One Small Universe ³

 

The last building block clattered into its appointed place as Zinc closed the toy box; his father was on his way. He could tell because the house’s weight seemed to shift a bit when people moved in it, particularly on the stairs. Oh no! The stairs…toy cars…DAD!

 

He was looking down at the desk clock still in his hand when the realization hit him that his chin was rushing at the hardwood stairs at a fair rate of speed. Without thinking, he reached for the banister, which promptly snapped out of reach as he reversed direction with a sudden jolt, sending the clock one way and him the other. He was watching himself as in a taped image on fast reverse, but moving AWAY from the stairwell altogether. At a point where his head was now pointing toward the floor, about 15 feet away now, he felt his chest constrict and everything in the room stopped. Looking up, he saw half a dozen Hot Wheels on the stairs, the clock floating in midair, and a slight sigh from somewhere behind his head.

 

“Sorry Dad. I was cleaning up, I really was, I just forgot about…those.”

 

“Looks different when the coyote does it…I think it’s the umbrella.”

 

Whew! Zinc tried not to laugh…it was very hard. “Yea, but his invention Kung Fu is weak!”

 

“Was that an attempt at temporal reversal?”

 

“Just then?”

 

…his son knew what he meant. He was stalling. No need to answer insulting questions…silence.

 

Oops! Just once he’d like to get away with some misdirection…just once. He never practiced parlor magic on his father. No fun…at all. “Kinetic, actually…that isn’t the same thing, is it?”

 

He’d had to make it clear that mussing about with time dilation or temporal eventing held the inherent risk of destroying…everything. He wasn’t sure his son’s powers extended into that ability, but no point risking it. “No, it’s not. But I feel like I swallowed an electric eel; how about setting me down, it’s getting hard to breath.”

 

As Dr. Ryan spun slowly upright, he plucked the clock from the air on his way down like a peach from a tree, then he noticed there were no more toys on the stairs, but the sound of plastic skidding on wood came from the direction of Zinc’s room.

 

“How long have you been practicing multiple targets?”

 

“I’m not. They’re just all grouped into the same task. Like time-chopping for…”

 

“…time slicing.”

 

“..yea, time slicing for computer processors. If I do it fast enough, it looks the same.”

 

Sitting on the third step, facing away from his son to hide the obviously proud grin on his face..

 

“You haven’t been this agreeable to cleaning up or this apologetic for nearly fracturing your dear old dad’s neck since I found that squirrel in the laundry hamper. So tell me…” pregnant pause, just for impact “…is it your grades, your exercises, or another hurt animal that is hopefully not hidden in an underwear drawer that even closely resembles mine?”

 

“I uh…well, you might be getting a call from the school because of something that happened in school today. AFTER school actually, but at the school.”

 

Shooting a glance over his shoulder, then stifling the urge to react immediately, “Was, how can I put this; anyone hurt?”

 

“That depends on if a..well if a car counts as ‘anyone’.” Zinc began to wince and closed his eyes, afraid to elaborate.

One Small Universe <part II>

 

The steady sound of the desk clock began to annoy Zinc’s father..

 

“You can’t be serious! You’ve read my report, the results are obvious!” it HAD to be him sweating, because he noticed dampness on the back of his hand as the phone almost slipped out of his palm as he just stopped himself from hurling it into the fireplace…well that, and he hadn’t paid enough for this phone to get one with a ‘sweating feature’, he was sure of that.

 

“Arnie listen to me. I’m going to be frank with you on this because we were roommates, and because you were the only reason I passed Dr. Youngblood’s theoretical physics class. They think you’ve lost it, big A. Using the experimental drugs on your son was one thing, but the rituals for God’s sake, what were you thinking?”

 

A sound…a quiet one, began just between his ears, toward the back of his head. That same one he used to get when he was a kid…a soft, prickly, static-electricity-trapped-in-a-feather-pillow sound…just before he got his allergy shot. He had to get those shots for two years. His mom had tried to make it fun by making a calendar with a different type of coin for his collection taped to each Friday in a small envelope…where WAS that collection? “You know dam…you KNOW the human race has a history of science and technology proving the tenets of faith, religion, and myth. I thought you understood that, Richard! And don’t go talking about ‘drugs’ as if I was giving Zinc Haldol or Thalidimide…it was a synthetic form of his own serotonin, not some designer drug made from nasal inhalers and brake fluid…..”

