The other half was intent on bottle caps and dirt and a certain old man….

Jake Pickett watched the water sink into the ground around the old rose bushes. Soon it would be time to cut them back for the winter. The old hose became a neatly coiled green snake beneath the water spigot. Pickett prided himself on the neatness of the little yard. It wasn’t much work, what with only the roses and irises needing attention. The big scrub oak that grew next to the brick pathway required only an occasional soaking.

He walked around the house to enjoy the sunset. Off to the west the sun was hunting for a resting place in the distant Pacific. Despite having spent his whole life in Southern California, he’d been to the beach only twice, both times as a child. He recalled liking the ocean; the play of the surf, the hot sand between his toes, the gulls crying raucously overhead as they swooped and dove for garbage; but not caring for the people who frequented the beach. It was too crowded for him.

He preferred his house and his little hillside. For company he had the attendance of the laughing, brown-skinned children. Their parents were nice to him, and if he felt like any real change of pace he could always drive down to the city park or up to Arrowhead. For Jake Pickett familiarity bred content. No one bothered him.

, Entering the kitchen through the back door he checked the small pot of pork and beans simmering on the stove. After stirring briefly with a wooden spoon to keep them from sticking he tried a sample. Done, he thought, and hot. A wife probably would have improved his diet, but somehow he’d never felt the need for permanent companionship. Just a crusty, dull old bachelor, that’s me, he thought, undismayed by the image.

He poured the beans out of the pot into a large dish, using the spoon to scrape the last of them and making sure he didn’t miss any pieces of pork. He twisted a couple of hunks of bread from the big round loaf on the counter, put the sealed bag back in the refrigerator, and headed for the living room.

The pork and beans went down well with the evening news. Both were basics of Pickett’s lifestyle. Sometimes it bothered him that he didn’t understand a lot of what the honey-voiced correspondents said on the evening news. It wasn’t that they used such big words. They didn’t. It was just that some of the subjects they discussed were completely alien to him. He regretted not having progressed past high school.

Circumstances, life, had interfered and made any higher education impossible. He’d always had to work to bring in money, especially after mom and pop had died so young. Things had gotten a little easier after Catherine had moved off to Texas. He’d always managed to make enough to support himself. With social security he was actually better off than he’d ever been. It made him feel good, confident. Of course, it helped that he’d never had much and therefore never expected much. He didn’t feel particularly deprived.

The pork and beans went down warmly. As usual, they were much more nourishing than the news. He rose and re-entered the kitchen. Carefully he washed out the dish and put it in the yellow rack to dry, then returned to the television.

Outside, the sun had finally set. It was cooling off daily. Soon it would be winter and the rains would come; short, vicious downpours that were typical of Southern California. The ridge on which his house was built had more rock in it than most hillsides. Mudslides would occur elsewhere and he would read about them and cluck his tongue. People in this part of the country would build in the damndest places. It always amused him.

He enjoyed the rain, although for the last few years the cool weather had begun to affect him at the joints, as if his heart trouble wasn’t cross enough to bear. Better count your blessings, you greedy old man, he admonished himself. You might be living in South Dakota instead of Southern California. Hell, you don’t know what cold is.

He watched the bubbles fill the screen and listened to the music. Lawrence Welk was pleasantly familiar. After Welk it was time for sitcoms. Those he didn’t much care for. It seemed like he’d outgrown the crude gags that were in vogue these days.

The documentary that followed on PBS was nice. All about the South Pacific. The TV was as close to Fiji as he’d ever get, not only because of his lack of money but because of his heart condition. Still, he enjoyed the vicarious traveling. It was the best thing about television.

The late news then, largely a reprise of what he’d already seen earlier. He watched it for the weather update. As he rose to turn the set off, he wondered if perhaps he should take some of his small savings and invest in a color console to replace the black and white. They were so damned expensive, though, and the images wouldn’t come in any sharper or the words any clearer. Still, it was a thought he’d toyed with for months. Shows like the one on the South Pacific always gave the idea new impetus. He’d think about it some more, he decided.

He was half undressed when he walked into the bedroom. There was no television in there. Televisions belonged in dens and living rooms. He’d decided that when the new invention had first come onto the market.

There was a portable radio on the end table next to the bed, however. It was battered but serviceable. He flipped it on. It was preset at the local all-news channel. Despite the depressing nature of the majority of the news, Jake found it relaxing. As to many poor people, the day’s litany of disasters and crises was more reassuring than debilitating to Jake, because it reminded him of how much better off he was than much of the rest of the world.

The anchorman/DJ currently working had a particularly pleasant voice. They both have something to offer, he thought. Television and radio. On the radio they didn’t worry about making stupid jokes to each other or about how they looked. You could be a journalist instead of a movie star. The forced camaraderie, the bad ad libs (happy news, the stations called it) had nearly turned him off television news completely. For a while he’d taken to watching it without the sound.

The electric blanket had been on for several hours and the bed was nice and warm as Jake slipped beneath the covers. He got cold easier than he used to. That was a sign of aging, the doctor had told him, Funny, but he didn’t feel like he was getting old. He didn’t feel a day over fifty. Except for his heart, of course.

He didn’t have to look to make sure the little bottle of nitroglycerine tablets was where it belonged, on the end table next to the lamp. The bottle and the tiny yellow pills it held had been part of his life for twenty years. He could find it quite easily without the lamp’s aid.

A glance at the clock showed him that it was nearly ten. Midnight in Texas, he mused. He leaned back against the two pillows and closed his eyes. The moon cast faint illumination through the thin curtains. Jake didn’t try to fall asleep. It was Thursday night. He always got a call from Amanda Rae on Thursday night. Their conversations were always the highlight of his day.

