remembers before there were electric lights.”
“Lots of people do,” he said, “but it won’t be long before all those people are gone . . . and when that happens, nobody will think much about what a miracle electricity is. And what a mystery. We have an idea about how it works, but knowing how something works and knowing what it is are two very different things.”
“How did you turn on the lights?” I asked.
He pointed to a shelf beyond the table. “See that little red bulb?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s a photoelectric cell. You can buy them, but I built that one myself. It projects an invisible beam. When I break it, the streetlights around Peaceable Lake go on. If I do it again . . . like so . . .” He passed his hand above the landscape and the streetlights dimmed, faded to faint cores of light, then went out. “You see?”
“Cool,” I breathed.
“You try it.”
I reached my hand up. At first nothing happened, but when I stood on tiptoe my fingers broke the beam. The humming from beneath the table started up again and the lights came back on.
“I did it!”
“Betchum bobcats,” he said, and ruffled my hair.
“What’s that humming? It sounds like our TV.”
“Look under the table. Here, I’ll turn on the overhead lights so you can see better.” He flipped a switch on the wall and a couple of dusty hanging lightbulbs came on. They did nothing about the musty odor (and I could smell something else as well, now—something hot and oily), but they banished some of the gloom.
I bent—at my age I didn’t have to bend far—and looked beneath the table. I saw two or three boxy things strapped to the underside. They were the source of the humming sound, and the oily smell, too.
“Batteries,” he said. “Which I also made myself. Electricity is my hobby. And gadgets.” He grinned like a kid. “I love gadgets. Drives my wife crazy.”
“My hobby’s fighting the Krauts,” I said. Then, remembering what he said about that being kind of mean: “Germans, I mean.”
“Everyone needs a hobby,” he said. “And everyone needs a miracle or two, just to prove life is more than just one long trudge from the cradle to the grave. Would you like to see another one, Jamie?”
“Sure!”
There was a second table in the corner, covered with tools, snips of wire, three or four dismembered transistor radios like the ones Claire and Andy had, and regular store-bought C and D batteries. There was also a small wooden box. Jacobs took the box, dropped to one knee so we’d be on the same level, opened it, and took out a white-robed figure. “Do you know who this is?”
I did, because the guy looked almost the same as my fluorescent nightlight. “Jesus. Jesus with a pack on his back.”
“Not just any pack; a battery pack. Look.” He flipped up the top of the pack on a hinge not bigger than a sewing needle. Inside I saw what looked like a couple of shiny dimes with tiny dots of solder on them. “I made these, too, because you can’t buy anything this small or powerful in the stores. I believe I could patent them, and maybe someday I will, but . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
He closed the top of the pack again, and carried Jesus to the Peaceable Lake landscape. “I hope you noticed how blue the water is,” he said.
“Yeah! Bluest lake I ever saw!”
He nodded. “Kind of a miracle in itself, you might say . . . until you take a close look.”
“Huh?”
“It’s really just paint. I muse on that, sometimes, Jamie. When I can’t sleep. How a little paint can make shallow water seem deep.”
That seemed like a silly thing to think about, but I didn’t say anything. Then he kind of snapped to, and put Jesus down beside the lake.
“I plan to use this in MYF—it’s what we call a teaching tool—but I’ll give you a little preview, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Here’s what it says in the fourteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. Will you take instruction from God’s Holy Word, Jamie?”
“Sure, I guess so,” I said, starting to feel uneasy again.
“I know you will,” he said, “because what we learn as children is what sticks the longest. Okay, here we go, so listen up. ‘And straightaway Jesus constrained his disciples’—that means he commanded them—‘to get into a ship, and to go before him to the other side of the water, while he sent the multitudes away.