Jonathan Strahan - Eclipse Three

Water and music are the same thing, at the core.

You stop at the edge of a pool deeper and wider and even more pellucid than the one in which you met the mermaid before. The water moves only where slow drips scatter into it from the ceiling, the beams of your flashlight and Marty's scattering where they're reflected.

You half-expected the mermaid to be waiting, maybe even for her to sing you in, but the only sound is the arrhythmic plink of droplets. She's taken what she wanted and given what she chose to give. She's done and the rest is yours now.

Except you want it all to be yours, earned, not borrowed glory. You wonder if Marty-if anyone-can get her to let you go this time, let you come up out of the darkness again. You wonder if she'll be angry that you're rejecting her gift. You wonder what she'll say, and if she'll curse you.

You breathe deep of wet air to fill yourself up, and nerve yourself to call her up with your song. Because even if it's quick and easy, even if you've already paid for it, even if it's the most beautiful sound you'll ever make, you don't want to echo her voice forever.

You want to grow your own.

Señora?" The man standing at my screen door is travel-stained. Migrant, up from Mexico. The dogs haven't heard him come up but now they erupt in a frenzy of barking to make up for their oversight. I am sitting at the kitchen table, painting a doll, waiting for the timer to tell me to get doll parts curing in the oven in the workshed.

" Hudson, Abby!" I shout, but they don't pay any attention.

The man steps back. "Do you have work? I can, the weeds," he gestures. He is short-legged, long from waist to shoulder. He's probably headed for the Great Lakes area, the place in the U.S. with the best supply of fresh water and the most need of farm labor.

Behind him is my back plot, with the garden running up to the privacy fence. The sky is just starting to pink up with dawn. At this time of year I do a lot of my work before dawn and late in the evening, when it's not hot. That's probably when he has been traveling, too.

I show him the cistern, and set him to weeding. I show him where he can plug in his phone to recharge it. I have internet radio on, Elvis Presley died forty-five years ago today and they're playing "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care." I go inside and get him some bean soup.

Hobos used to mark code to tell other hobos where to stop and where to keep going. Teeth to signify a mean dog. A triangle with hands meant that the homeowner had a gun and might use it. A cat meant a nice lady. Today the men use websites and bulletin boards that they follow, when they can, with cheap smartphones. Somewhere I'm on a site as a "nice lady" or whatever they say today. The railroad runs east of here and it's sometimes a last spot where trains slow down before they get to the big yard in Belen. Men come up the Rio Grande hoping to hop the train.

I don't like it. I was happy to give someone a meal when I felt anonymous. Handing a bowl of soup to someone who may not have eaten for a few days was an easy way to feel good about myself. That didn't mean I wanted to open a migrant restaurant. I live by myself. Being an economic refugee doesn't make people kind and good and I feel as if having my place on some website makes me vulnerable. The dogs may bark like fools, but Hudson is some cross between Border collie and golden retriever, and Abby is mostly black Lab. They are sweet mutts, not good protection dogs, and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

I wake at night sometimes now, thinking someone is in my house. Abby sleeps on the other side of the bed, and Hudson sleeps on the floor. Where I live it is brutally dark at night, unless there's a moon-no one wastes power on lights at night. My house is small, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a family room. I lean over and shake Hudson on the floor, wake him up. "Who's here?" I whisper. Abby sits up, but neither of them hear anything. They pad down the hall with me into the dark front room and I peer through the window into the shadowy back lot. I wait for them to bark.

Many a night, I don't go back to sleep.

But the man at my door this morning weeds my garden, and accepts my bowl of soup and some flour tortillas. He thanks me gravely. He picks up his phone, charging off my system, and shows me a photo of a woman and a child. "My wife and baby," he says. I nod. I don't particularly want to know about his wife and baby but I can't be rude.

I finish assembling the doll I am working on. I've painted her, assembled all the parts and hand rooted all her hair. She is rather cuter than I like. Customers can mix and match parts off of my website-this face with the eye color of their choice, hands curled one way or another. A mix and match doll costs about what the migrant will make in two weeks. A few customers want custom dolls and send images to match. Add a zero to the cost.

I am dressing the doll when Abby leaps up, happily roo-rooing. I start, standing, and drop the doll dangling in my hand by one unshod foot.

It hits the floor head first with a thump and the man gasps in horror.

"It's a doll," I say.

I don't know if he understands, but he realizes. He covers his mouth with his hand and laughs, nervous.

I scoop the doll off the floor. I make reborns. Dolls that look like newborn infants. The point is to make them look almost, but not quite real. People prefer them a little cuter, a little more perfect than the real thing. I like them best when there is something a little strange, a little off about them. I like them as ugly as most actual newborns, with some aspect that suggests ontology recapitulating phylogeny; that a developing fetus starts as a single celled organism, and then develops to look like a tiny fish, before passing in stages into its final animal shape. The old theory of ontology recapitulating phylogeny, that the development of the human embryo follows the evolutionary path, is false, of course. But I prefer that my babies remind us that we are really animals. That they be ancient and a little grotesque. Tiny changelings in our house.

I am equally pleased to think of Thanksgiving turkeys as a kind of dinosaur gracing a holiday table. It is probably why I live alone.

"Que bonita," he says. How beautiful.

"Gracias," I say. He has brought me the empty bowl. I take it, and send him on his way.

I check my email and I have an order for a special. A reborn made to order. It's from a couple in Chicago, Rachel and Ellam Mazar-I have always assumed that it is Rachel who emails me but the emails never actually identify who is typing. There is a photo attached of an infant. This wouldn't be strange except this is the third request in three years I have had for exactly the same doll.

The dolls are expensive, especially the specials. I went to art school, and then worked as a sculptor for a toy company for a few years. I didn't make dolls, I made action figures, especially alien figures and spaceships from the Kinetics movies. A whole generation of boys grew up imprinting on toys I had sculpted. When the craze for Kinetics passed, the company laid off lots of people, including me. The whole economy was coming apart at the seams. I had been lucky to have a job for as long as I did. I moved to New Mexico because I loved it and it was cheap, and I tried to do sculpting freelance. I worked at a big box store. Like so many people, my life went into freefall. I bought this place-a little ranch house that had gone into foreclosure in a place where no one was buying anything and boarded up houses fall in on themselves like mouths without teeth. It was the last of my savings. I started making dolls as a stopgap.

I get by. Between the little bit of money from the dolls and the garden, I can eat. Which is more than some people.