The Field

by Tracy Richardson

  “Nothing like a little full-out water polo,” Cole says as he towels himself dry.

  I laugh, but he’s right. The tenseness between Will and me is gone. Will even brings up the internship again.

  “Do you know where the internship’s going to be? With the Universal Energy experiments or doing that mind-reading stuff?” he asks.

  I wince, but I don’t think he’s being sarcastic. He’s just not into the remote viewing. “No, Renee and I really haven’t talked about it. Maybe we’ll find out more from Mr. Ogle on Monday. Are you applying, Cole?”

  “No, AP Enviro is cool, but science isn’t really my thing. I just took it for the AP credits. You guys can duke it out.” Which is exactly what I’m worried about.

  13

  I KICK ASIDE a pile of clothes on the floor of my room to see if the shirt I’m looking for is underneath it. Nope. It’s possible that it got shoved under the bed, so I get down on my knees to look. There it is—a gray/blue Henley surrounded by several of Ralph’s chew toys that he’s ‘buried’ under my bed. I pull it out and give it a sniff. Not too fresh. So it’s time for the Eric ‘special’ clothes wash. I grab a few more shirts that look excessively wrinkled and are not exactly smelly, but not exactly clean either, throw them in a laundry basket and take the stairs two at a time on my way to the laundry room.

  My ‘special’ wash is a true time saver and last minute personal care miracle. I’m supposed to be doing my own laundry, but as it doesn’t always get done, I devised this simple fix. A few squirts of clothes freshener on the item to be cleaned, then five to ten minutes in the dryer, and—‘voila!’—clean, wrinkle-free clothes! The freshener comes in Spring Rain and Ocean Breeze scents. I prefer Ocean Breeze myself.

  Marcie comes into the laundry room with her hamper while I’m spraying my shirts. She has to do her own laundry too, and as she is a little more fastidious than I am, she doesn’t ascribe to the special wash method.

  “Thanks for just dumping my clothes on the floor,” she says. Her load had been in the dryer—finished, I might add—so I had to take them out to put my clothes in.

  “Sorry, I have to do a load. Anyway, folding your clothes is not part of my laundry duties.”

  She starts pulling her clothes out from the pile, folding them and putting them into her hamper. She notices that I’m spraying my shirts. “Oh, the Eric ‘special’ wash. Do you have a date or something? Are you dating that Italian girl who’s always waiting for you after the games?”

  “She’s actually French, and yeah, we’re dating. After dinner we’re going to the Benton County Wind Farm. I want to take Dad’s telescope so we can go star-gazing too, at McCloud Park.”

  “We haven’t been out with the telescope in forever.”

  “It’s not your usual sort of date. I hope Renee likes it.”

  “She probably will. Most girls would think it’s romantic.” She’s quiet for a minute, lays a folded red shirt on top of her growing pile and then says, “Do you ever think about star people? I mean, like if they exist or if they’re actually already here, on earth?” This is not as weird a question as it seems. In my family we’ve talked about stuff like this around the dinner table for years.

  “I think it’s naïve to believe we’re the only inhabited planet in the Universe. But I have no idea about aliens. I guess they could be here, but wouldn’t we know?”

  “I think they’d be so advanced they could be hiding in plain sight. And maybe some people do know. Maybe the whole planet isn’t ready to know about them and they’re helping us without interfering.” She’s stopped folding laundry and is just looking at me. Now it is getting a little weird.

  “Well, yeah, I guess, but who knows?” And then I just can’t resist adding, “It almost sounds like you’ve got some inside knowledge, Lieutenant Uhuru. Beam me up Scotty?”

  “Very funny. Like that would ever happen.” She starts swatting me with the shirt she’s holding. “My mistake for trying to have a serious conversation with you.”

  I hold up my arms to shield my head. “I’m sorry, but there was no way I could let that opportunity go by.”

  She stops hitting me and gets back to folding her clothes. “Didn’t you go on a field trip to the wind farm last week?”

