My name is Rheticus. I guess my father gave me that name. That’s what I was told. It wasn’t that bad. In school everyone called me Rhet. Like Rhet Butler. I didn’t know anything about Rhet Butler though. Not back then. I do have memories of my father. One memory anyway. I remember I wandered out the back door of a house at night. It must have been the house I lived in when I was a kid. It was a warm summer night and I was in my pajamas. My pajamas had flying saucers and rockets on them. I loved those pajamas. Dad was way out in the back yard. The yard was huge and very dark and he was in a spot of light back there, back by the alley and the garage with his telescope. He waved me over. I tell him Mom sent me out to tell him I was going to bed. He waves me over and puts the telescope to my eye. Or puts my eye to the telescope. I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7. He said “see that? see the heavens?” That’s all I remember. That’s it. I think of that memory a lot. It’s even in my dreams. I went back to where that house was later, after I graduated from foster care. It was pretty run down. The whole block. Empty. That’s the only memory I have of my dad. I guess it’s important to tell you that my Dad died. Probably not too long after that day he showed me the heavens, though my Uncle Jell told me he spent a lot of time watching the sky. Maybe he showed me the heavens more than once. Who knows? Uncle Jell was my Dad’s younger brother. He stayed up north after he was discharged. After the war. He got pretty banged up. It took me a long time to find him. I had to get my life together after foster care and it took longer than I thought it would. I had high hopes at first. Jell was the one told me that my dad named me Rheticus. My mom died very soon after dad was killed. That’s all I know. Funny, I don’t remember much about her other than her voice calling me into the house, calling out into the dark yard, while Dad showed me the heavens. Uncle Jell said she never got over my dad’s dying. It took a while for him to tell me how all this went down. He said he wanted me to have good thoughts about my folks. He laughed when he described my mom’s reaction to the name my dad wanted me to have, but she thought being called Rhet would be okay. I finally got a little settled. Now I want to find my sister. She was younger than me and was adopted out pretty quick after we were sent to foster care I guess. I don’t have any memories of her. I never got adopted out. Uncle Jell talks about what a pretty little girl she was. Smart too. It’s been hard to locate her. There are a lot of rules. I get that. In some ways I get that. I’d still like to find her. I think the jail time was the hardest. If you want to know the truth. I got up to Detroit after I was cut loose from foster care and things didn’t really fall into place. I mean, they gave me a couple of contact numbers and explained how I could get hooked up in the system up here in Michigan. Like I said I had high hopes at first but I never had to make those kinds of arrangements before. It seemed like the money just came to pay the foster home I guess, I didn’t know anything about it. It was okay. People tell terrible stories about foster care but it was okay. I still want to find my sister. The contact numbers didn’t really amount to anything if you want to know. That’s probably the main reason I ended up in jail. It’s a long story and that’s all behind me now. I got this gig in an all-night gas station party store, plus I do some side gigs with this guy I met in jail who paints houses. Jules. I work a lot. That’s okay. That’s the way it has to be. My name is Rheticus. I’ve started to tell people the whole name. It’s unusual. And being called Rhet is pretty ridiculous, now that I know why people know that name. When you think of who Rhet was and who I am. Really. I’ve never met anyone named Rheticus. People want to know where it came from and I told them my dad named me and that he was big into star gazing. I’m kinda interested in that too, now that I seem to have gotten my shit straight a little. I came up to Detroit mostly because that’s where I thought Jell moved once he cut loose from the service. I thought he might help me get settled. That was my plan. But I never found him. I mean I never found him before the shit hit the fan and I got myself arrested. It was all very confusing. You know, I was hungry and a little scared though I’d never admit it. Probably that didn’t help much. The place I was staying was full of… full of… well, I finally found him once I got out of jail and started to make a little money and moved in with Jules. Jules has a girlfriend. Dellah. She works at the hospital. Jules is determined to stay straight. Dellah is determined that he