Fear Nothing

structure is a studio, where Toby Ramirez builds his life from glassing.
        Approaching through the fog, I saw the windows glowing Toby often wakes long before dawn and comes out to the studio.
        I propped the bike against the barn wall and went to the nearest window. Orson put his forepaws on the windowsill and stood beside me, peering inside.
        When I pay a visit to watch Toby create, I usually don't go into the studio. The fluorescent ceiling panels are far too bright because borosilicate glass is worked at temperatures exceeding twenty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit, it emits significant amounts of intense light that can damage anyone's eyes, not just mine. If Toby is between tasks, he may turn the lights off, and then we talk for a while.
        Now, wearing a pair of goggles with didymium lenses, Toby was in his work chair at the glassblowing table, in front of the Fisher Multi-Flame burner. He had just finished forming a graceful pear-shaped vase with a long neck, which was still so hot that it was glowing gold and red; now he was annealing it.
        When a piece of glassware is removed suddenly from a hot flame, it will usually cool too quickly, develop stresses-and crack. To preserve the item, it must be annealed-that is, cooled in careful stages.
        The flame was fed by natural gas mixed with pure oxygen from a pressurized tank that was chained to the glassblowing table. During the annealing process, Toby would feather out the oxygen, gradually 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 Carmelita'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 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 intellectually 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, Toby - then 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 Ceramfab 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 pear-shaped vase so that it was bathed uniformly by the fire.
        With a