  “My AP Enviro class went, but it’s awesome to see at night. There’s an amateur astronomer’s stargaze tonight and I don’t have a game, so I thought we could do both.”

  “That’ll be cool. So, the soccer team’s on a pretty good winning streak, right? What have you won now, like ten straight games?”

  “The team’s won thirteen, but I’ve only played in seven games. I’m splitting games with Brett Morgan. But it’s still pretty cool. How’s cross country going? Sorry I can’t make it to any meets, you know, with practice and all.” I’m done spraying the shirts, so I load them into the dryer and put the timer on for ten minutes.

  “It’s good. I’m really better at the middle distances—200 and 400 meters, but I do okay in the longer races. I’ve had two personal best times the last two meets. At least I’m improving.”

  “That’s cool. Hey, I gotta go. I need to find Dad and ask about the telescope.”

  I find him on the porch lying on the couch. The ceiling fan is revolving at high speed, fluttering the pages of the book he’s reading. The breeze coming through the screens is just pleasantly warm and the nights have been cool. There’s a hint of that sweet rotting smell you get when the plants in the garden are past their prime and beginning to fade and wither.

  “Hey, Dad, would it be okay if I took the telescope out tonight? Renee and I are going to the wind farm and I want to show her some stuff with the telescope.” He puts the book down on the coffee table and looks over at me standing in the doorway to the house.

  “Sure thing. Do you know what’s in the sky right now? We could look it up before dinner if you want.”

  “I looked at Indiana Amateur Astronomer’s website and it says that M13 is visible and so are the Ring Nebula and Saturn Nebula. I’m pretty sure I can find them. It’s also the night of the Harvest Moon, so that’ll be cool to look at, even though it’ll make it harder to see the stars. Here, I printed off some stuff.” I put the pages I printed from the site down on the table. He sits up and pats the faded cushions next to him.

  “Have a seat,” he says. “Maybe you can see the Milky Way. You know there are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth?”

  “Yeah, I know.” He’s only told me about as many times as there are grains of sand in Florida.

  “Dad, have you ever heard anything about the Universal Energy Field? Renee’s dad is studying it.”

  “Oh, yes.” He takes his glasses off and puts them on the table. “It’s also called Dark Energy. Not because it’s malevolent, but because we can’t detect it. At least not yet. But we know it’s there because of movements and behaviors of celestial bodies that can only be explained by the presence of an energy we can’t directly detect.” He taps his fingers on the pages spread out on the table. “So Dr. Auberge is studying The Field. Interesting.”

  “Really, you’ve heard of it? What is it?” My dad’s always been an amateur astronomer, so he’s into this stuff, but I’m a little surprised that he knows about the Universal Field.

  “Dark Energy is some kind of cosmos-filling field of energy. It’s everywhere in the Universe. In fact, Dark Energy and Dark Matter make up almost 95% of the entire Universe. The matter and energy we can see and measure are only 5% of the Universe.”

  “That’s crazy. That we really know so little about the Universe.”

  “I think it can be overwhelming for some people, but I like to think of it as endless possibilities in an elegant Universe. The hand of God is everywhere.”

  “You mean like ‘God the Creator of the Universe?’” We’ve gone to church sporadically my whole life, but I’ve never felt much of a connection with the God in flowing robes carrying a scepter directing events
from his throne in the sky. Somehow, God seems both more personal and more unfathomable to me.

  “I can’t claim to really understand what God is, but I feel like God is a part of us and everything else in the Universe,” my dad says. “The Chinese call it ‘Chi.’ The energy or life source of all things. Does that make sense?” As with so many things, my parents have never really forced their opinions on me, but have allowed me to find my own way.

  “Yeah, it makes total sense.” I say.

  TONIGHT I’M DRIVING my Dad’s Audi, which is an improvement over the minivan, but not by much, as it’s about a thousand years old. Still, it is a German-made sedan. Renee and I have the windows down and I’ve got some low-key driving music playing. Instead of taking the highway north to the wind farm, I decided to go the scenic route on the back roads. We pass through tiny one-stop towns with only a gas station and a quick mart and sometimes a flea market, and I wonder who lives there and what do they do to make a living or for fun. It’s at least half an hour to get to the nearest drugstore, let alone a movie theater or restaurant.

