The Fire and the Anvil

by Michael Galloway

  “Did you stop after that?”

  “I should have, right? But I didn’t. I went back two weeks later. I finally started winning but the holes got deeper. I ended up putting us into a ton of debt. It wasn’t long after that that we ended up…” His voice trailed off as he looked toward the window.

  “…divorcing?” John said.

  Dr. Ferganut shook his head. “But after that I gave up on casinos. By then it was too late. I apologized for it, but I don’t know if anyone remembers it. I beat myself up about it from time to time. I think it did more damage to my relationship with Madeline than anything else.”

  John took copious notes. “Can you tell me something else? If all this work meant so much to you, why do you sacrifice some of the machines you make? I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t know if sacrifice is the right word. I guess I don’t think about it when it happens. I just act.”

  “By the way, I lost two of your centipedes today when they hit some explosives. Sorry.”

  “I know. I counted them in the box. It doesn’t bother me one bit. You don’t need to apologize.”

  “Not even a little?”

  Dr. Ferganut waved him off. “I can make more if I have to. I keep copies of all my plans in multiple locations. I learned that lesson the hard way.”

  John still wrestled with the idea and looked at his final few questions. His mind started to wander.

  “Since we’re talking about advice, can I offer you some?” Dr. Ferganut began again. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Don’t let your rocket work overrun your time with Madeline. It’s not worth it. Even if you do get good data. I know they call you Data Guy, but don’t lose sight of what’s really important in life. It’s too easy to let things become idols. Even work can be an idol. So maybe I don’t look at the destruction of my machines as sacrifice. Maybe there is some idolatry there.”

  “Are you saying your centipedes were idols when you made them?”

  Dr. Ferganut sighed. “I don’t know. But I know that sometimes idols have to be burned.”

  John froze. He hesitated to put that comment in his notes. He then decided it was time for a break. He was surprised the professor gave him this much information. He rose up from the couch and stretched.

  “You said before you work a lot with software,” Dr. Ferganut said. “Would you mind helping me solve a few programming bugs? Within boundaries, of course.”

  “Sure thing. Is this for the centipedes or something else? I noticed they struggled when navigating around rocks.”

  “No, it’s for something else.”

  “Can you give me some more information?”

  “The code is on my laptop. Here,” Dr. Ferganut reached over and slid another black laptop computer across the coffee table. He brought up a code editor on the screen and then opened several files.

  John sat back down and pulled the laptop closer. He paged through the Java code in the editor, and although he understood it, it frustrated him because he did not know its ultimate purpose. “This is gonna be hard. I’m a big picture kind of guy. If I can’t get an idea of where the whole thing is going I get worried. Is this the other idea you talked about working on over the years?”

  Dr. Ferganut smirked. He pointed out two files that were bug-ridden and tried to explain the desired results versus what was being produced by the code.

  John took a deep breath. “Can I take a break first? This may take a while.”

  * * *

  “The sky is amazing out here, isn’t it?” Madeline said as she sat next to John on her father’s screened porch. She held his hand tight and stared out into the night. The air was still, cool, and clear and the sound of Mormon crickets filled the darkness.

  “I’ve never seen so many stars in my life. Kind of puts things into perspective,” John said as he surveyed the Milky Way. The sky was unusually dark in this part of the country due to the lack of light pollution. An absence of wildfire smoke helped, too, he reasoned, although the faint aroma of burnt wood still lingered.

  “By the way I overheard most of your interview tonight.”

  “And…?”

  “I heard the talk about boundaries and all that. Sounds great but I can’t tell if it’s real.” There was a hint of disappointment in her voice.

  “When are you going to take him at his word?”

  “John, I’m just confused. I want to forgive him but I want to talk to him first.”

  “You’ve got time. What about now?”

  “I don’t want to get hurt again if he hasn’t changed. I need more…time.”

  “But Madeline, that’s life. People say things they don’t mean. They make mistakes. They do things they later regret.”

  “Like the birthday party?”

  “Do you really remember back that far?”

  “I don’t remember the cake, but I remember them fighting.” Madeline crossed her arms. “I just don’t want to keep reliving those moments.”

  “You really don’t think he’s changed, do you?”

  Madeline shrugged her shoulders.

  “You don’t want me to work on his project. Is that it?”

  “I didn’t say that. Go work on it. Just don’t get carried away and don’t stay up all night.”

  “When have I ever done that? This really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s just I remember walking in on him one time while he was working in his laboratory. I interrupted him while he was soldering one of his bees and he blew up at me. But it was spooky. He seemed…different.”

  “Driven?”

  “No. Obsessed. Something was different in his face. His eyes seemed…dark.” She looked into John’s eyes. “It was like I lost my dad for a night.”

  “So you think you’re going to lose me too?”

  “Am I?”

  * * *

  John worked steadily at debugging code in the upstairs laboratory until his eyes burned. He tested the code one last time and pumped his fist in exuberance. He called out to the professor. “I got everything up and running. If you want to take a look, let me know,” he said. “I ran through all your test cases and a few edge cases.”

