Monsters (14 page)

Jane kept a vegetable and herb garden for the house beside the woodpile. Hugo proved himself adept at determining which plants were weeds by the texture of their leaves, their growth between the rows, and comparisons with the other plants. Often, Bruce would return from working in the back fields to find Hugo sitting in the garden, facing the sun, enjoying its warmth on his face as his hands glided over the soil and plants, picking at the weeds.

Bruce built a loft within the farmhouse to give him and Jane some privacy while opening up the downstairs area for Hugo. They said they'd been planning to add a second story within the cabin anyway, but Bruce suspected Hugo knew better.

Hugo had a brilliant memory and a mind that loved to reason, to think in depth and discuss concepts from new angles. He taught Bruce about physics in the evenings. It seemed Bruce was destined to learn about physics whether he wanted to or not, which brought a smile to Jane's face.

In the soft crackling light of the fire within the cabin, Hugo spoke of his love for science.

“It was Galileo who said, mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Mathematics allows you to read nature like a book.”

Bruce was sure he was right, even though he wasn't that good with mathematics, but Jane had taught him to take up opposing positions so as to avoid any bias in his reasoning. He hadn't been game to try that with Jane, but he figured he'd give the concept a whirl with Hugo to see what he could learn.

“I can't see it,” Bruce began, suddenly becoming acutely aware he'd used a term inappropriate for Hugo. He tried to catch himself, but once that word was spoken it could not be recalled. Bruce tried to go on without putting his foot in his mouth again.

“I can understand how mathematics is needed for bartering in the markets and buying equipment, but there are no numbers governing my plow, or guiding my arrow to a deer. I don't mean to sound like one of the judges, but I'm not sure how much help physics can be out here on the farm. I mean, we don't have cars and computers, airplanes or submarines. We've just got axes and spades.”

“Oh, on the contrary,” Hugo replied. “You are so familiar with nature, you take physics for granted, just as I once did. You shoot your arrows and instinctively appreciate the rate at which they fall, but it is a rate that can only be properly expressed using mathematics. Our world is ordered by numbers, my friend, whether we realize it or not.”

Bruce could see Hugo's face lighting up with the prospect of an intellectual challenge.

Jane took Hugo's hand, guiding it to a cup of herbal tea she had made from soaking dried apple and crushed almonds in boiling water. She had allowed the tea to cool before giving it to Hugo. He raised it to his lips, sniffing and then sipping, savoring the taste.

“Even though I know you're right,” Bruce said. “There seems to be too much chaos, too much noise and confusion to find any simple, clear-cut ways of using physics on a farm or while out hunting.”

Hugo smiled.

Bruce could almost hear his thoughts before he spoke. His eyebrows were raised, his cheeks were flushed, and his posture was straight. Even with the horrible scarring on Hugo's face, he looked excited. As shocking as his appearance was, Jane and Bruce looked past that, seeing the beauty of his heart.

“It's in the finer points,” Hugo replied. “You'll find physics in the subtleties most people overlook. Physics is an old Greek word, it simply means nature, and that's all physics is, a way of describing the world around us. There's nothing hard or mystical about it. We instinctively use physics all the time without realizing it. I'll show you an example.”

Hugo turned toward where he could hear Jane cleaning up and asked for a broom. She handed the coarse wooden broom to him, taking time out to watch his example.

Bruce and Jane exchanged silent glances with each other, curious as to what Hugo had in mind. For his part, Hugo was oblivious to their unspoken communication. In the time Hugo had been with them, they'd learned to say more with gestures and facial expressions than they ever had before, not that they were trying to exclude him, it was that they were a married couple and they felt the need to be expressive with each other in some private way. For Bruce, it was fun to be intimate in a variety of manners. Having Hugo around accentuated that aspect of their relationship, and Bruce loved it.

Hugo held out the broom for Bruce, saying, “Can you balance this broom on just one or two fingers?”

Bruce took the broom, lifting it up, feeling it naturally weighted toward the bristles. Holding the broom with one hand and trying to position his fingers in the right spot, he quickly realized he was going to run out of hands and laughed, giving Hugo an audible cue.

