The Fireman Read Online Free

she should've thought of that. I hate her. She's got you going and next thing you know we'll be out, no house, no job, nothing."
     
    "You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, whole worlds we don't dream about, to make a woman stay in a burning house. There must be something fine there. You don't stay and burn for nothing."
     
    "She was simple-minded."
     
    "She was as rational as you or I, more so, and we burned her."
     
    "That's water under the bridge."
     
    "No, not water, Millie, but fire. You ever seen a burned house? It smolders for days. Well, this fire'll last me half a century. My God, I've been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night, and I'm crazy with trying."
     
    "You should've thought of that before becoming a fireman."
     
    "I THOUGHT!" he said. "Was I given a choice? I was raised to think the best thing in the world is not to read. The best thing is television and radio and ball games and a home I can't afford and, Good Lord, now, only now I realize what I've done. My grandfather and father were firemen. Walking in my sleep, I followed them."
     
    The radio was playing a dance tune.
     
    "I've been killing the brain of the world for ten years, pouring kerosene on it. Millie, a book is a brain. It isn't only that woman we destroyed, or others like her, in these years, but it's the thoughts I burned and never knew it."
     
    He got out of bed.
     
    "It took some man a lifetime to put some of his thoughts on paper, looking after all the beauty and goodness in life, and then we come along in two minutes and heave it in the incinerator!"
     
    "Let me alone," said Mildred.
     
    "Let you alone!" He almost cried out with laughter. "Letting you alone is easy, but how can I leave myself alone? That's what's wrong. We need not to be let alone. We need to be upset and stirred and bothered, once in a while, anyway. Nobody bothers any more. Nobody thinks. Let a baby alone, why don't you? What would you have in twenty years? A savage, unable to think or talk — like us!"
     
    Mildred glanced out the window. "Now you've done it. Look who's here."
     
    "I don't give a damn." He was feeling better but didn't know why.
     
    "It's Mr. Leahy."
     
    The elation drained away. Mr. Montag slumped.
     
    "Go open the door," he said, at last. "Tell him I'm sick."
     
    "Tell him yourself."
     
    He made sure the book was hidden behind the pillow, climbed back into bed, and had made himself tremblingly uncomfortable, when the door opened and Mr. Leahy strolled in, hands in pockets.
     
    "Shut the radio off," said Leahy, abstractedly.
     
    This time, Mildred obeyed.
     
    Mr. Leahy sat down in a comfortable chair with a look of strange peace in his pink face. He did not look at Montag.
     
    "Just thought I'd come by and see how the sick man is."
     
    "How'd you guess?"
     
    "Oh." Leahy smiled his pink smile, and shrugged. "I'm an old hand at this. I've seen it all. You were going to call me and tell me you needed a day off."
     
    "Yes."
     
    "WELL, take a day off," said Leahy, looking at his hands. He carried an eternal match with him at times in a little case which said, Guaranteed: One Million Cigarets Can Be Lit with this Match , and kept striking this abstractedly against its case as he talked. "Take a day off. Take two. But never take three." He struck the match and looked at the flame and blew it out. "When will you be well?"
     
    "Tomorrow, the next day, first of the week, I..."
     
    "We've been wondering about you." Leahy put a cigar in his mouth. "Every fireman goes through this. They only need understanding, need to know how the wheels run, what the history of our profession is. They don't give it to rookies any more. Only fire chiefs remember it now. I'll let you in on it." He lit the cigar leisurely.
     
    Mildred fidgeted.
     
    "You ask yourself about the burning of books, why, how, when." Leahy exuded a great gray cloud of smoke.
     
    "Maybe," said Montag.
     
    "It started around about