Asimov's Science Fiction

by Penny Publications

  At the end of seventh grade, his dad died.

  At the funeral Rafi stood up and said, “Just watch, old man, the world is going to drift right along without you.” His older sister grabbed him and pulled him outside. She made me sit on the funeral parlor porch with Rafi until the service was over. I was happy to do that, to break away from the peculiar mood inside. A younger sister brought jacks out and I spent the time showing her elaborate versions of the game.

  My mother and I spent the whole day at Rafi’s house, accepting gifts of food, greeting visitors, cleaning up. Rafi’s mother never said anything about his outburst and wouldn’t let his older sister say anything either. We kids took turns on the tire swing and chased the younger ones around the yard. We had to be quiet when we were in the house.

  Rafi was so right about the world drifting on. His mom ran the store like she always did. His older sister quit school to work with her and the rest of the kids helped out after school and on weekends and holidays. Rafi was the only one who almost never helped because he said the store reminded him of his father and he wanted to forget.

  I didn’t think the world would drift on if my dad died. But it was my mom who died first. I was in community college and my dad took her to the hospital. When the doctor told him to leave, my dad dutifully went home. I would never have done that. She died alone. And my dad’s world died with her. I quit school and went home to take care of him. I thought this would only last a little while, but it lasted years, till he died.

  Luckily, two years of college qualifies you to be a teacher where I come from, so I had work.

  Rafi didn’t stay in college after I left. He had wanted to be an architect, but he didn’t want to study so he became an artist. He went to California and New York. He sent me a Frida Kahlo book and an adult-sized skirt from Mexico. I don’t understand how he got to all the places he traveled to, because he never seemed to have a real job. He just made stuff for people, furniture and earrings, doghouses and pots. Every once in a while, I’d get a package from him.

  My favorite gift was a blue bowl with a crack in it that he sent me after my mom died. Pop thought he must have gone crazy to give me a broken bowl, but I loved it. The blue was the color of the Johnny Jump-ups we picked as kids to decorate our hideout. And the fact that it wasn’t perfect was fitting. It matched my nature since I couldn’t seem to do anything right. I couldn’t help Pop get over Mama’s death. I couldn’t fall in love with the guys who “courted” me, and I couldn’t think of Rafi as a boyfriend either since we’d always been such good friends. He was so brave, and I was... not. I couldn’t convince Ronda to stop drinking, and I couldn’t talk AmberAnn into leaving her abusive husband. In ten years I had three fifth grade students that I couldn’t teach to read, eighteen who ultimately went into the mines, four diehard bullies. I couldn’t persuade most of the girls that there was something out there for them beyond being wives and mothers. I couldn’t talk the boys out of joining the army when they graduated, even though all their brothers went to war and many didn’t come back, or came back with pieces missing. I couldn’t break patterns, not my own or anyone else’s.

  I thought up endless ways the bowl might have been damaged—in the arms of a woman running away from a war, from a fall when two lovers kissed in a warm kitchen, when a child banged a spoon in exuberance while licking cake batter. Whenever life got boring, I made up stories about the bowl.

  The bowl and I were imperfect but we harbored illusions of mystery and bright color. And then Pop died.

  Rafi

  The cracks came from my dad on a daily basis. “Stupid boy.” “Ninny.” “Bastard.” He knew a million ways to make you feel bad, especially Mama. Then there were the cracks across the face. He always went for the head, except for the times he went for the back of your knee to make you fall as you passed by. It wasn’t very creative abuse.

  When that storm hit and the lightning crashed, it set us kids off. Drunk as he was, he went after the little ones first. I jumped on the table so he’d go after me. There was screaming and running, things breaking... a deafening crack brought it all to a standstill. We thought it hit the house. Everyone sniffed the air for smoke. And then we thought it hit Dad. He grabbed his heart and went down like stone in water. My brother Sal said, “And God has finally spoken.” Mama went to the old man, as slow as she could. Us kids just stood there and watched. Later, we’d tell each other we hoped he was dead; we hoped he was alive; we hoped he was paralyzed. Holly hoped he’d turn into a dog (she always wanted a dog).