“Hold out your arms,” Hugo said, taking the broom from him with the confidence of one that had sight. The fire crackled with warmth. “I'll show you how easy it is. This is a simple experiment, but it demonstrates the notion of a center of gravity.”

Hugo ran his fingers along the broom, gently taking Bruce's arms and stretching them apart. He rested the shaft of the broom on one finger from each of Bruce's outstretch hands. Bruce was amused by the novelty of having Hugo so actively involved in something that would normally require sight.

“Now, if you keep your hands level and start moving them together you'll find the broom stays balanced. It won't fall from your fingers even though it is heavier at one end. The broom will stay balanced because you already have it in balance. As you move your fingers together you'll naturally find the center of gravity.”

Bruce went along with the old man, more out of politeness than anything else, but he was right. As Bruce moved his hands together they ended up close to the bristles, but the broom remained balanced on his two fingers.

“And how is this going to help me sweep the floor?” asked Bruce with a lighthearted voice.

“Oh,” Hugo replied. “It won't help you keep the cabin clean, but it will help your hunting.”

That got Bruce's attention.

Hugo reached out and took the broom from him. Bruce was fascinated to see how confident the old man was, instinctively grabbing the broom even though he couldn't see the shaft. Hugo leaned it up against a wall that was just out of reach, confident of his position within the room.

“All right, Mr. Physics,” Bruce said. “I'm sure this is going to be good. Tell me, how can balancing brooms improve my hunting?”

“By helping you make better arrows,” Hugo replied. “You can take this principle and apply it to your arrows. Imagine the bristles of the broom are the arrowhead. The arrow should always reach a point of balance well beyond the halfway point between the flight feathers and the arrowhead.

“Now, this is where the physics kicks in. Sort through your arrows. Divide them into those that have their center of gravity closer to the middle of the arrow and those that balance closer to the arrowhead.

“Those arrows that balance close to the arrowhead are going to be heavier overall. As they whip through the air they're going to tilt down and fall shorter than an arrow with a more central balance. These weighted arrows are best for use at close range, as they'll pack more punch. If you use them at distance, you'll find them inaccurate as well as inconsistent with each other.

“Arrows that balance closer to the middle of the shaft will gain lift as they fly through the air, much like an eagle soars without flapping his wings, gliding on the breeze. These arrows will be more accurate at long range, but they're not going to have as much penetrating power. They're ideal for bringing down birds.”

Bruce nodded, mumbling in agreement as Hugo spoke.

“But get too close to the middle of the arrow shaft and the flight characteristics will be unstable. It will take a bit of experimentation to find the right compromise. If your center of gravity is behind the middle of the arrow, your shot will fail entirely, flipping the arrow over in mid-air.”

“Oh, yeah,” Bruce said. “I saw that hunting rabbits with my brother. We’d make our own arrows, but without too much care, and the rabbits would look at us befuddled as our arrows toppled to the ground.”

Hugo laughed as he continued.

“If you separate your arrows like this, marking them with reds and yellows to tell you how they rate according to their center of gravity, you'll find your consistency between shots will increase.”

“Huh,” Bruce replied, genuinely surprised.

“You see, something as simple as understanding the physics around the center of gravity is important.”

“Yes,” Bruce said, agreeing with him. “I'll give that a try.”

And he did.

Bruce spent the next morning carefully comparing his arrows, refining them so they were more consistent with each other and separating them into the two categories Hugo suggested. Some practice shots confirmed the old man's theory and Bruce couldn't wait to try the arrows on a hunt. He went out that afternoon, down by the swamp and caught a pheasant. Hugo was visibly proud to have been some help.

“Not bad for a blind man, hey?” Hugo bragged, biting into a juicy piece of breast meat that night.

“Not bad at all,” Jane said.

“Hey, Bruce. I've been thinking. We should make a steam engine.”

“A steam engine?” Bruce replied. “What exactly is a steam engine? And why would I want one?”

Hugo laughed. He was clearly enjoying Bruce's easy-going nature and willingness to try new things.

