Long Way Home

Buddy Delmar squeezed into a hard plastic seat. He cupped a hand to his mouth; sure his breath smelled of onions. Not that there were such things now. He jumped when Mrs Doyle asked if he wanted a cup of tea, or something. He could only croak out what sounded like an old charts hit, ‘no-oh,’ which sounded a bit strange, even to himself, as if he wasn’t used to talking. Not that Mrs Doyle would know anything about chart hits. She was far too young, and self evidently pretty, to know about such things. But he couldn’t help smiling like an old fool. It was her bright red hair that did it; made him long, suddenly, for his wife. Such memories were a long drop, like a sharp blow to the solar plexus, and all the things that were, and had been, and would never be again. She knew nothing of this. Her cat like green eyes that of a bright child, humouring an adult. She could have wrapped her thin arms around herself, and patted herself on the back, and it would have still seemed natural. He expected that, but hadn’t thought about the wet patches under his arms, or not being able to hold a cup of lukewarm water, because his hands shook so much. His tongue was rooted to the roof of his mouth and he tried working it loose with salvia, but felt like a fragment of old bible text, cleaving to his mouth, with forked tongue. He looked longingly at the sealed exit door. It would be even hotter than any circle of Dante’s hell out there, but at least he’d be free.

‘I’ll not be a tick,’ he said to Mrs Doyle, but felt as if he was speaking Tanakh.

Buddy checked his equipment. The kids had seen so much, and knew so little; he was sure they wouldn’t be in the least impressed. But it was all he could muster.

Mrs Doyle had asked him to speak to the class. She said they’d be very excited. What she hadn’t said, Buddy could read on the soft lines around her mouth, primed to a childish smirk. He knew she’d already asked a number of bigwigs, and they’d turned her down. Buddy also knew he’d have to stop thinking: ‘bigwigs;’ nobody knew what terms, like that were anymore. But, in turning her down, he’d been courtly in his dance of politeness. Jennifer Cluntz, however, didn’t get to be Mrs Doyle, and a teacher, without knowing more than the shortest algebraic path from A to B.

Barry Delmar, had appeared like an old fashioned envoy, at his Pod and asked him to give the talk to his class. Not for Mrs Doyle, of course. For himself, because he, ‘really, really, wanted it’. Buddy could see in his too earnest face, that it was a chore, like feeding long dead protein to live hens, that Barry felt he had to do, but in his innocence, the boy even made himself believe it. Buddy, didn’t like to say no, especially as Barry had used that word: ‘granddad,’ and looked a dead ringer for him, with his corkscrew brown curls no barber could tame, the Delmar nose, and thick lips that could smooch and stammer at the same time, and claim it was neither one, nor the other.

The pedantic old man in Buddy didn’t want to correct him, point out that he was, in fact, his father’s, father’s father; especially as it made him feel younger. But that would have meant also acknowledging that he had no prior knowledge of the boy, had thought his DNA as dead as the dolphin, or the grizzly bear. The strange thing for him was, with so much blood evaporated, it was still blood that mattered, and Buddy found himself mumbling: ‘I’ll do it.’

Buddy groaned when Mrs Doyle introduced him to the class, and with his burnt red face, and yellowing attempt at a beard, felt like a counterfeit Santa Claus at a Bar Mitzvah. Of course, that made him feel even older, none of the kids in the class would have known who Santa was, or ever been allowed to buy into such a flawed mythology as religion. Barry was sitting at the front. Buddy tried to work out whether that was good or bad. In his day the brightest sat at the front. Then, again, the dumbest were sometimes made to sit at the front too. And, of course, those with specs, or those that needed specs. The front of the class seemed all of a sudden crowded to Buddy, peopled by ghosts. He stumbled, almost falling over the Bunsen burner, he’d brought, and carefully placed down on the floor, like a fragile package, at his feet.

The boys eyed it, trying to make out what it was, as if it was some kind of elf sitting there. Mrs Doyle had been more diplomatic, simply smiling to disarm him, and asking if he had a permit for it, and a permit for its potential energy use. Buddy had both crammed into his oversized pockets, finding which one was the difficult part.

‘Do any of you boys know what this is?’ said Buddy holding up the Bunsen burner.

