The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  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 bringing conversations to a screeching halt with statements like that. 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.

  Jason paused halfway up the mound, panting for breath. He turned and gazed out at the world below, the flat country that stretched forever to the north and west, eastward the gray-brown river spotted with silver flecks of reflected sun-light, the Ruth Caldzvell disappearing around a distant island. The strange white splotches on the brown, level fields were more distinct from this height than from the second floor of his home. Mr. Regan, he saw, was in his carport, bent over his boat. Birds chattered at Jason from the trees, but louder still was the howling of dogs. It sounded as if every dog for miles around had gone berserk.

  His mom’s car, he saw, was just turning off the highway on its way to their house. He turned again and climbed steadily to the top of the mound. An old pumpkin oak stood on the mound’s verge. It had been struck by lightning, Jason observed. Part of the trunk was scorched black, limbs were splintered and bare of leaves, and much of the crown had burned away, but the oak had somehow survived the sky’s onslaught. New shoots were sprouting out of the burned part, looking frail in the sunlight, but waving their leaves proudly.

  There were some bundles of dried flowers laid before the tree, Jason observed, among the tangled roots, and the remains of incense cones. His mother had made offerings here, though he could not say whether they had been to the tree’s burgeoning life or to the spirits of dead Atlanteans. The mound was thoroughly forested, and the view was largely blocked by the crowns of trees that grew on the steep slopes. Jason made his way to a little cleared space, where he found trampled grass and a used condom. Courting couples, he guessed, came up here to watch the sunset. He felt a sudden flush of distaste for the latex object, and he kicked it away, then reached into his pocket for the eyepiece to the scope.

  There was nothing to rest the Astroscan on, so Jason just let it hang from the shoulder strap while he put his eye to the rubber eyepiece. He turned the scope on his own home, and through the back window he could clearly see his mother in the light of the kitchen, drinking a glass of energized water while frowning and contemplating something beyond the edge of the windowframe—Jason realized after a few seconds that she was looking into the open refrigerator, presumably trying to make up her mind what to have for dinner.

  And then Jason realized that the image was, for a change, rightside-up. He wondered about that, until he realized that he was standing with the telescope under one arm and he was bending over it, head hanging down, to put his eye to the eyepiece. The image seemed rightside-up because his head was upside-down.

  The ripping engine noise of an ATV sounded in the distance. Jason took his eye from the scope, and saw Muppet’s little green vehicle racing down the levee with Muppet bent over the handlebars. Behind, throwing up dust, was a Cabells Mound police
car, lights flashing. Though Muppet had cranked the ATV’s throttle as far as it would go, the car, following behind, seemed only to be loitering.

  “Asshole Eubanks,” Jason said. “You’re not even in your jurisdiction, damn it!” He bent his head and tried to focus the scope on the top of the levee. With more luck than skill he managed to catch Muppet in the scope’s image. He saw the green helmet turn, look over his shoulder at the car following so easily behind, and then glance down the slope of the levee, toward the cot-ton field below.

  Yeah, Jason thought. He could almost read his friend’s mind. Go for it. He saw Muppet’s gloved hand twist the throttle, heard the change in engine pitch that came with the shift in gears. And then the ATV rolled off the top of the levee, accelerating for the field below, where the car might not follow.

  “Go!” Jason shouted. “Run for it!”

  The ATV raced down the levee’s flank. The police car slowed, hesitated. Above the chainsaw rip of the ATV’s engine Jason heard an eerie, collective howl, as if all the dogs in the world were crying in pain. He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

  And then the world rose and hit him on the chin.

  NINE

  A report prevailed in town yesterday, that a part of the town of Natchez had been sunk by an Earthquake, and that four thousand persons perished. —We trust that this report will prove to be unfounded; but if such a deplorable circumstance has taken place, it could not have been on the morning of the 16th December, as a letter dated on that date at Natchez, and published some time since at the city of Washington, says “A considerable shock of an Earthquake was felt here last night,” without adding anything further…

  Charleston, Jan. 24, 1812

  They were late in getting started because Viondi needed to pick up something to deliver to one of his relatives in Mississippi. What the object turned out to be was a large silver samovar, over two feet tall, tossed casually in a cardboard box in Viondi’s trunk, next to another card-board box that held Viondi’s clothes and toilet articles. Nick put his soft-sided suitcase and his satchel in the trunk next to the boxes.

  “A samovar?” Nick said. “What’s your family doing with a samovar?”

  “Is that what it’s called?” Viondi shrugged. “No idea how we got it, brother. You can ask Aunt Loretta when you meet her. We use it to make tea and shit.”

  “And what happened to your suitcase? Why’s your stuff in a box?”

  “I loaned my suitcase to Dion.” Dion was one of Viondi’s sons. “But he was living with his girlfriend, and when she moved out, she packed her stuff into the suitcase and never gave it back. And she and Dion don’t talk to each other no more, so odds are I won’t ever see it again.” Nick looked at Viondi. “It’s a complicated family you’ve got, Viondi.” Viondi grinned at him through his bushy beard. “All families are complicated.” He slammed the trunk with his big hands, mashing the cardboard box of clothes. “You want to drive?” Nick shrugged. “Might as well.”

  “She won’t bother.” The loud voice of a well-dressed white businessman cut across from the sidewalk, talking to another businessman. “The nigger who’s right? No way.”

  Nick hunched for a moment, anger kindling in his soul at the slur that just flew in from nowhere, and then he realized that what the man had actually said was, “She won’t bother to figure who’s right.” And he tried to relax, but the carefree moment was gone.

  He looked at Viondi, and could tell from his expression that he had processed the random words the same way Nick had, and had then made the same correction.

