Isaac Asimov's SF-Lite

by Gardner R. Dozois

  Maggie didn’t understand her uncle’s stories. They all sounded alike and they were all about scientists and girls. Ned ran the hardware store on Main. He played dominoes on Saturdays with Dr. Harlow Pierce who also ran Pierce’s Drugs. On Sundays he watched girls’ gymnastics on TV. When someone named Tanya did a flip he got a funny look in his eyes. Aunt Grace would get Maggie and take her out in the car for a drive.

  Maggie found a stack of magazines in the garage behind a can of kerosene. There were pictures of naked girls doing things she couldn’t imagine. There were men in some of the pictures and she guessed they were scientists, too.

  Aunt Grace and Uncle Ned were dirt poor but they gave a party for Maggie’s eighth birthday. Maggie was supposed to pass out invitations at school but she threw them all away. Everyone knew Jimmy Gerder chased her home and knew why. She was afraid Aunt Grace would find out. Uncle Ned gave her a Philips screwdriver in a simulated leather case you could clip in your pocket like a pen. Aunt Grace gave her a paperback history of the KGB.

  Maggie loved the freedom children enjoy in small towns. She knew everyone on Main who ran the stores, the people on the streets and the people who came in from the country Saturday nights. She knew Dr. Pierce kept a bottle in his office and another behind the tire in his trunk. She knew Mrs. Betty Keen Littler, the coach’s wife, drove to Austin every Wednesday to take ceramics and came back whonkered with her shoes on the wrong feet. She knew about Oral Blue, who drank wine and acted funny and thought he came from outer space. Oral was her favorite person to watch. He drove a falling-down pickup and lived in a trailer by the river. He came into town twice a week to fix toasters and wire lamps. No one knew his last name. Flip Gator who ran Flip Gator’s Exxon tagged him Oral Blue. Which fit because Oral’s old ’68 pickup was three shades of Sears’ exterior paint for fine homes. Sky Blue for the body. Royal blue for fenders. An indeterminate blue for the hood. Oral wore blue shirts and trousers. Blue Nikes with the toes cut out and blue socks.

  “Don’t get near him,” said Aunt Grace. “He might of been turned. And for Christ’s sake don’t ever sit in his lap.”

  Maggie kept an eye on Oral when she could. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she’d run home fast with Jimmy Gerder on her heels and duck up the alley to the square. Then she’d sit and watch Oral stagger around trying to pinpoint his truck. Oral was something to see. He was skinny as a rail and had a head too big for his body. Like a tennis ball stabbed with a pencil. Hair white as down and chalk skin and pink eyes. A mouth like a wide open zipper. He wore a frayed straw hat painted pickup-fender blue to protect him from the harsh Texas sun. Uncle Ned said Oral was a pure-bred genetic albino greaser freak and an aberration of nature. Maggie looked it up. She didn’t believe anything Uncle Ned told her.

  Ten days after Maggie was eleven Dr. Pierce didn’t show up for dominoes and Ned went and found him in his store. He took one look and ran out in the street and threw up. The medical examiner from San Antone said Pierce had sat on the floor and opened forty-two-hundred pharmaceutical-type products, mixed them in a five-gallon jug and drunk most of it down. Which accounted for the internal explosions and extreme discoloration of the skin.

  Maggie had never heard about suicide before. She imagined you just caught something and died or got old. Uncle Ned began to drink a lot more after Dr. Pierce was gone. “Death is one of your alternate lifestyles worth considering,” he told Maggie. “Give it some thought.”

  Uncle Ned became unpleasant to be around. He mostly watched girls’ field hockey or Eastern Bloc track and field events. Maggie was filling out in certain spots. Ned noticed her during commercials and grabbed out at what he could. Aunt Grace gave him hell when she caught him. Sometimes he didn’t know who he was. He’d grab and get Grace, and she’d pick up something and knock him senseless.