  On either side of the road are fields of dry cornstalks with ears of corn still attached, like the kind people put by their doors to decorate for Halloween, and soybean fields turning from green to gold. Some of the trees are starting to turn orange and red, and goldenrod grows in swathes along the side of the road.

  “The fields and sky are really beautiful here,” Renee says, interrupting my thoughts. “The sky is so huge, like an enormous blue dome, and the clouds are amazing to watch.”

  “There isn’t much to block your view, that’s for sure. It’s pretty flat up here, not hilly like in the southern part of the state. But you’re right, it is beautiful.” A flock of birds flies overhead, looking like a swiftly moving grey cloud. Several minutes pass as the birds flow by in a continuous stream. There must be thousands of birds moving together, migrating south. “It’s too bad, what they said on the field trip, about the wind turbines interfering with bird migrations. I guess there’s always a downside, even with something good.”

  “Yes, but I think interfering with bird migrations and some ground vibrations are pretty minor drawbacks when you compare it to the pollution created by burning coal and oil. That probably kills more birds anyway,” Renee says indignantly. I’m preaching to the choir here.

  We round a bend in the road and the wind turbines rise up from the farmland before us. There are dozens of them spaced out evenly across the fields; enormous white sentinels soaring into the sky. Somehow they always seem alien to me, like they are visitors from another planet or giant transmitters sending messages into space. Each tower is topped by three curved blades, like a child’s whirligig, and they appear to be moving slowly in circles when, in fact, they are whizzing around at 80 to 120 miles an hour. They move in a sort of choreographed dance. I don’t get why some people consider them eyesores. To me they seem majestic and almost awe-inspiring.

  I pull over into a small park with a playground in an unnamed town on the country road. We sit side by side on the top of a wooden picnic table to one side of the swing set. Renee rests her hand on my knee and I pick it up and hold it between my hands. I have big hands—good for catching the ball—and her smaller hand disappears between mine. She smiles at me and tugs her hand free. I reach over to smooth her hair back from her forehead and then put my arm around her, pulling her close. She leans her head on my shoulder. The sun is just now setting, and we have a clear view of the western sky across the cornfields ablaze with color. We watch the sun go down and the sky change from pink and blue to orange and lavender and then dark blue and purple.

  “It’s really lovely—like an impressionist painting. Wonderful colors,” Renee says. As night gradually replaces the day, lights on the top of the turbines begin to flash a warning to planes. Hundreds of red lights blink on and off in unison, appearing to be sending a message to more than just passing planes, reinforcing my feeling that they are communicating with some far-off galaxy.

  “Somehow the wind mills mean more to me than just green energy. Having so many of them all together, spinning at the same speed and flashing in unison is so harmonious, almost cooperative.” I feel so at ease with Renee, like old friends, that I can say stuff to her that I wouldn’t talk about with anyone else.

  “They’re quite magnificent. Like gentle giants. Simple and elegant. We have wind turbines in Europe, but I’ve never seen so many of them together.”

  “Didn’t they say on the field trip that it’s the largest wind farm east of the Mississippi? It’s good for the farmers, too. Extra money.” I hop off the table and stretch out my back, leaning side to side. “I think it’s dark enough to use the telescope now, but we have to get away from the flashing lights.” I hold my hand out to Renee as she steps down from the table. “McCloud State Park is a little bit south of here on the way home. There’s a good place there for star gazing.”

  The air is cooler now after the sun has set, and I put on my sweatshirt before getting back into the car. In the twilight we pass by more fields of corn and see fireflies hovering over the tops of the stalks, blinking on and off like little satellites. “I like the scenery of the Midwest,” Renee says. “It’s a more subtle beauty than the mountains or the ocean.”