‘It’s an old piece of junk,’ said one boy, out of the side of his mouth, sitting at the bad –boy back of the classroom. He was smaller framed and younger than the other boys, but something in the cockiness of his big voice and his cow’s lick hair that made Buddy think of Murray that lived in the tenement building next to him as a kid.

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ said Buddy smiling back at the echo of little Murray.

‘You’re on the verge of losing your rations. One more point and that’s it. We don’t want that do we?’ said Mrs Doyle sweetly.

‘No Miss,’ said the boy, all the hard angle of his elbows and legs tucking in beneath the desk, his face flaring up, so that he suddenly needed to scrutinise it for the answer to a question only he knew.

Mrs Doyle imperceptibly nodded to Buddy to continue, but he stood transfixed, sweat running down his armpits; the boys looking up at him, as he waited, and hoped to find something to say.

‘A Bunsen-burner?’ said Mrs Doyle, delicately holding out the words for him to grasp.

‘Yes, a Bunsen burner,’ said Buddy, but his hands were rifling through his pockets trying to find something else.

Mrs Doyle watched the boys squirm in their seats. She clapped her hands together, two sharp raps, that brought everyone’s face into sharp focus and turned the bloom of her own smile to its fullest Wattage.

‘Does anyone know what these are?’ said Buddy.

The boy’s gaze shifted to poor old Mr Delmar. ‘I think…’ said Mrs Doyle, trying to frame the right response; picking up one of the exhibits from the desk, her nose crinkling with the smell of rubber, holding it away from her with some distaste. ‘I think…’

‘Do you know what they are?’ said Mr Delmar.

Mrs Doyle had seen the invoice. Of course she knew what they were. They were 12 pieces of rubber, in different primary colours: red, yellow, blue, and green. It was an unusual request, but Mrs Doyle had made sure that it had been met. She had thought the idea of bringing a real -live -shepherd into her classroom would have been a success, showing daring and flair, and given her kudos when she moved on to jobs more suited to her skills. ‘Of course…’ she said, her smile powering up beyond the rigor mortis scale of insincerity.

Buddy Delmar was stuck for something to say, but his long fingers remained dextrous. He picked up a yellow piece of rubber. Before Mrs Doyle could say anymore he had blown into it, did some kind of legerdemain with his hands, let go of the inflated piece or rubber and watched it gently float up to the roof of the classroom. The boys’ mouths dropped open, and Max Arthur, the biggest man in the class, actually clapped his hands together, like a five-year old.

‘How did you do that?’ said Stefan Oliver.

Mrs Doyle whispered to Buddy: ‘is it safe?’

‘It’s easy,’ said Buddy, laying a piece of rubber out on each desk, like a little present.

‘I don’t know if that’s advisable,’ said Mrs Doyle.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got one for you too,’ said Buddy, handing her a green piece of rubber.

‘What do we do?’ said Barry, fingering his piece of rubber, sounding as if he didn’t want to speak, but had to know, in a way that reminded Buddy of his own son.

‘It’s easy,’ Buddy said.

Mrs Doyle had put her piece of rubber back on the desk, placing it carefully down, like a dead fish, and discretely smelling her fingers, and brushing the rubbery residue on her dress. She desperately wanted to rush away and wash her hands, but stood behind Buddy, in case anything else went wrong. Of course, she automatically smiled her best-unconcerned- teacher smile, as she stood guard.

Buddy put the bit of rubber up to his mouth, and adjusted his fingers as if he was playing a mouth organ, so that the boy’s could see what they were doing, as he blew up the piece of rubber. The boys looked at each other to see what to do next. Max went first. His balloon farting across the room as it ran out of breath. The stuffy room became like a Christmas party, with coloured balloons zipping one after another, and boy’s chairs being scrapped back as they laughed and followed.

‘No,’ said Buddy smiling more that the boys, if that was possible. ‘You need to nip it like this. And then tie the rubber in a knot like this. That way the air in it is retained.’

‘That’s it,’ said Buddy, as one by one the boys held up their balloon, like pieces of sculpted craftwork, for him to inspect.

‘Mines isn’t working sir,’ said Max who had kept blowing and blowing until his face was more purple than normal.

‘That’s ok. It’s probably got a hole in it.’ Buddy said, gently taking the piece of rubber off the desk in front of Mrs Doyle and handing it to him.

Mrs Doyle mouth opened and she looked about to speak, but said nothing.