  Mama sat and stared at him for a long time. We were quiet. “Rafi,” she said finally. “Call 911.”

  Calvin gave me a look that meant “take your time,” and I did. Mama didn’t seem to care.

  Becca was my best friend, and she knew more than anyone (and believe me the whole town knew) what a hellion my dad was. But she was shocked when I stood up and screamed at the funeral. She was shocked for a whole minute and then I could see that she wanted to laugh, but she’s such a good girl... too good for me.

  I got out of that town as quick as I could. I tried to get Becca to come with me, just as a friend, but she stayed behind to tend to her folks. Such a good girl... The sibs stayed to help Mama with the store but one by one they drifted away, too. Mama sold the store and went to Florida to be with her sister. The family came apart when the torment stopped. Go figure.

  Becca was my best friend because she had the biggest dreams, dreams way too big for that town. But she was too shy to act on them. I found out that it wasn’t hard to make it in the world if you’re willing to work. I’m not too smart but I’m good with my hands so I started making stuff. I started traveling around to meet other folks who made stuff and learn from them. I met Dabber in a place called Egypt Gully, not far from the Pennington Gap. I don’t know if it was Kentucky or North Carolina. It was the sort of place nobody wanted to claim.

  Dabber had fixed up a cave to live in, with handmade furnishings and generators for lights and stuff. He had a tent for overnight guests. I’d seen some of his fine pottery in a shop off the Jonesborough Road, and tracked him down. (He told me later that he couldn’t be tracked unless he wanted to be and I would never find him again.) Dabber shared the secret of his pottery with me. He took me deep into his cave, which I realized wasn’t a very smart thing for me to do, but he was an old guy and, at the time, I thought I could take him. He had me dig out a plug of natural clay and bring it up. In the light of day that clay was the strangest color I’d ever seen. It wasn’t sepia and it wasn’t greensick but it was some unnatural combination, an eerie pigment.

  “Don’t worry,” Dabber said. “We’ll make it a strong blue by soaking it in hot water with this herb.”

  “Okay.” I’d never seen the herb he held up.

  “Don’t leave it in too long,” he said. “I have some stuff to tend to.”

  “Take it out and work it. Make something then let it dry. It’ll dry fast once you take your hands off.”

  I guess I left it soak a little too long because when I took it out the blue was intense. Dabber called it “enthusiastic.”

  I wasn’t much of a potter at that time, but I fashioned a bowl, a bit uneven at the sides but it sat flat. I liked the imperfection of it and so did Dabber. “There’ll be a crack,” he told me.

  “Where?”

  “It’s not there yet, but it’ll come. You have to give the first one away or it’ll crack open your life.”

  I liked my life, didn’t want to spoil my untroubled journeys. “Who’s going to want a cracked bowl?”

  “Think on it. You’ll know someone who’ll appreciate it. Gotta do it. It’s tradition.”

  I spent the night in Dabber’s “guest tent.” I dreamt of home and Becca. So by morning I knew who I had to give the bowl to. The tiniest thread-like crack had begun to appear. Dabber sent me off with a couple pounds of clay wrapped in some kind of special herb he called Warrener. By the time I sent the bowl off to Becca, the crack was
about an inch and a half and wavy like a sidewinder.

  Becca

  After I buried Pop, I wandered around the cemetery for a while. It was a pretty little place, hilly and graced with shade trees. I thought about staying in the same house, wrangling fifth graders that belonged to other folks, ending up in the ground next to Mama and Pop. The world was drifting by without me. It didn’t sit well. But I had no place to go, no prospects. What did I know about the world outside of Hardtack Hollow (what Rafi and I always called our town)?

