Red Thunder

“That mind still works, but not always according to the laws of logic you and I know. But amazing things can come out of that mind.”

He looked down at the silver bubble he had been playing with.

“Like that,” he said. “That… that violates just about every law of [101] physics I was ever taught. And something that different, something that violates so many rules… well, friends and neighbors, that scares me.”

“Jubal was making them for some sort of target-shooting game,” I told him. “Or to put on Christmas trees.”

“Yeah, that’s pure Jubal,” Travis said.

We were all silent again for a time. Jubal wanted to use the silver bubbles as children’s toys, but it was pretty obvious they meant a lot more than that. Just what they meant was still an open question.

Which Travis meant to solve. He got up from his seat and stretched. Then he looked at all of us again, in turn.

“I told you, I’d be a lot happier if it was just Jubal and me aware of this.”

“We won’t steal anything from you,” Dak said.

“I trust you guys more than anybody I know.”

“Because we didn’t rob you on the beach?” Alicia laughed. “I’ll fess up, I told Dak he ought to take a hundred for the taxi service.”

“You had a right to,” Travis said.

“And you said yourself you’ve used up all your friends but us. Who else is there for you to trust, except Jubal?”

“Do you ever pull any punches, lady?”

“Not that I ever saw,” Dak said, standing and stretching, too. “So what do you want from us, man? Swear us to secrecy?”

“Until we’ve had a chance to learn more about it from Jubal.”

“I’m okay behind that. What about the rest of you, musketeers? All for one…”

“And one for all…”

IT WAS JUST starting to get a little light in the east when Travis, Kelly, and I found Jubal out on the lake. When Jubal was rowing at night, he hung an old kerosene lamp from a davit in the bow, just as his father had done in the Louisiana bayous when out hunting at night. We could see it from some distance, flickering like an orange firefly.

Travis’s boat was about what you’d expect from a guy who had been letting a Mercedes cook in the Florida sunshine. It was low, fast, and [102] plush, with a tiny cabin and head up front and room to seat six or seven in the open in back. But it was showing distress from the indifferent care it had been getting since drinking became a full-time occupation for Travis. Some of the seat material was cracking and there were patches where green slime was growing on the Fiberglas.

The big Mercury outboard seemed healthy, though. It started at once, and then burbled with quiet authority as we pulled away from the dock.

We eased up from behind. He didn’t acknowledge us in any way. I was amazed at the speed he was making in the old craft. It was easy to see how he got the big arms.

“I’m sorry, Jubal,” Travis said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“Don’t matter none, no,” Jubal said. And kept rowing. Travis kept us off to Jubal’s right and just behind the sweep of his oars.

“We’d all like to see those target bubbles again, Jube, see what they can do.”

“Dey don’ do much,” he said. “Jus’ go pop!” He giggled.

“Maybe you could show us how,” Travis suggested.

“What I be out here fo’,” Jubal admitted, and now his brow furrowed. “Tryin’ to ’member how dey works.”

“You mean you can’t make any more?”

“No, cher, no, I can make plenty wit’ de squeezy t’ing I show you. I tryin’ to member how I make de Squeezer.”

“It’ll come to you, mon ami,” Travis said.

“Mebbe yeah, mebbe no.”

“Come on, Jube, let me tow you in, we’ll have us some petty dejournez.”

Kelly leaned over the side of the boat with an open cardboard box. “We got Krispy Kremes, Jubal,” she said.

Jubal’s steady rowing pace faltered. Kelly angled the box so he could see inside it.

“Only one lef, cher,” he said. “I don’ take you las’ Krispy, no.”

“More coming, cher,” Kelly said. “Can you smell ’em?” It was clear [103] he could. Finally he gri

SWAMP BIRDS AND other critters were greeting the day when Travis, Jubal, Kelly, and I walked the path back from the lake, with its crunching covering of new white shell. Dak and Alicia were pulling up in Blue Thunder.

It seemed that Krispy Kremes were Jubal’s biggest weakness. They were Travis’s last resort. If he really had to get Jubal’s undivided attention, he offered him donuts.

“Gotta be careful, though,” Travis had said. “Jubal would live on nothing but Krispys if he could drive a car to go get them.”

“Like driving a spike straight into his own heart,” Alicia told us.

“Would you believe Jubal was a ski

Dak had wanted to get three dozen, but Alicia held him down to two. They also brought back supersized paper mugs of Mississippi Mud espresso. We all gathered around the patio table and the food. All of us were yawning.

We dug in like wild javelinas, Alicia watching in horror and volunteering to make some oatmeal if anybody wanted it. But it wasn’t an oatmeal morning, and eventually even she admitted it and ate two donuts. I don’t even want to know how many sit-ups she did that day to make up for it.

At last we all sat back, and I watched Jubal cleaning up the donut boxes like a kid licking the cake icing out of a bowl. He saw me looking at him, and we gri

[104] Travis had brought the Squeezer out and set it on the table. Jubal eyed it unhappily, but finally settled back and laced his fingers over his big belly.

“Jube,” Travis said, “I’d like to ask you some questions about this thing, what it does, how it does it… and so forth. I’m not angry, mon cher, and I’m not going to get angry later. We’re just trying to find out, okay?”

“Fire away, Travis,” Jubal said. “Mebbe you get lucky, you.” And he laughed.

“So, what’s in the bubbles, Jubal?”

“In dese bubbles? Jus’ air. Nuttin’ but air.”

“So you… you make this silvery stuff…”

“A force field,” Jubal said. “Like in de comics books.”

“A force field. You’ve lost me already.”

“Los’ me, too, mos’ly. It don’ really ack like nuthin’ else I know from de books.”

“From your physics textbooks.”

“From any my books.” He frowned, then looked surprised. “It don’ take no power, no. No power to make de bubbles, no power to move ’em roun’.”

“You’ve lost me,” Dak said. Travis nodded.

“No power. Lookee here.” He popped open the battery chamber of the Squeezer. The two AA batteries that would normally be there were missing. Wires had been soldered to the two little springs that normally would have touched the bottom part of the battery cylinders. The wires went through two holes that seemed to have been burned with a soldering iron.

“Dis gizmo here, dis be de part initiate de bubbles. Dis part, it take de… de… it take de framework an it twis’ it, ninety degrees from ever’thin’ else, so it ain’t really here in dis… dis… space-time condominimum.” When he mangled that last word, Jubal’s almost impenetrable Cajun accent was nearly gone. I could tell that talking about science was hard for him. His basic vocabulary was limited to the words he learned growing up, and everything he had learned since then was the result of incredibly hard work. Clearly, the idea of a space-time [105] continuum was not one that got a lot of discussion down on the Broussard bayou.