by Erika Swyler
“Galaxy cake,” said an older voice, thin, dry. “Coconut, marshmallows, and lemon, with silver stars. You could only get it at the Bird’s Eye in Easter. Have you been there?”
“Lord, it’s been forever.”
“Can’t remember when I last got down that way.”
“Yes, Ginny’s not real fond of people. I assume she got a bee in her bonnet about something. She’ll call when she’s ready.”
“I had to switch suppliers. Prater keeps missing shipments and won’t pick up the phone.”
Her eye descended on a house, a small, garishly colored Victorian, and two children, no bigger than pill bugs, walking by it.
She witnessed the town’s concealment from the world, how they’d been swallowed, roads consumed by vines, blacktop buckling, shaken from below by vegetation reclaiming what had once belonged to it. She wanted to smell the oranges, but her dream did not allow it.
She tried to close her eyes against the years of hurricanes and cars finding new ways around her little town. Trucks followed roads, unwinding like string.
It was easy to be forgotten.
1986: Dawning
Theo flicked on the Geiger counter and listened to the clicks of background radiation in the room. It was the simplest and easiest safety precaution. The radioactive samples he used in Crucible were stored in a lined canister, which he kept inside a small refrigerator. The refrigerator did nothing to prevent radiation leaks, but it appeased the facilities manager, who’d somehow gotten the idea that isotopes could “go bad.” Theo took a few laps around the room, noting readings, then suited up. It was ironic that the medical supply company from which he got the endless skin treatments that were likely poisoning him also provided the lead-lined vest and gloves he wore to keep from poisoning himself. The cesium-137 sample was a single microcurie, diluted in water, easily transported in a perfect little jar the shape of one of Betheen’s flour canisters. Sealed. As safe as something radioactive could be.
The Geiger counter cackled and sang like a dolphin when he took a reading from the sample. Again, within normal. The noise excited something inside him, a hum of life. He noted the room readings again once the sample was safe behind the flanged door in the drum at the center of Crucible.
The halls were silent. They should be at six in the morning, but the quiet gave him the feeling of being the sole person alive, that his was the only light on, and he and Crucible were alone. On a practical level, working early meant fewer people using equipment, and less of a chance to short the building. Again.
He ignored the twinge from his hand and flipped the switch.
The wonder of watching his machine come to life was something he’d never been able to explain properly. He’d had a moment or two with Liebowitz, when they’d seen satellites launch, but that hadn’t been their work specifically; the thrill was muted.
The legs on the machine began spinning, like a dancer’s skirt. Slowly, then gaining speed, pushing air across the lab, through his hair. A cold breeze. He noted the time, jotted observations. A two-degree drop in temperature. Then there came light.
He thought, at first, that it was leaking through the seal on the door in Crucible’s drum, but it grew, coming not from the inside of the drum but the drum itself. The metal radiated light, birthing photons. He wrote as quickly as his hands let him, marking the light’s quality—lemonlike, clear—distinctly unscientific, but descriptors that might help direct him later. The tick in his heart sped up. Six fifteen A.M. The legs too were glowing. He had the sudden vision of a pumpkin turning into a carriage, dullness becoming light and wonder. Crucible spun and blurred in his vision, a burning beacon.
“I know you think your projects are your children,” Betheen once said. But that wasn’t it. She should know. He’d walked by her strange experiment this morning, a bowl of what looked like surgical jelly she was determined to make into something. Betheen should understand how he felt, what he felt.
His projects weren’t children; they were pieces of his mind made physical. An idea he’d torn at for years was whole, and spinning before him, weaving light.
God, but it was beautiful, and he’d made it.
At six seventeen A.M. he flipped the switch again and watched the legs begin to slow, the light ebb. The frame had withstood the force and hadn’t shifted. He hadn’t shorted the building.
When the legs slowed to a stop, he opened the drum’s door, placed a probe inside, and listened to the Geiger counter. The clicks were a slow, clean rhythm.
He forced himself to focus on the numbers, not what it meant or what it might mean. Data first, study and theory later.
