August 10, 2025 • 16 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time enough at last by Lynn Venable. For a long time,
Henry Beamos had had an ambition to read a book,
not just the title or the preface, or a page
somewhere in the middle. He wanted to read the whole thing,
all the way through, from beginning to end. A simple ambition, perhaps,
(00:23):
but in the cluttered life of Henry Beamos, an impossibility.
Henry had no time of his own. There was his wife, Agnes,
who owned that part of it that his employer, mister
Carsville did not buy. Henry was allowed enough to get
to and from work, that in itself being quite a
concession on Agnes's part. Also, nature had conspired against Henry
(00:49):
by handing him with a pair of hopelessly myopic eyes.
Poor Henry literally couldn't see his hand in front of
his face for a while. When he was very young,
his parents had thought him an idiot. When they realized
it was his eyes, they got glasses for him. He
was never quite able to catch up. There was never
(01:11):
enough time. It looked as though Henry's ambition would never
be realized. Then something happened which changed all that. Henry
was down in the vault of the east Side Bank
and Trust when it happened, he had stolen a few
moments from the duties of his teller's cage to try
to read a few pages of the magazine he had
(01:33):
bought that morning. He had made an excuse to mister
Carsville about needing bills in large denominations for a certain customer,
And then, safe inside the dim recesses of the vault,
he had pulled from inside his coat the pocket size magazine.
He had just started a picture article cheerfully entitled the
(01:53):
New Weapons and what They'll Do to You. When all
the noise in the world crashed in upon his ear
drup ums. It seemed to be inside of him and
outside of him all at once. Then the concrete floor
was rising up at him, and the ceiling came slanting
down toward him, and for a fleeting second, Henry thought
of a story he had started to read once called
(02:16):
The Pit and the Pendulum. He regretted in that insane
moment that he had never had time to finish that
story to see how it came out. Then all was
darkness and quiet and unconsciousness. When Henry came too, he
knew that something was desperately wrong with the East Side Bank.
(02:37):
And trust. The heavy steel door of the vault was
buckled and twisted, and the floor tilted up at a
dizzy angle, while the ceiling dipped crazily toward it. Henry
gingerly got to his feet, moving arms and legs experimentally.
Assured that nothing was broken, he tenderly raised a hand
(02:58):
to his eyes. His precious glasses were intact. Thank god,
he would never have been able to find his way
out of the shattered vault without them. He made a
mental note to write doctor Torrance to have a spare
pair made and mailed to him, blasted nuisance, not having
his prescription on file locally, But Henry trusted no one
(03:21):
but doctor Torrance to grind those thick lenses into his
own complicated prescription. Henry removed the heavy glasses from his face.
Instantly the room dissolved into a neutral blur. Henry saw
a pink splash that he knew was his hand, and
a white blob come up to meet the pink as
(03:42):
he withdrew his pocket handkerchief and carefully dusted the lenses.
As he replaced the glasses, they slipped down on the
bridge of his nose a little. He had been meaning
to have them tightened for some time. He suddenly realized,
without the realization actually entering his thoughts, that something momentous
(04:02):
had happened, something worse than the boiler blowing up, something
worse than a gas mane exploding, something worse than anything
that had ever happened before. He felt that way because
it was so quiet. There was no whine of sirens,
no shouting, no running, just an ominous and all pervading silence.
(04:26):
Henry walked across the slanting floor, slipping and stumbling on
the uneven surface. He made his way to the elevator.
The car lay crumpled at the foot of the shaft,
like a discarded accordion. There was something inside of it
that Henry could not look at, something that had once
been a person, or perhaps several people, it was impossible
(04:47):
to tell now. Feeling sick, Henry staggered toward the stairway.
The steps were still there, but so jumbled and piled
back upon one another that it was more like climbing
the side of a mountain than mounting a stairway. It
was quiet in the huge chamber that had been the
(05:07):
lobby of the bank. It looked strangely cheerful, with the
sunlight shining through the girders where the ceiling had fallen.
