Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2)

by Ray Bradbury

But the sun vanished, the coins were spent, the air blew gray; the salesman shook himself from the spell. The salesman edged slowly up the lawn.

But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did.

“Do we?” said Will’s father. “Let’s see. Charles William Halloway. Nothing extraordinary about me except I’m fifty-four, which is always extraordinary to the man inside it. Born in Sweet Water, lived in Chicago, survived in New York, brooded in Detroit, floundered in lots of places, arrived here late, after living in libraries around the country all those years because I liked being alone, liked matching up in books what I’d seen on the roads. Then in the middle of all the running-away, which I called travel, in my thirty-ninth year, your mother fixed me with one glance, been here ever since. Still most comfortable in the library nights, in out of the rain of people.