Red Thunder (20 page)

"He says you're his best friend, Manny. He'll listen to you. I don't
know if you realize just how much of an impression you and your family
made in his life. All he talks about, except about building a spaceship
and flying it to Mars, is you and your friends.
His
friends. All I ask is you take a shot. Will you do that for me, Manny?"

I FOUND JUBAL where Travis had said he would be, deep
in the darkness of his laboratory in the prefab barn. He had made a
big, primitive desk with sawhorses and a four-by-eight sheet of
plywood. He was surrounded by stacks of downloaded books, printed out,
two-hole punched, and bound together with string. It made me think of a
child's fortress, made of bricks of compacted snow, though I'd never
had a chance to build such a thing. His high-speed printer was spitting
out another book at about ten pages per second.

I saw his face before he saw me, and the expression there was one
I'd never seen before. Jubal was mighty worried. Then he looked up, and
the frown wrinkles vanished as he recognized me. He used a number two
pencil with the eraser chewed off to mark his place in one of the Big
Chief elementary school pads he used to take notes.

"Manuel Garcia, my fren'! I am so glad dat you see me!
Entrez, entrez,
come on in, chile, you wanna Popsicle?" He hurried to a small freezer
in the shadows and came back with a grape Popsicle, which he knew was
my favorite.

The next little while was taken up with the social pleasantries
Jubal would no more think of dispensing with than he would eat a meal
without saying a prayer. I told him we were all doing fine, that the
business was running better than it ever had, thanks largely to him. He
asked about several people in the neighborhood, many of whom I'd never
met until he brought his infectious enthusiasm into our lives. People
like Mr. Ortega the grocer, who I had dealt with since I was old enough
to cross the street by myself, but who I had never really
talked
to until Jubal and I bought a bag of fresh oranges from him and spent the next twenty minutes learning about fruit.

"Still got dat rifle I tell Ralph Shabazz I fix," Jubal admitted. "You tell him Jubal been mighty busy dis week, hah?"

"I'll do dat t'ing." He laughed like he always did when I spoke a
little Jubalese. He knew I wasn't mocking him. He knew his accent was
sometimes almost impossible for strangers to understand. He said he'd
tried to shake it, speak like the people on the television, "Spit de
craw-dads outta my mouth an comb de swamp moss outta my hair," as he
put it. No luck.

"Travis is worried about you, Jubal."

"I know dat, me. He t'ink I'm crazy." He touched the depression in his head, the awful wound given him by his father.

"I don't think you're crazy."

"T'anks,
mon cher.
T'ank you fo' dat. But he worried, Travis. He plenty worried."

"About what?"

He sprang to his feet and hurried to the plywood desk. He swept
papers aside until he came to the notebook he wanted. I could see him
writing his home-school lessons in a book just like that one.

Looking over his shoulder, there was very little I saw that I could
relate to. I knew it was math, but it was Greek to me. Actually, a lot
of it
was
Greek. I recognized the letter
pi,
and
theta.
I didn't think it meant he was pledging fraternities. I saw a few
equals signs. A square root radical. That was about it. Nothing else
was familiar.

"What is this?" I asked, without much hope.

"Dis de Vaseline drive."
Vaseline? Oh, right. VASIMR.
The ion drive the Ares Seven were currently using to get to Mars.

"Slow, but steady, right?" I asked.

"Should be, oughta be. But is it slow
enough,
hah?"

"What do you mean?"

"Dey in a big hurry, yes dey are. Dey aimin' to get dere, get back to home fus', steal some glory, oh yes."

He looked into my eyes with an intensity I'd never seen before. This
was Jubal the genius. This was Jubal zipping, flashing, flying through
regions I knew I'd never even crawl through. This was a Jubal to stand
in awe of, and believe me, I did, from that moment on.

"Look, rah
cheer
," he said, and pointed at his notebook,
talking so fast that even if he spoke fluent Floridian I'd probably
never have understood. That notebook led to another. Stacks of
printouts toppled as he bored through them, hunting for the diagrams he
wanted. I tried signaling him that I was in
way
over my head,
but he was off in his own world. So I stood there and tried to soak up
at least an idea of why he felt the American
Ares Seven
was doomed.

