The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories (18 page)

I guess that’s it. I’ve gone way over my time, I know. Thanks for inviting me to speak today. It’s good to have an audience. It’s good to know that people, especially young people, are still interested in things like this. After all, I did what I could for you. 

The Boy in Zaquitos 

Story Notes 

“Dream Baby”—the short story and novel both—may have taken fifteen years of physical hard work—library research, correspondence or interviews with two hundred veterans of three American wars, and the sheer number of drafts (7 x 600 pages)—but this story took thirty years in the mind’s interior and not-always-conscious regions. In the mid-’70s I tried the idea as a thriller, got seventy pages of it done with a very long outline, and received an outrageously enthusiastic response from the West Coast editor of a major New York publishing house (lots of “What are you going to do when we publish it and it becomes a bestseller, Bruce?” letters and phone calls). Then, when the project was met with the most deafening silence imaginable from that editor’s NYC bosses, I had it explained to me by a third party that this particular West Coast editor had been assigned to the West Coast because he wasn’t “NYC material.” If he wanted, poor man, to chat up authors and get them all excited, that was fine, but his recommendations carried no weight whatsoever in the Big Apple. The man who explained this to me was Oakley Hall, director of the UC Irvine MFA program from which I’d just graduated—and an accomplished novelist himself whose book,
The Art & Craft of Novel Writing,
is a modern classic—and whose kindness was legend. Always generous with his students both current and former, he also offered to read the “portion and outline” for my novel; and when he’d done so, had the caring courage to express the truth: the novel was terrible. (Why thrillers by science fiction writers are often so awful is a fascinating topic, but one for another venue.) The fact was, as with the Terrible Ludlumesque Novel, I had tried to be someone I wasn’t, and had failed the way writers fail when they try to be a writer they’re not. The premise of the story, however—what happens to a man whose job it is to kill by being intimate—continued to haunt, and, as happens often with an idea that won’t go away, finally appeared three decades later in a new form and with, I’d hope, a little more sophistication in the pages of
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
and, later, in
The Best American Short Stories 2007
(under Stephen King’s guest-editorship) as “The Boy in Zaquitos.” Some readers have found this story not to be science fiction. Perhaps that’s because in a universe somewhere it did indeed happen and for reasons that seemed right and noble, I have no doubt, to those writing the operational plans.
 

Stu 

The first time I met Stu, I was just a kid and there weren’t any lights hovering over his house. The last time I saw him, when I was grown and we both knew what life could be if you let it, there were. That’s the best way to start, I guess. 

That first time, our dad piled us into our old Chevy wagon—the kind you took to drive-in movies with sheets on the seats and your kids in pajamas—and drove us to the north county, saying only, “Stu is an inventor. He’ll never see any royalties from his inventions because the Navy owns them, but he’s an inventor, the kind that made America great.” 

Our dad was director of a Navy laboratory on Point Loma, and he was an inventor, too—which made us proud—but he was very humble when it came to his friend Stu. “All I’ve invented,” he would say, “is a car headrest, and I didn’t do much with it.” It was true. He’d invented a headrest for cars in the 1940s, when there weren’t any, even if people needed them then, too. He’d even patented it but hadn’t tried to sell the patent or find venture capital for it. After all, he was a career naval officer; the Navy was his life, and what a life. He got to work on classified projects with his favorite people: electronics experts, materials engineers, microwave physicists, and the kinds of inventors who, like Stu, had made America great. 

How had he first met Stu? How does anyone in the Navy get to know a wide-eyed, crazy-haired inventor who wasn’t at all “by the book,” who shouldn’t have been anywhere near the military but somehow was? On a
Secret Project,
of course. My brother and I—who were six and ten at the time—were sure of it. Our dad and Stu had to be working on a Secret Project together. 

We had evidence. Only a few weeks earlier we’d gotten stuck after school waiting for our dad at the Lab, which is what they called the row of old converted Navy barracks. We’d stood there patiently in the parking lot until we couldn’t stand it any longer, then started playing with the little pieces of neatly cut brass and other alloy that someone had tossed out a window instead of putting in a dumpster. When our dad finally came out to get us, he took us into the most secret-looking building of all, the one with darkened windows. There we saw them: The miniature brass ships, three or four different kinds, sitting on circular tables that were metal, too, and could turn. There were machines aimed at the little metal ships, but they weren’t on. What kinds of beams, we wondered, could they send at the miniature ships? We’d seen
The Day the Earth Stood Still
and enough TV shows to know what space weapons looked like. What
was
the Secret Project we were sure our dad had risked his career—maybe even his life—to show us before he took us home that day? We never did find out, but after we met Stu that first time, we just knew he was involved, too. 

Stu lived up near Escondido, in the avocado orchards, and the drive over took forty-five minutes. When we got there, he had this gigantic plastic above-ground swimming pool in his backyard and this machine suspended above it on a winch, the kind you use to lift engines out of cars. No one said a thing about the pool as we ate hot dogs, hamburgers, and potato salad in the backyard. But in the car driving home our dad said, “He’s using it to look for oil.” 

“What?” we both said. 

He looked at us slyly and said, “He’s using sonar—sonar aimed down through the water in the pool—to look for oil. No one’s ever done it before. The Navy’s not interested in using it that way—which is why he can talk about it. But let’s still keep it our little secret, okay, boys?” 

We always kept things secret. When you’re not even supposed to carry one of your dad’s “Property of US Government” ballpoint pens to school, you learn to keep secrets—even ones the Navy isn’t interested in. 

“Sure, Dad,” we said. 

“If it works, won’t he get rich?” I asked. I was the oldest, so I asked questions like that. 

“No. He works for the Navy. Anything he invents belongs to them. Whether they’re interested in it or not.” 