The cesium’s rate of decay had slowed. He checked the readings twice, three times. He jotted them down again, rechecked, wrote them down once more—his hand was shaking too badly to write clearly—and whooped.
Theo hadn’t whooped before. He’d never had cause to. At his wedding he’d been too concerned about responsibilities; at Nedda’s birth he’d been too scared to drop her. He’d never had a moment of joy that had been solely his. He bit back the noise, forcing it inside, until he vibrated with it. He’d tell his department head later. After more tests. A repeat performance. He’d tell Betheen tonight, over dinner. He’d call Liebowitz. Liebowitz would have suggestions for other tests, would hammer the idea into his head that it was a fluke, and if it wasn’t a fluke, it would demand thorough testing. It was essential to have people to poke holes in your theories, in your advancements. But oh.
A giggle slipped out. And yes, he was trembling. Ah, Papas, you bastard, you did something good.
It worked. He pounded his hands against his thighs, the pain sharp, clear, making it real. Joyfully real.
It was preliminary. He’d have to replicate it with other samples. Test the change in the cesium sample over hours, days. He shuffled around, returning the jar to the lead-lined canister, then the refrigerator. He ran the Geiger counter in and around the machine for trace radiation. None. Perfectly contained.
It worked.
He closed his eyes and let the weight of the lead vest hold him to the chair. Good weight. The shadow of Crucible’s bright whirling still burned in his eye. He skipped over imagining trials with other isotopes, repeat trials, different samples, the endless documentation and grant requests to follow, patents. He thought of knees that never wore down, hands that never hurt, minds that did not tie themselves in knots with age. And if those thoughts had a lemon-yellow color to them, a clear light, it was natural.
Theo’s heart smacked as if to escape, dancing in a way his body did not let him. Inventions were not like your children. Your children were all your flaws shown to you in a way that made you love them: your worst made good. Inventions were your best attempt at beautiful thought. They were objective; they worked or they did not. They had purpose, whether they achieved it or not. They were yours always, in that they did not leave you, or turn away.
It worked.
Theo’s laughter echoed down an empty hallway.
1986: Grove and Light
She woke to Denny’s face inches from hers, light from the window glinting in his good eye.
“Are you up?”
“I am now.” Her Dream Machine’s blue numbers showed 5:15. Why was it so bright out?
“I need to go to the grove. Do you want to come?”
Her brain was like the inside of a pillow. Hadn’t he gone yesterday? His shoes were already on. Maybe he’d fallen asleep without taking them off. “I thought you wanted to be home for breakfast.”
“There’s a thing I busted and I need to fix it,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
“You broke something at the grove?”
“Yeah. I can fix it, though.”
At six, Betheen would be awake, cracking and whipping whatever needed to go in the oven today.
“Can we go later? I bet Betheen’s going to make cake batter pancakes.” Nedda had eaten too many cake batter pancakes to like them anymore, but Denny would lo
ve them.
“I really want to fix it. I woke up early and I thought about it and I’m pretty sure I can, but I need help. Please come?” He worried his lip against his broken tooth.
“What’d you break?”
“One of my dad’s machines. If I wait until after school, he’s not gonna let me in the shed, and he’ll have one of the Mikes fix it and—I need to fix it. Don’t you want to help me take something apart?”
She knew he would go without her. If she said no, he’d wait until she went to the bathroom, then climb out the window. But he didn’t want to be alone and neither did she. Nor did she want to miss seeing the inside of whatever it was.
“What if you break it worse?” She pulled her shoes from under the bed.
“I won’t. You’ll be there.”
She got her bike. Denny’s was below her bedroom window, leaning against the trellis, cushioned by climbing bougainvillea. The moon shared the sky with the sun, dipping low—a moon Judy Resnik would have liked, one to navigate by. How fast did thoughts travel? If they moved faster than light, they’d have reached the moon almost as soon as the explosion happened. Maybe they were gliding across craters, sailing over dry seas. It was strange for the sun to rise so early in winter. But maybe that’s what explosions did, made the air bend light differently. It hadn’t been fully dark at night either.