  Shit, Nick thought. You were always ready for it. Always braced for bigotry until sometimes you heard it where it didn’t exist. No wonder so many black people die of hypertension.

  “Give me the keys,” Nick said.

  The keys to the Buick spun glittering through the air. Nick caught them on his palm, opened the door, slid into the leather seat.

  The car still smelled new.

  Viondi jumped into the shotgun seat and picked up a satchel of tapes. “What you want to listen to?” Nick narrowed his eyes as he gazed over the wheel at the busy street in front of him. “The blues,” he said.

  Viondi looked at him. “You got some more bad news?” he asked.

  “Heard from Lockheed on Friday,” he said. “I didn’t get the job.”

  “Sorry, man. That’s bad.”

  Nick started the car.

  “You got any more places to apply?”

  Nick shook his head. “Not for the kind of work that I do.”

  “There’s all sorts of engineers, though, right? I mean, you can get a job in another field?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. But I’m about fifteen years out of date for anything but what I’ve been doing.” Viondi thought for a moment. “You get back from seeing your girl,” he said, “we’ll talk. I’ll get you some work.”

  “I don’t know anything about plumbing.”

  Viondi’s laugh boomed out in the car. “Nick, you an engineer! You don’t think you can learn plumbing? Only two things you got to know about plumbing. The first is that shit runs downhill, and the second is that payday’s on Friday.”

  A reluctant laugh rolled up out of Nick. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

  “A man sends his daughter to France, that man needs a job.”

  Nick sighed. “I know,” he said.

  “Professor Longhair’s what you need,” Viondi said. He slotted in a tape. “Let’s hear a little of that N’Yawlins music, get that Louisiana sound in your soul.”

  So they listened to Professor Longhair on their way out of St. Louis, and as they headed south on 1-55 they followed it with Little Charlie and the Nightcats, Koko Taylor, and Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows. They avoided the Swampeast by crossing into Illinois at Cape Girardeau, the silver bridge vaulting them over a brown, swollen Mississippi that was packed high between the levees and walls. Even from high above, on the bridge, the slick, glittering river looked fast, deep, and dangerous. The old town of Cairo was decaying gently behind its tall concrete river walls. Viondi took over the driving because he wanted to stop at a barbecue place he remembered, and he drove around the shabby downtown area for twenty minutes, but the restaurant had closed or he couldn’t find it, so they got some burgers and crossed the Ohio into Kentucky. They followed Highway 51 through Fulton into Tennessee, and then south through Dyersburg and Covington. And as they approached the homeland of the blues, Viondi’s music drifted back in time, a connection to the heat and toil and sadness of the Delta, all the horrible old history, shackles and cotton fields, mob violence and the lash. Lonnie Johnson. Son Seals. Victoria Spivey. Robert Johnson.

  “My granddad came north up this road,” Viondi said. “Highway 61 out of the Mississippi Delta to Memphis, then 51 north on his way to Chicago.”

  “That’s the way a lot of people went,” Nick said. “My mother’s people came north that way.”

  “North to the Promised Land. Get away from the Bilbos and the coneheads. And what they got was South Chicago.” Viondi shook his head. “I remember driving down with my family during the summers to see all the relatives we left behind. All the old folks, still in Friars Point. The backseat all packed with kids and packages and the smell of food.”

  They carried their food, Nick knew, because black people could never be sure if restaurants would serve them. And even after segregation ended, the habit of carrying food along continued. Nick’s stomach rumbled. He found himself wishing there was a full hamper on the backseat.

  “You still got people there?” Nick asked.

  “A few. All working for Catfish Pride.”

  “And one of them owns a samovar.”

  “Aunt Loretta isn’t a relative, she’s a used-to-be in-law. She’s kin to Darrell’s momma.” Viondi smiled.

  “She’ll put us up tonight. You’ll see.” He lifted his sunglasses, looked at Nick out of the corner of one eye.

  “You getting hungry?”

  “Yeah. That burger
didn’t last. Maybe we can get something in Memphis.”

  “I know a place that’s closer.”

  Nick sighed. “Sure we can find it?”

  Viondi dropped his sunglasses back on his nose and laughed. “Let’s check it out. You don’t want to eat now, we’ll get some takeout.”

  The restaurant was open, an old ramshackle seafood place that loomed above the Hatchie north of Garland, gray weathered clapboards and mossy shakes on the roof. Nick and Viondi ate fish, cole slaw, greens, a bottle of Bud apiece, then stepped out onto the dense heat of the late afternoon and looked down at the thick, slow river, swollen by the backwash of the Mississippi. Nick felt an unaccustomed contentment easing his strung-wire muscles, and he touched the little box in his shirt pocket, the diamond necklace he had bought for Arlette.

  Tomorrow he’d give it to her. He imagined her eyes shining.

  Shadows were starting to lengthen. Nick got behind the wheel and crunched away down the gravel drive.

  “I can get us to Memphis from here,” Viondi said. “We don’t have to backtrack. Just turn right.” He slotted a Lonnie Mack tape as Nick made the turn. “My token white guy,” he said. They drove down a winding two-lane blacktop. There were few buildings, and no people. Pines clustered thick on all sides.

  Lonnie Mack’s voice grated from the car’s speakers.

  Viondi adjusted the seat to recline more, leaned back with his hands pillowed on his stomach. The bottle of beer had made him drowsy. “So,” he said, “what do you call a whore with a runny nose?” Nick looked at him suspiciously. “What?”

  “Full.”

  Viondi’s laugh boomed out in the car. Nick shook his head. “That’s the third most disgusting joke you’ve told today,” he said. Lonnie Mack’s guitar stung the air.

  The car took a leap, left the road for a second, and Nick’s eyes shot to the road, his hands clenching on the wheel. Had they just blown a tire? Hit something?