  Maggie stayed out of the house whenever she could. School was out and she liked to pack a lunch and walk down through the trees at the edge of town to the Colorado. She liked to wander over limestone hills where every rock you picked up was the shell of something tiny that had lived. The sun fierce-bright and the heat so heavy you could see it. She took a jar of ice water and a peanut butter sandwich and climbed up past the heady smell of green salt-cedar to the deep shade of big live oaks and native pecans. The trees here were awesome, tall and heavy-leafed, trunks thick as columns in a bad Bible movie. She would come upon the ridge above the river through a tangle of ropy vine, sneak quietly to the edge and look over and catch half a hundred turtles like green clots of moss on a sunken log. Moccasins crossed the river, flat heads just above the water leaving shallow wakes behind. She would eat in the shade and think how it would be if Daddy were there. How much he liked the dry rattle of locusts in the summer, the sounds that things made in the wild. He could tell her what bird was across the river. She knew a crow when she heard it, that a cardinal was red. Where was he? she wondered. She didn’t believe he’d been a mole at Montgomery Wards. Aunt Grace was wrong about that. Why didn’t he come back? He might leave Mother and she wouldn’t much blame him if he did. But he wouldn’t go off and leave her.

  “I don’t want you to be dead,” she said aloud. “I can think of a lot of people who it’s okay if they’re dead, but not you.”

  She dropped pieces of sandwich into the olive-colored water. Fish came up and sucked them down. When the sun cut the river half in shadow she started back. There was a road through the woods, no more than ruts for tires but faster than over the hills. Walking along thinking, watching grasshoppers bounce on ahead and show the way. The sound came up behind her and she turned and saw the pickup teeter over the rise in odd dispersions of blue, the paint so flat it ate the sun in one bite. Oral blinked through bug spatters, strained over the wheel so his nose pressed flat against the glass. The pickup a primary disaster, and Oral mooning clown-faced, pink-eyed, smiling like a zipper, and maybe right behind some cut-rate circus with a pickled snake in a jar. He spotted Maggie and pumped the truck dead; caliche dust caught up and passed them both by.

  “Well now, what have we got here?” said Oral. “It looks like a picnic and I flat missed it good. Not the first time, I’ll tell you. I smell peanut butter I’m not mistaken. You want to get in here and ride?”

  “What for?” said Maggie.

  “Then don’t. Good afternoon. Nice talking to you.”

  “All right. I will.” Maggie opened the door and got in. She couldn’t say why, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

  “I’ve seen you in town,” said Oral.

  “I’ve seen you too.”

  “There’s a lot more to life than you dream of stuck on this out of the way planet I’ll tell you that. There’s plenty of things to see. I doubt you’ve got the head for it all. Far places and distant climes. Exotic modes of travel and different ways of doing brownies.”

  “I’ve been over to Waco and Forth Worth.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “You just say you’re a space person, don’t you,” said Maggie, wondering where she’d gotten the courage to say that. “You’re not really are you?”

  “Not any more I’m not,” said Oral. “My ship disintegrated completely over The Great Salt Lake. I was attacked by Mormon terrorists almost at once. Spent some time in Denver door-to-door. Realized I wasn’t cut out for sales. Sometime later hooked up with a tent preacher in Bloomington, Indiana. Toured the tri-state area, where I did a little healing with a simple device concealed upon my person. Couldn’t get new batteries and that was that. I was taken in by nuns outside of Reading, Pennsylvania, and treated well, though I was forced to mow lawns for some time. Later I was robbed and beaten severely by high-school girls in Chattanooga where I offered to change a tire. I have always relied on the kindness of strangers. Learned you can rely on ’em to kick you in the ass.” Oral picked up a paper sack shaped like a bottle and took a drink. “What’s your daddy do? If I’m not mistaken, he sells nails.”

  “That’s not my daddy, that’s my uncle. My f
ather disappeared under strange circumstances.”

  “That happens. More often than you might imagine. There are documented cases. Things I could tell you you wouldn’t believe. Look it up. Planes of existence we can’t see or not a lot. People lost and floating about in interdimensional yogurt.”

  “You think my father’s somewhere like that?”

  “I don’t know. I could ask.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “I got this shirt from a fellow selling stuff off a truck. Pierre Cardin irregular is what it is. Dirt cheap and nothing irregular about it I can see. Whole stack of ’em there by your feet.”

  “They’re all blue.”