There were no cars the entire two miles east on Acacia Lane or when they turned onto Orange Way, which led to the grove. She pedaled hard enough to power her small headlight, which lit up Denny’s reflectors. His headlight was bulky and ran on batteries. Hers was better; her dad made it and it was brighter than any other generator headlight she’d seen. It almost made up for the banana seat. Her lungs hurt—Denny pedaled fast and never checked to see if she kept up. He knew she was there.
At the grove’s gravel entrance, Denny tossed his bike and started climbing the fence.
That’s when she saw the glow hanging over the trees. That wasn’t the word for it, but she couldn’t think of what was. The light looked stuck to the trees, or like it came from them, and it was a sick-looking yellow-green. Above the glow was the haze of sprinklers, rain in slow motion.
“Come on,” Denny said.
She wanted to stop, but Denny was over the fence and running. She caught her pants on one of the links, tearing a hole in the back, the kind of hole that mending would make a keloid of stitches.
“This way,” he said, and took off for the equipment shed, his shoes kicking up a dust cloud.
It wasn’t as much a shed as it was a giant metal barn that could house an airplane, but instead stored the grove’s larger machinery—trunk shakers, spraying rigs, and things Nedda didn’t know the names of. When she reached him, Denny was pulling at the door, using his full body weight to slide it open across a rail made rough by rust.
“Can you get in? Feel around. There’s a light switch on the left side. Maybe if you push from the inside it’ll open.”
She was thinner than Denny, an accident of frame, something from her mother’s side. Betheen was willowy. Polite people called Nedda wiry; to everyone else, she was scrawny. Tiffany and Vicky were already pushing toward the promise of boobs. Nedda had dents—dents were perfect for fitting through cracked-open doors. Hand against metal, she searched for the switch. Space walks must feel like that, reaching into nothing, stretching into dark.
The lights went on in the back of the shed first and rolled forward. Hiccupping electric clicks revealed the silhouettes of tractors, shakers, and large-bladed things.
When the door squealed open another two inches, Denny jammed himself through. He went to a pug-nosed machine, a tractor-like thing with a flat front. Tucked up against its side were four circular saw blades that attached to what looked like a folding arm.
It looked like the cargo arm on Challenger. Canadarm, because it was made in Canada. Canadarm, because it said CANADA across it in huge letters. Canadarm. Canadarm. She pinched herself to stop thinking the word.
“That’s the thing you broke?”
“I wasn’t even doing anything,” he said.
“Suuuure you weren’t.”
He popped the hood open with a hollow thump, then stuck his arm deep inside. She would have checked for fan blades, sharp things, but Denny always moved like nothing could possibly hurt him.
“What’s it do?”
“It’s a pruner. It hacks off the tops of trees to keep them from growing too close. I guess you could make hedges with it too. Maybe you do that with kumquats. Ever see a kumquat tree? Kumquat. Kumm-kwatt. Kum-kwatt.”
She laughed, but couldn’t shake her nervousness. “How long do you need?”
“I dunno. A little while, I guess.”
“When does your dad come in?”
“It depends,” he said. “But he always goes to the office first. We’ll hear the truck.”
“Okay.”
The doorway leaked light from the trees. Yellow like citrus, like limes and oranges, grapefruits. A sour kind of light. She peered through the door at the trees again. They were wrong somehow. Almost moving.
A hissing sound came from near Denny’s arm. “Can you come here? I need a hand.”
The pruner’s insides looked like the workings of any car to her—black and oily with a velvety coat of dirt—nothing like the shiny clean things her father built. She grabbed the network of hoses and lines Denny pointed to. Battery cable, a radiator hose, and the rest she didn’t know. “How’d you break it?”
A smear of grease on Denny’s cheek blended with the dark edge of the bruise. “I didn’t. It stopped when I was on it. I didn’t do anything different from normal. I know how to drive it.”
She believed him. In the summer, he’d taken her out on a tractor, riding it up and down the narrow rows. Lumbering, bumpy. But she’d felt safe.
