Cut.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sometimes you see a kite so high, so wise it almost knows the wind. It travels, then chooses to land in

one spot and no other and no matter how you yank, run this way or that, it will simply break its cord,

seek its resting place and bring you, blood-mouthed, running.

"Jim! Wait for me!"

So now Jim was the kite, the wild twine cut, and whatever wisdom was his taking him away from Will

who could only run, earthbound, after one so high and dark silent and suddenly strange.

 

"Jim, here I come!"

 

And running, Will thought, Boy, it's the same old thing. I talk. Jim runs. I tilt stones, Jim grabs the cold

junk under the stones and - lickety-split! I climb hills. Jim yells off church steeples. I got a bank account.

Jim's got the hair on his head, the yell in his mouth, the shirt on his back and the tennis shoes on his feet.

How come I think he's richer? Because, Will thought, I sit on a rock in the sun and old Jim, he prickles

his arm-hairs by moonlight and dances with hop-toads. I tend cows, Jim tames Gila monsters. Fool! I yell at Jim. Coward! he yells back. And here we - go!

And they ran from town, across fields and both froze under a rail bridge with the moon ready beyond

the hills and the meadows trembling with a fur of dew.

Ray Bradbury, from Something Wicked This Way Comes