction.’
    I smiled. ‘Sounds good. I might get off there.’
    â€˜You’re a liar and a fool. What you want? Adventure? Romance? Go ahead, jump off the train. Ten seconds later you’ll call yourself an idiot, grab a taxi and race us to the next town.’
    â€˜Maybe.’
    I watched telephone poles flick by, flick by, flick by. Far ahead I could see the first faint outlines of a town.
    â€˜But I don’t think so,’ I heard myself say.
    The salesman across from me looked faintly surprised.
    For slowly, very slowly, I was rising to stand. I reached for my hat. I saw my hand fumble for my one suitcase. I was surprised, myself.
    â€˜Hold on!’ said the salesman. ‘What’re you doing?’
    The train rounded a curve suddenly. I swayed. Far ahead, I saw one church spire, a deep forest, a field of summer wheat.
    â€˜It looks like I’m getting off the train,’ I said.
    â€˜Sit down,’ he said.
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘There’s a something about that town up ahead. I’ve got to go see. I’ve got the time. I don’t have to be in L.A., really, until next Monday. If I don’t get off the train now, I’ll always wonder what I missed, what I let slip by when I had the