The Sound of Life and Everything

by Krista Van Dolzer

  Mama clamped her lips shut, but the television kept going:

  12.

  11.

  10.

  “The subject may need some time,” Dr. Franks said suddenly. “He probably won’t remember everything all at once. I don’t mean to alarm you, but the other subjects have struggled—which is to say that they haven’t adapted as quickly as we’d like.”

  “Mildred,” Mama whispered. “Are you absolutely certain that this is what you want?”

  A single tear spilled down her cheek. “Yes, Anna, I’m sure.”

  3.

  2.

  1.

  The line glowed, something hissed, and the horse pill split in half. Steam poured through the opening as a dim outline emerged.

  I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed my nose to the glass. As the shape took a wobbly step out of the horse pill, it resolved into a man. A man that might be Robby.

  My heart sank to my toes. What if it really was Robby? What if he’d come back to life and the first face he saw was mine? It should have been Theo’s or even Gracie’s. Someone from his real family, not me.

  Before I could retreat, the man bobbled and fell. Auntie Mildred gasped—she probably wanted to help him—but before she or Dr. Franks could rush to his aid, the man managed to drag himself back to his feet. When he looked up, our eyes met, and I saw three things all at once:

  First, he was a man—or at least a boy—with arms and everything.

  Second, he was naked.

  And third, he wasn’t Robby. He was Japanese.

  2

  Mama attempted to cover my eyes, but it was a halfhearted move, more thought than action. When I knocked her hand away, she didn’t try to resist.

  We stared at the man, and he stared back at us. I couldn’t tell how old he was—I’d always been terrible at guessing ages at the county fair—but he looked as old as Robby when he left for the war. The fact that he was naked—and covered in slime—didn’t seem to concern him. I couldn’t help but be impressed.

  Dr. Franks gasped. “What on earth . . . ?”

  “Is this a joke?” Mama asked.

  “Of course not,” he replied, slithering backward a step.

  The panic in his voice—and the look on Mama’s face—made my hands start to sweat. I hadn’t expected Robby to come out of that pod, but I certainly hadn’t expected a Japanese man to, either.

  “Would you care to explain where he came from?” she asked.

  “How should I know?” he replied. “That was supposed to be Robert Clausen, not some baby-faced Jap!”

  Auntie Mildred was too busy staring at a spot on the wall to do much more than blink, but I swallowed, hard. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor when I was just a baby, but I knew why people hated them. Why they still called them names. The war they’d dragged us into had taken my cousin, Robby; my brother, Daniel; and at least one son or daughter from every family in St. Jude. Forgiving wasn’t easy when you lost someone you loved.

  Dr. Franks, who’d been backpedaling since the Japanese man had emerged, crashed into the door. “I don’t understand.” He grabbed a nearby clipboard. “The DNA’s never wrong.”

  “What’s DNA?” Mama asked.

  “It’s an abbreviation,” he said as he fluttered through several pages. “It stands for deoxyribonucleic acid.” He smacked the clipboard. “And it’s never, ever wrong!”

  “Then there must be some mistake.” Mama pried the clipboard from his hands. “You cockamamie scientists must have more of these capsule things. Robby’s probably in one of them.”

  His head bobbed up and down. “Well, yes, I suppose he could be. I need to check with Imogene.” And with that, he seized the clipboard and scurried out of the room.

  The soft snick of the door sliding shut on his heels was enough to snap Auntie Mildred out of her trance. She covered her face with her hands, and though she didn’t make a sound, her bony shoulders shook from the violence of her sobs. I tried to feel what she was feeling, but the tremors wouldn’t come. We’d buried Robby a long time ago. This loss felt small compared to that one.

  While Mama tried to comfort Auntie Mildred, I sneaked another peek at the Japanese man. I’d been so certain that no one would come out of that horse pill, so now that someone had, I wanted to make sure he was real. His hair was black and caked with slime, which made it stick out every which way, but since it looked like a bird’s nest, I decided I liked it. His eyes were dark brown and shaped like sideways teardrops.

