Hidden Talents

End,” Quinton said.
    “No shit.” Caleb studied the green rocks beneath the surface of the pool. “That would be all the way back to what? Nineteen sixty-eight or 'sixty-nine?”
    “Maybe earlier.” Blade's brow furrowed as he gazed intently into the water. “Way I heard it was, you got to spend a long time in here meditatin' and purifyin' your brain first. Then, sometimes, if everything is just right, you get a vision.”
    “You said this legend dates from the late sixties?” Caleb contemplated the spring. “From what I've heard, visions were fairly common in those ancient golden days of yore, and they weren't usually induced by meditation and purified brains. I think whether or not you had a good vision had more to do with what you'd been smoking.”
    “One should not scoff at what one does not comprehend,” Quinton said. “We cannot perceive all the mathematical planes with the five ordinary senses.”
    Caleb shrugged. “Maybe you're right.”
    Silence again.
    “I had a vision here once,” Montrose said very softly. “Years ago.”
    “Yeah?” Blade gave him a curious glance. “What was it like?”
    “Hard to explain. I remember I'd been giving Serenity violin lessons that afternoon. For some reason I came up here that evening just to think. I used to do that a lot in those days.”
    “I remember,” Quinton said.
    “The vision was kind of like a dream except that I knew I was awake and that it wasn't a dream.” Montrose rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “It was weird, if you want to know the truth. A real personal thing. I never told anyone about it until now.”
    “Could you tell if it was a vision of a verifiable mathematical reality?” Quinton asked curiously. “Was there any symbolic logic to it?”
    Montrose shook his head. “It was just a vision.”
    Caleb stretched out his legs and took another swallow of Old Hogwash. “So? What did you see?”
    Montrose gazed into the pool. “My old man. He was listening to me practice the piano, telling me how good I was. Same way I'd been telling Serenity how good she was earlier that day. I was just a little kid in the vision. Nine, maybe ten years old, I guess. I remember how great it felt to know that my old man was proud of me. Somehow it made me calmer inside.”
    The beer tasted warm in Caleb's mouth. “That sounds like a memory, not a real vision.”
    “Whatever it was, it wasn't a memory,” Montrose said. “My old man ran off before I was born. I never even met him.”
    No one said anything for a moment. They all sat gazing into the crystal pool.
    “Maybe you were lucky.” Blade gripped his beer bottle fiercely. “I could have done just fine without ever knowing my old man. He liked to hit me and Mom with his belt. Sometimes he used his fists. I wanted to leave home a million times, but I stayed because I figured that as long as he was knockin' me around, he wasn't beatin' up on my mom.”
    Caleb looked at Blade. “You defended your mother?”
    “She wasn't much of a mother, I guess. Kind of weak and pathetic. Never had the guts to leave my dad. Let him kick us around. But she was my mom. Felt like I had to do something, y'know?”
    Caleb remembered the confrontation with Roland at the paddock. Don't call her a bitch . “Yeah. I know.” He watched the water shimmer in the pool. “You ever hit your dad?”
    “The day Mom died. Came home from the funeral and told him I was leavin' for good and I wasn't ever comin' back. He took a swing at me. I slammed him into a wall. Knocked him cold. I walked out the door, joined the Marines, and I never saw him again. Heard he died five years ago. Didn't go to the funeral.”
    Silence descended on the small group once more.
    Caleb leaned back against a steam-warmed rock. “This is all very interesting. But did you guys bring me up here just for a little male bonding or was there something more specific that you wanted to say to me?”
    “We brought you up here because we wanted to talk to you about Serenity,” Quinton said.
    “Jessie and Ariadne figure there are some things that need saying,” Montrose added. “They decided we're the ones to say them.”
    Caleb rested his head against the rock. “Talk. I'm listening.”
    “Don't know if you exactly understand how it is with Serenity and a lot of us here in Witt's End,” Blade said. “We're her family. The only one she's got.”
    “She told me that,” Caleb said.
    “This town raised her,” Quinton explained