IT TOOK HIM half an hour to make his presentation to
what was, for all practical purposes, an absent audience. Absent, as in
the space between my poor ears. I mean, I wasn't even fit to pound the
erasers in Jubal's classroom.

"You see, Manny? You see why it so
important?
"

Anyone but Jubal, I'd be wondering if he was just rubbing it in. Because I
didn't
see, might never see... and my appraisal of my own prospects for an education in science had never been lower.

On the other hand, how many people get tutoring from Albert Einstein's smarter brother, and how many could keep up?

"I see that you think there's something to worry about, Jubal," I said.

He nodded, absently chewing on the end of another pencil. The eraser
broke off and he took it out of his mouth and frowned at it, as if
wondering how it got there.

"Travis, he t'ink dis idea of us all buildin' us a spaceship an goin' to Mars, he t'ink dat a stupid idea."

Us?
First I'd heard of it.
All of us?

"I dunno. Travis, he know a
fis'ful
more 'bout de
'impractical amplications' of t'ings dan I can do, oh yes." He tapped
his head, shrugged fatalistically. "Maybe getting' dere fust, maybe dat
ain't important. But dem Ares Seven folks, dey gonna be in a
heap
a trouble. An dat means de mother a his two sweet little girls, yes. We
gotta go out dere, Manny. We be de onliest one's what can be dere to
help out, de time comes."

"I'm convinced, Jubal."
All of us? When do we start?

"But not
Travis!
Manny, I..." he trailed off, muttering to himself.

"Go ahead, Jubal. Say it. We're friends, you can ask me anything."

He studied me. Jubal had never completely trusted anyone but Travis, which was why he was finding it so hard to go against him.

"Travis, he ain't talkin' to me, Manny."

I thought it was Jubal who wasn't talking to... Well, I knew the
same story often looked entirely different to two different people.

And I knew that was exactly the sort of problem you didn't want to
get in the middle of. Never in a million years. No way, Jose! Include
me out.

"Would you go talk to Travis, Manny?"

"Sure, Jubal. Sure I will."

SURE I WILL. Jubal. Sure.

I got as far as the tennis court and stopped. I looked back. I
looked forward. I was about halfway between Travis's house and Jubal's
barn and I had no idea where to go from here.

I'd parked the Triumph on the tennis court. I got the cell phone out of the sidecar and dialed Kelly's work number.

"Strickland Mercedes-Porsche-Ferrari. How may I direct your call?"
At least it wasn't a mechanized phone menu. But it was supposed to be
Kelly's direct line.

"I'll take two Boxsters and a Testarossa, to go."

"You want fries with that?"

"Put me through to Kelly, please, Lisa."

"Manny, I was told—"

"Lisa, you know how pissed she's going to be if you don't put me through. And you know we won't tell on you."

There was a silence. I didn't envy her, stuck between the boss and
the boss's daughter, neither of them being the type of person you
wanted to mess with. She sighed, and I heard Kelly's phone ring.

"Jubal?" she answered, sounding worried.

"Me, Kelly. My call didn't go through."

She sighed.

"Oh, don't worry about it. Just my dad being an asshole again."

"Yeah, but your caller ID thought this was Jubal calling. It's his
phone. The one in the sidecar that he never uses. So he's blocking
calls from Jubal, too." Not that Jubal would ever call, but Mr.
Strickland probably didn't know that.

I could almost hear her simmer.

"Yeah, when I get home I'm gonna rip him a new... Can you believe
that? He must have his spies working again, and now he's messing with
the computers.
My
computers. Oh, Manny, he's going to be one sorry, racist mother—"

"I'm out at the ranch," I said. Don't want to let Kelly get started on her father, she could damage the phone.

"Some problem?"

"Yeah... you could say I've got a problem. I don't know what to do."

"Start at the beginning."

I did, and I didn't get very far before she cut me off.

"Don't do anything. I'll be right over."

I FIGURED NOT doing anything didn't apply to fishing.
If you're seriously doing something when you're fishing, you're missing
the whole point.