 

“Exactly. And using a synthetic process that YOU invented, and that YOU have not gotten approved, blind tested, or even certified for fire safety by Underwriter’s Labs! You can insist on doing things your way Ryan…but don’t start getting indignant when people begin thumbing their noses at you when you ask them for money.”

 

The sound in Dr. Arnold Ryan’s head began to give off heat…the long pause on the other end of the phone meant he was supposed to say something, but his earlobes were starting throb and he literally had nothing else to say; except to perhaps remind his old friend that he still had pictures of…

 

<sigh> “Look, most of what they had objections about was rumor anyhow, I’ll try to see what they’re really worried about. In the meantime, would you PLEASE get that FDA paperwork completed? We’ll call it a show of faith…you know about faith right?”

 

“Don’t start patronizing me! You know this is important, no matter HOW I got here, you know what this means. I…..can’t…..I can’t let it all be for nothing.” He looked down at his hand and he was holding the desk clock against his chest, like a rosary; he examined the face….”I’ve got to go, it’s Zinc’s bedtime.”

 

“Right. Muss his hair up for me will ya?”

 

“I need you on this one Richard.”

 

“I know. I’ll call you on Thursday; I should know something by then.”

 

“Ok. Love to Meagan and Josh”

 

“G-night Dr. Frankenstein.” <click>

One Small Universe

 

As Zinc put away his Legos, he couldn’t help but think how cool they were. Not as messy as clay or Playdoh, you could clean them up with Tonka bulldozer cuz they didn’t get stuck in the carpet…

 

Would you like to make some really interesting things with them? I can show you.

 

…and you could mix the colors and not have to worry about everything ending up that boring shade of gray all the time. Plus, granny had given him some really neat ones that came with instructions. He didn’t think he’d like to be told how to play with them, that seemed a little silly; but it was a challenge he found he rather enjoyed. It reminded him of a jigsaw puzzle really, but you could play with it afterward. How many jigsaw puzzles can you say THAT about…

 

Puzzles. Ah yes. The world IS a puzzle young human…how many pieces do you think make up its edge? Define its boarders? Are there good pieces? Bad pieces? Forbidden…pieces? I wonder what those would look like.

 

Dad would be here in a moment to go over his exercises; the phone…he remembered the phone ringing earlier. He hoped that wasn’t his Ms. Blanchard…she was his favorite teacher, she always listened to him…

 

I know why she’s your favorite, and so do you. You just won’t admit it to yourself little one. The way she still moves a little when she stops moving just inside her blouse…I know what you’re thi….arrrgh!

 

The voice in his head, the one he couldn’t get away from, the one that was there every waking moment of his life. Zinc had focused his will into an interlocking zipper of  razors, cutting the voice short mid-sentence and strangling it into silence like the wringing of a wet dishrag caught in the prop of an outboard motor. But those last words hung in his mind like a neon thought suspended from an invisible airship. A lonely echo in a large, empty room. “I know what you’re thinking.” He hated that that was true; it was. But that didn’t stop it from accusing him of thoughts that weren’t his. Ms. Blanchard was the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend in his life; and though his method of dealing with Jak would make him very angry later, he’d learned not to even THINK things apologetic when it came to him. He wasn’t going to allow him to say things like that, ever. He called him Jak. Zinc really didn’t know if Jak was a ‘him’ or an ‘it’…he thought of  the ageless entity as a caged animal. A pet he couldn’t get rid of, because…a silent laugh…who would want to adopt THAT?

 

Jak would never admit it, but this was far closer to the truth than even Zinc realized, and that made him very…very angry.

I often wonder about people and how they look at, and feel about, others.

The friends we make tend to say much about us; and in some cases, perhaps something we don’t like.

I have, in my life, met a few people I considered my friends who, thinking back, really weren’t. What puzzled me about them, and eventually led me to the realization that they were not good for me, was that people were like holograms to them. Just things. No relationship was ever dropped, no tie severed for any reason, because they always felt as if it could be ‘useful’ later on...for something. Freinds were...collected.