  I slid along the window until I was even with him. I’d seen his arms and legs, but maybe he had four thumbs or flippers instead of feet. There was only one way to find out. After drawing a deep breath, I pressed my hand to the glass.

  He must have known what I wanted, because he took a shaky step toward me. His legs caved underneath him, but once he regained his balance, he pressed his hand to the glass, his left against my right. His hand was bigger than mine, but it was a hand, with four tapered fingers and one crooked thumb. Our palms didn’t touch, but as slime outlined our hands, I thought I could feel the heat radiating off his skin.

  Worry and excitement warred inside me, battling for my attention. But before one could win, Mama barked, “What are you doin’? Take your hand down from there, and turn around this instant. If your daddy only knew what you were lookin’ at . . .”

  Grudgingly, I dropped my hand, but I stayed where I was. The Japanese man was a mystery I intended to solve.

  • • •

  For all of his so-called intelligence, Dr. Franks had no idea where the Japanese man had come from. As far as their records indicated (and their records were very accurate, he assured us), they’d injected the donated egg with Auntie Mildred’s sample. He only had one explanation for why it hadn’t grown into my cousin: the DNA—the blood—on my cousin’s dog tags must not have belonged to him.

  Mama made a face. “That ain’t an explanation,” she said.

  “Well, it’s the best one I’ve got. The science is still quite new. That’s why we call it a test.”

  Mama didn’t try to reason with Dr. Franks, just grabbed her sister’s arm. “Let’s go,” she mumbled.

  Dr. Franks lowered his clipboard. “But aren’t you going to take him?” He motioned toward the window.

  “Take him where?” Mama asked.

  Dr. Franks blinked. “Home, of course.”

  Auntie Mildred’s eyes fluttered, which was what they always did when she started to swoon. We had to do something, and fast. Mama smacked her cheek while I kicked her in the shins. The kicking was usually Gracie’s job, but I’d seen her do it plenty of times.

  Auntie Mildred straightened back up. “Thank you,” she peeped.

  “My pleasure,” I said.

  Mama returned her attention to Dr. Franks. “Did you really think we would just take him home?”

  “Well, yes,” he replied. “Ingolstadt’s not equipped to house our subjects on a long-term basis. This is a laboratory, not the Biltmore.”

  I wished it were the Biltmore. Then it would have had room service—not to mention a pool—instead of these tiny rooms and the lingering aroma of Dr. Franks’s cologne.

  Mama tried a new tack. “What about your research?”

  “Oh, well, you’ll bring him back every week for the next couple of months.”

  Mama snorted. “Not likely.”

  Dr. Franks sputtered. “But Mrs. Clausen signed a contract! She agreed to take custody.”

  “No,” Mama said, “she agreed to take Robby.”

  Mama rushed us away without a backward glance. I dragged my feet, wanting to catch one last glimpse of the Japanese man, but Mama’s grip was as tight as Uncle George’s bear traps. Dr. Franks pursued us, but Mama ignored his fervent pleas, her mouth set in a grim line.

  We took several wrong turns, bu
t Mama never wavered. When we finally emerged into the lobby with the three-story portrait, it was by the sheer force of her will. The secretary refused to meet our eyes as we skittered out the mouth door, which zoomed shut on our heels like it was spitting us out.

  It wasn’t until the afternoon sun started to thaw out my arms that I realized how cold I was, and suddenly, I felt a little sorry for the Japanese man. Would he ever know the feeling of sunshine on prickly goose bumps, or of fresh air in cooped-up lungs?

  Auntie Mildred shook her head as we climbed into the car. “I can’t take him. I won’t. I told them I’d take Robby, not this . . . this imposter.”

  Mama jerked the gearshift into reverse. “Didn’t I say that ad was trouble?”

  “I just wanted Robby back.” Auntie Mildred’s shoulders slumped. “Dr. Franks said they’d discovered the secret of life.”

  Mama’s nose wrinkled. “He ain’t God Himself.”

