Sam
Riley acquired the telescope just six weeks shy of his twenty-second wedding
anniversary. It was Jolene’s second marriage and Sam’s third. When people asked
how many children they had, Sam always said, “We have four, two girls and two
boys.” Jo always said, “I have two girls and Sam has two boys.” Sam didn’t take
offense at this. He was ten years older than his wife. When they’d gotten
married, his boys, David and Brian, were teenagers. In fact, Dave had already started
college at Rolla. Jo didn’t have a hand in raising them. Her girls, on the other
hand, had still been small: Audrey had been nine and little Jess, only five. Their
dad had been mostly out of the picture, so Sam had stepped in. He’d been glad
to do it, bandaging up boo-boos, attending parent-teacher nights, cheering them
on at softball games and even washing their hair in the kitchen sink nights because
he didn’t think it was proper for him to see them naked in the tub.
Now
the kids were all grown and gone, and in Sam’s estimation, they were all in
fine shape. He loved to tell people, “Not a bum in the lot.” And it was true. They’d
all gone to college except for Jess, who was happy as a clam doing her business
from home, selling her handmade knickknacks on the Internet and making a tidy
living at it.
But
it was Dave who brought him the telescope. Dave was the only one who had stayed
close to home. He taught at the junior high where he was real popular with the
kids. Besides teaching science, he coached basketball and track and ran several
academic clubs.
The
old junior high building had been built in the 1920s. A new wing had been added
sometime in the 60s, but it still lacked air conditioning. The furnace was
notoriously temperamental, too. Many times over the course of the winter, it would
conk out entirely. When it did, teachers resignedly informed their charges to
go to their lockers and get their coats before resuming the lesson.
Since
Dave had started teaching there, extensive renovations had begun. The principal
was a man named Greg Meier, who Sam remembered seeing often hanging around the
house when the boys had been growing up, slurping RC Colas and playing video
games on the old Commodore 64. Now, Greg was overseeing a clean-up project at
the school, starting with the storage spaces. There was a large attic in the
old wing that nobody’d hardly been in since Ford was in office.
That’s
where they’d found it, fully assembled under a drop cloth: an orange-bodied
Celestron with an 8” lens.
When
Sam was a boy, his great-grandma, who everybody called Sweetie Pie, used to
joke it was a good thing he was the spittin’ image of his daddy, otherwise
people might think he’d been left on the doorstep by Gypsies, he was such a
natural tinker. Even as a boy, he’d been a patient, meticulous sort, intrigued
with the inner workings of things. His prized possessions in those days had
been the collection of tools and spare parts he’d scavenged from old sheds and trash
heaps. His room had been a magpie nest of nuts and bolts, shoeboxes overflowing
with bits of wire, erector sets, airplane models and old vacuum tubes. He kept
Sweetie Pie’s ancient (even in those distant chrome-and-frosted-aqua days of
1959) floor model Victrola running. At fourteen, he built his own ham radio. At
eighteen, he’d joined the army and served in the Signal Corps. He did a tour in
Viet Nam, then went to college on the GI Bill to study electrical engineering. After
ten years in broadcasting, he went to work for an electronics company where he
stayed for twenty-seven years. During his first two marriages, he’d held a
part-time job as a repairman at an appliance store. Long after he quit, people
in town continued to bring him things that wanted fixing: telephones, radios, clocks,
cameras, watches, televisions, computers, which he happily did at no charge. He
made house calls to work on major appliances or to hook up someone’s surround
sound system. When he’d retired, several people, including Dave, had suggested
he teach technical courses, or even go into consulting. Sam always shook his
head and said, “I just wouldn’t have the patience for that kind of thing.” But
the truth was, at sixty-four years, Sam couldn’t credit the idea of starting
over. Besides, he liked puttering around his own shop, dozing in front of Bonanza reruns and playing with the
grandkids.