I’ve only recently quantified this into what you read now because I’ve had a chance to contemplate my own life in the past few weeks and have tried to put a finger on some of the regret I feel in hindsight with a few of my more recent run-ins with people of this sort.

I can only hope that others, seeing this, (or perhaps meeting the people I have known and trusted) will not think badly of me, or consider me weak; but realize that perhaps my hope to find something true and healthy in them was just a misplaced, Quixotian optimism that I am, and will always be, afflicted with.

A certain amount of naïve is inevitable when giving benefit of doubt. If only for a short while.

The friends we make say much about us, the ones we keep tell us just as much, about them.

Got three different kinds of coffee in the mail yesterday from Coffee AM (see reviews for link):

Kenya AA, Kona, and Jamaican Blue Mountain...life is good! And I'm vibrating so rapidly now that my glasses clean themselves. How cool is that?!

I just ran across this...

At The Garden Gate - David McCord

Who so late

at the garden gate?

Emily, Kate,

and John.

“John,

where have you been?

It’s after six;

Supper is on,

And you’ve been gone

An hour,

John!"

“We’ve been, we’ve been,

We’ve just been over

The field,” said,

John.

(Emily, Kate,

and John.)

Who so late

at the garden gate?

Emily, Kate

and John

“John,

what have you got?”

“A whopping toad

Isn’t he big?

He’s a terrible

Load.

(We found him

A little ways

Up the road,”

said Emily,

Kate,

and John.)

Who so late

at the garden gate?

Emily, Kate,

and John.

“John,

put that thing down!

Do you want to get warts?”

(They all three have ‘em

By last

Reports.)

Still, finding toads

Is the best of

Sports,

Say Emily,

Kate,

and John.

The first poem I ever learned, and just happened to run across before heading to bed, night all.

Shaq Paq...Ack!

Has anyone seen this Burger King™ commercial with Shaq™ wearing this leather coat that's the size of unstuffed furniture covering and jamming the ball on some unsuspecting kiddies who probably just want to play some lot ball without being picked on by Andre the Hormonally Imbalanced? All with this butchered version of the Shaft™ theme playing in the background that HAS to make Richard Roundtree not only instantly airsick, but want to hook up with Lawrence Fishbourne and go kick Shaq's™ sorry ass. I don't care if he DID act with him in that _Steel_ movie. What's up with that? Why not having him trying to slam down on the Lipton™ animated characters, a trio of blindfolded 3 year olds, a three legged dog named Tripod? Wanna impress me, put Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chuck Norris in between him and the basket...yea baby! (Hmm, very strange...I just noticed how many threes just cropped up in that paragraph) The sound of his chin hitting the pavement would set off Richter measurements in Ixtapa.

I mean, he's eating a hamburger that I assume is full size, but looks like it's a White Castle™ or a plastic toy out of the Collector's Edition of Fast Food Frolick Barbie Activity Set™ in those Tex Avery/bitten by a radioactive habitual masturbator hands of his. Then, to top it all off, it comes with, of all things, this thimble of cheese dip...chedder flavor specifically (as if they would have had Roquefort or Fetta).  What the? Why cheese, why not...I dunno, a specially colored ketchup labeled 'Shaq Sweat'™, a mini, electric salt injector, a spray bottle of fresh grease, or a small plastic hoop with a glow-in-the-dark net that clips to your nostrils so you can really *dunk* your fries. Slammin! ugh.

I'm so disgusted by this 'heavy rotation' sports whoring, I'm going to stop now before I begin to come across as far more bitter and cynical than I really am.

Oh yea, and a big kiss and hug to all you mothers out there! Happy Mother's Day™, even if it IS a corporate manufactured holiday created by greeting card lobbyists...you deserve more than just one day, but since we could never really pay you back anyhow, accept this wish that, starting today, you never have to remind the men in your life to also put a liner back in the cans after so thoughtfully taking out the garbage

Before I begin, a word on night fishing and why anyone would want to. What ends up happening is that you create a small ecosystem, kind of like a late-night minnow bar for insomniac sufferers of the aquatic persuasion. You put out lanterns, we were using 5 Coleman Double-mantel propane lanterns, and you wait.

