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
had 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 to me.”
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 even know 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 she said, “Can I see it?”
Then
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 and 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.”
