reducing the temperature, giving the glass molecules time to shift to
more stable positions.
Because of the numerous dangers involved in glassblowing, some people
in Moonlight Bay thought it was irresponsible of Manuel to allow his
Down’s-afflicted son to practice this technically demanding art and
craft. Fiery catastrophes were envisioned, predicted, and awaited with
impatience in some quarters.
Initially, no one was more opposed to Toby’s dream than Manuel For
fifteen years, the barn had served as a studio for Car melita’s older
brother, Salvador, a first-rank glass artist. As a child, Toby had
spent uncounted hours with his uncle Salvador, wearing goggles,
watching the master at work, on rare occasion donning f I A I Kevlar
mittens to transfer a vase or bowl to or from the annealing oven.
While he’d appeared to many to be passing those hours in stupefaction,
with a dull gaze and a witless smile, he had.actually been learning
without being directly taught. To cope, the ntellectually
disadvantaged often must have superhuman patience. Toby sat day after
day, year after year, in his uncle’s studio, watching and slowly
learning. When Salvador died two years ago, Tobythen only
fourteen-asked his father if he might continue his uncle’s work.
Manuel had not taken the request seriously, and he’d gently discouraged
his son from dwelling on this impossible dream.
One morning before dawn, he found Toby in the studio. At the end of
the worktable, standing on the fire-resistant Ceranifab top, was a
family of simple blown-glass swans. Beside the swans stood a newly
formed and annealed vase into which had been introduced a calculated
mixture of compatible impurities that imparted to the glass mysterious
midnight-blue swirls with a silvery glitter like stars. Manuel knew at
once that this piece was equal to the finest vases that Salvador had
ever produced; and Toby was at that very moment flame-annealing an
equally striking piece of work.
The boy had absorbed the technical aspects of glass craft from his
uncle, and in spite of his mild retardation, he obviously knew the
proper procedures for avoiding injury. The magic of genetics was
involved, too, for he possessed a striking talent that could not have
been learned. He wasnyt merely a craftsman but an artist, and not
merely an artist but perhaps an idiot savant to whom the inspiration of
the artist and the techniques of the craftsman came with the ease of
waves to the shore.
Gift shops in Moonlight Bay, Cambria, and as far north as Carmel sold
all the glass Toby produced. In a few years, he might become
self-supporting.
Sometimes, nature throws a bone to those she maims. Witness my own
ability to compose sentences and paragraphs with some skill.
Now, in the studio, orange light flared and billowed from the large,
bushy annealing flame. Toby took care to turn the pearshaped vase so
that it was bathed uniformly by the fire.
With a thick neck, rounded shoulders, and proportionately short arms
and stocky legs, he might have been a storybook gnome before a watch
fire deep in the earth. Brow sloped and heavy.
Bridge of the nose flat. Ears set too low on a head slightly too small
for his body. His soft features and the inner epicanthic folds of his
eyes give him a perpetual dreamy expression.
Yet on his high work chair, turning the glass in the flame, adjusting
the oxygen flow with intuitive precision, face shimmering with
reflected light, eyes concealed behind didymium goggles, Toby did not
in any way seem below average, did not in any way impress me as being
diminished by his condition. To the contrary, observed in his element,
in the act of creation, he appeared exalted.
Orson snorted with alarm. He dropped his forepaws from the window,
turned away from the studio, and tightened into a wary crouch.
Turning as well, I saw a shadowy figure crossing the backyard, coming
toward us. In spite of the darkness and fog, I recognized him at once
because of the easy way that he carried himself. It was Manuel
Ramirez: Toby’s dad, number two in the Moonlight Bay Police Department
but now at least temporarily risen by succession to the top post, due