The dappled sunlight glinted across the silent lobby, and everywhere
there were huddled lumps of unpleasantness that made Henry sick
as he tried not to look at them. Mister Carsville,
(05:30):
he called, It was very quiet. Something had to be done.
Of course, this was terrible, right in the middle of
a monday too. Mister Carsville would know what to do.
He called again, more loudly, and his voice cracked hoarsely,
mister Carsville. And then he saw an arm and shoulder
(05:53):
extending out from under a huge fallen block of marble ceiling.
In the buttonhole was the white carnation mister Carsville had
worn to work that morning, and on the third finger
of that hand was a massive signet ring, also belonging
to mister Carsville. Numbly, Henry realized that the rest of
(06:13):
mister Carsville was under that block of marble. Henry felt
a pang of real sorrow. Mister Carsville was gone, and
so was the rest of the staff, mister Wilkinson and
mister Emery and mister Prithard and the same with Pete
and Ralph and Jenkins and Hunter and Pat the guard
(06:33):
and Willie the doorman. There was no one to say
what was to be done about the East Side Bank
and Trust except Henry Beams. And Henry wasn't worried about
the bank. There was something he wanted to do. He
climbed carefully over piles of fallen masonry. Once he stepped
down into something that crunched and squashed beneath his feet,
(06:57):
and he set his teeth on edge to keep from wretching.
The street was not much different from the inside, bright
sunlight and so much concrete to crawl over, but the
unpleasantness was much much worse. Everywhere there were strange, motionless
lumps that Henry could not look at. Suddenly, he remembered Agnes.
(07:20):
He should be trying to get to Agnes, shouldn't he.
He remembered a poster he had seen that said, an
event of emergency, do not use the telephone. Your loved
ones are as safe as you. He wondered about Agnes.
He looked at the smashed automobiles, some with their four
wheels pointing skyward like the stiffened legs of dead animals.
(07:45):
He couldn't get to Agnes now anyway. If she was safe,
then she was safe. Otherwise, of course, Henry knew Agnes
wasn't safe. He had a feeling that there wasn't anyone
safe for a long, long way. Maybe not in the
whole state, or the whole country, or the whole world. No,
(08:08):
that was a thought Henry didn't want to think. He
forced it from his mind and turned his thoughts back
to Agnes. She had been a pretty good wife, now
that it was all said and done. It wasn't exactly
her fault if people didn't have time to read nowadays,
it was just that there was the house and the
bank and the yard. There were the Joneses for bridge,
(08:31):
and the Graysons for Canasta, and charades with the Bryants,
and the television, the television Agnes loved to watch, but
would never watch alone. He never had time to read,
even a newspaper. He started thinking about last night, that business.
About the newspaper. Henry had settled into his chair quietly,
(08:55):
afraid that a creaking spring might call to Agnes's attention
the fact that he was momentarily unoccupied. He had unfolded
the newspaper slowly and carefully. The sharp crackle of the
paper would have been a clarion call to Agnes. He
had glanced at the headlines of the first page, Collapse
(09:16):
of conference imminent. He didn't have time to read the article.
He turned to the second page, Solan predicts war only
days away. He flipped through the pages faster, reading brief
snatches here and there, afraid to spend too much time
on any one item. On a back page was a
(09:38):
brief article entitled prehistoric artifacts unearthed in Yucatan. Henry smiled
to himself and carefully folded the sheet of paper into fourths.
That would be interesting. He would read all of it.
Then it came Agnes's voice, Henry, and then she was
(09:59):
upon him. She lightly flicked the paper out of his
hands and into the fireplace. He saw the flames lick
up and curl possessively around the unread article. Agnes continued, Henry,
tonight is the Joneses Bridge night. They'll be here in
thirty minutes, and I'm not dressed yet, and here you
(10:20):
are reading. She had emphasized the last word as though
it were an unclean act. Hurry and shave, you know
how smooth jasper Jones's chin always looks and then straighten
up this room. She glanced regretfully toward the fireplace. Oh
dear that paper. The television schedule. Oh well, after the
(10:45):
Jones leave, there won't be time for anything but the
late late movie. And don't just sit there, Henry, hurry.
