Dandelion Wine

Should a Happiness Machine, he wondered, be something you can carry in your pocket?

Or, he went on, should it be something that carries you in its pocket?

"One thing I absolutely know," he said aloud. "It should be bright!"

He sat a can of orange paint in the centre of the workbench, picked up a dictionary, and wandered into the house.

"Lena?" He glanced at the dictionary. "Are you 'pleased, content, joyful, delighted'? Do you feel 'lucky, fortunate'? Are things 'clever and fitting', 'successful and suitable' for you?"

Lena stopped slicing the vegetables and closed her eyes. "Read me the list again, please," she said.

He shut the book. "What have I done, you got to stop and think an hour before you can tell me. All I ask is a simple yes or no! You're not contented, delighted, joyful?"

"Cows are contented, babies and old people in second childhood are delighted, God help them," she said. "As for joyful, 'Lee? Look how I laugh scrubbing out the sink ..."

He peered closely at her and his face relaxed. "Lena, it's true. A man doesn't appreciate. Next month, maybe, we'll get away."

"I'm not complaining!" she cried. "I'm not the one who comes in with a list saying, 'stick out your tongue. Lee, do you ask what makes your heart beat all night? No! Next will you ask, 'What's marriage?' Who knows Lee? Don't ask. A man who thinks like that, how it runs, how things work, falls off the trapeze in the circus, chokes wondering how the muscles work in the throat. Eat, sleep, breathe, Lee, and stop staring at me like I'm something new in the house!"

Lena Auffman froze. She sniffed the air.

"Oh, my God, look what you done!"

She yanked the oven door open. A great cloud of smoke poured through the kitchen.

"Happiness!" she wailed. "And for the first time in six months we have a fight! Happiness, and for the first time in twenty years it's not bread, it's charcoal for supper!"

Ray Bradbury

9:40 a.m. - 2014-09-26