Now, the waiting part is the key. Any look at Sunday afternoon TV will leave you with the impression that fishing is all about nancing around a lake in a $38,000 bass boat trying to out-guess the fish and find out where they are. Not always. The key to this particular method, and there are many, is to setup and let the fish come to you.

Zane’s condensed theory of night fishing:

• The light attracts the bugs


• The bugs die in the water


• They attract the minnows and smaller bait fish


• The larger bait fish come and set up a ruckus


• The combination of that and the tempting pool of lights bring in the big ones like first semester freshmen to a keg party…even if it IS Milwaukee’s Best or Shaffer.

Well, that’s the theory we’re working with anyway….so suspend disbelief for a bit if you must, and stick with me.

Day Two: Bugs, bugs, and Bugs!

For most of us,  bugs and flying insects are a damn nuisance, they get in your hair, on your skin, in your ears, nose, mouth…generally give you the willies, and are NOT considered a food group. It is important to note that one stage of night fishing is probably the most uncomfortable ordeal anyone has been through, particularly first-timers. This is stage where the *bugs* begin to show up. They swarm around the lights and above the water in a cloud of silent chaos only broken up by the occasional fly-by which can be reduced by a heavy coat of skeeter repellent, and by sitting in the middle of the boat away from the lights. This will put you just on the edge of the cloud, but it still makes you a rest stop..kind of the first wet bar foot rail closest to the dance floor, if you will. What may keep you going and not just erupt in a fit of cuss words and flailing appendages is the fact that it will, at most, only last about 2 hours…and usually a light breeze brings relief from time to time during that wait. After a bit, most of the bugs within the attraction radius of the lamps will be in the water or stuck to the lanterns and the night will be as quiet and still as a church on Super Bowl Sunday…broken occasionally by a well-timed belch and the fit of shouted scores by the judges that follows. 

The key word here, and for the rest of the night, is waiting. Never pull up anchor and untie to move just because you’ve been there for 2 hours and not gotten a bite. If for no other reason, you’ll have to go through the bug-letting again, and that’s only slightly less fun than shaving yourself with a vegetable peeler soaked in Tabasco.

On day one, there were NO bugs because a constant wind was blowing across the lake. I was wet and a bit cold, so every once it a while I’d squint into the breeze as if to say “That’s enough, I get the point already!”. Well on this day, I got payback. On our way out to the cove, the lake was a Teflon-flat mirror. I kind of felt like a fly trapped in a bathroom, stuck to the mirror…lost in an actual-size painting of…everything. Of course it wasn’t until we got set up and the insects started to show up that I realized what that meant. The swarm of bugs around the boat about 20 min after the sun dropped was….if you’ll pardon a double Haigism…Spielbergically Hitchcockian in it’s size, density, and duration. The only thing missing was a sound track with a repeating violin note and a camera shot from inside one of the lanterns looking up through a cloud of bugs seemingly intent on sucking the oxygen out of the air and dousing the ever-evil Colemans and their siren-call glow.

Now, before this trip out, and this happens on just about every vacation, we had to make a trip to Wal-Mart. Is it just me or does day one of every vacation, particularly ones where you have to bring supplies (camping, boating, fishing, skiing…gambling, etc.) result in an immediate reassessment of the supplies list? It seems like very time I head out, after the first day, my neat little list of checkmarks on a legal pad seems to laugh back at me in defiance as if to say, “Think again, wake-board boy.” So, we’re at WallyWorld picking up all the stuff we forgot to put on the list and buy before we left. And well, there’s just something not right; I realized that it felt just like when I visited Oklahoma. I was driving around for about 2 hours, my subconscious pestering me the whole time, but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Something was off ever since I crossed the boarder, but I didn’t know what it was…couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Finally the magnetic field in the car aligned, or a blood clot came loose, or that last bit of undigested Taco Bell slipped through my duodenum, or whatever and a couple of synapses closed in my brain and I realized it was the fact that none of the cars had front license plates. Not only that, but there was no ugly ‘bracket’ in the front for them either. That was it, these cars are PRETTIER than the Texas cars…because let’s face it, a big ole plate bracket on the front of a Dodge Viper is NOT a beauty mark…it’s a cold sore. Well the same thing happened here…but I recognized the feeling so I figured it was something visual and different. This time it didn’t take two hours, all the packages had French translations on them. It was too cool…like a shop and learn sort of thing, only I’m not that fast a learner so I can’t remember the French words for stool, diarrhea or condom even though I thought to check those items at the time…so it was lost on me as a learning tool, surprise. We had gone to the other side of the lake and were in Louisiana at a Wal-Mart…thus the extra wording on everything. Simple.