  Dr. Ferganut prodded one of his centipede prototypes with a tweezers and a metal-tipped meter probe. Eventually he set down his tools and stood next to John to review the code. A huge smile broke across his face. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done. I tried so many times to break through but I couldn’t. It was getting hopeless.”

  John brushed off the effort. “It’s no big deal. It was mainly a few rounding bugs and a couple of uninitialized variables.” He looked up at Dr. Ferganut but was bothered by a change in the professor’s complexion. He could not put his finger on it, but he wondered what the professor was thinking about beside the centipede’s design. He attempted to judge the color of the professor’s eyes, but the man looked away.

  “I can take it from here,” Dr. Ferganut said as he patted John on the back. He then went back to his desk and drank a few gulps of coffee.

  John sat in silence a moment but the whole interaction left him spooked. He rubbed his eyes until they felt better. It was eleven-thirty and Madeline was already asleep in the guest bedroom. Captain fell asleep an hour ago on the couch. He stepped outside for some fresh air and opened the door of his truck. He reached inside and pulled out an unopened roll of duct tape. He returned to the laboratory and set it onto Dr. Ferganut’s desk.

  “What’s this for?” Dr. Ferganut said.

  “In case you need it. For your secret project. You see my other name is Duct Tape Guy. You’d be amazed at what I can do with a roll.” John then went to the kitchen for a drink of water but soon found himself in the living room. Silently he picked up the Stratego game from the end table and brought it into the kitchen. He opened the box and set up the board on the table. Piece by piece he filled the board and played out a few strategies in his mind. He grabbed his road atlas again and set it next to the game board.


  Then the thought hit him. He was looking at the map all wrong. Dr. Minton’s hideout wasn’t to the north of here, he thought. It’s south. He spun the atlas around and circled an area on the southern edge of the Valentine Wildlife Refuge in blue pen. For all of Dr. Ferganut’s talk of the limited range of Dr. Minton’s firebugs, the truth was that they really did not know if that information was accurate. After all, it had been years since Dr. Ferganut encountered the devices and the latest example his wirefly brought in was inoperable. After a few minutes he put the board and the pieces back into the box.

  He headed into the guest room and lay on a cot in silence.

  Madeline lay in main bed and whispered to him in the darkness. “How did the rest of the night go?”

  “Good. I think.”

  “What’s he doing now? Is he still up?”

  “Yeah. I think he’s trying to figure something out. He’s really energized like he’s onto something. Drinking mugs of coffee, too.”

  She sighed in the darkness. “Here I thought he changed.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’ll be fine.” Somehow, John knew that Dr. Ferganut was not fine and he wondered what things would look like in the morning. As much as he desired to tell her about her father’s demeanor he preferred peace instead. Then again, the professor lived alone all the time and who cared if he stayed up late once in a while?

  Chapter Eleven

  Despite being the last to fall asleep, John was the first to awaken to the sounds of two chipmunks squabbling outside of the bedroom window. He sat up from his cot, ran his hands through his hair, and left the room. As he passed by Dr. Ferganut’s laboratory, he peeked in through the doorway to see if the professor was still awake. To his surprise, Dr. Ferganut had fallen asleep at his desk. In order to avoid a scene with Madeline he gently shut the laboratory door.

  “Everything okay?” Madeline said. She stood behind John with her arms crossed and yawned.

  “I think he fell asleep at his desk.”

  Madeline pushed the door open to have a look. When she was satisfied, she closed the door quietly and motioned for John to follow her into the kitchen. There, she pulled out two nonstick skillets, a carton of eggs, and a package of bacon.

  “Now I don’t know what to believe,” John whispered to her.

  “What do you mean?” There was a coy sarcastic edge to her voice. She handed him a loaf of wheat bread and pointed to the toaster. “There’s butter in side door of the fridge.”

  John dropped two pieces of bread in the toaster and pushed the lever down on the front. He then dug out the butter from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. “Well, he spent the last part of the interview yesterday talking about creative fire. And the need for boundaries. And how much damage it did when he didn’t have limits.”

  Madeline lit two burners on the stove, cut open the package of bacon, and laid the strips into one of the skillets. As she cracked six eggs into a white ceramic bowl, her eyes were downcast. Her usually swift movements around the kitchen seemed slowed by thought, indecision, or sadness.

  “Maybe you were right all along. I should have listened to you,” John said.

  “You’re just figuring this out now?” She whipped the eggs into froth and sprayed the other skillet with cooking spray. At no time did she look John in the eyes.

  “Maybe this whole book thing was a bad idea.”

  “Why stop now? You’re on a roll.”

  “So you’re mad about last night?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The sarcastic tone of her voice wore on his nerves like a squeaky hinge. “Or are you mad I worked on his project? Wow. He said he’d been stuck on something for a long time. Aren’t you glad I helped him?”

