Red Thunder (10 page)

"So this is part of the recovery process?" Travis asked. "Eating rabbit food?"

"Rabbits don't eat cheese."

"Mouse food, then. Is this the thirteenth step?"

"Did you read the booklet I gave you?"

"Yeah. I figure seven steps out of twelve ain't too bad."

"You've done seven of them?" Kelly asked. "That sounds pretty good to me."

"He means he's willing to
try
seven of them," Alicia said. "Right, Travis?"

"And I'm sort of dubious about step five. Maybe I should only tackle six and a half steps. It's still a majority."

"What's step five?" I asked.

" 'I admit to God, to myself and to another human being...' "
Alicia, Kelly, and Travis broke up as they realized all three were
chanting in unison. Travis finished it:

" '...the exact nature of my wrongs.' "

"That's very good, Travis," Alicia said. "Did you memorize them all?"

"I've got a good memory."

"Well, you're not the first one to stumble over the God business.
Like I told you, just do the ones you can, for a start. That, and
concentrate on taking your life one day at a time. Did you go to a
meeting?"

"Part of one," Travis confessed. "I didn't speak. Except the part about 'Hi, my name is Travis.' "

The four of us shouted,
"Hello, Travis!"
It startled him,
and for a moment I thought we'd done the wrong thing. Then he laughed,
and really seemed to mean it. For the first time I began to get some
idea of how lonely these years of being a drunken failure had been for
him.

So Alicia proposed a toast:
"To our health!"
and we all
drank or sipped from the tumblers of glop she had poured us. Travis
chugalugged his, then fell off his chair and rolled around for a while
clutching his stomach, moaning theatrically.

While most eyes were on Travis I used the opportunity to ditch the
rest of my drink in a sickly looking potted palm under the kitchen
window.

AFTER LUNCH DAK and I got out our computers and Travis
took us through three more lessons. He gave us assignments that would
probably keep us busy the rest of the afternoon. Then he and Kelly and
Alicia went off down the newly trimmed path to the lake, fishing
equipment in hand. They seemed to take an evil delight in looking back
at us chained to the laptops until they were out of sight.

Ten minutes later we heard the deep roar of a big outboard. I
gritted my teeth and kept my eyes on the screen. Soon the sound faded
away.

"I never liked fishing much, myself," Dak muttered.

"What, when we can be out here improving our minds? Hell, no. Big
waste of time. Probably nothing out there but some big ol' bass,
anyway."

"What you wanna bet all they get is a bad sunburn?"

"I hear you, Dak, I hear you."

"Maybe some catfish."

"Ugliest fish in the world, catfish."

We finally got settled in. We kept at it for two hours without a
sign of Kelly and Alicia. I called for a break and Dak wasn't opposed.

"Let's go down to the dock," he suggested.

"You crazy? That's just what they want us to do. I wanted to talk to that guy, Travis's cousin, what was...?"

"Jubal. Short for Jubilation. Gotta love the name."

About halfway to the barn Dak caught my arm, and he looked like he was having second thoughts.

"What's up?" I asked him. We continued walking, but at a slower pace.

"Jubal's odd, Manny."

"I heard that. What, is he dangerous?"

"Oh, hell no. He just takes some getting used to. He's got some kind
of brain damage but he won't go to a doctor to get it checked out. He's
scared of doctors. He's scared of a lot of stuff, including meeting new
people."

"Is this a bad idea? We could wait till Travis gets back."

"Nah, I think we'll be all right. Just don't get insulted if he
walks off in the middle of a conversation. Jubal is socially
challenged."

We came to the door and there was a piece of cardboard stuck on it
with strapping tape. Somebody had written on it with a grease pencil in
block letters:

IS NO DORBEL & DO NOT KNOKC
IF LOKED DONT DISTRUB
IF UNLOKED YOUR WELCOM COM IN!

"Dyslexia," I guessed.

"He ain't illiterate, he just can't spell worth a damn." He tried
the door handle, found it was not "loked." He gestured for me to go
ahead, and pulled the door wide open. A full-grown bull alligator
reared up and lunged at us, roaring like a grizzly bear.

"Very funny," I said. Dak was leaning against the doorjamb, in the
middle of one of those soundless fits of laughter that can make it hard
to get your breath. I glanced inside and saw Jubal himself just beyond
the alligator. He was smiling broadly.

