John Varley - Red Thunder

TRAVIS HAD EMPHASIZEDJubal’s social anxieties, and it was true, when Jubal was around people he didn’t know he muttered, hung back, never made eye contact, and just generally seemed to want to be somewhere else. But after he’d had a little time to take your measure he could loosen up quite a bit, and when he regarded you as “family,” which could take as little as a microsecond with Alicia to a couple of days with me and Dak… then all bets were off. With his family Jubal liked to laugh, and sing and dance and generally have what he called a “fais do-do,” which is Cajun for party, I think.

He changed my family a lot in two weeks.

For the first few days we kept the television on during dinner. But everyone was laughing and talking so much that by the third day we just forgot about watching or listening to it. Kelly, Dak, and Alicia started eating the evening meal with us as often as not, and we even got Sam Sinclair, Dak’s Dad, to join us a couple of times.

After, there was no telling what we might do. I took Jubal to Rancho Broussard to pick up his record collection, which was about fifty vinyl 33-1/3, and his old turntable. All of it was Cajun dance tunes, music from way back in the bayou. Jubal loved to dance to this music, and to sing along. He was a good singer and an enthusiastic dancer, alternating between his “four young ladies,” or just dancing by himself.

Or sometimes we got the Monopoly board out. Jubal had never played but he told us how he’d learned to do his “numberin’ ” using that kind of money. He picked it up easily enough, and he loved it. He was ruthless, and won more often than not. He took the little racing [129] car from the very first, and I never told him that was traditionally my piece. And Mom says I’ve got a lot of maturing to do. I wanted the little racing car, that car was mine , but I let our guest have it. Is that mature, or what?

I remember at the first game, when Kelly was putting a hotel on Pacific Avenue, he asked, “Why the Blas’-Off Hotel ain’t on dis board, hah?” He suggested we rename Park Place or Boardwalk.

“Park Place is more like the Golden Manatee across the street, cher ,” Mom said. “The Blast-Off, when they built it, might have been on one of the red properties, Illinois Avenue maybe, or New York at the worst. Now we’re a lot closer to ‘Go.’ ”

Then we started arguing about what space the Blast-Off should be on.

“Oriental,” I said. “One step above the roach motel on Baltic.”

“Hel-… uh, pooh!” Dak said. “Baltic, that’s a SRO, a ‘single room occupancy’ joint, bathroom down the hall. Oriental, that’s where the desk clerk sits in a booth behind bulletproof glass. The ol’ B-O Motel, I figure we’re on Saint Charles Avenue. Which, incidentally, give me two houses on Saint Charles. Next time around, Manny, those houses gonna wipe you out!”

Probably. I didn’t tell Dak that we’d seriously considered installing one of those Plexiglas booths. After the second time you’re held up by some wild-eyed angel duster I think anyone would. We’d been robbed four times since I’ve been old enough to remember. Mom shot the first one, right in the gun hand, just like in an old cowboy movie. After that, the police and me persuaded her to just hand over the money. It wasn’t enough to die for, or even to kill for. Nobody ever ran out of our office rich.

One amazing thing was that, with Jubal around, we all had more free time. It got to where there sometimes wasn’t anything really urgent to do by the afternoon, so Jubal and I would go for a ride. Mostly we went up and down the beach, because Jubal loved the ocean. We got to be a regular sight. Many a tourist snapped our picture as we roared by, Jubal in his loud shirts and dark sunglasses and white beard and sunburned nose smiling and waving to everyone we passed.

[130] Other afternoons, with Jubal around to help out, Mom and Maria got to go out together for some fun. Mom said she’d pretty much forgotten how.

Mom hit the roof when I gave her the money Travis had pressed on me.

“I told him his credit was good with us, but he gave me his plastic anyway,” she hissed at me after I gave her the roll of hundreds. Mom doesn’t like shouting, but she can make a hiss carry a city block. “You know Jubal’s room won’t come to anything like this much. He could stay four months on this.”

“Travis said it was for food, too.”

She drew herself up and glared at me.

“We don’t run a restaurant here, Manuel. Jubal is a friend. He’s welcome at our table at any time. You don’t charge your friends for food.”

I knew that. I could only shrug.

“It’s just crazy,” she muttered. “The way that man works. We should be paying him . In fact, I offered to, but he wouldn’t take it. Unlike my spineless son.”

I wasn’t going to sit still for that, but she relented and apologized to me. Then she went away muttering about how she’d stuff it up… well, she’d be sure he took it. I decided to make myself scarce for that little scene.

I’m not so sure about the food business, it just seems like common courtesy to pay for your suppers if you’re staying a while. But Mom’s biggest fear was to be thought of as common. She had that prickly pride some chronically poor folks get… actually, far too few of them, in my experience, but some. She was quick to take offense at any suggestion she couldn’t get by on her own, or pull her own weight, and never, never ask for a handout, nor accept charity.

Jubal just started cleaning out our little kidney-shaped pool one day. What are you going to do, just stand there and watch him? Dak and I joined in-after our regular studies, Jubal would not allow us to shirk that-and soon the bottom had been caulked and painted, the pump and filter refurbished, and the pool was filled with water for the first [131] time in three years. We held a pool party to celebrate and I saw my mother and aunt in bathing suits for the first time I could remember. Owners of neighboring businesses came and ate Aunt Maria’s fabulous cupcakes and cookies and sipped Alicia’s tofu punch before tossing it to the potted palms and grabbing a beer. They complimented us on how great the old joint looked and spoke of their own plans to renovate, refurbish, and upgrade, often glancing up nervously at the looming concrete of the Golden Manatee. They knew they were in trouble and were looking for a way out. Half our neighbors had already sold to the Manatee’s parent corporation, Pillock and Burke. More would sell soon, you could lay money on it.

We sent an invitation to the Manatee, as a joke. To everyone’s surprise the manager showed up. His name was Bruce Carter. He was courteous to Mom and Maria and spoke briefly to most of the business owners there. He even talked to me for a bit. He told me how much he admired the Triumph. He’d seen me and Jubal going by. He said he’d owned one, once, so we talked motorcycles for a while. Then he went back to work, leaving me depressed. I think it’s easier if your enemy is a genuine prick. This guy didn’t seem to enjoy what was happening to us. He never gloated. But he knew as well as we did that the days of the Blast-Off were numbered. If Pillock and Burke didn’t drive us out, somebody else would.

ON THE TENTH, maybe the eleventh night of his stay with us we were deep in a Monopoly game and I was about to be driven to the poorhouse, as usual. It was my night on desk duty, so I was listening for the doorbell with one ear.

Suddenly Jubal stood up and shouted, “Holly!” We all looked at him and he was pointing at the television screen. I looked, and it was one of those group portraits NASA is so fond of, with the seven Mars astronauts hovering chipmunk-cheeked and bushy-haired in their weightless wardroom. One of the women, Holly Oakley, was holding the mike and answering a question.