  “He sounded smart,” she went on. “He knew stuff we didn’t.”

  “Lots of folks know stuff we don’t, but that doesn’t make ’em smart.”

  Mama and Auntie Mildred didn’t say another word for the rest of the ride, though I would have welcomed the entertainment. The drive was as dull as Mama’s silver, nothing but rolling hills and clumps of sage for as far as the eye could see. Or maybe it wasn’t the drive that was really the problem. My thoughts were tangled knots that I couldn’t untie, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. The others seemed to think that the Japanese man was a criminal, but how could you decide if a man was good or bad just by looking at his face?

  I was still trying to decide when we turned off the old highway, but before I could ask, Auntie Mildred finally cracked.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “There’s only one way that blood could have ended up on those dog tags.”

  Auntie Mildred gave us a chance to work it out on our own, but me and Mama were less thinkers, more doers. We didn’t work anything out before her patience ran dry.

  “There must have been some sort of scuffle.” Auntie Mildred hissed the words as she leaned across the seat. “Then he must have killed my son.”

  I might not have had the brains to come up with the answer on my own, but I could spot the truth when someone pointed me in its direction. Worry rumbled in my stomach like a pack of restless squirrels. If the Japanese man had killed Robby, would he kill us, too? I glanced at Mama to see if she’d had the same thought, but her face in the rearview was a blank mask.

  “That’s quite an accusation,” she said.

  Auntie Mildred sniffed. “It’ll turn out to be true. You just wait and see.”

  3

  Daddy didn’t get home that night until it was almost time for dinner. As soon as he walked through the door, he hung his hat on the coatrack and retrieved his dinner jacket. He always wore it to eat, just like he never left home without a hat on his head. I figured that was why they called it a dinner jacket.

  “Evening, Anna,” he said as he strolled into the kitchen.

  She looked up from the ham she’d been dragging out of the oven. “I’m sorry we’re late. It’s been one of those days.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, relieving her of the ham. He set it on the table with an audible thunk. “But really, I don’t mind.”

  Mama kissed him soundly. “I appreciate your assistance.”

  Daddy grinned. “My pleasure.”

  I pretended to hurl into the mashed potatoes, but neither of them seemed to notice.

  Eventually, Mama returned her attention to the ham. “Did you have a nice time at the pier?”

  “Not really,” he said. “For some reason I can’t quite fathom, the fish prefer George’s line.” He sneaked a piece of ham. “Did you have a nice time baking cookies?”

  “Actually,” I replied, “we didn’t have time to make cookies. Auntie Mildred called after lunch, and we had to—”

  “Ella Mae,” Mama said, “how are those potatoes lookin’?”

  I inspected my handiwork. I could have made a stink that she hadn’t let me finish, but I’d long since figured out that mamas played by different rules. “I’d say they’re lookin’ mashed.”

  Mama untied her apron. “Then I’d say it’s time to eat.”

  I set the potatoes down next to the ham, then squeezed into my seat. Daniel’s was more accessible, but no one sat in Daniel’s chair. If we had dinner guests, Mama made us eat outside. Other folks might have minded, but it made sense to me. I wanted Daniel to come home and take his seat at the table almost as much as she did.

  Daddy held out his hands. His prayers were short and sweet, but that was just the way I liked them. I figured Jesus liked them that way, too, since He had to listen to so many.

  After he finished the prayer, Mama dished up the potatoes. They only looked slightly lumpy. “I assume you ate the fish for lunch?”

  Daddy nodded. “You know George.”

  Uncle George had been an Eagle Scout since they were first invented, so he didn’t believe in frying fish in pans. Instead of bringing his catch home, he roasted it right there on the beach, where it would taste like sand and surf. Since Auntie Mildred only cooked what Betty Crocker told her to, this arrangement worked out well.

  Mama took a sip of sweet tea. “I guess buying that electric range was a waste of money.”

  “It does match their Chrysler,” Daddy said.

  “And their toaster,” I replied.