"Scared you a little, though, didn't it?" Dak wanted to know.

"A little. Till I saw the eyeball hanging by a wire."

"I t'ought I fix dat, me," Jubal said, and bent over his mechanical
pet, stuffing the stray eyeball back in its socket. He was dressed like
he was the first time I saw him, in khaki shorts, very loud aloha
shirt, and flip-flops. A pudgy teddy-bear of a man, with his wild white
beard and hairy arms and legs.

"Jubal, this is Manny, my best friend," Dak said.

"Meet him already," Jubal said, and turned and waddled off. Dak looked at me and shrugged. We decided to follow him.

Jubal's barn was full of dinosaurs. Most of them were torn into a
lot of pieces with wires and tubes sticking out and metal bones and
hydraulic muscles exposed.

"This is where old animatronics go to die," Dak explained. "When an
attraction at some of the theme parks stops being popular, Travis and
Jubal go buy it, cheap."

We moved out of the dino graveyard and in among a bunch of what
looked like mad scientist equipment. There were things that made yellow
and purple sparks, and racks of tubes and glassware with colored fluids
moving through.

"Looks like Doctor Frankenstein's been here, right?" Dak said. "This
is more props and stuff. They bought it off some of the movie studios.
Like this Jacob's ladder, and this Tesla coil. And this Van de Graaf
generator. Supposed to make your hair stand on end from static
electricity." He put his hand on a brushed aluminum globe on the end of
an aluminum pole. Nothing happened. "Well, it does for you white folks,
anyway. Us AAs, our hair too kinky." He pointed at me and as his finger
got close a spark jumped—and so did I.

"Hey, Jube," he called out, "how about we turn off some of the special effects? We can hardly hear each other talk in here."

In a moment all the sparking, spitting, popping, and hissing props
got quiet. I followed Dak to the only open area we'd seen so far.
Standing in the middle of it was Jubal, hands in his pants pockets,
rocking back and forth on his heels, looking pleased with himself.

"Manny, how you like dis crazy place, you?"

"It's fantastic, Jubal."

"Every boy's dream clubhouse," Dak agreed, and Jubal roared with laughter, reminding me again of Santa Claus.

"Jus' junk, mostly," Jubal said. "Mos' dis stuff jus' git t'rowed away."

"What do you do with it?" I asked.

"Parts, mos'ly. Stuff in dere custom made, sometime I can twis' it around a little, make it do somethin' else."

"He's working on a robot," Dak said. "Come on, Jubal, show it to him."

He took us to the far side of the barn, where the equipment wasn't
quite so eye-catching, but obviously a lot more useful. Tables and
shelves were covered with tools and instruments and work in progress. I
saw what I was pretty sure was an electron microscope, and a mass
spectrometer. There were also more ordinary machines lined against a
back wall, drill press, lathe, table saw, stuff like that.

But what my eye went to was a table with a metal skeleton on it. The table was waist high, a good level to work.

"Did you see that video, 'Frankenstein Meets Madonna'?" Dak asked. "This table was one of the props. Show him, Jubal."

Jubal spun a wheel at the side of the table and it slowly rotated
until it was at a forty-five-degree angle. The thing on the table
didn't have a head, but the torso, hips, arms and legs were all in the
right spots.

Jubal picked up a robotic hand from his worktable. He pulled some
levers at the base, and fingers twitched. Jubal seemed wildly pleased
by each motion, like a kid with a toy. That's how Jubal seemed to
approach all his inventions. Just a big, balding kid on Christmas
morning.

"De han's, dey sto' bought, from... Sears and Roebuck."

Dak said, "Like, a catalog. Off the shelf, right, Jubal?"

"Off de shelf, yes! Dese from Universal Positronics. Dey figure out han's long time ago. Travis, he get 'em cheap, him."

"So he's got hands from the Sears, Robot catalog," I said.

Jubal looked puzzled for a moment, then his eyes widened.

"Sears Robot! From de Sears Robot!" And he laughed so hard he had to
grab the table behind him to keep from falling over. And hey, I know it
wasn't all
that
funny, but his laughing was the worst kind of infectious. You just could not watch Jubal laughing without laughing yourself.

Jubal finally calmed down, but the rest of the day he kept muttering "Sears Robot" to himself, and then laughing aloud.