Henry was hurrying now, but hurrying too much. He cut
his leg on a twist piece of metal that had
once been an automobile fender. He thought about things like
(11:05):
lockjaw and gangreen, and his hand trembled as he tied
his pocket handkerchief around the wound. In his mind, he
saw the fire again, licking across the face of last
night's newspaper. He thought that now he would have time
to read all the newspapers he wanted to. Only now
there wouldn't be any more. That heap of rubble across
(11:28):
the street had been the Gazette building. It was terrible
to think that there would never be another up to
date newspaper. Agnes would have been very upset no television schedule,
but then, of course, no television. He wanted to laugh,
but he didn't. That wouldn't have been fitting, not at all.
(11:51):
He could see the building he was looking for now,
but the silhouette was strangely changed. The great circular dome
was now a ragged semicircle, half of it gone, and
one of the great wings of the building had fallen
in upon itself. A sudden panic gripped Henry beams. What
(12:11):
if they were all ruined, destroyed, every one of them.
What if there wasn't a single one left. Tears of
helplessness welled in his eyes as he painfully fought his
way over and through the twisted fragments of the city.
He thought of the building when it had been whole.
He remembered the many nights he had paused outside its
(12:33):
wide and welcoming doors. He thought of the warm nights
when the doors had been thrown open and he could
see the people inside, see them sitting at the plain
wooden tables, with the stacks of books beside them. He
used to think, then, what a wonderful thing a public
library was, a place where anybody, anybody at all, could
(12:56):
go in and read. He had been tempted to enter
many times. He had watched the people through the open doors,
the man in greasy work clothes who sat near the
door night after night, laboriously studying a technical journal, perhaps
difficult for him, but promising a brighter future. There had
(13:17):
been an aged scholarly gentleman who sat on the other
side of the door, leisurely paging, moving his lips a
little as he did so, a man having little time left,
but rich in time because he could do with it
as he chose. Henry had never gone in. He had
started up the steps once got almost to the door,
(13:38):
but then he remembered agnes Her questions and shouting, and
he had turned away. He was going in now, though,
almost crawling, his breath coming and stabbing gasps, his hands
torn and bleeding. His trouser leg was sticky red where
the wound in his leg had soaked through the handkerchief.
(14:00):
It was throbbing badly, but Henry didn't care. He had
reached his destination. Part of the inscription was still there
over the now doorless entrance p U B C L
I B R. The rest had been torn away. The
(14:23):
place was in shambles. The shelves were overturned, broken, smashed, tilted,
their precious contents spilled in disorder upon the floor. A
lot of the books, Henry noted gleefully were still intact,
still whole, still readable. He was literally knee deep in them.
(14:44):
He wallowed in books. He picked one up. The title
was Collected Works of William Shakespeare. Yes, he must read
that sometime. He laid it aside carefully. He picked up
another Spinoza. He tossed it away, seized another, and another,
(15:07):
and still another, which to read first? There were so many.
He had been conducting himself a little like a starving
man in a delicatessen, grabbing a little of this and
a little of that, in a frenzy of enjoyment. But
now he steadied away from the pile about him. He
(15:27):
selected one volume, sat comfortably down on an overturned shelf,
and opened the book. Henry Beamus smiled. There was the
rumble of complaining stone minute. In comparison with the epic
complaints following the fall of the bomb, this one occurred
under one corner of the shelf upon which Henry sat.
(15:50):
The shelf moved threw him off balance. The glasses slipped
from his nose and fell with a tinkle. He bent down,
clawing blindly, and found finally their smashed remains. A minor
indirect destruction stemming from the sudden wholesale smashing of a city,
(16:12):
but the only one that greatly interested Henry Beamys. He
stared down at the blurred page before him. He began
to cry, end of time enough at last, by Linvenable
Time enough at last by Lynn Venable. For a long time,
Henry Beamos had had an ambition to read a book,
not just the title or the preface, or a page
somewhere in the middle. He wanted to read the whole thing,
all the way through, from beginning to end. A simple ambition, perhaps,
(00:23):
but in the cluttered life of Henry Beamos, an impossibility.