stay straight. It’s his last chance with her. That’s what she says. Quite often actually. I was glad to find Jell. He’s not so healthy but he’s got a good sense of humor and was glad to see me when I found him and likes company being that we’re family and all. We have him over for dinner from time to time. I cook a little. Everyone seems to like it. My foster mom showed me fried chicken and greens. Jell likes that southern cooking. Jell tells stories about my dad at the dinner table. Apparently, my dad was quite intelligent. Smart guy. Jell says he was the star of the family and that maybe he was a genius. If he’d had a chance, a real chance he would have gone somewhere. They really thought he would amount to something. He had a great way of explaining stuff and people liked listening to him. He was really into looking at the stars from a very early age and he got everyone into it too. Jell said it was like he would go into a trance and be able to explain things that eventually went beyond what anyone could understand other than how it made everyone feel like the earth was spinning in space and they could feel just where the planet was located in relation to the rest of the planets and the moon, and they were there. On the planet. Spinning in space between the planets and the moon. Jell said it was a little spooky, like connecting to something magic and real at the same time. It would make your head spin a little, make you dizzy. I got this old beater to drive around town in. Lucky I live with Jules and Dellah because its cheaper than living in my own place and safer than that fucking hotel where I got arrested so I was able to save up for this little Chevy. It’s not pretty but it runs and I’ve got pretty good at doing basic stuff on it. Jules taught me. Some nights I take off… you know, when Jules and Dellah are having one of their fights. It happens. They get over it. But I tell you, Jules better be careful if he knows what’s good for him. Dellah don’t take no shit and I think she’d toss him out for sure if he pulled anything really serious. He still messes around with some of the addicts and dealers in the neighborhood. Says it gives him relief. I kinda listen to him but the stuff he fucks around with I don’t want no part of. That shit’ll kill you. But he’s a good guy. I don’t know anything about it really but still I guess he’s more like a brother than anyone else I’ve ever known. Dellah says I’m good for him. Sometimes when they fight I go spend the night on Uncle Jell’s couch. It’s kind of a nasty thing but I learned a long time ago how to sleep just about anywhere. ***
Guess what I found out? This is so cool. I was talking to Jell the other day and he went into more detail about my dad and his telescope. He said my name has something to do with it. With the telescope. He wasn’t sure how it all fit but he remembered that my dad came up with the name when I was born because of something about the telescope and his love of looking into the night sky. Jell was pretty young yet when Dad and Mom were married and when I was born so his memory isn’t real clear. You know how memories are, more like dreams than anything that really happened sometimes. But Dad called Jell over one day… to the same house that I remember, with the garage back by the alley. Kind of a long narrow back yard. When Jell remembered I remembered it too, even more than before, and it made me sort of happy in a way. I mean, I remembered that one night and how dark the yard was, but the rest was always kind of foggy to me and Jell helped fill in the blanks a bit. I guess my dad called him over to show off the telescope when it was new. This was when my Dad was carrying a couple of jobs. He quit working in the tomato fields outside town. There were a lot of big farms in the area. He hated that, according to Jell, and the pecan orchards were run by some real cruel mothers so they were even worse. Besides, Dad was better at mental stuff. He was quite a thinker. But there weren’t any jobs for that kind of work anywhere near so Dad took jobs when he could. He did a lot of landscaping and was pretty good at fixing electronics. There was a time when he thought he might try to get his own storefront, over in Maslow, fixing electronics. This was all before computers. Maslow was the county seat and a bigger town. My fosters shopped there pretty often. Anyway, Dad was real excited about the telescope that night. And this is the thing that really impressed me. Jell remembered how Dad told him that a guy at the University in Columbia gave Dad the telescope. Then the whole story came out, Jell said. While he was showing Jell the telescope and showing Jell the heavens (Jell said the first time he saw Jupiter hanging up there in the sky like all the pictures