The
day Dave brought the telescope over, Jess was visiting her mother in the
kitchen. When Dave came in, they ignored him and he ignored them. The
relationship between Jo, her daughters and Sam’s sons had always been a bit
frosty for Sam’s liking. For the life of him, he didn’t understand why the five
of them didn’t get along better. It seemed that things had only gotten worse in
recent years. Sam suspected it had something to do with Jo and the girls not
caring much for Dave’s wife, Shannon, who, admittedly, thought a lot of herself.
Then there was the fact that Dave and Shannon had started attending the mega-church
some years ago and had tried to convince the rest of the family to do likewise.
The place packed in almost four thousand people on the weekends, which, in
Sam’s opinion, seemed more like a stadium event than a house of worship, but to
each his own. He was just grateful everybody kept relations civil, especially
on the holidays.
As
for him and Jo—well. In some ways, they were very compatible. They were both
hard-working, both loners. They were both thrifty and liked a tidy house. But
Jo had always been an unhappy woman. She’d met her ex, an Air Force man, when
he was stationed in Wichita. She’d married him to get away from Middle of
Nowhere, Kansas, (a map might list it as “Walton,” which was the closest town,
at any rate), where she’d grown up. Her mom had been a real good-time gal,
dumping her off in the country like a dog for her grandparents to raise. As a
result, Jo hated the country, hated everything to do with the country. She wouldn’t
even go camping. Sam had inherited his grandfather’s old farm about ten miles
northeast of town and had once nursed dreams of building a house out there in
his retirement. But of course, Jo wouldn’t even consider it.
In
school, young Jo-Jo had gotten good grades, but had never had the money to go
to college, something she’d always regretted. Audrey had remarked a few times
that there wasn’t anything preventing her from taking classes now, but for some
reason, Jo never did it. The community college brochures Audrey brought over
sat untouched on the kitchen counter until Sam threw them away. Jo didn’t
really have any hobbies to speak of either. She gardened some—if you could call
keeping some African violets on the window sill, popping petunias out of a
plastic container and dropping them into a terra cotta urn in the springtime “gardening.”
Jo had said one time that she might like to learn to knit, so on her birthday,
the girls presented her with a course they’d paid for—just a little four-week thing
offered up at the community center. Jo went to one session, but said it was too
hard on account of her being left-handed. She was a fine cook and would have
spent more time in the kitchen trying out exotic recipes, but Sam, a diehard
meat-and-potato man, didn’t have the palate for anything more refined than
Heinz 57.
Jo
always complained about how they never did anything fun. But if Sam suggested
they go see a movie, she sniffed and said there wasn’t anything worth paying
ten dollars to see. If he suggested they go out for an ice cream cone, she got
all huffy and said no, that he just didn’t understand.
She wanted to go out and do something.
How come they never traveled? “Well, now,” he’d said. “Traveling is a big
expense. We’ll have to do our research.”
And
research Sam had. That was the way he did everything. Purchasing a new pair of
shoes took him a few weeks. A ladder had taken him six months. A new car, a
year. He had to try things out, investigate all the options. The way he looked
at it, every purchase was an investment. A vacation was no different, really. There
was the matter of airfare, lodging, rental car. Their food and entertainment
budget would have to be planned.
“Where
do you want to go?” Jo had asked.
“Where?”
he’d frowned. “Well, how about . . . Galveston?”
“You
know damn well I hate Texas.”
“Galveston’s
not at all like Fort Worth. And anyhow, I don’t think it’s fair for you to say
you hate a place you haven’t been to in over thirty years.”
“How
about Vegas?”
“What
would we do in Vegas?”
“Go
to the casinos, see the shows, go dancing--”
“The
casinos? Why not just throw all our
money away and cut out the middle man?”
They’d
argued for days about where to go before finally settling on checking out the cruise
lines. That was over a year ago, and Sam still insisted he was comparing deals.
