The Ravine Read Online Free PDF

tiny dot of light, about the size of a dime, appeared on the dark oval of glass. I held my breath and waited. Then I exhaled and held my breath again. Then let it out. The tiny dot of light seemed to have little intention of becoming anything larger.
    Uncle Johnny brought the heel of his hand down upon the cherry wood housing and the dot blossomed, its soft black edges pushing outward to the rim of the glass. Inside the oval of light there was a figure, indistinct and wavering. The man (even though the television screen was absolutely grey, there was darkness enough to suggest a black suit) spoke in a voice cluttered with static, but I heard, and I remember, what he said. “You are entering another dimension of time and space …”
    “Hey,” said my mother, “this thing works better than I thought it would.”
    “Hold on,” said Uncle Johnny, and he reached into the pocket of his overcoat and removed a pair of rabbit ears. I guess it says somethingabout my uncle and his dimensions that he could produce one of these portable antennae in this surprising and wizardly manner. He placed the plastic base on top of the console and went behind the set to do the wiring. I peeked around to see what he was up to. I don’t remember leaving the kitchen for the living room—I guess I’d moved forward in a sort of trance.
    My uncle was removing two screws from a little brass plate at the back with his thumbnail, huge and chipped and stained yellow by the cigarettes he smoked hoodlum-style. Then he positioned the metal u’s at the end of the antenna’s wiring and drove the screws back in.
    The image of the man suddenly hove into focus. He was weedy and sallow and had dark shellacked hair. Despite his elegant black suit, he, like my uncle, smoked his cigarette hoodlum-style, squeezed between thumb and index finger, the ember pointed palmward.
    “Submitted for your approval,” said this man, “‘Time Enough at Last.’”
    All right, there are a number of ways to proceed here, at least three different areas that must be covered, and while a better writer might be able to continue forward in a linear manner, juggling them all, I’m just not up to it.
    So in a blocky and unimaginative form, here are the three things you should hear about.
    The television show was
The Twilight Zone
, a continuing series of one-offs (excuse the argot), strange and twisted fictions largely written by the man in the black suit, Rod Serling. I think Serling is one of the great dramatists of the twentieth century—at least, I have made this claim at various industry seminars, and I have supported the claim by belligerently (usually drunkenly) refusing to brook any argument. But there is something to it. Even ignoring some of his wonderful long-form stuff
(Requiem for a Heavyweight
, for example),many of the episodes of
The Twilight Zone
have made lasting impressions. Ask anyone over a certain age to name their favourite, and it will be quickly forthcoming. Rainie van der Glick was always very partial to an episode entitled “The Eye of the Beholder,” which featured a woman whose entire face was swathed in post-plastic-surgery bandaging. Doctors surround the woman (we see them only from the back, or hidden by shadow) and, as they cut away the gauze, they wonder and hope aloud about the success of the operation. The bandages are removed to reveal a woman of stunning beauty; the doctors and nurses are then shown to be hideously deformed. And, of course, the medical people are repulsed, because beauty is in …
    “Time Enough at Last” is likewise a famous episode, starring Burgess Meredith, who plays Henry Bemis, a meek bank teller and bibliophile. Reading constitutes the whole of this man’s life and passion. He resents even the most innocent demands on his time, and can’t wait for lunchtime, when he can escape to the huge vault with his bagged lunch. (Henry is also burdened with a shrewish wife, something I am a little hesitant to bring up, for