you see of it he almost shit himself it was so cool) my dad talked about how he’d been making trips over to the University regularly because he wanted to meet a guy who was pretty a pretty famous astronomer and see if he could talk to him about some of the stuff he was seeing in the sky with his little department store telescope. This had been going on more than a year apparently. And then the guy gives my dad this great telescope. Jell said my name had something to do with all of this. He also said Dad pointed out four of Jupiter’s moons and Jell could see them. In that silent darkness. Jell was blown away and still is when he thinks about it. I guess my dad said “just like Galileo. You’re seeing exactly what Galileo saw” Jell asked who the hell that was. But even I knew that. I remembered that from school, and I told Jell I can still remember what it felt like that night my dad called me over to show me the heavens even though I can’t really even remember what he looked like. Not really. Though sometimes I hear his voice in my dreams. I told Jell we had to do something to find out more, to find out more about how he came up with my weird name. Maybe I’d go to the library. Or maybe I could get downtown to Wayne State and check out some things. I looked up Galileo then. I wanted to find out a little more. On Dellah’s new laptop, she looked it up with me. Me and computers don’t really get along. Shit. I don’t have enough money for that kind of shit anyway. I got to have a car and pay my share of rent. But what my dad showed Jella was exactly what Galileo saw that proved that the sun is at the center of the universe I guess… four moons circling Jupiter, the first four moons anyone ever saw around a planet other than ours. I guess that’s how Galileo proved something that a guy named Copernicus had figured out a hundred years before but Copernicus didn’t have any telescope and couldn’t see any of the moons around Jupiter. Everyone back then thought that everything moved around the earth and that the earth stood still. Well, almost everyone. Galileo got into a lot of trouble too. The pope put him under house arrest. I guess it was some kind of holy law of some kind and the church could do that back then, put people away. Kinda fucked up. And he died not long after that. Galileo did. His daughter died not long before he did too, I guess, so he had a kind of fucked up hoodoo shit life then. That’s what it said. And I get that. That sucks. The pope was an asshole, but then everyone really thought God made the earth the center of everything. Even Jell could see that was bullshit. Though that feeling, that feeling that you could tell we are all moving around in space was a little spooky to him. Speaking of house arrest, Jules kind of crossed the line and almost got himself kicked out again. Dellah was really pissed. He got fired from a big painting job and then went out and got really fucked up. Dellah wasn’t having any of it she said. I could hear them both yelling and crying. Jules was really fucked up. I didn’t know what I could do to help the situation. I mean, they’re kind of like family to me and I wanted to do something, but what? So I took off on a walk. I didn’t have any cash for gas in the car. I ran into a young guy I’ve been hanging out with a little. Smart kid. I tell him about this astronomy stuff and he gets it and even knows more about it all. I like his company and he’s trying to make it straight in the world. He works downtown and takes a college class from time to time when he can save enough money. He’d like to be a writer he says but he’s not sure how to break into the whole thing. He writes poems. Colt is his name. The poems are pretty good I guess. I don’t know much about that stuff. Maybe I’ll go to one of the readings he goes to. I’ve never done that. We’ll see. I feel a little shy about it. But I like hanging out with him. Friends are hard for me to make. He said my name sounded like Latin. I gotta find out more about it. I think I could even find more out about my dad that way too. If I found out about my name. Rheticus. It’s a weird name. I probably should just have Dellah look it up. ***