In
the meantime, he understood that Jo needed something in her life. When the
girls were at home, none of this had been a problem. In those days, there was
no such thing as free time. Even as the girls got older, it seemed there was
always something going on—back-to-school shopping, math homework, doctor’s
appointments. Both Sam and Jo worked full-time. They had their commutes; they
had a house and vehicles to maintain, coupons to clip, casseroles to make, check
books to balance. Twice, Jo had to go through lengthy and acrimonious child
support proceedings. Sometimes, it had felt like they barely had time to speak
two words to each other before collapsing into bed at night.
Now,
the bills were all automated and there was no need to cook every day, or even
every other day. In fact, several times a week they ordered dinner off the
senior menu at Perkin’s, pot roast for him, Cobb salad for her. The house and
yard were always immaculate. And yet, they still barely spoke two words to each
other, unless it was to snap. Just the other day, Sam had gone into the kitchen
to let her know he was going to the hardware store.
She’d
had her back to him, bent over the sink washing the breakfast dishes. Just as
he leaned over to give her a kiss good-bye, she said, “So, go. No one’s stopping you.”
He’d
hoped grandchildren would help, but Jo didn’t regard his grandchildren as hers.
In fact, she seemed to resent the amount of time he spent with them. Nine times
out of ten, Jo found some reason not to go to their baseball games and ballet
recitals. She’d hinted once that Blake and Taylor were spoiled. That had led to
such a nasty exchange, Sam stopped asking her to accompany him altogether.
But
if she disapproved of his spending time with the grandkids, she hated that he
fixed stuff for free, and made no bones about it.
So
when Dave brought over the telescope, they snuck it in through the garage.
Sam’s
shop was a far cry from his cluttered childhood bedroom. He had two main work
areas in the house’s sub-basement, one for woodworking and one for electronics.
The electronics area had a wide bench with a heavy-duty magnifier lamp. Shelves
and peg boards lined the walls. All his tools, equipment, spare parts and
hardware were sorted and labeled.
As
Sam flipped on the lights, Dave was saying, “Greg called and asked me if the
science faculty might have any use for it. I told him, ‘Oh, heck, yeah. I’d
love to do an astronomy unit. And the science club would just love it.’”
Sam
grunted. “Well, let’s have a gander.”
Dave
and Greg had managed to dig up the telescope’s original carrying case, dusty,
slightly scuffed, but none the worse for wear. Sam popped it open to reveal the
telescope nestled within, the body unscrewed from the tripod, all the
individual pieces matched up to their foam rubber compartments.
“I
took it home and cleaned it,” Dave said. “Blake and I took it out last night,
but we couldn’t get it to focus.”
Sam
examined the parts one by one, laid them neatly out on his workbench: tripod,
finderscope, sun shade, altitude adjustment. He saved the body of the telescope
itself for last, turning it thoughtfully over in his hands.
“Think
you can fix it?”
“Sure.
For a fee.”
Dave
laughed a trifle disbelievingly. “Fee?”
Sam
nodded, tapping a finger against the orange tube. “If I fix it, I get to keep
it for a few weeks.”
“Is
that all?” Still laughing, Dave clasped his father’s shoulder. “Sure, that seems
fair.”
Dave
stayed and visited for a little while, but declined Sam’s offer to stay for
supper. As soon as Dave left, Sam got to work.
Generally,
Jo didn’t come down to the basement. If she wanted something, there was a
return vent in the kitchen floor she could holler through. So she didn’t find about
the telescope until a replacement part arrived a week later.
“What’s
this?” Jo asked when she found the small, flat parcel in their mailbox.
“That
must be the lens I ordered,” Sam replied.
“For
what?”
“Telescope.”
“Telescope?
What telescope?”
“They
found it up at the school. Asked me to take a look.”
“Doing
it for free?”
“Well,
there wasn’t hardly anything to it. The screws that held the focuser in place
came off, so the mechanism fell down into the shaft. All I had to do was get it
out. Took me all of five minutes.”
“But
you ordered a lens.”
“Old
one was scratched.”
“How
much did that cost us?”
