"Uncle Einar" (1947)

I'm infatuated with this story by Ray Bradbury, which puts him more squarely in the realm of horror than science fiction where I usually slot him. It was published first in a Bradbury collection called Dark Carnival and later in a more famous one called The October Country and it's part of Bradbury's "Elliott Family" series. The Elliotts are a kind of Addams family—kooky, altogether ooky oddballs with strange powers. It's gentle, of course, the way Bradbury does. Besides the Addams family, the Elliotts also feel like some precursor to the X-Men with their mutant gifts and outsider status. Most of the Elliott family has more subtle powers, with mental abilities like telepathy and telekinesis. Uncle Einar's is harder to hide from the world: he has a giant pair of green wings growing on his back and he can fly. I imagine his wings as more like dinosaur wings than bird or moth, leathery and tendoned. He can't really go among humans at all and he must do most of his flying at night when he won't be seen. He also has a kind of radar that enables him to sense objects in his way as he flies around in the dark. But a terrible accident occurs one night. Something goes wrong and he collides with a high-tension tower and takes a massive jolt of electricity that knocks him out. Fortunately he lands on a farm operated by Brunilla Wexley, a single woman who will become his wife. Bradbury plainly has a lot of feeling for Uncle Einar and imbues him with much humanity—his love of flying, his sadness at being grounded, his love for his wife and eventually their children, and finally the solution they work out so he can fly safely again. At the same time, as benign as we know Uncle Einar is, it's not hard to imagine how scary it would be to see him flying at night. That's a neat trick on Bradbury's part. It's all quite vivid. I have a clear sense of Uncle Einar and Brunilla too, and like them both. I should say it's also the only Elliott Family story I've read that I like much—in general the concept is typically too cute and wholesome by half, though some of the powers are certainly interesting. This Elliott Family story comes a bit later than the first batch and in many ways feels like Uncle Einar might have been a character who nagged at Bradbury and importuned him to tell his story. It feels like a Sherwood Anderson story too with its candid treatment of socially determined grotesques and their experience of being marginalized. In fact, a lot of Bradbury stories feel like they have sources in Anderson. This is one of the best.

The Stories of Ray Bradbury (Everyman's)
Read story online.