‘What do we do now sir?’ said Barry.

‘Just let them go,’ said Buddy.

The balloons floated gently to the classroom roof, each colour finding its own breeze.

‘They’re beautiful,’ said Mrs Doyle.

‘Yes,’ replied Buddy as if she’d asked a question. But he’d one of his own. ‘Does anyone know what makes them float?’

Max Arthur sat with his back ramrod straight against a chair that suddenly seemed too small. His eyes were watchful, in case he got the wrong answer, to so elementary a question. ‘Gas is heavier than air,’ he said, erasing his childhood self with an adult frown.

‘Of course,’ said Buddy, ‘but what happens to the gas?’

Mrs Doyle cleared her throat.

‘Ok then,’ said Buddy, ‘what happens to the balloon then?’

‘The balloons come down to earth,’ said Barry.

‘Yessss,’ replied Buddy. ‘And what happen to the gas energy?’

‘It dissipates,’ said Max.

‘And where does it go to?’ said Buddy. ‘It goes back to the ether. You know what that is? It’s what the ancients thought was the space between things. Such gasses would be caught like an insect in varnish. But we know of course that gases don’t behave like that. They change. You don’t need to know your astrophysics to know that only a sterile desert stays the same. Even then it doesn’t. All living things change. All organisms as we know, adapt to change, or they die, and in dying they also change. They change with change. But the analogy is a useful one, because that is what I do. I capture energy before it changes. And we can re-use that energy. It’s too late now. Earth, as we know, can only absorb so much heat from the sun, before it bucks like a bull. The story of Achilles and the tortoise originates from ancient Greece. Zeno. In a way he predicted this outcome over 2000 years ago’.

Mrs Doyles dry ahem, caught Buddy mid-sentence. The faces in front of him showed that the boys were listening only because they had to. A feeling he knew too well from his childhood.

‘I’d like you to thank Mr Delmar for his contribution,’ said Mrs Doyle, clapping her hands together, and I’m sure if you have any questions I’m sure he would be glad to…’

‘…Thanks,’ said Mr Doyle, nodding and picking up his package from the floor.

‘What does that do?’ said little Murray, the sparrow like cockiness back in his eye.

‘The Bunsen burner? I was going to show you an experiment with it.’ Buddy sneaked a look at Mrs Doyle, and that was enough to let him know that there would be no experiments. Not now. Not ever. ‘It just produces a steady flame. From gas… Have any of you ever heard of the Hindenberg?’

Buddy knew that he’d lost them again.

‘No,’ said Barry rescuing him.

‘Well,’ said smiling, ‘my grandfather was a boy on the Hindenberg, part of the ground crew. The ships then were 10000 times smaller than the floating ships I take care of now. And they didn’t travel in convoys, tethered together, like a V shaped flock of geese, to save fuel. But it was the same principal. They were the space rockets of their day, only more likely to explode. I know it’s almost impossible for you to imagine it now, raining twice in one day, but if that hadn’t happened then, soaking my granddad’s clothing… And if he wasn’t a young, fit boy, able to run quicker than anyone else. Well. Hydrogen and naked flames, as we know, don’t mix’.

‘What happened to him?’ said Barry.

‘Well, he flew bombers in the Second World War, and I fly jets in the…sorry I’m rambling again.’

‘What do you do now?’ asked Max.

‘That’s easy,’ said Buddy, ‘I’m a shepherd. You know how many storms there are? What the weathers like?’ Buddy swiped at the coloured balloons floating about the classroom roof. ‘When one of the energy grazing units are hit by a storm and detached from the others I go and get it. Bring it back.’

‘What kind of rations do you get?’ asked Mrs Doyle, bringing them back to everybody’s favourite subject.

‘Well I get enough for one trip, to bring back one unit to our settlement.’

‘What happens? What happens if you need to bring back more than one unit?’ said Barry looking up at the balloons, that had been hit with one swipe spreading out across the far corners of the room.

‘When it’s two or three. And they’re hidden by grey cumuli. The ones that almost taste like ice. I can set them back on course. But I barely get enough rations for bringing back one unit. And it’s a long way home.’ Buddy could no longer trust his own voice. And, when he looked at Barry, it was if there was no one else in the classroom, ‘But I’m old. You have still got your life to live.’