Henry had no time of his own. There was his wife, Agnes,
who owned that part of it that his employer, mister
Carsville did not buy. Henry was allowed enough to get
to and from work, that in itself being quite a
concession on Agnes's part. Also, nature had conspired against Henry
(00:49):
by handing him with a pair of hopelessly myopic eyes.
Poor Henry literally couldn't see his hand in front of
his face for a while. When he was very young,
his parents had thought him an idiot. When they realized
it was his eyes, they got glasses for him. He
was never quite able to catch up. There was never
(01:11):
enough time. It looked as though Henry's ambition would never
be realized. Then something happened which changed all that. Henry
was down in the vault of the east Side Bank
and Trust when it happened, he had stolen a few
moments from the duties of his teller's cage to try
to read a few pages of the magazine he had
(01:33):
bought that morning. He had made an excuse to mister
Carsville about needing bills in large denominations for a certain customer,
And then, safe inside the dim recesses of the vault,
he had pulled from inside his coat the pocket size magazine.
He had just started a picture article cheerfully entitled the
(01:53):
New Weapons and what They'll Do to You. When all
the noise in the world crashed in upon his ear
drup ums. It seemed to be inside of him and
outside of him all at once. Then the concrete floor
was rising up at him, and the ceiling came slanting
down toward him, and for a fleeting second, Henry thought
of a story he had started to read once called
(02:16):
The Pit and the Pendulum. He regretted in that insane
moment that he had never had time to finish that
story to see how it came out. Then all was
darkness and quiet and unconsciousness. When Henry came too, he
knew that something was desperately wrong with the East Side Bank.
(02:37):
And trust. The heavy steel door of the vault was
buckled and twisted, and the floor tilted up at a
dizzy angle, while the ceiling dipped crazily toward it. Henry
gingerly got to his feet, moving arms and legs experimentally.
Assured that nothing was broken, he tenderly raised a hand
(02:58):
to his eyes. His precious glasses were intact. Thank god,
he would never have been able to find his way
out of the shattered vault without them. He made a
mental note to write doctor Torrance to have a spare
pair made and mailed to him, blasted nuisance, not having
his prescription on file locally, But Henry trusted no one
(03:21):
but doctor Torrance to grind those thick lenses into his
own complicated prescription. Henry removed the heavy glasses from his face.
Instantly the room dissolved into a neutral blur. Henry saw
a pink splash that he knew was his hand, and
a white blob come up to meet the pink as
(03:42):
he withdrew his pocket handkerchief and carefully dusted the lenses.
As he replaced the glasses, they slipped down on the
bridge of his nose a little. He had been meaning
to have them tightened for some time. He suddenly realized,
without the realization actually entering his thoughts, that something momentous
(04:02):
had happened, something worse than the boiler blowing up, something
worse than a gas mane exploding, something worse than anything
that had ever happened before. He felt that way because
it was so quiet. There was no whine of sirens,
no shouting, no running, just an ominous and all pervading silence.
(04:26):
Henry walked across the slanting floor, slipping and stumbling on
the uneven surface. He made his way to the elevator.
The car lay crumpled at the foot of the shaft,
like a discarded accordion. There was something inside of it
that Henry could not look at, something that had once
been a person, or perhaps several people, it was impossible
(04:47):
to tell now. Feeling sick, Henry staggered toward the stairway.
The steps were still there, but so jumbled and piled
back upon one another that it was more like climbing
the side of a mountain than mounting a stairway. It
was quiet in the huge chamber that had been the
(05:07):
lobby of the bank. It looked strangely cheerful, with the
sunlight shining through the girders where the ceiling had fallen.