"We figger, we make a robot can really walk, we make us a
fis'ful
a money," Jubal said.

"You bet, Jube, a fistful," Dak said.

"Here, watch dis, y'all." He cranked the table so it was
perpendicular to the floor. He flipped some switches in the skeleton's
belly. Jubal took the thing by one arm and pulled. It put out one foot,
then the other. Now it was standing on its own.

"Gyros," Dak explained.

"Yessum, but dese don' hold him up like a... like a..."

"Steadicam?" Dak asked.

"Yeah, dat, what you say. Dese gyros tell him which way up be."

"Like an inertial tracker," I said.

"Yeah, what you say." He gave the thing a shove. Instead of falling
backward it put a leg out and placed one foot behind itself, then
straightened again. Jubal shoved it again, harder. It staggered, then
it stabilized again.

"Pretty good," I said.

"Yeah, I know what you're thinking," Dak said. "You've seen it before. We've even seen something like this climbing stairs."

"I've never seen one run," I said.

"Dis one, neither," Jubal said, sadly. "Need some better sof'ware, me."

"Well, I think it's pretty damn fine already," Dak said, and I agreed.

"
Cher,
sell him for twenny t'ousand dollah, we make a
fis'ful
a money!"

"Twenty thousand..." Dak was grinning at me. "What does something like this usually cost?"

"Manny, no need to even walk into the showroom unless you can write
a check for half a million. Jubal thinks he can make one for under ten
grand."

"Maybe I kin," Jubal said, scratching his head. " 'Course, I done already spend fi'ty t'ousand on dis one!"

It was an awesome idea. A humanoid robot cheaper than a new car? I wondered if it could clean toilets.

"So what all do you figure it will do?" I asked Jubal. "Aside from walk around, I mean. Will it clean windows?"

"I fought long time on dat question, me. Dis t'ing, it could carry
roun' a bag full a dem golfin' clubs, I t'ink." He put his fists on his
hips and glared at me.

"Robo-Caddy," Dak said. "I think you got something there, Jube. And we could also walk dogs."

Jubal frowned at the floor again, and twisted his shirttails.

"Mebbe," he said. "Mebbe we could."

He turned away from us and went to a worktable across the room,
where he started sorting stuff that had already looked fairly well
sorted to me.

"He looks like I hurt his feelings," I whispered to Dak.

"Not your fault, man. I'd a done the same thing but Travis clued me in. Heck, it's my fault, I guess, I forgot to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"It's more about... well, Manny, Jubal is some kind of genius, but
he don't have a practical bone in his body. He makes these wonderful
things and doesn't have any idea at all of what to do with them. Travis
always figures that out. You and me, we think it over ten minutes,
we'll come up with a dozen things to do with it. Jubal won't."

Jubal had taken the top off one of those big glass jars you see in
convenience stores with spicy sausages floating around in them. It was
half full of shiny silver Christmas tree ornaments.

I took my silver bubble out of my pocket and went over there.

"I found this in your yard the other day," I said. Jubal's eyes lit
up and just like that, his sulk was over. He took the bubble from me,
holding it with fingers loosely curled around it, just like I'd had to
do to keep it from slipping away.

"I
fought
I was short a couple. It's hard to keep 'em all straight, dey jus' floats away. T'anks, Manny."

"Sure thing, Jubal."

He took the lid off the jar and popped my bubble in.

"Less'n you want it," he said. I looked at him. He seemed completely innocent of any idea that the thing was something special.

"Jubal, what I'd like to know is, what
is
it?"

He looked down at the big glass jar. He moved it around and the
silver bubbles swirled. He let it go and the bubbles kept swirling for
a minute, then settled down.

Jubal laughed. "That's jus' what I tryin' to figure, me. Ain't got
no name for 'em." He looked back at the jar and shook it again. He
seemed far away.

"One day my pa, he cut him down a li'l ol' spruce tree someplace and
he brung it home. He set dat li'l tree right in de house. Not much
taller dan me, no. An' when he had dat tree set up, he go out to his
pirogue boat and he got him an ol' towsack. He say ol' Boudreaux didn'
have no fi'ty dollah he done promised for a gator hide, he only had
fo'ty-fi' dollah, him!" Jubal chuckled at this, and Dak and I smiled.