But now, with the river high, a few rural roads and the crest of the levee were the only places to drive. Jason was determined, though, to make the most of it. At least on the top of the levee he could go fast. It wasn’t as good as skating, Jason thought. Nothing was. But it was better than staring at the walls and waiting for his parents to change their minds and bring him back to California. He wondered how he was going to get his father to buy him an ATV. It was too late for his birthday—his dad had already bought the present, or so he said. And Christmas was far away. Maybe, he thought, if he did really well on his finals…
The Indian mound loomed up on the right, and below it, the row of five houses with Jason’s in the middle. Jason decelerated, clutched, shifted into a lower gear, then steered off the top of the levee and onto the steep grassy grade. Muppet’s feet flew high as the ATV pitched over the brink and accelerated, engine buzzing like an angry beehive. Jason heard Muppet give a whoop.
Jason gave the machine more throttle.
The ATV hit the flat with a bump, bouncing high and throwing Muppet forward into Jason. Jason laughed. He upshifted and felt the wheels spin on gravel, and then the cart took off, throwing Muppet back on the seat and bringing a fierce grin to Jason’s face. The ATV lurched as he corrected his course, and then he accelerated down the lane. His house came up faster than he expected and he overshot the drive-way, coming to a stop on the front lawn.
“You’re getting the feel of it, all right,” Muppet said.
“Thanks for letting me drive.” Jason put the vehicle into neutral, then dismounted. “Want to come in?” Muppet shook his head. “No thanks. My mom is having her piano lesson now, and I’ve got to get dinner ready for my baby sister.”
“Okay.” Backing toward the porch. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“See you then.”
“Thanks!”
Muppet revved the engine and took off, making a U-turn on the front lawn and heading back to the levee. As the buzzing engine receded, Jason could hear the Huntley dog, Batman, barking like fury from his confined yard.
Jason took off his helmet—his mother had relented to the extent of giving his armor back, if not his skates—and then he turned and bounced up the porch steps before noticing the large UPS package that sat before the screen door. His nerves gave a little joyous leap. His birthday present from Dad!
He picked it up, and it had quite a respectable weight. At least it wasn’t clothing. He unlocked the door and took the package upstairs to his study. His birthday wasn’t until Friday, but he saw no reason not to open it now, so he took out his pocket knife and slit open the strapping tape that held the box together. When he’d finally placed the contents of the box on top of his desk, he looked at it in puzzlement.
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 eye-piece, 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.