The dappled sunlight glinted across the silent lobby, and everywhere
there were huddled lumps of unpleasantness that made Henry sick
as he tried not to look at them. Mister Carsville,
(05:30):
he called, It was very quiet. Something had to be done.
Of course, this was terrible, right in the middle of
a monday too. Mister Carsville would know what to do.
He called again, more loudly, and his voice cracked hoarsely,
mister Carsville. And then he saw an arm and shoulder
(05:53):
extending out from under a huge fallen block of marble ceiling.
In the buttonhole was the white carnation mister Carsville had
worn to work that morning, and on the third finger
of that hand was a massive signet ring, also belonging
to mister Carsville. Numbly, Henry realized that the rest of
(06:13):
mister Carsville was under that block of marble. Henry felt
a pang of real sorrow. Mister Carsville was gone, and
so was the rest of the staff, mister Wilkinson and
mister Emery and mister Prithard and the same with Pete
and Ralph and Jenkins and Hunter and Pat the guard
(06:33):
and Willie the doorman. There was no one to say
what was to be done about the East Side Bank
and Trust except Henry Beams. And Henry wasn't worried about
the bank. There was something he wanted to do. He
climbed carefully over piles of fallen masonry. Once he stepped
down into something that crunched and squashed beneath his feet,
(06:57):
and he set his teeth on edge to keep from wretching.
The street was not much different from the inside, bright
sunlight and so much concrete to crawl over, but the
unpleasantness was much much worse. Everywhere there were strange, motionless
lumps that Henry could not look at. Suddenly, he remembered Agnes.
(07:20):
He should be trying to get to Agnes, shouldn't he.
He remembered a poster he had seen that said, an
event of emergency, do not use the telephone. Your loved
ones are as safe as you. He wondered about Agnes.
He looked at the smashed automobiles, some with their four
wheels pointing skyward like the stiffened legs of dead animals.
(07:45):
He couldn't get to Agnes now anyway. If she was safe,
then she was safe. Otherwise, of course, Henry knew Agnes
wasn't safe. He had a feeling that there wasn't anyone
safe for a long, long way. Maybe not in the
whole state, or the whole country, or the whole world. No,
(08:08):
that was a thought Henry didn't want to think. He
forced it from his mind and turned his thoughts back
to Agnes. She had been a pretty good wife, now
that it was all said and done. It wasn't exactly
her fault if people didn't have time to read nowadays,
it was just that there was the house and the
bank and the yard. There were the Joneses for bridge,
(08:31):
and the Graysons for Canasta, and charades with the Bryants,
and the television, the television Agnes loved to watch, but
would never watch alone. He never had time to read,
even a newspaper. He started thinking about last night, that business.
About the newspaper. Henry had settled into his chair quietly,
(08:55):
afraid that a creaking spring might call to Agnes's attention
the fact that he was momentarily unoccupied. He had unfolded
the newspaper slowly and carefully. The sharp crackle of the
paper would have been a clarion call to Agnes. He
had glanced at the headlines of the first page, Collapse
(09:16):
of conference imminent. He didn't have time to read the article.
He turned to the second page, Solan predicts war only
days away. He flipped through the pages faster, reading brief
snatches here and there, afraid to spend too much time
on any one item. On a back page was a
(09:38):
brief article entitled prehistoric artifacts unearthed in Yucatan. Henry smiled
to himself and carefully folded the sheet of paper into fourths.
That would be interesting. He would read all of it.
Then it came Agnes's voice, Henry, and then she was
(09:59):
upon him. She lightly flicked the paper out of his
hands and into the fireplace. He saw the flames lick
up and curl possessively around the unread article. Agnes continued, Henry,
tonight is the Joneses Bridge night. They'll be here in
thirty minutes, and I'm not dressed yet, and here you
(10:20):
are reading. She had emphasized the last word as though
it were an unclean act. Hurry and shave, you know
how smooth jasper Jones's chin always looks and then straighten
up this room. She glanced regretfully toward the fireplace. Oh
dear that paper. The television schedule. Oh well, after the
(10:45):
Jones leave, there won't be time for anything but the
late late movie. And don't just sit there, Henry, hurry.