The next time we visited Stu, I was twelve and the big plastic above-ground pool was gone. So was the machine with its winch. My brother and I looked around the yard for anything that looked like an invention, and couldn’t see a thing. But when we went inside for dinner—Stu loved to barbecue, so it was patties and wieners again—there was Stu standing in the middle of the living room holding something and grinning. His white hair stuck out like Einstein’s, and though he didn’t wear a moth-eaten sweater like Einstein, he wore this little vest that looked just as silly. Stu’s face was a little crazier-looking, too. His eyes were open a little too wide—as if something had just bitten him—and his smile was a little crooked. 

He was holding a machine about the size of a workman’s lunch pail; and when we saw how he was grinning at us, we knew he’d waited for us to come in before telling our mom and dad about it. 

“Know what this is, boys?” he asked. 

“No,” I said for us, and our mom gave me a look. “No,
Dr. Lundbergh,”
I added. 

“Well—” he gave our dad a conspiratorial look “—this is a portable sonar unit. The usual sonar machines are the size of a dresser—maybe you’ve seen them at the Lab, Brian—and you certainly can’t carry them around. This one doesn’t weigh any more than a puppy. Want to hold it?” 

He held it out and I took it. It wasn’t really as light as a puppy, but, sure, you could carry it around if you were a grownup and needed to. 

“I’m sorry, Stu,” our dad was saying, and we didn’t know what he meant. 

Stu didn’t stop grinning. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that it
exists
—that such a wonderful thing exists. Don’t you agree, boys?” 

We nodded our heads to let him know we did. Our dad seemed sad, or at least disappointed, but Stu seemed happy enough, and we didn’t want to ruin it. We were smiling as hard as we could. 

In the car, our dad said: 

“He invented it for the Navy, boys. He—” 

“Should you be telling them this, Jim?” our mom interrupted. 

“It’s okay. The Navy doesn’t want it.” 

“The Navy doesn’t want what?” I asked, afraid I knew. I wanted Stu to be happy. He was our dad’s friend, after all. 

“He’s invented this portable sonar, and the Navy sat on it for six months. They finally told him: ‘Because of the impact on personnel, we won’t be implementing it.’ ” 

My brother and I just sat there. 

“I don’t think the boys understand,” our mom said, and she was right. 

Our dad didn’t say a thing for a minute. 

“It would,” he finally said, “improve things considerably, boys, if the Navy used it. Think of the possibilities. Navy commandos with their own portable sonar. The tiniest boat—even a rubber one—could have one. One- and two-man submersibles like the ones you’ve played on at the docks. The Arctic-explorer vehicles the Lab is working on could, too. But the Navy has decided that Stu’s invention will—well, that it will cause too much trouble in terms of Navy jobs. That’s what they’re saying anyway. . . .” He stopped and sighed. 

We still didn’t understand, but that’s where it ended. Later—later in life, I mean—I’d understand what he was saying, how efficiency isn’t always the goal, how all the wonderful inventions in the world may be less important sometimes than keeping things the way they are. But I didn’t know that then. 

We didn’t see Stu again for a couple of years. I’d graduated from high school and was in college when I saw him next. I was avoiding the draft, and certainly looked like I was—T-shirts with peace signs, long hair, the rest—and I was worried about what Stu might think. My dad, one of the kindest men you’d ever meet, had been very understanding. He’d said, “I don’t know, Brian, what I would have done in WWII if all my friends had been avoiding the war the way your friends are. It would have been hard to keep the faith. . . .” I still felt guilty. I admired my dad and I admired Stu, and I didn’t want my hair and clothes to be an insult. 

But when we got there, Stu just looked at me—my brother was in high school and hadn’t discovered the sixties yet, so he was dressed just fine—and I could tell by his grin that nothing had changed. My hair and peace sign and scruffy beard didn’t faze him. I was still the boy he remembered. 

And he was holding something in his hands, as always. 

This one was long—three or four feet—and appeared to be made out of plastic, but metal, too, and it was painted a camouflage pattern. Actually, it looked like a really bad imitation of a plant, or a kid’s rocket disguised to look like a plant. 

Stu didn’t say anything about it at first. He just put it on the sofa—which got him a nasty glance from his good wife, Marjorie, since it had dirt on its pointed end—and went outside to start cooking hot dogs and hamburgers. 

When our dad saw the object on the sofa, he frowned; and when he was outside by the grill, he said to Stu, “You sure you can talk about it?” I was standing in the shade of a big avocado and could hear them, but they couldn’t see me. 

“Don’t worry, Jim. People don’t believe things like that. But even if they did believe, would it matter? The world is full of miracles and people don’t take notice—not really.” 

“We don’t want you getting into trouble for telling the boys about it, that’s all.” 

“They’re interested, aren’t they?” 

“Of course, Stu. What boys wouldn’t be?” 

“Then,” he said laughing, “it’s worth the risk, wouldn’t you say? Maybe what they hear will change their lives. Maybe it will make them see how marvelous the world really is, or can be. . . .” 

“Okay, Stu.” 

That was that. And when they were done talking about Russia and Nixon and, for some reason, ovens—yes,
ovens
—I looked at Stu. He looked back at me, and I knew he’d known all along I was there. My father hadn’t, but he had. He’d wanted me to hear that conversation because, as he’d said, it just might make a difference. 

After dinner, when my brother was in the TV room watching
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
with Stu’s daughter, who was in high school, too—Stu picked up the object from the sofa and said: 

“If you went to Vietnam, Brian, you wouldn’t see this, but it would be there. Even if you were near it—which I’d hope you wouldn’t be—you wouldn’t see it. It’s called an ‘ADSID,’ and it’s a beautiful thing. A miracle actually. That’s one of the points I want to make now that you’re a young man: that we can make our own miracles if we choose to.