Walter Williams - The Rift

Astroscan , it said. Reflector telescope . And there was a book with it, explaining how to find and view astronomical objects.

The telescope made sense as a gift, Jason supposed, though he couldn’t remember expressing any interest in astronomy to his father, or his father to him. Here in rural Missouri, with only the minimal glow of Cabells Mound on the north horizon, the night starscapes were spectacular.

On those nights when the sky wasn’t covered with cloud, anyway. There hadn’t been many clear nights this rainy spring.

He suspected that his father hadn’t thought of the gift, though. It seemed more like something that Una might pick.

The thing was, the Astroscan didn’t look like a telescope. Telescopes were supposed to be long tubes, Jason knew, with a piece of glass at one end and someplace to put your eye at the other. This thing looked, if anything, like a giant red plastic cherry.

There was a round, red hard plastic body, maybe ten inches across. It was round on the bottom, and wouldn’t stand by itself, but there was a stand provided in which it could sit and rotate freely. And then there was a thick stem, six or seven inches long, that stuck out from the body. Removing the plastic cap on the end of this revealed a piece of glass that Jason assumed was a lens. There was another lens, an eyepiece, in a foam-padded box, but it seemed to go in the stem, not on the end away from the front lens.

It seemed very strange.

Jason wondered for a while if this was some kind of kiddie scope, if his father had got him something intended for a six-year-old.

The Huntleys’ dog Batman was still barking, barking as if it were deranged. Jason looked out the window to see if the dog was barking at an intruder, but Batman was sitting in the backyard next to the little Huntley girl’s inflatable wading pool, with its muzzle pointed to the sky, barking into the air.

Maybe, Jason thought, it had a bad case of indigestion or something. He returned his attention to the telescope.

He shoved his computer monitor out of the way, put the scope on his desk, put the eyepiece into the aperture, then pointed the Astroscan out the window and put his eye to it. He could see nothing but a blur. He spun the focusing knob.

And the world leaped into focus. There, amazingly close, was the line of trees at the far end of the cotton field. And beyond that, the water tower of Cabells Mound with its winding stair, its metal skin painted its strange unnatural green. Birds flew past, sun glowing on their feathers.

But it was upside-down. The water tower and the trees were planted in the sky and pointed down to the earth. Weird.

Jason rolled the telescope over in its cradle, then walked around the desk and looked through the eyepiece from the other side. The picture was still upside-down.

He guessed he would have to get used to it.

At least it wasn’t a kiddie scope. He could see miles with this thing.

He wished Batman would stop barking.

He scanned the horizon, but the view to the north was too flat to see very much, just the tower and the line of trees. He cleared the other end of the desk, shifted the scope, and looked east toward the river, twisting the focus knob until the flooded cottonwoods leaped out in bright detail. The inverted image revealed a big hawk sitting atop one of the trees, its back turned to him. Its dull red tail was clearly visible, as was the mottled pattern of feathers on its back.

And then something big moved behind the hawk, and Jason turned the focusing knob until he saw a tow boat churning upstream, the hot exhaust that poured from its stacks blurring Jason’s view of the river’s far bank. The tow consisted of fifteen barges lashed together by steel wire, and Jason could see the ribbed capstans that held the wire taut, the rust that streaked the sides of the barges, the white bow wave that marked the tow’s speed. He could see the radar spinning on top of the tow boat, and see the red flannel shirt and heavy boots of one of the crewmen as he busied himself on the afterdeck.

He tried to follow the tow boat with the scope as it moved upstream, but it was difficult because he kept forgetting the image was inverted- he’d push the scope in the wrong direction, and the image would leap out of sight as if the host of a slide show had clicked from one slide to the next. Jason then spent too much time finding the tow boat again- crazy views of sky and field flashed through the eyepiece- and then, once Jason found the tow boat, he had to refocus the scope. The boat was now stern-on, and above the huge double swell of its wake he could read its name in black letters on the white stern counter: Ruth Caldwell.

“Cool,“ Jason said.

He needed to go someplace higher and get a better view. For a moment he considered trying to get up on the roof, and then he remembered that there was a vantage place just behind his yard.

The old Indian mound that towered over the property in back. Between the height of the mound and the reach of the scope, Jason could probably see Memphis.

There was a shoulder strap that had come with the scope, which would make it easy to carry- now Jason saw the value of the Astroscan’s compact design. He clipped the strap to the scope, put the big plastic lens cap over the objective lens, and put the eyepiece back in its padded box, then put the box in his pocket. He swung the shoulder strap experimentally over his shoulder and found that he could hold the Astroscan reasonably secure under one arm.

Then he bounced down the back stairs, paused by the fridge for an apple and some supernaturally charged water, went out the door. The huge mound loomed above him. A gust of wind rustled the oaks and elms that crowned its massive height.

The Huntley dog had given up barking and was whining now, whining as if it were in pain. Jason looked over the fence, but he couldn’t see anything wrong, and he couldn’t think of anything that he could do, so he passed by the propane tank, crossed the soggy backyard, and began walking briskly toward the mound.

There was a kind of steep earthen ramp that led to the top, with a path that zigzagged through the brush and trees. Jason began to climb. Within moments he was breathing hard, and his thighs were aching with the strain. The Indian mound was bigger and steeper than it looked.

On another side of the mound, by the highway, was a little plaque that the town of Cabells Mound had put up. It explained that it was this mound that had given the town of Cabells Mound its name, and that the mound had been built approximately 800–900 a.d. by the Mississippian Culture, and was once surrounded by a large town. About the year 900 the site had been abandoned for reasons unknown.

Jason’s mother, on the other hand, held to the opinion that the mound had been built thirty thousand years ago by refugees from Atlantis, a theory that Jason had once dared to doubt out loud. “Who are you going to believe?“ Catherine retorted. “A bunch of know-nothing archaeologists, or people who are in touch with the Atlantean survivors today ?“

Jason’s mother had a knack for using arguments like that to bring conversations to a screeching halt.

Fortunately Muppet and his friends didn’t seem to mind hanging around with the son of the New Age Lady. They thought her beliefs were sort of interesting- when Jason had them over and showed them the house, they asked what the crystal in the water jug was for, who the Egyptian person in the photo was, and for details concerning the expected demise of California. When they met Catherine, a few hours later, they looked at her with a curious expectancy, as if she might begin chanting or channeling Elvis at any moment.

Jason figured he’d made some real friends here. Friends would stick by you no matter how crazy your mom happened to be.