  “Well, I know that.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “My place. Show you my interstellar vehicle and break open some cookies. You scared to be with me?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “You might well ask why I make no effort to deny my strange origin or odd affiliation. I find it’s easier to hide out in the open. You say you’re from outer space, people tend to leave you alone. I’ve lived in cities and I like the country better. Not so many bad rays from people’s heads. To say nothing of the dogshit in the streets. What do you think? You have any opinion on that? People in small towns are more tolerant of the rare and slightly defective. They all got a cousin counting his toes. I can fix nearly anything there is. Toasters. TVs. Microwave ovens. Everything except that goddamn ship. If Radio Shack had decent parts at all I’d be out of here and gone.”

  Oral parked the truck under the low-hanging branches of a big native pecan. The roots ground deep in the rigid earth, squeezed rocks to the surface like broken dishes. The tree offered shade to the small aluminum trailer, which was round as a bullet. Oral had backed it off the road some time before. The tires were gone, tossed off in the brush. The trailer sat on rocks. Oral ushered Maggie in. Found Oreos in a Folger’s coffee can, Sprite in a mini-fridge. A generator hacked out back. The trailer smelled of wine and bananas and 3-In-0ne oil. There was a hotplate and a cot. Blue shirts and trousers and socks.

  “It’s not much,” said Oral. “I don’t plan to stay here any longer than I have to.”

  “It’s very cozy,” said Maggie, who’d been taught to always say something nice. The trailer curved in from the door to a baked plastic window up front. The floor and the walls and the roof were explosions of colored wire and gutted home computers. Blue lights stuttered here and there.

  “What’s all this supposed to be?” said Maggie.

  “Funky, huh?” Oral showed rapid eye movement. “No wonder they think I’m crazy. The conquest of space isn’t as easy as the layman might imagine. I figure on bringing in a seat from out of the truck. Bolt it right there. Need something to seal up the door. Inner tubes and prudent vulcanizing ought to do it. You know about the alarming lack of air out in space?”

  “I think we had it in school.”

  “Well, it’s true. You doing all right at that place?”

  The question took Maggie by surprise. “At school you mean?

  Sort of. Okay I guess.”

  “Uh-huh.” Oral hummed and puttered about. Stepped on a blue light and popped it like a bug. Found a tangle of wire from a purple Princess phone and cut it free. Got needle-nose pliers and twisted a little agate in to fit. “Wear this,” he told Maggie. “Hang it round your waist and let the black dohicky kind of dangle over your personal private things.”

  “Well, I never!” Maggie didn’t care for such talk.

  “All right, don’t. Run home all your life.”

  “You’ve been spying on me.”

  “You want a banana? Some ice cream? I like to crumble Oreos over the top.”

  “I think I better start on home.”

  “Go right up the draw and down the hill. Shortcut. Stick to the path. Tonight’s a good night to view the summer constellations. Mickey’s in the Sombrero. The Guppy’s on the rise.”

  “I’ll be sure and look.”

  When Maggie was twelve, Aunt Grace went to Galveston on a trip. The occasion was a distant cousin’s demise. Uncle Ned went along. Which seemed peculiar to Maggie since they wouldn’t ear together, and seldom spoke.

  “We can’t afford it, God knows,” said Aunt Grace. “But Albert was a dear. Fought the Red menace in West Texas all his life. Fell off a shrimper and drowned, but how do we know for sure? They'd make it look accidental.”

  She left Maggie a list of things to eat. Peanut butter and Campbell’s soup. Which was mostly what she got when they were home. Aunt Grace said meat and green vegetables tended to give young girls diarrhea and get their periods out of whack.

  “Stay out of the ham and don’t thaw anything in the fridge. Here’s two dollars that’s for emergencies and not to spend. Call Mrs. Ketcher you get sick. Lock the doors. Come straight home from school and don’t look at the cable.”

  “I’m scared to stay alone,” said Maggie.

  “Don’t be a fraidy cat. God’ll look after you if you’re good.”

  “Don’t tell anyone we’re gone,” said Uncle Ned. “Some greaser’ll break in and steal us blind.”

  “For God’s sake, Ned, don’t tell her that.”