I walked down the dock. The boathouse door wasn't locked. I found a
rod and reel in there, and borrowed a trowel. At a likely looking spot
of ground, I turned over a few scoops of soil and immediately had half
a dozen red wigglers.

That's where I was an hour later when I heard footsteps. I turned
and saw Kelly, dressed in a smart blue suit and blouse that looked
uncomfortable out here in the blinding sunshine. She kicked off her
medium-heeled shiny black shoes, then hiked up her skirt and quickly
peeled down her pink panties and taupe pantyhose. It was over almost
before I knew she was doing it. She stuffed the frillies in her purse
and sat beside me on the end of the pier and dangled her feet in the
cool water, just like I was doing.

"Catching anything, Huck?"

"Could I have an instant slo-mo replay of that? I think I missed
some of the finer points." I lifted the stringer almost out of the
water. Two big bass flopped on the end of it. I grabbed the other end
of the string and unthreaded it from their gills. They floated there a
moment, not quite sure they were free, then swam off. I never would
have kept them at all except that, the one time me and Kelly went
fishing together, I couldn't even land a scrawny little perch. I had to
show her I
could
catch fish. Manny, the mighty hunter, bringing the mammoth meat home to the cave.

"So, start at the beginning, okay?" she said.

"Well, Travis called me and... and he... you have
no
idea how distracting it is, you sitting there and me knowing you're not wearing any panties."

She looked at me dubiously, and snorted.

"Boys. Can't educate 'em, can't understand 'em, can't do without
'em. Or so I've been told. I can't dangle my feet in the water wearing
pantyhose, Huckleberry. It wasn't about you at all." But I could tell
by the glint in her eyes that it had been, at least partly. And I knew
she was filing the fact that it turned me on, and one day soon I'd be
treated to some little scenario she had worked out involving not
wearing any underwear.

Life is so tough sometimes, ain't it?

AS IT TURNED out, I didn't tell my story then. Kelly
had called Alicia, who had called Dak, and they were due out at the
ranch soon. They arrived a few minutes later, and both kicked off their
shoes and rolled up their pants legs and sat beside us. Not nearly as
interesting to watch as Kelly.

When I finished telling them what I'd heard in the last couple hours
they were all quiet for a while. Then Dak turned to me with a dubious
but hopeful expression.

"It's that 'all of us' interests me the most," he said. "You're sure that's what he said?
All
of us? You and me? Not America, not NASA?"

"
All
of us." Kelly pressed down
hard
on the first word. "As in me, you, Manny, Alicia, Jubal, and Travis. Okay?"

"What would you want to go to Mars for, Kelly?" Dak looked honestly
puzzled. I was, too, but I knew better than to show it. "Sell BMWs to
the Martians?"

"I'd want to go because it's an adventure," Kelly responded quietly,
not taking offense. "You don't get a shot like this twice in one
lifetime. Plus, I have to watch over Manny." She smiled at me, making
me feel great, and a bit worried at the same time.

"Me, too," Alicia chimed in. "Hell... heck, I rode every ride at Disney World, Universal,
and
Florida Adventure. This couldn't be any scarier than that."

Dak looked us over one at a time, then nodded. "This is what I was
looking for from Travis from day one, only I was thinking more along
the lines of a foot in the door at a good school."

"It's going to take some careful pushing and shoving," Kelly said. I
could already see the gears turning in the fabulous head. This was the
sort of thing Kelly thrived on. "If it works out right, he won't know
what hit him, just one day he'll wake up and realize he's agreed to fly
us all to Mars."

"Don't worry, hon," Alicia said with a sniff. "The day I can't push
a coon-ass peckerwood in the direction I want him to go... that'll be a
cold day in heck!"

"I don't think Jubal—" I began.

"Not Jubal, Huckleberry," Alicia said. Did I really look like that
much of a hayseed with my pants cuffs rolled up? "I'm talking about
Travis, the Big Coon-Ass Peckerwood himself. Pardon my pejorative."

"No problem, hon," Dak said. "Ain't nobody here but us darkies, the spic, and the white chick."

"White chick? White
chick?
" Kelly said. "Yo momma."

" '
My
mamma?' Gal, yo momma so dumb she tripped over a cordless phone."