The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun (26 page)

His father’s voice broke in upon Julian’s vision. Apparently he had been continuing talking all the time that Julian had made his little voyage to earth. Julian was then again back in the aircraft, and turning from the window he gave his father a half-smile and said, “Okay, thanks. That would be great.”

Aldrin had expected more enthusiasm or perhaps even some kind of physical contact from his son. They had yet to touch one another since their meeting. Julian hadn’t even taken his proffered hand when they had made their way through the airport in Washington. To cover his disappointment he now himself looked down out of the window over Julian’s shoulder. The landscape had changed again.

West said, “We ought to be home in about an hour now. Your mother will be so happy.”

Julian made no reply.

There was no doubt but that Julian had changed and grown up. The manifestations were subtle, a slight difference in the way he wore his clothes, even the sound of his footsteps, and yet he remained remote and locked in and it was quite possible that this enabled him to survive the spate of publicity that had attended his return. In some manner Julian managed to give the impression that all that was being written, printed and talked about with regard to the adventure had to do with somebody else and not himself. He was able to remain aloof from it all.

His father tried daily. He tried hard. His eyes had actually been opened to the gap which had existed between himself and his son and to the insensitivity of his own behaviour. He had been badly frightened by Julian’s escapade which might have ended in total disaster. His problem was that he did not know what to do. He was too long laced into the straitjacket of adult ways of thinking and acting and he did not know how to extricate himself. His avenues of approach to Julian consisted of showing an exaggerated interest in his extra-curricular activities and Julian accepted this gratefully and responded to his father’s show of concern. Yet Aldrin West was aware that he never achieved any genuine closeness or penetration of this curious reserve which had fallen upon the boy ever since he had found him in Washington.

West did not know of one major achievement on his part, which was that by all the evidence of his concern over Julian’s trip, and above all by his crossing the continent to bring Julian home, he had shown him that he cared and had restored some of his son’s trust in him. As with many children, Julian’s feelings about his father had been based partly upon fact, partly upon fantasies and the latter were now dispelled. And the relationship between father and son would have returned to a more normal everyday one except that West had no way of knowing the depth of the trauma that Julian had suffered on a totally different level.

West was a businessman and not a psychiatrist or even a person with too much understanding, or he might have thought it strange that Julian had never broken down. One would have expected a child of his age to shed tears at being robbed of the most important thing he had ever achieved, a creation all his own. West, during the ensuing days, was often to wonder at Julian’s stony faced acceptance of things as they were. Outwardly he was a normal schoolboy. The laboratory built in the basement had to be accounted a huge success, for when his homework was done Julian was always down there tinkering and working. But once the excitement over the adventure had subsided Julian never referred to it again and the curious barrier between his father and himself stayed. As for his mother, she remained blissfully unaware. She had her son back. She was pleased with her husband’s efforts and the minor manifestations of Julian’s independence were realized without too much regret. After all, one had to accept the fact that one’s children did grow up. What was satisfactory was that her husband had had a lesson and appeared to have profited by it.

It was thus several months later that Julian came home from school, entering the vestibule noisily, dropping his satchel on the floor, slinging his cap accurately up on to one of the hooks of the hatrack and heard his mother’s voice from above stairs.

“That you, Julian?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“How was school?”

“Fine. I’m going down to my shop, Mom.”

“Don’t you want a glass of milk, Julian?”

“No thanks, not now.”

Here was an example, a small one, albeit, of Julian’s newly won status. Before, his mother would have insisted upon his having the glass of milk and would have had it slightly warmed since cold milk on the stomach was supposed to be bad. Now there was no further attempt at persuasion, only the usual query, “Have you any homework?”

Julian replied, “Not much. I’ll do it downstairs.” He slung his satchel again over his shoulder and went down the cellar steps. He hurried through his lessons and thereafter became engrossed in a mechanical problem that he had not solved.

Due to his youth and inexperience Julian’s mechanical bent was still imitative and adaptive like his transformation of a water pistol into a Bubble Gun. Now he was working on a flight toy he had acquired, a disc which consisted of four blades with a spring in the central hub. When the spring was pressed down by means of a stick, it caused the disc to spin rapidly and due to the pitch of the blades, rise vertically from the ground in a short flight. Julian’s idea was to convert this into a helicopter toy. He had made several drawings and even one mock-up, but the activation of the blades was still a difficulty.

But he was happy enough with his long workbench equipped with a lathe, electric drill and a vice. There were drawers and receptacles for materials such as sheets of tin, bits of plywood, nails and screws, etc., and his tools were neatly contained in a rack. He had also been provided with a special drawing-board table and the necessary implements.