She didn’t have to call so late, of course, but it was easier that way. Easier on her rather than Jake. After all, she did all the work.

It was funny how their regular conversations had begun. They’d been talking to each other so consistently over the years that Jake could almost call her. It was much simpler for her to make the call and for him just to wait, however. She didn’t have as much trouble making the connection that way, she’d explained to him.

The first time she’d called him he hadn’t known it was her. He hadn’t even known what it was, much less who. There’d been only a mindless, wordless wailing inside his head. He spent hours scouring the house for the source, thinking that maybe one of the neighborhood kids had gotten stuck somewhere—in the narrow crawl space that ran beneath the floorboards, maybe, or on the slope that ran down into the dump.

This had gone on for days running into weeks before Jake had decided maybe it was time for him to go down to the Senior Citizens Center in Riverside and see a doctor. The doctor had given him some pills and some advice, neither of which had done any good.

It was only later, after the wailing became crude words, that Jake learned he was hearing his grandniece Amanda Rae. That first desperate, wailing call had come to him from her parent’s house in Port Lavaca, Texas, more than sixteen years ago. He’d talked about it with Amanda lots of times. It took a while for them both to figure out that he’d been hearing her call out from inside her mother, because that first wail had reached him two months before she’d been born.

VI

So as Jake snuggled back into the pillows and waited for his grandniece to call it made no difference that there was no telephone in the bedroom. He and Amanda Rae didn’t need one. They had something better, much better. Jake didn’t pretend to understand it, but Amanda thought she did. He was so proud of his grandniece. She was smart, downright brilliant her teachers had called her. It was all those books she read.

Jake knew that Amanda Rae was a lot smarter than he was, but it didn’t intimidate him. You couldn’t be intimidated by someone you were so close to. In their strange, secret fashion Jake and Amanda were much closer to each other than uncle and grandniece. They were more like brother and sister.

It was strange, but Amanda couldn’t call anyone else. Only her Uncle Jake. They often speculated about that, to no avail. If it was true telep—Jake stumbled over the word—true telepathy, it was awfully limited. She couldn’t talk that way to her mother or father or anyone else. Only Uncle Jake.

It became their special secret. Her parents didn’t know about it, nor did her doctors, of which she had many. There was no reason for anyone to suspect it, because there was no evidence of it.

Jake smiled to himself as he lay there against the pillows. It sure saved on long-distance bills. This way he could keep up with Amanda’s family; with his niece Wendy, with her hard-working husband Arri and with Amanda herself. And he could do more than just take, he could give. Maybe he wasn’t book-smart, but he was sure world-smart. His commonsense advice had been of good use to Amanda on many occasions. It’s important for a youngster to have an older person to talk to who’s not immediate family. Jake made a sympathetic and safe, long-range father confessor.

Then he was there. In Port Lavaca. It was much more than just a silent two-way exchange of thoughts. Ideas could be exchanged as well, and sounds, and sometimes even smells. It was as though part of Jake’s mind was suddenly shunted halfway across the country to sit behind strange eyes.

There was a dim, misty picture of Lavaca Bay. From the angle Jake knew Amanda Rae was staring out her bedroom window in the direction of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. For an instant they were one person, the tired old man and the immobile young girl.

It was a fair trade-off. Through her Uncle Jake, Amanda was still able to experience the sensation of walking, a lovely motile daydream. It kept the memory of what walking was like alive within her, and made her a little less bitter.

“Hi, Uncle Jake,” a whispery voice said inside his own head.

“Hello, Mandy.” He smiled with his mind. “The Bay looks awful pretty tonight.”

“It is. Hot and sticky, though.”

“That’s no surprise. I wish I could feel it.”

“I wish you could, too, Uncle Jake. I wish there was more moon, though. The moon is always so pretty on the water. You can see the fish jump.”

“Haven’t done any fishing in a while. I wish I could come and see them jump myself.”

“You are seeing them jump, only through myself.” She laughed inside his mind, vox telepathica.

“You know what I mean,” he said, chiding her gently. “I haven’t seen you in years. It’d be awfully nice to go out there for a real visit. In person. But I don’t have the money.”

Amanda was too polite, too understanding to suggest that her Uncle Jake might consider giving up his color television and spend the money he’d put away on a trip to Texas instead. She did go so far as to say, “You know mom and dad would love to see you.”

“Not anymore than I’d love to see them, Mandy. Maybe I can manage it in a few months.”

“Sure, Uncle Jake.” It was a persistent fiction they both worked at maintaining. “Maybe in a few months. How’s your heart? Any troubles?”

“Not lately,” he assured her. “In fact, I feel better than I did this time last year. I haven’t had a really bad spell since January, and then only briefly. Been taking pretty good care of myself.” He chuckled at her. “Maybe I’m getting better, huh?”

“You never know, Uncle Jake.” Amanda knew from her studies that several heart attacks had damaged her uncle’s heart beyond possibility of improvement. He’d been fighting a holding action for the past five years and he’d continue doing so for the rest of his life. She worked very hard at not thinking about that.

“I’ve been walking a lot,” he told her, “playing with the local kids. Having a pretty good time. Did you hear about the mine explosion in Bolivia yesterday?”

“Sure did. It’s terrible what they do to those poor people down there, working them like animals year in and year out just for a little tin and silver.”

“No wonder cocaine running’s so popular, Mandy. It’s a lot easier to work than tin ore. I really can’t blame them. It’s been that way all through history.”