“Thirty-one
ninety-five. I found it on eBay.”
“Are
they going to compensate us for that?”
“In
a manner of speaking.”
“What
does that mean?”
“I
told Dave I wouldn’t charge if I could borrow it for a while.” As soon as Sam
finished that sentence, he braced himself for the haranguing that was sure to
follow.
To
his surprise, Jo didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then: “Can I see it?”
It
was his turn to pause. “Sure. Come on down.”
She
went with him to the shop and watched as he opened the package and screwed in
the new lens. “There,” he pantomimed dusting his hands off. “That’s that.”
Jo
bent to look into the eyepiece. She moved the telescope around, adjusted the
focus. “You know, my grandpa got me a telescope when I was ten or eleven. We
used to go up on the roof and look at the constellations.”
“Did
he?” Sam tried to recall if she’d ever told him that before. He didn’t think
so. “Well, I figured we’d take it out tonight. You know. Give it a spin.”
“What’s
the moon phase tonight?”
“Waning
crescent. It’ll be a new moon in a few nights. Then we’ll really be able to see
some things.”
“Did
you look that up?”
He
nodded. “I been checking out some astronomy sites. You want to see?”
The
two of them sat down in front of his computer, where they remained for the
better part of the afternoon. Just before dusk, Jo fixed them up some
sandwiches while Sam took the telescope out to the backyard. He set out a pair
of aluminum folding chairs next to it, lit some citronella candles to keep the bloodsuckers
off.
Jo
brought the plates outside and they settled down together, sipping iced tea and
watching the sky darken. The cicadas gave way to lightning bugs. The lightning
bugs gave way to crickets. When Sam and Jo finished eating, they wiped the
potato chip grease off their hands and stood up.
Sam
started to take the eyepiece, then paused and offered it to Jo.
She
shook her head. “After you. You fixed it.”
So
Sam put his eye to the lens. After some adjusting, he beheld the moon.
They’d
mostly stuck to the beginner astronomy websites, and it had felt kind of
elementary to be reading about Orion’s Belt and Cassiopeia—who didn’t know
about them? But seeing them like this made him glad they did. Why had they ever
taken the moon for granted? Then there were the Pleiades. There was Perseus. Jupiter
with its tan girdle, its red spot, its four moons, Io, Europa, Callisto and
Ganymede. There were nebulae and galaxies. And of course, all the bright stars,
alone or in clusters.
Sam
and Jo passed the eyepiece back and forth, rotating the telescope in slow
circles so they could see all that they could see.
“I
found a list of astronomical events the other day,” Sam said. “We’ll get to see
a meteor shower in October.”
“Won’t
the telescope have to go back by then?”
“I
was thinking we might get one of our own.”
She
nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“I
was also thinking we could visit some of the observatories. There’s one up at
William Jewell. UMKC, too.”
“And
Louisburg.”
“We
could visit all of them.”
“We
could.”
They
didn’t even realize how quickly time was passing, the fairy circle of candles
turning into puddles of wax around them, a foraging possum trundling its way
across the yard to sniff at their discarded Lay’s bag.
It was after 2 a.m. when they finally decided
to turn in. Sam broke down the telescope while Jo gathered up their plates and
crumpled-up napkins. As they walked together back towards the house, Jo said, “You
know, I’ve always wanted to go to Cape Canaveral. That’d be a nice anniversary
gift to ourselves, wouldn’t it?”
He
smiled. “I hear Florida’s nice this time of year.”
Lauren Scharhag
Lauren
Scharhag is an award-winning writer of fiction and poetry. She is the author of
Under Julia, The Ice Dragon, The Winter Prince, West Side Girl & Other
Poems, and the co-author of The Order of the Four Sons series. Her
poems and short stories have appeared in over eighty journals and anthologies,
including Into the Void, The American Journal of Poetry, Gambling the Aisle and
Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more
about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads:
Tags:
Short Fiction
Clever but meaningful. Well done.
ReplyDeleteArnold Dairyd