Mystery solved, I bought two minnow buckets and an extra basket…oh yea, did I mention the aeration pump on the minnow cooler didn’t work either that first day? Heck, we were catching stuff with dead minnows anyway, but you can’t ‘hurry up and fish before the bait dies’, ya know? I also got bought one of those new blue led flashlights…these things are cool! I have some ideas for these LEDs as well, but I’ll share that later.

[to be continued]

 

So sorry for the delay folks! But I’ve been a bit preoccupied by things personal and just really have not had the desire for storytelling the past few days. Say, ya ever see something coming from a mile away and when it finally arrives, knowing it was coming doesn’t really seem to help much? It feels like I was staring down a set of tracks watching the light get brighter, hoping it would stop, or at least slow down but now the train is blowing past me in a hurricane of noise, sand, and scattered paper and I swear I can just make out the tinkling of champagne glasses in the club car as it thunders past. It’s funny, if you have had someone teach you about being honorable, why do they leave out the part where you lose? I suppose it’s because honor is its own victory; but if that’s the case, why do I feel like I need some sort of spiritual wheel and pottery kiln to fashion this wet lump of emptiness into something useful?

 

Ew, I’m waxing rhetoric…sorry about that. I think Orange Clean will get that out, for you people in the front row. Next up, Day Two and the story of bugs...the other, other, other white meat.

  I’m not going to try to censor myself here; this is about a bunch of guys on a boat. So if you’re sensitive about what is said and how, keep in mind:

·        We’re only taking showers to keep from being denied service for lunch

·        When describing the clothes we’re changing into, ‘dry’ is more important than ‘clean’

·        Burping and/or belching are an Olympic-Class event

·        Farting while sitting on the hull of a floating boat makes a really cool echoing sound

…well, you get the idea.

 

Day One: And for my next trick....

 

I’ll start with our arrival at the lake, since the events up to that point were rather mundane. This lake is big; Toledo Bend is on the boarder between Louisiana and Texas and could probably hold two of any other man-made lake in Texas. But, as in any profession, hobby, pyramid scheme, or even infomercial advertising…specialization is important. That being so, the spots we DO fish are few and specific lending a SETI/Contact atmosphere to the finding of a fishing spot in this lake. Hmmm, now that’s an odd comparison to come up with…well I’ll not bore you with interpretation of my own anecdotes. To continue:

 

Tips on gettin’ the boat wet:

1.      Don’t start drinking beforehand. This can cut a fishing trip short and finding a wench to put a grounded boat back on its trailer is not only embarrassing, it’s about as likely as finding a stale Twinkie.

2.      Know the weight capacity of your boat. Nuff said.

3.      Boat ramp pavement ends…usually out of sight from above the water. Know this and be prepared for sharp rocks and debris, particularly if barefoot, wearing sandals, or after violating rule #1.

4.      Be mindful of your goal, to get the boat in the water. This is not about being slick, or cool, or fast. Take your time, cuz swimming back to shore holding 5 fishing poles isn’t even on the same planet as ‘cool’.

5.      You may want to load the beer first, but don’t let this get in the way of stuff like fuel and other passengers, particularly if they helped buy the beer.

6.      Check to make sure the drain plug is back in its hole. I know, you checked it before you left. Check it again, Skippy.

7.      Check any critical equipment before putting the boat in the water. It may have worked for 12 years without a hitch, but when it breaks…emphasis on the word WHEN, it will do so when the boat in the water, away from shore, and it is very dark.