  “They make teal toasters?” Daddy asked.

  Mama scooped up some green beans. “They make teal everything.”

  “Including houses,” I said.

  Mama shook her head. “No, that’s completely different.” She scooped up some more green beans (though I knew for a fact that she only ate green beans because they were good for you). “Our house is sky blue, not teal.”

  Our house was certainly something. It used to be white, but on the one-year anniversary of my brother’s death, Mama had decided that white was too drab. It had taken her a few weeks to pick out a new color, but once she’d settled on blue, it had only taken us a few days to paint it. Slow to judge, quick to act—that was how Mama lived.

  Daddy raised his glass. “Well, thank goodness I married the sensible Simpson.”

  Mama clinked her glass to his. “You can put that on my tombstone.”

  He speared a slice of ham. “Everything’s delicious, sweetheart. You two must have spent the whole day in the kitchen.”

  “Actually,” I said, “we didn’t get back until—”

  I broke off when something—or someone—kicked me in the shins.

  Mama smiled sweetly. “Pass the butter, will you, sweetness?”

  Scowling, I passed the butter. I would have made more of a fuss, but I didn’t fancy getting kicked again.

  Daddy speared another slice of ham. “Where did you go?” he asked.

  When Mama didn’t answer right away, I took advantage of her silence: “We drove up to Pasadena to meet a man named Dr. Franks. He grows folks in these red horse pills, and one of them should have been Robby, but he was Japanese instead.”

  I’d tucked my legs under my chair about halfway through this speech, but I needn’t have bothered. Mama’s attention was on Daddy, who arched an eyebrow at her. When Mama shook her head, Daddy burst into guffaws.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded. I really didn’t like being the only person in the family under the age of forty-five. It made it hard to get the jokes.

  “You are,” Daddy said.

  I knotted my arms across my waist. “I was tryin’ to be serious.”

  “We know,” Mama replied as she nudged me with her foot.

  The emphasis she put on that one word said more than ten or twenty could have, but Daddy didn’t seem to notice.

  “Maybe we ought to take a break from Sergeant
Friday,” he said, winking. “I didn’t realize you had such a vivid imagination.”

  He and Mama went on laughing like a pair of drunken sailors, but I didn’t join in. No matter what people said, most folks laughed at you, not with you. I drained my milk in one swallow, then slammed the glass down on the table (since that was what the cowboys in all of Daddy’s Westerns did).

  “May I be excused?”

  At least that got their attention. “Aren’t you hungry?” Daddy asked.

  Irritably, I shook my head. “Seeing men come back to life kind of takes away your appetite.”

  Daddy’s forehead wrinkled, but before he had a chance to ask me what I meant, Mama said, “I’m sorry you’re not feelin’ well. Maybe you should go upstairs.”

  She meant that I should go upstairs before I spilled the beans, but I’d already spilled them, and Daddy still hadn’t believed me. We’d been partners in crime since Daniel had left for the war, so this brush-off was especially painful. I set my plate down in the sink, then headed upstairs to my room.

  I stormed past Daniel’s door, which was closed like always, the doorjambs standing guard like a pair of silent soldiers. Mama kept his room exactly as he’d left it, as if he might come home someday and pick up the pieces of his life. I couldn’t say I blamed her. Daniel was the only thing she’d brought all the way from Alabama after the Depression and the Dust Bowl had forced them to head west. She’d always called Daniel her home’s blood and me her little miracle, but maybe if she’d called Daniel the same thing, he wouldn’t have stepped on that land mine.

  I flopped down on my bed and tucked my hands behind my head. Normally, I liked making sense out of the squiggles on my ceiling, but today, they looked like twisty halls and horse pills filled with men.

  I rolled onto my side. “I thought God was the only one who could bring folks back to life, but it looks like Dr. Franks can, too,” I whispered to the yellow wall that I’d once shared with Daniel. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question in my head: If God let Dr. Franks resurrect a Japanese man, why couldn’t He let Dr. Franks resurrect you, too?