Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury

er up to seventy, eighty, hell! why not
ninety!"
                 Neva
gave a quick, critical look at the lion, the intruder in the back seat, to see
if she could shut his jaws with a glance. They shut.
                 And
that, of course, is how Doug felt about the beast. Not a stranger, no, not
hitchhiker, but intruder. In just two minutes of leaping into the red-hot car,
with his jungle hair and jungle smell, he had managed to dis -ingratiate
himself with the climate, the automobile, Doug, and the honorable and
perspiring aunt. Now she hunched over the wheel and nursed the car through
further storms of heat and backlashes of gravel.
                 Meanwhile,
the creature in the back, with his great lion ruff of hair and mint-fresh
yellow eyes, licked his lips and looked straight on at Doug ia the rearview mirror. He gave a wink. Douglas tried to wink back, but somehow
the lid never came down.
                 "You
ever try to figure—" yelled the man.
                 "What?"
cried Neva.
                 "You
ever try to figure," shouted the man, leaning forward between them "—whether
or not the weather is driving you crazy, or you're crazy already?"
                 It
was a surprise of a question, which suddenly cooled them on this blast-furnace
day.
                 "I
don't quite understand—" said Neva.
                 "Nor
does anyone!" The man smelled like a lion house. His thin arms hung over
and down between them, nervously tying and untying an invisible string. He
moved as if there were nests of burning hair under each armpit. "Day like
today, all hell breaks loose inside your head. Lucifer was born on a day like
this, in a wilderness like this," said the man. "With just fire and
flame and smoke everywhere," said the man. "And everything so hot you
can't touch it, and people not wanting to be touched," said the man.
                 He
gave a nudge to her elbow, a nudge to the boy.
                 They
jumped a mile.
                 "You
see?" The man smiled. "Day like today, you get to thinking lots of
things." He smiled. " Ain't this the summer
when the seventeen-year locusts are supposed to come back like pure holocaust?
Simple but multitudinous plagues?"
                 "Don't
know!" Neva drove fast, staring ahead.
                 "This is the summer. Holocaust just around
the bend. I'm thinking so swift it hurts my eyeballs, cracks my head. I'm
liable to explode in a fireball with just plain disconnected thought. Why—why—why—"
                 Neva
swallowed hard. Doug held his breath.
                 Quite
suddenly they were terrified. For the man simply idled on with his talk,
looking at the shimmering green fire trees that burned by on both sides,
sniffing the rich hot dust that flailed up around the tin car, his voice
neither high nor low, but steady and calm now in describing his life:
                 "Yes,
sir, there's more to the world than people appreciate. If there can be
seventeen-year locusts, why not seventeen-year people? Ever thought of that?"
                 "Never
did," said someone.
                 Probably
me, thought Doug, for his mouth had moved like a mouse.
                 "Or
how about twenty-four-year people, or fifty-seven-year people? I mean, we're
all so used to people growing up, marrying, having kids, we never stop to think
maybe there's other ways for people coming into the world, maybe like locusts,
once in a while, who can tell, one hot day, middle of summer!"
                 "Who
can tell?" There was the mouse again. Doug's lips trembled.
                 "And
who's to say there ain't genetic evil in the
world?" asked the man of the sun, glaring right up at it without blinking.
                 "What kind of evil?" asked
Neva.
                 "Genetic,
ma'am. In