One of the best things about the place was its aloneness. His mother never came down; it was understood that he was to keep it clean himself, and did, and there with the cellar door closed and lights blazing and the stillness except for the occasional whine of his drill, it was as though he were wearing yet another skin, a second Julian. And sometimes while that second was functioning, the first one, he himself, the inside Julian, would fall into a reverie. His thoughts would wander far afield from where he was and what he was doing and old sadnesses would be revived.

At six Aldrin West came home, set his briefcase down and looked casually through the letters on the salver on the side table, the late afternoon delivery. One of them brought a look of curiosity to his face and he examined both sides of it without learning much. He called out, “Julian?”

The reply came from below, “I’m down here, Dad.”

With the puzzling letter in his hand West descended the steps into Julian’s workshop and asked, “Who do you know in Sheridan, Alabama, Julian?”

Julian looked up from the bit of tin he had locked in his vice for shaping and asked, “Where?”

His father repeated, “Sheridan, Alabama,” and handed him the letter. “It’s addressed to you.”

Julian took it and examined it: “Julian West, 137 Floral Heights, San Diego, California,” in a style of wandering handwriting that gave him a strange and creepy feeling, as though the envelope itself communicated something to his fingertips, or had absorbed some kind of message and sent it along down to his stomach. He stood there holding it and looking at it until his father said, “Well, why don’t you open it and find out.”

Julian picked up the screwdriver from his workbench, slit the envelope and removed the letter, and his father, looking over his shoulder, saw that it was written on the letterhead of Collins Garage, 43 Main Street, Sheridan, Alabama. Directly beneath this had been pasted a cutting from a cheap magazine. It was an advertisement from a mail-order toy company for an article that looked very much like the one Julian had invented. It was a one-column, two-inch square ad with the picture of a gun with soap bubbles emerging from the muzzle. The text boasted:

BUBBLEGAT
!
LOOKS LIKE THE REAL THING BUT SHOOTS BUBBLES. AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS. EVERY BOY SHOULD HAVE A BUBBLEGAT. ORDER NOW WHILE THEY LAST. FILL OUT THE COUPON AND SEND
$1.65
TO INCLUDE THE COST OF MAILING TO BUBBLEGAT, P.O. BOX
37,
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA.

The man and the boy stared at this advertisement for a moment uncomprehending, then their attention was drawn to the handwritten scrawl beneath it.

West asked, “What does it say?”

Julian read out loud carefully and meticulously since there was some difficulty with the handwriting.

“Dear Julian, Ha-ha. I guess this will give you a big laugh. I was a boob, but it shows you are a real inventor and had a great idea only somebody beat us to it. So I was a rat for nothing. Like I said I blew all my dough so I am down here in Sheridan working in a garage. Hope you are OK. Your old pal, Frank Marshall.”

Julian finished reading, and as he had reached the end his chin and lower lip had begun to tremble and his face had screwed up curiously. He placed the letter on his workbench, tears already streaming from his eyes, put his face down on his arms and gave way to crying. For the first time since the disaster in Washington, the emotional dam had burst, his weeping was the drawing out of the agony which had so long lived in his heart.

Aldrin West looked at his son with amazement and said, “C’mon, son, what are you crying about? It serves him damn well right. He asked for it and he got it.”

Julian raised his head from his arms only long enough to shake his head in negation before he was seized by a fresh paroxysm of sobs.

His father groped, “Is it because somebody else thought of the Bubble Gun first? Look, it can happen to anyone. It shows you your invention was okay.”

Punctuated by sobs and half smothered because the small head was still buried in his arms came the words, “Who cares about an old Bubble Gun.”

West was still alarmed and bewildered by the sudden breakdown of his son, so unexpected and, too, so frightening in that, somewhere buried in the back of his mind, was the thought that it was not quite the reaction that one would expect from a child.

He asked, “Then what are you crying about?”

The muffled reply emerged from the buried head, “Marshall.”

West picked up the letter and read through it again and for the first time had one of those moments of clarity that are able to sweep away differences, stupidities, blockages and blindness and demolish all barriers between two humans. He let the letter fall back upon the workbench and put a comforting arm about Julian’s shoulder. He said, “Julian. I guess perhaps I understand. We’ll write to him. Maybe we can give him a hand.”

Julian lifted his head from his arms and looked up at his father who was standing close beside him. He looked at him and through him and in his ears rang the simple phrase that West had used in all sincerity, “Maybe we can give him a hand.” Julian put his arms about his father’s waist and his face against the rough pocket of his jacket and hugged him hard.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

P
AUL
G
ALLICO
was the author of twenty-seven previous novels, twelve books of nonfiction, and four books for children. Among his best-known works are his wonderful fables,
The Snow Goose
and
Miracle in the Wilderness,
the Mrs. ’Arris books,
The Zoo Gang,
and
The Poseidon Adventure.
Born July 26, 1897 – Died July 15, 1976