  Madeline did not reply and instead dumped the eggs into the skillet. By this point Captain rustled to life in the living room.

  “So now I’m going to get the silent treatment?” John said.

  Madeline just gave John an I-told-you-so grin which irritated him further.

  He decided at this point to dig in. “Just to let you know I did have another set of questions I intend to ask him before the day is done.”

  “Oh really? Care to share?”

  “I want to know what he’s working on in the other laboratory and why he won’t show us what’s down there.”

  “Good luck with that. Mom or I never figured out his secret projects half the time. What makes you think you’ll succeed?”

  He walked over to the door that led into the basement. For the first time since his arrival he noticed the door was made of metal and not wood. With his curiosity piqued even further, he put his hand onto the keypad lock and debated about punching in a series of random numbers. The keypad was as cold as a snowball.

  The temptation to open the lock drove him crazy until Madeline looked back at him. He withdrew his hand and stood by the toaster again to warm his hands.

  “Besides,” Madeline said. “It’s one thing to know him intellectually and it’s another thing to have lived with him.”

  * * *

  By the time Dr. Ferganut awoke, breakfast was over even though the odor of bacon hung in the air. He entered the living room where John and Captain sat next to each other on the couch.

  “Did you figure it out?” John said without looking up from his laptop computer.

  “What?” Dr. Ferganut said as if he was still lost in thought.

  “Whatever you were working on last night.”

  “I stayed up pretty late, didn’t I?” Dr. Ferganut’s voice was quiet and reserved. He pressed the side of his hair down and adjusted his glasses. “Yes, I figured it out. All is well. Where’s Madeline?”

  John finally looked up. The air felt heavy and it annoyed him. “She just left a few minutes ago to head up to Valentine. She should be back in about an hour. Said she wanted to pick up something different for lunch. There’s some leftover bacon in the fridge.”

  “Did you want to finish the interview now or later?”

  John glanced over at Captain and then back at Dr. Ferganut. “Let’s do it now.”

  Dr. Ferganut took a seat again in his black leather recliner and this time he kept his glasses off. He rubbed his eyes as if he still did not receive enough sleep.

  John tapped a few keys and switched to his document full of questions. “Need a cup of coffee?”

  “No. Anything but that.”

  John then dove in but tried to hide all traces of emotion from his face. “What have been your expectations with your inventions? And have those expectations matched up with reality?”

  “Good questions. I had a lot of hope when I first jumped into this. That I was going to make it big, that the money would roll in, that kind of thing. That wasn’t my main motive, but I wouldn’t have complained if it happened. But it didn’t. Some of the engineering problems were ridiculously hard. If I had known how much work it was going to be over the years and how long it would take to make headway, I might have reconsidered. Maybe.”

  “Would you do it all over again?”

  “The inventions or everything else?”

  “Both.”

  “I don’t know. I tried to have it all and sometimes I wonder if I gained anything in the end. I can live without fame and money and all that. If something happened to Madeline or even Evelyn, I’d have a very difficult time with it.”

  John typed up the responses but then closed the interview document. A part of him still believed in the man and his work despite what happened last night. He closed his laptop to make his intentions clear. “So what really happened last night? Off the record. With the code and what you were working on.”

  For the first time this morning, Dr. Ferganut made eye contact. He smiled but then suppressed it again. “In the past I used to have tunnel vision. I had this uncanny ability to tune everybody and everything out except the thing I was working on. But something was different last night. I can’t really explain it. Maybe it was because I prayed ab
out it beforehand. I’ve been trying that lately. It was like I was highly focused yet still aware of all that was going on around me.”

  John stood up and walked over to one of Dr. Ferganut’s bookcases. Compared to the last time he saw it, he noted that its contents changed. There were more Biblical titles than before and many of the medieval literature books were gone as if they were pushed out by the new arrivals. He glanced back at the Bible on the coffee table. “Speaking of prayer, what are your thoughts on God?”

  “I’ve read the Bible many times over. But something has been different the past couple of years. It’s become a lot more personal to me. I used to say God had a plan for my life because that’s what the Word said. But I think now for the first time in my life I’m actually believing it. How about you?”

  John did not have a ready answer. He returned to the couch and stared again at the Bible on the table. “I’m still working my way through it. I’ve been slacking on it lately, though. But Madeline has really helped my faith along over the past few months. I don’t know where I’d be without her.”

  After a moment of silence, the rotary telephone rang. Dr. Ferganut walked over to it but hesitated to pick up the receiver.

  “Who is it?” Captain said.

  Dr. Ferganut’s face became sullen and immediately he hit the speaker button on the phone so that everyone in the room could hear the conversation. “Hello?”

  “Good morning, James,” Dr. Minton said in a deliberate and welcoming voice. “I trust you rested well, no? Have you given any thought to my previous inquiry?”

  “What do you want from me, Julius?” Dr. Ferganut snapped back.

  “You really are losing your memory, aren’t you? Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

  “I figured out that you went over the line.”