  The drive into the park from the road winds through open fields of tall grass and fading wildflowers, illuminated now by the full moon that’s risen in the east. I’ve come here before with my dad and the amateur astronomer’s club. They have an area cleared on top of a hill with level spots to set up the telescopes. My dad’s scope is a ten-inch Dobsonian, which weighs about 50 pounds. It’s a good scope for an amateur. Easy to maneuver, but powerful enough to see space objects really clearly.

  There are three other groups with telescopes already set up when we get to the top of the hill. I pick a spot off to the side and set up the Dobsonian.

  “I’ve never done this before. What kinds of things are we going to look at? Galaxies and nebulas?” Renee seems excited.

  “I thought we’d start by looking at the moon, since it’s the Harvest Moon, and it’s the closest thing to Earth.” The moon hangs in the eastern sky, a silver orb reflecting the light of the sun. I position the telescope toward it and focus on its surface.

  “What’s the Harvest Moon?”

  “It just means the full moon closest to the Fall Equinox.” I have a clear view of its pitted surface in the viewfinder. “Here, have a look.”

  Renee puts her eye on the viewfinder and a moment later exclaims, “Wow! It’s so bright and so clear. I can see all the craters and everything,” which is the reaction I was hoping for. After a moment she asks, “How big do you think the craters are?”

  “A hundred miles or more across.”

  “It feels so close through the telescope. It’s incredible to think that it’s out there in space orbiting around us.”

  “I know, right? Let’s look at some things that are much farther away.” I locate M13 in the sky by its neighboring stars and focus the scope on it. “Here, this is M13 a globular star cluster.” I move to the side so she can look.

  “What am I looking for?” she asks. “I don’t see anything except what looks like a faint white cotton ball. Is that it?” She sounds disappointed.

  “Yeah, that’s it. It’s a star cluster of hundreds of thousands of stars, tens of thousands of light years away.” I know this because I read up on it this afternoon in the stuff I printed off from the website. It’s not like I’ve got it memorized or anything, but I wanted to appear like I knew what I was doing. “That’s hundreds of thousands of stars like our sun in that one little puff of cotton. You have to remember that we’re just using a ten-inch scope. The pictures you usually see of stars and galaxies are taken over a really long period of time. With much more powerful telescopes.” I don’t want her to be disappointed. I want her to feel the same awe I feel when I look at the stars.

  “It’s hard to get your mind around a concept like that. Hundred
s of thousands of stars in that tiny spot in the sky.” She’s stepped back from the scope and is standing next to me looking upward. “You can see so many more stars here in the country. Even with the moon out.”

  “I’ll tell you a story that will really blow your mind. A while back astronomers decided to focus the Hubble telescope on what they thought was empty space, to see what they would find. The first time, they focused it on a point in the sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. They left it there ten days to gather light from that one spot. They found there were over 3,000 galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars in that one tiny spot. The next time they did it, they chose a different spot, and the technology was even better. They found 10,000 galaxies. The stars we see in our sky are all from our own galaxy, the Milky Way. There are over 100 billion galaxies in the Universe.”

  “That’s absolutely incredible.” Her face is lit from the moon above. “What’s that reddish pulsating star over there?” Renee points to a spot in the southern sky just above the treetops.

  “I think that’s the red super-giant star Antares.” I pull out the map of the sky I printed from the website and look for it. “Let me get it into view.” I move the scope to that section of sky.

  We look at several more objects and check out what the other groups are looking at through their scopes before the chilly air makes us decide to call it a night. On the ride home we hold hands, but we’re both quiet, lost in our own thoughts.

  I pull up in front of Renee’s house and we spend several enjoyable minutes kissing each other good night. I’ve pushed the driver’s seat way back and Renee’s climbed over the gear shift and is sitting on my lap. She sucks my lower lip into her mouth and lightly bites me, sending shivers up my neck and making my hair practically stand on end. Then she leans away from me against the steering wheel.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had such a wonderful date. Thank you for showing me the wind farm and taking me star gazing. You are so much more than you seem, American boy.”