  Neighbors brought food, but I didn’t encourage them to stay. It was summer and there was no school, so I kept to myself. I sat Rafi’s bowl out on the table where I could see it when I ate, something Pop hadn’t let me do because he was afraid someone would stop in and see us using broken pottery. He liked everything new and plain. No bright colors or doodads, no sentimentality or made-up stories about things chipped or broken.

  One day, I was cleaning the bowl, thinking about something else. I sat it on the counter to get something, but I hadn’t emptied all the water out of it. It tipped a bit when I put it down and a little pool of water seeped out of the crack. I hesitated a moment because I thought I saw a face in it, the face of my neighbor Mrs. Miller. It looked like she was crying.

  And then a knock at the door, and there was Mrs. Miller looking anything but sad.

  “I wonder if I might borrow a stick of butter? I’m making my butter biscuits and ran out. Raymond is coming home from Iraq, and we’re all so excited we don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “Sure, come on in.” Her son, Raymond, had been away for nearly two years.

  “How are you doing, hon?”

  “I’m fine,” I told her. But when I took the butter out, I happened to look down at the puddle and the image of Mrs. Miller was gone, replaced by a narrow box with a flag draped over it. I grabbed the dishrag and swiped at the water.

  “Oh, you broke your bowl,” she said. “What a shame, such a beautiful bowl.”

  “Can I make you a cup of tea, Mrs. Miller?”

  “I’d love to stay and catch up, but with Raymond coming, I’m so busy. Some other time. Maybe you want to come to supper when Raymond’s home tomorrow? He’d love to see you.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t. You’ll want your son and family all to yourself. Thank you, Mrs. Miller, but I don’t think I’m ready to be in company yet. Some other time.”

  “I understand, dear. We’ll have tea after he leaves.”

  I sat at the window and watched. Within twenty minutes, the soldiers were there to give her the bad news.

  After that, I saw Jane Miller’s baby boy (who wasn’t due for four months), Ali Sandoz’s car keys in her Crape Myrtle, Mr. Purdy’s wallet behind the toilet in his house, and a mysterious cache of gold (Nazi? Confederate?) in a hole in old Mrs. Bane’s back yard. All of this appeared in puddles that spilled from Rafi’s bowl. I dreamed of finding Amelia Earhart’s plane, Jimmy Hoffa’s body, the mysterious babushka lady from JFK’s murder. Then one morning, I looked into a puddle and saw myself.

  Rafi

  I had a feeling that storm meant something ominous. I was living outside Sonora near a small patch of the Sonora desert they called the Heavenly Desert, a strange name for a place filled with prickly weeds and poisonous critters. Lightning cracked right over my head. I took it as a sign for me to move on. When it was over I went out to look at the damage. Fulgurites had formed from the tree line almost to my cabin. Any kind of cracks made me think of my dad, my family, home, and my old friends. I packed up and drove into town where I called Becca. But there was no answer.

  I had some commission money and no one to answer to so I took to the road. As I drove through Texas, one day, two days, three, I realized that I was heading toward West Virginia and home—a place I’d vowed never to return to. I told myself I’d visit Becca then head north, to Vermont or maybe Canada. This country was going to hell anyway. I thought about Becca, such a good girl. I hadn’t heard from her in years. How would I, moving around like I did? She was probably married, surrounded by a passel of kids. Maybe she’d left town—no, that would be impossible for Becca, she was rooted in that town. Her folks were good, kind people and everyone loved them and loved Becca. She’d never make waves or fall through the cracks like me. It was like having a saint for a friend, someone I could never live up to; but because she was my friend, I was a better person, better than my mean father, my neglectful mother, my broken sibs.

  I’d been all over but I never met anyone like Becca. Becca was a wonder. She shouldn’t be stuck in that backwater town, but there was no place for her, no place for a saint. The world was too corrupt. It was made for people like me.

  Becca

  Once I knew I had “the sight,” I began to believe I could use it to make my way in the world. So I packed some things in Pop’s old Buick and took off. I’d seen the town I was going to in a pool from the bowl. I just didn’t know where it was. So I started driving.

