John Varley - Red Thunder

[79] 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 t’ought 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.

“So Boudreaux he tellin’ my pa ’bout dis t’ing dey be doin’ down de bayou, in Lafayette or maybe it was all de way to N’awlin, what dey call it Chris’mas.

“Now my pa he say, ‘Boudreaux, you t’ink I’m a fool, me? I know all ’bout Chris’mas. Don’t hol’ wit’ it, is all.’

“Now Boudreaux he say, ‘I don’ mean no such of a t’ing, Broussard. Ev’body on dis bayou know Broussard no fool, you. And dey know Broussard, he don’t put up no lights nor set him up a tree, no. But lookee heah, Broussard.’ An dat when Boudreaux, he show my pa de towsack wid all the Chris’mas pretties in it.

“My daddy, he say he had him a weak moment, Satan mus’ a reach [80] out to him, because he tooken dat towsack full a li’l pretties, him, ’stead of dat fi’ dollah what Boudreaux still owe him.”

Jubal had a good laugh about that, and I laughed with him, because I simply loved the way he told a story. Not laughing at his preposterous Cajun accent, but because of how it just made me listen harder to every word.

“My pa, he brung in dat towsack and open it up on de flo’, an all dese Chris’mas pretties dey tumble out. Dey was lights on wires… and my pa laugh, him, and we all laugh, ’cause we don’t have no ’lectric, no!

“Dere was little angels cut outta tin, an’ my pa he give dem to my li’l sister Gloria and tol’ her to tie ’em up to de tree anywhere she want. And dere was silver strings. And dere be fo’ or fi’ dozen roun’ balls, all colors. I drop one an it break… yessum, it did.

“An’ den my ma, she tie candles to dat Chris’mas tree, six or seven of ’em, and she say it was de pretties’ t’ing she evah see.”

He said nothing for a moment, tasting the memory I think.

“Bedtime, Ma, she put out de candle lights. Ma pere , he go out jack-lightin’ deer with Fontenot an’ Hebert. Junior Hebert, not Alphonse.

“An’ I got me outta bed and I light dem candle again so Santy Claus kin fin’ de house, him. And what do y’know, dat tree it kotch fire and burn down de whole house. We sleepin’ in leaky tents de res’ a dat winter, we did, till de new house done got build.” He chuckled again. This time I wasn’t tempted to laugh along with him.

“Pa, he come home firs’ light, see dat ol’ shack jus’ smokin’ ashes and his family standin’ dere in de only clothes dey own. He tole us, ‘Dat’s what Almighty God t’ink a Chris’mas trees, boys. And dere be y’all’s Chris’mas. Yo firs’ an yo las’!’

“And den he wallop me upside de head!”

He smiled again, and for the first time I could see, the way the light hit him, that there was a dent in the side of his head. I’d thought Dak was exaggerating. It was partly hidden by wispy white hair, but I could have laid three fingers in it.

I was at a loss what to say. Clearly, the story was over, but Jubal hadn’t answered my question. I wasn’t sure now I wanted it answered.

[81] “So that’s what those are?” Dak asked him, nodding toward the jar. “Some new kind of Christmas tree ornament?”

Jubal said nothing, just took the lid off the jar and handed a bubble to Dak.

… who immediately had it slip from his hand. He quickly reached down to catch it before it hit the floor, but it just hung there.

His eyes got wide, and he smiled. But the smile didn’t last long. I shut up for the next ten minutes, letting Dak repeat the kind of experiments I’d done already. Finally he gave up and scowled at me. He probably felt like a fool. I know I’d felt that way.

“So what is it, and what’s it for, Jubal?”

“Tol’ you I got no name for it, me. You could hang ’em from de Chris’mas tree.”

“Anything else?” I asked. I was trying to be careful, remembering what Dak had told me about Jubal and his limitations in practical matters.

He looked back and forth at us, then smiled like a little child with a secret.

“I got some ideers, me. Come look.” He led us to another workbench across the room. There was a device there, I saw it was made from two video game controllers, one with a couple small thumbwheels, another with a pistol grip. It was held together with twisted copper wire and pieces of duct tape. Small plastic labels had been glued over the places where a particular button’s function used to be.

The only label I could read was on one of the control wheels, and it said SQUOZE and DE-SQUOZE, with arrows pointing to the left for the one and the right for the other.

“Chris’mas, dat be de reason I build de Squeezer,” he said. “Wondered if I could build me a silver ball dat don’ break so easy, me. Done started readin’ on optics, indexes of refraction an’ reflection, stuff like dat…” He looked thoughtful, then scratched his head around the horrible dent and looked confused for a moment, as if he couldn’t remember where he was. Then he smiled again.

“Den I had dis idea, me. An’ you watch, it gonna make us a fis’ful a money!”

[82] “So it’s called the Squeezer?” Dak asked him.

“It is? Who said dat?”

“You did.”

Jubal thought back, then laughed.

“I guess I did. How ’bout dat? De Squeezer. I guess dat’s right. Now watch.”

He took one of the bubbles out of the jar and placed it in the air. It just hung there, drifting in random air currents. But Jubal worked some controls on his device and suddenly it jerked to the left.

Jubal waved it back and forth, and the bubble stayed out there as if it were impaled on the tip of an invisible sword.

“Really neat, Jubal,” I told him.

“Dat ain’t nuttin’. Watch dis.” He turned one of the wheels of the game controller and the bubble shrank down to the size of a marble, then a BB. “Don’ wan’ get her too small, no,” Jubal said. “We lose her for sure.”

Dak moved closer, and he looked at the bubble as if he found it offensive.

“That’s why you call it a Squeezer?” Dak asked.

“Dat’s why. Now, stan’ back, cher .” Dak did. Jubal fired the trigger mechanism on the other game controller…

… and I must have jumped a foot. It sounded like a gunshot.

“Goodness gracious, as my grandma used to say,” Dak breathed. “That was one powerful startlement.”