  Uncle Ned tried to slip a paper box in the back seat. Maggie saw him do it. When they both went in to check the house she stole a look. The carton was full of potato chips and Fritos, Cheetos and chocolate chip cookies. There was a cooler she hadn’t seen iced down with Dr Pepper and frozen Snickers and Baby Ruths. There were never any chips or candy bars around the house. Aunt Grace said they couldn’t afford trash. But all this stuff was in the car. Maggie didn’t figure they’d be bringing any back. When the car was out of sight she went straight to the garage and punched an ice pick hole in the kerosene can that hid Uncle Ned’s stash of magazines. She did it on a rust spot so Ned’d never notice. Then she went out back and turned over flat rocks and gathered half a pickle jar of fat brown Texas roaches that had moved up from Houston for their health. Upstairs she emptied the jar where Aunt Grace kept her underwear and hose. Downstairs again she got the ice pick and opened the freezer door and poked a hole in one of the coils. In case the roasts and chickens and Uncle Ned’s venison sausage had trouble thawing out she left the door open wide to summer heat.

  “There,” said Maggie, “y’all go fuck yourselves good.” She didn’t know what it meant but it seemed to work fine for everyone else.

  When Maggie was thirteen, Jimmy Gerder nearly caught her. By now she knew exactly what he wanted and ran faster. But Jimmy had been going out for track. He had the proper shoes and it was only a matter of time. Purely by chance she came across Oral’s gimmick in the closet. The little black stone he’d twisted on seemed to dance like the Sony when a station was off the air. Why not, she thought, it can’t hurt. Next morning she slipped it on under her dress. It felt funny and kinda nice, bouncing on her personal private things. Jimmy Gerder caught her in an alley. Six good buddies had come to watch. Jimmy wore his track outfit with a seven on the back. A Marble Creek Sidewinder rattler on the front. He was a tall and knobby boy with runny white-trash eyes and bad teeth. Maggie backed against a wall papered with county commissioner flyers. Jimmy came at her in a fifty meter stance. His mouth moved funny; a peculiar glaze appeared. A strange invisible force picked him up and slammed him flat against the far alley wall. Maggie hadn’t touched him. But something certainly had. Onlookers got away fast and spread the word. Maggie wasn’t much of an easy lay. Jimmy Gerder suffered a semi-mild concussion, damage to several vertebrae and ribs.

  She hadn’t seen Oral in over a year. On the streets sometime, but not at the extraterrestrial aluminum trailer by the river.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “I don’t get chased any more. How in the world did you do that?”

  “What took you so long to try it out? Don’t tell me. I got feelings too.”

  Nothing seemed to have changed. There were more gutted personal home computers and blue lights, or may
be the same ones in different order.

  “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me,” said Oral. He brought out Oreos and Sprites. “Got the ship clear out of the atmosphere and hit this time warp or something. Nearly got eat by Vikings. Worse than the Mormons. Fixed up the ship and flipped it out again. Ended up in Medieval Europe. Medicis and monks, all kinds of shit. Joined someone’s army in Naples. Got caught and picked olives for a duke. Look at my face. They got diseases you never heard of there.”

  “Oh my,” said Maggie. His face didn’t look too good. The bad albino skin had holes like a Baby Swiss.

  “I taught ’em a thing or two,” said Oral, blinking one pink eye and then the other. “Simple magic tricks. Mr. Wizard stuff. Those babies’ll believe anything. Ended up owning half of Southern Italy. Olive oil and real estate. Not a bad life if you can tolerate the smell. Man could make a mint selling Soft ’n Pretty and Sure.”

  “I’m glad you’re back safe,” said Maggie. She liked Oral a lot, and didn’t much care what he made up or didn’t. “What are you going to do now?”

  “What can I do? Try to get this mother off the ground. I’m thinking of bringing Radio Shack to task in federal court. I feel I have a case.”

  Maggie listened to the wind in the trees. “Do you really think you can do it, Oral? You think you can make it work again?”

  “Sure I can. Or maybe not. You know what gets to me most on this world? Blue. We got reds and yellows and greens up the ass. But no blue. You got blues all over.” Oral put aside his Sprite and found a bottle in a sack. “You hear from your daddy yet?”

  “Not a thing. I’m afraid he’s gone.”

  “Don’t count him out. Stuck in interstellar tofu most likely. Many documented cases.”