“Well,” Hugo began. “Think about your fireplace. All that wood burns, throwing out a nice warm heat, but most of the heat is lost as it goes up the chimney. A steam engine is a way of capturing that heat as energy and harnessing it to do some work.

“Think about the steam that comes off a boiling kettle, it is energetic, whistling as it rises out of the spout. We can control that thermodynamic change from a liquid to a gas and put the steam to work to help us.”

“What kind of work?” asked Bruce, curious.

“Well, there are a number of things we could do. I reckon we should go with a turbine steam engine. Yes, that's what we should build. Pistons would be too difficult. They'd require a level of machining precision we just don't have.”

“Now, hold on,” Bruce said, seeing Hugo had already jumped two steps ahead of him. “What's the point of this thing? What is it going to do for us?”

“Oh,” Hugo said, getting back on track. “Steam engines are wonderfully diverse. We could use it to pump water from the stream. We could use it to grind grain in the mill. If we got really sophisticated, we could even use a steam engine to power a cart, pushing it along without a horse.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Jane said, sitting down beside them.

“But they're dangerous,” Hugo said, as though he were recounting some adventurous tale from his youth.

“What isn't?” asked Bruce.

“Oh, we have to be careful,” Hugo continued. “We'll need Jane's dad to help manufacture the parts, as the pressures need to be carefully contained or they could blow apart the house.”

“OK,” Bruce said, chuckling. “You've talked me into it. Sounds like fun.”

Jane swatted him. Hugo sensed their banter and laughed.

Nothing ever came of the steam engine, but plenty of planning and discussion surrounded the concept over the following months as Hugo explained the laws of physics to Bruce.

Hugo spoke of Archimedes and Newton as though he’d known them personally.

For Bruce, the idea that technology from the past could be revived in the present was fascinating. He was torn. On one hand, he wanted to build a steam engine out of a sense of nostalgia, if not for practical reasons. On the other, he didn't want to fail. It seemed the vision was too fragile, too precious to risk, and so the engine remained little more than a dream, a tantalizing possibility.

Jane fell pregnant late in the spring, which gave the new year a lift. Hugo was as excited as Bruce. As the months wore on and summer slowly turned to autumn before descending toward winter, Jane glowed with excitement. Her maternal instincts kicked in as she prepared for the birth of their child.

Hugo said she was nesting, slowly tweaking small aspects of the cabin for the arrival of the baby, knitting baby clothes, converting a wooden crate into a crib and clearing out any musty old bedding. Being pregnant, Jane couldn't help out as much on the farm as she once had, putting the burden of preparing for the snow drifts on Bruce.

The past year had been kind. The thick deciduous trees bordering the farm to the north had held the monsters at bay during summer, but with their leaves covering the ground, Bruce had to reinforce the berms and spike pits protecting his fields before winter set in.

A mountain lion had been stalking deer nearby, spraying to mark its territory, leaving the smell of musk drifting across the back plots near the forest.

Bruce was worried the massive beast would find a way through the pits, over the berms and approach the farm buildings. Although the cabin sat in a depression near a stream they had a clear field of view of the various approaches over the lowlying hills. At night, though, a big cat would be dangerous. If a mountain lion got inside the corral or the barn it could kill the livestock. More than likely, a lion would go for the chickens in the pen as the smell probably carried on the wind for miles.

“Be careful,” Jane said as Bruce hoisted a saddle from the loft of the barn, positioning it on his horse with a pulley.

“I'll be fine,” he said, and he believed it, even though he knew his beliefs made no difference at all. Deep down, memories stirred of the sense of invulnerability he and Jonathan had while marching on Bracken Ridge. They thought the world would fall at their feet, but they were wrong. As Bruce strapped the saddle in place he shook off any doubts, knowing what needed to be done.

“Take one of the farm hands with you,” insisted Jane, her arms wrapped around her waist in the cold autumn air. “If you run into any monsters you'll need help.”

“The hands are all to the south,” Bruce replied. “I'll lose too much time. Don't worry. If I have to, I'll split the work over a couple of days so I'm not exposed around dusk.”