“Mom wasn’t there when I got home from school yesterday, so I came here. Little Mike taught me how to drive it a while back. He shows me how to run stuff sometimes.” Little Mike was one of the grove’s workers. He wasn’t much taller than Nedda, square, and sun browned. There was a Big Mike too. “The door was open, but nobody was in here. I just wanted to make the arm run, swing around at a few things. It’s got a separate gear shifter and there’s not a lot of stuff you can run with two shifters at once. I wanted to get the blades going a little, because it sounds good. It makes this whhrrrrrrr, and it’s like a chainsaw but when it goes through trees it’s like a lawn mower. I wasn’t going to cut any of the trees, I just wanted to swing it around. I got out to the west gate and I was trying to get the arm going, but the gears are sticky. I rolled into a puddle one of the sprayers left, and the whole thing seized up and wouldn’t go anywhere. That’s when Pop’s truck pulled in.”
“What’d he do?”
“He hitched it to the pickup to get it back here.”
She wanted to ask, to see if he’d say that Pop hit him. But it was the kind of question you couldn’t take back.
“Jimmy La Morte shot spitballs at me during the launch. That’s why I called him that.”
Denny stopped moving. “I can spit in Jimmy’s lunch. It’ll look like an accident.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“The pruner cost a lot of money,” he said and tossed two bolts onto the seat. “And Pop was already in a bad mood about the frost. If I can fix it, it won’t be so bad. I know I can. I’m not sure why it stopped. The oil’s okay. It’s got gas and the battery’s good. I thought it had to be the battery because of the cold, right?”
“Cold is bad on rubber too.”
He almost smiled. “Yeah, it could be that. Maybe it’s a hose line. There are a bunch of hoses on hooks in the back. Can you grab me some? And a knife. There’s one in the middle drawer of the red tool cabinet.”
Nedda walked deep into the shed, weaving between machines. How were you supposed to not want to take them out, to make them do whatever you wanted, to feel big? Shadows of the vehicles loomed like dinosaur skele
tons in a museum, menacing for what they could have been when they were alive, when they were running. She looked for Pop Prater in all those dark places.
She found the hose coils and hefted them off the hook with both arms. “Hey, Den?”
“Yeah?” He looked up from the pruner.
A sputtering sound like fireworks came from the nearest trees as a line of sprinklers turned on, and with it came a shot of light that fell across Denny, a brilliant green-yellow flooding the open door, heavier, thicker than sprinkler mist. Nedda ducked behind a tractor. Denny turned to look, mouth open. His hair blew back.
It was pretty hair, she thought, and then the light devoured him in a flash, blinding her.
Fierce cold froze the snot in her nose and the words in her mouth. A slick of ice brushed her skin—not wet, not dry—cold and glass-like. She screamed, but the sound was swallowed by light. Breath, her breath was gone, until it crashed back in, gasping, as though she’d never breathed before.
The cold receded as quickly as it had come, leaving in its place a ringing in her ears, and darkness.
Her vision returned as blinking dots, blue and purple ringed by white. Retinal burn. She knew that eyes could get sunburned—that’s what snow blindness was. “Denny?”
He didn’t answer.
She inched toward him, using the machines for balance, feeling her way. There was the trunk shaker with its wide catch. The table with a toolbox. She called his name. The closer she got to him, the hotter the shed was. Why wasn’t he answering? He wouldn’t have run. He’d never left her. Not ever. Not when the wheel had come off her bike on the way to the gator park, not even when she’d gotten sick at the lunch table and thrown up on Melissa Simm’s red Esprit sweatshirt. There were moths inside her, under her ribs. Or dragonflies. Somehow dragonflies had gotten inside her.
He was still there, sitting on the pruner, looking back, and yet he wasn’t. His hands looked larger, his arms looked stretched—thinner. In front of her he was changing. All she could think of was Plastic Man, and how he stretched, but Plastic Man was silly and awful. Denny just looked wrong. His eyes looked wrong. Blurry.
