Eventually the gathering wax from the candle tilts the scales so that the flame singes the thread and the lever drops and the ball rolls down the chute to strike the tong which collapses the first of the dominoes, and the last of that line closes the door of a small chamber where a trickle of something is running but no more so heaviness gathers and the structure falls slightly to align with a channel where rafts are set in motion by the current created by the tilt of the surrey with gears turning the turret to align light from a prism catching the sun at the moment the wax shall have gathered four seconds before and the excited electrons dance and then the fire and the ice and the singing and the raising of the dead. It's so very simple, she tells me. I say, but ...
... and she says, wait. And she shows me. One candle flame. See?
Raton was Reloj's best pal in high school. He was very talented as an artist and very creative and happy all the time. He could knock out onetwothreefour paintings, just like that, and sell them, too, in Okie bars for drinks. Jesus, he was a handsome kid.
They were mischievous, the two of them, and their combined drawings were legendary. I wish I had all of the works of Reloj and Raton. It was so wonderful to know them in those long days of summer back on that hot and lonesome prairie.
The sperm finds the egg, and it's like a salmon flashing amidst rocks up the stream. It is very likely it won't happen, and if it doesn't happen then Raton will become a famous illustrator and we will all say, hey, I knew Raton once upon a time. But the wax drops.
And now Sharon marches like a funeral procession into the high school. Raton is in class, but it isn't sex education, I know that. We were all ignorant domines on that flat tableland, and Raton is falling.
Here he comes out of the high school, marching dutifully with Sharon. He never in his life went back into a school. It was the time of raw earnest then sad cold loss and dread and sirens growing ever closer.
At one time the village psycho and Raton were expecting sons. Expecting sons to be released at about the same time from separate prisons. The son of Raton had threatened his father. Once Raton was driving and drunk and a wreck chanced along and neither the boy nor Raton have been the same since. Raton had to stop his conversation frequently after that, say, wait, let me get my head right.
The last time Reloj and I went to Mexico, the last time, we drove from our old hometown to the airport, he dropped me off and proceeded to go and visit Raton. The old Raton, he was beginning anew, he said. He had his recent artwork up on an easel in his parents' apartment. Five months on one painting. Somethng was wrong with him, he couldn't walk nor concentrate for any length of time. But he was gonna catch that train again.
Later on, I asked Reloj, hey, how's Raton's artwork coming?
It's crap, says Reloj, sadly. Pure crap.
Rita is Reloj's wife and the phone rings, and she answers. It's Raton! Tag! says Raton. He'd flown into Anchorage all the way from Waco without notice to surprise his old pardner.
I'm very sorry, says Rita, and she certainly was. Reloj had been gone not two weeks.
I don't know what happened next. I don't even know what happened all the time, for it didn't happen to me. The evidence is in conversations with Reloj over the years, but that wasn't it. The secret was in his drawings, which I never asked him about, and he never in his life spoke of, to my certain knowledge.
This one is fairly new to me. I've been studying Reloj for, I guess, sixty years now, and a surprising amount of that study isn't written or spoken. This drawing is only some forty years old, so I'm still working on it. I see how one's keester shows when he opens his mouth, and I see the ball roll out of the chute, and I know the ankle bone is connected to the shin bone, so I know what it's about. It's just that, I'm wondering, is there a way for it to all come out differently?
I mean, did it have to be like this?
And she says, very patiently, start with the candle flame...