8.      When the engine is in gear, make sure you can see the anchor rope. ALL of it.

 

Putting the boat in the water started..well..badly. A full five feet off the trailer, the bow line (see rule #8) got spun up in the prop so tight, it stalled the engine. So, after a puppetmaster display of trying to pull a lame boat by the remaining bow line from the loading peir to get it close enough to the fuel dock to get to the motor, we ended up shortening the brand new length rope by about 5 feet. This, we learned, did NOT keep the other ropes in the boat from getting an attitude. But you’ll be happy to know that the short lengths of rope that resulted from the prop surgery were salvaged by yours truly to tie off the minnow buckets later…but those weren’t bought until Day Two.

 

With the motor now enabled to do its job, we tried to lower it further into the water only to find the 150 bucks we spent to have the power tilt/trim fixed was evidently not enough to ensure it *stayed* fixed (see rule #7). This only proved my theory that the guy was a pansy to begin with and did not shed any blood while working on the motor, thus ensuring that the job did not stay done. (For those of you who don’t know this, if you’re working on something and you don’t have extra parts left over and a wound that needs tending to, it will not stay fixed. Period. Trust me.) Now the engine is running, but very rough…like a camel trying to cough up an 80 lb. hairball, and stalls again trying to get it into the slip. The wind is getting faster as the boat stalls yet again. The only thing missing at this point is the organ music, scratchy film, and a black and white image sped up about 1/8^th too fast. Well, this one was easy, the feed bulb on the gas line was sucked flat, I had forgotten to open the vent valve on the gas tank and the motor was doing that thing we all do when we get a chocolate shake from Sonic and the straw is too small. Turn, turn, pump, pump, crank, crank, cuss, cuss…the boat is now in the slip. And there was much rejoicing.

 

The bait is bought, the boat is loaded, the passengers aren’t, and we’re ready to go. Now luckily, the power lift won’t work, but the prop is in the water anyway and we don’t have far to go. So we head out across the lake, argue about which tree to tie to and finally select one. I’m taking a moment to mention that, when several hundred yards from a bush, it’s easy to say “Tie off to that tree”. But when you are floating in water and actually pull up in and amongst  the branches, this can be painful, bug and spider-ridden process that will truly test your resolve. It did mine. I would have been cleaning off spiders and bugs all night, had it not been for the next event.

 

We back off from the tree, feeding out rope until we get far enough away from the shore to drop anchor. Drop anchor….from the back…of the boat….yep, it happened again. Only this time, we are in the middle of a cove, the anchor is set and we can’t get the slack out of the bow line. Now my dad’s friend is leaning over the transom to try and untangle the thing, but Zane is taking of his shoes and socks because, well troubleshooting for a living, one has to know when to stop tweaking and when to start getting manual. I humored them for about fifteen minutes, but we were losing daylight setup time and the way the trip had started, it only seemed inevitable that someone was getting wet. Me being the young buck in the boat, I knew my place. My shirt was off and I had one foot in the water when the first ‘Damn it!’ came from the back of the boat. Once in the water, I got little comfort from the fact that I was sharing this job with a dead catfish floating near my head. And of course, I had to make mention of how worthless they both were and that this wasn’t all that bad of a knot and why couldn’t they get it untangled this easily (throwing the rope back in the boat). Now, this being a fishing boat, and me already taunting them, they had to taunt back with the question of how I was going to get back into the boat. There wasn’t landing on this boat, it wasn’t for skiing or water sports of any kind. But one foot on the back of the high-riding, unable to lower motor, and I’m back in the boat along with the portion of rope that should be, but with soaking wet underwear and not a dry towel in sight.

 

The rest of the night went like clockwork, me sticking to two poles so that I could keep track of my rigging, the older ones insistent that more is better when it comes to fishing for Crappie (yep, it’s spelled that way…it’s pronounced ‘Crah-Pee’..but yes, we were Crappie fishing. Fits, huh?) but never actually equating that with the fact that once every hour they would end up with a tangle of tackle that looked like a torture device out of Hellraiser. At about two o’clock in the am, I expressed my testicle’s desire to get into a dry pair of underwear before they leave me for another man and we head in with close to 50 keepers. The return was uneventful, though the anchor had to be muscled from the mud…my hands are still in protest over the rope burns from that.

 

Stay tuned for Day Two: Bugs, bugs, and Bugs!