Henry was hurrying now, but hurrying too much. He cut
his leg on a twist piece of metal that had
once been an automobile fender. He thought about things like
(11:05):
lockjaw and gangreen, and his hand trembled as he tied
his pocket handkerchief around the wound. In his mind, he
saw the fire again, licking across the face of last
night's newspaper. He thought that now he would have time
to read all the newspapers he wanted to. Only now
there wouldn't be any more. That heap of rubble across
(11:28):
the street had been the Gazette building. It was terrible
to think that there would never be another up to
date newspaper. Agnes would have been very upset no television schedule,
but then, of course, no television. He wanted to laugh,
but he didn't. That wouldn't have been fitting, not at all.
(11:51):
He could see the building he was looking for now,
but the silhouette was strangely changed. The great circular dome
was now a ragged semicircle, half of it gone, and
one of the great wings of the building had fallen
in upon itself. A sudden panic gripped Henry beams. What
(12:11):
if they were all ruined, destroyed, every one of them.
What if there wasn't a single one left. Tears of
helplessness welled in his eyes as he painfully fought his
way over and through the twisted fragments of the city.
He thought of the building when it had been whole.
He remembered the many nights he had paused outside its
(12:33):
wide and welcoming doors. He thought of the warm nights
when the doors had been thrown open and he could
see the people inside, see them sitting at the plain
wooden tables, with the stacks of books beside them. He
used to think, then, what a wonderful thing a public
library was, a place where anybody, anybody at all, could
(12:56):
go in and read. He had been tempted to enter
many times. He had watched the people through the open doors,
the man in greasy work clothes who sat near the
door night after night, laboriously studying a technical journal, perhaps
difficult for him, but promising a brighter future. There had
(13:17):
been an aged scholarly gentleman who sat on the other
side of the door, leisurely paging, moving his lips a
little as he did so, a man having little time left,
but rich in time because he could do with it
as he chose. Henry had never gone in. He had
started up the steps once got almost to the door,
(13:38):
but then he remembered agnes Her questions and shouting, and
he had turned away. He was going in now, though,
almost crawling, his breath coming and stabbing gasps, his hands
torn and bleeding. His trouser leg was sticky red where
the wound in his leg had soaked through the handkerchief.
(14:00):
It was throbbing badly, but Henry didn't care. He had
reached his destination. Part of the inscription was still there
over the now doorless entrance p U B C L
I B R. The rest had been torn away. The
(14:23):
place was in shambles. The shelves were overturned, broken, smashed, tilted,
their precious contents spilled in disorder upon the floor. A
lot of the books, Henry noted gleefully were still intact,
still whole, still readable. He was literally knee deep in them.
(14:44):
He wallowed in books. He picked one up. The title
was Collected Works of William Shakespeare. Yes, he must read
that sometime. He laid it aside carefully. He picked up
another Spinoza. He tossed it away, seized another, and another,
(15:07):
and still another, which to read first? There were so many.
He had been conducting himself a little like a starving
man in a delicatessen, grabbing a little of this and
a little of that, in a frenzy of enjoyment. But
now he steadied away from the pile about him. He
(15:27):
selected one volume, sat comfortably down on an overturned shelf,
and opened the book. Henry Beamus smiled. There was the
rumble of complaining stone minute. In comparison with the epic
complaints following the fall of the bomb, this one occurred
under one corner of the shelf upon which Henry sat.
(15:50):
The shelf moved threw him off balance. The glasses slipped
from his nose and fell with a tinkle. He bent down,
clawing blindly, and found finally their smashed remains. A minor
indirect destruction stemming from the sudden wholesale smashing of a city,
(16:12):
but the only one that greatly interested Henry Beamys. He
stared down at the blurred page before him. He began
to cry, end of time enough at last, by Linvenable
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