  The road is a lonely place.

  Rafi

  There wasn’t much left of what Becca and I used to call “Hardtack Hollow,” some boarded-up stores and a few houses.

  A drunken and feeble Ronda told me Becca had left weeks earlier.

  “Just closed up the house and took off without a ‘adie-o’s’ or a farewell beer. Go figger. Said she seen somethin’ in the water. We all seen stuff since the gas company come. Had the nerve to tell me she seen my car go over a cliff.”

  I was glad to hear Becca’d gone. I wondered about the stuff she’d “seen” though. Maybe the town had driven her crazy. Ronda let me take a shower at her house and I left her passed out on the couch when I was finished. The water was undrinkable and the shower gave me a rash. AmberAnn, Becca’s other friend, was dead.

  Maybe it was the water that had gotten them all. I hoped Becca was somewhere safe.

  Becca

  I came on the town at sunset one evening. It was a mountain town like “Hardtack,” at the end of the Appalachians, nearly at the Canadian border. The town was called MacGoun and had once been inhabited by runaway slaves. There were less than three thousand people, a contented mix of African, French, and Native American lineage, artists looking for tranquility, and descendants of European adventurers who’d gotten lost in the mountains a couple of hundred years earlier. There was a small lake they called Little Vic and a smattering of hikers that came through.

  I rented a cottage by the lake and set up my business. I did this by locating (for free, at first) random car keys, rag dolls, wedding rings, left shoes, and a baseball signed by Satchel Paige. Word spread. Paying clients came.

  Life was good, but I knew it wouldn’t last. The water leaking out of the bowl was becoming murky.

  One night I saw the sight that changed everything, a young boy on his way to school with a gun in his backpack. I couldn’t let it happen.

  Rafi

  I was on my way north, sitting in a place called Rig’s Diner somewhere in southern Maine, when the news came on TV. A woman who claimed to be clairvoyant had confronted a teenager who had a gun. She’d talked a local policeman into going with her. He grabbed the boy, but not until after the boy shot her.

  I knew that woman.

  I drove all night to the hospital in Bangor where they’d airlifted her. She didn’t open her eyes when I got there but after a while, she squeezed my hand.

  Becca

  I really thought that boy was going to give me his gun, and I was happy Officer Pryme had the presence of mind to tackle him and not kill him outright. I hoped he could be saved. I was more than ready to slip away having used my gift to do good in the world.

  And then I felt a hand on mine, a touch I’d never forgotten. I knew he’d be disappointed in me if I didn’t give it a try.

  Rafi

  It took a while and a couple of surgeries for Becca to heal. When she was ready, I drove her back to MacGoun. She was such a hero that the town had bought the little cottage for her.

&nbs
p; “You picked a fine place to settle,” I told her.

  “Yes,” she said. “But it gets lonely.”

  “If it’s company you want, I wouldn’t mind hanging around for a while.”

  “I think that would be real nice,” she said.

  It didn’t take but a few weeks to realize that I wanted to stay on. I didn’t think I was worthy, though, so one morning I gathered up my things.

  “Do you have to go?” she asked me.

  “I’m not sure it would be a good idea to make this permanent,” I said.

  “I think it would be glorious,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t want you to get sick of me.”

  “I don’t think that would happen,” she said. “Maybe you’d get sick of me.”

  I knew that could never happen, but I was afraid...

  It was a warm late summer afternoon and the sun was getting ready to set. We were sitting on a blanket by the lake, the cracked bowl had been filled with peaches, fresh picked. She put the three we hadn’t eaten on the blanket and took the bowl down to the edge of the lake. Before I could get to her and ask if this was a good idea, she’d put handfuls of lake water into the bowl and it began to seep out of the crack. I squatted down next to her to see. But, because the ground sloped toward the lake, instead of pooling, the water trickled down into the lake.

  “I guess we weren’t meant to see our own future,” she said.

  I shrugged and kissed her, happy she wouldn’t see how it might end badly if I stayed.