So, Uncle Jell got a box in the mail from a cousin down south, I guess. Some news clippings and pictures. Wow. And there were pictures of my dad. In the best one the one you can really see it’s him he’s in the background with a bunch of other people. Everyone’s having a great time. But there he was. Freaked me out a little to see it. I don’t know. I can’t really feel any relation. I feel nothing. Not really. Just a kind of mystery. It’s a little like looking into that telescope into the heavens: this is where you live. This is who you came from. Hm. I don’t even really recognize him though he looks happy. In the picture anyways. Jell said he got in touch with that cousin. He asked him to send anything he had. The picture is from a big family picnic. I guess they used to have those all the time back in the day. Jell said “Before the big fire” Before the fire? I asked. What fire? Fire? Jell said “don’t you know” I said no I do not… what fire? And then he tells me this fucked up story about how the entire block was set on fire. Like a bomb. Or a gas explosion. No one ever figured it out. There were rumors that some fucked up assholes did it. “Didn’t you know” Jell asked again. No man, I said. “But that’s how your dad died Rhet, didn’t you know? That’s what killed him” Fuck no. That’s not what they told me, I said. I felt like I was falling. Through space. “Shit. I’m sorry Rhet, but that’s what happened man…” Don’t call me that. I said. My name is Rheticus. ***
I stayed away from Jell for a few weeks after that. I just couldn’t deal. Things between Jules and Dellah seemed to be getting better but one night some cops came by and took him. Dellah freaked out and really lost it. There was nothing I could do and then she kicked me out too. She said I should get my sorry ass out too. Man, I didn’t do anything but what was I supposed to do? I wandered around a bit and ran into Colt. He was sitting on his porch steps writing something and I told him the whole story. He asked me where I was going to stay and I said I fucking didn’t know. I mean, the painting job was shot I guess and I wasn’t making near enough at the store to get my own place. And I didn’t want to go back to that shithole hotel that’s for sure. Fucking Jules anyway. Fucking Dellah. Colt said I could sleep in his room if I wanted. I asked him if his mom would want me hanging around and he said she wouldn’t give a shit, she didn’t pay much attention to what he did and wasn’t home much of the time anyway… her job kept her away most of the time except when she was sleeping and she was spending lots of time with her current daddy. So I guess it was okay. I had to sleep in his bed with him but it was big and he didn’t snore. He said we should go find out more about my name. I wasn’t sure about it, I was still pretty messed about what my Uncle Jell told me how my dad died. I wasn’t really dealing with it and I hadn’t told anyone. A couple of nights later I woke up and Colt was holding on to me. It was weird. I never had anyone hold me when I slept before. I mean, a couple of the guys at the foster placement were into some weird sex stuff and had me join them, and then there was that one girl from the church the fosters went to who got me to fuck with her. The whole thing, sex I mean, seemed strange. I just wasn’t used to being that close to anyone. I guess I’m weird in that way. Not that the sex was bad… I mean with those guys it was more like some kind of game or contest. So I guess it was fun in a way. And the girl and I had sex a couple of times. Everything worked out okay. I mean all my parts worked the way they were supposed to and it felt fine while I was into it. A little like a drug if you want to know. I think I’m weird about all that. I just never learned how to be that close to anyone. But this thing with Colt seemed different. He just held on to me so I let him and I liked it really. So that started to happen all the time. I slept pretty good. We never really talked about it but it made things really comfortable between us. Like it was supposed to be that way. ***
I finally got up enough guts to go see Uncle Jell again. He cried when he saw me. He was all apologetic. He didn’t mean to hurt me, he said. I cried a little too. I never cry. He explained that the whole thing was so terrible, and so many people died… maybe that’s why no one talked to me about it. Besides they had to find a placement for me and my sister. I asked him if that’s when my mom died too and he said no, but that she was badly hurt and then fell apart. “She killed herself Rheticus… she just couldn’t take it. And there was no one to take you two in. I was away. I was in Nam. I just heard all of this when I was being shot at outside Danang. I swear, I was pretty fucked up all the time anyway. The pot and hash there could wipe you out, you know? And things being what they were, well… I just didn’t know what to think or do. I was still mostly a kid anyway so that’s why you guys got split up.” We were silent for a long time. I kept thinking about looking into the night sky next to my father that night. I swear, I could almost smell him. With the stars swelling all around me, all around that sad scene in my memory, spinning in that eternity. I felt I was fading away somehow. Then Uncle Jell reached out and took my arm. “You know though, you know what I found in that box my cousin sent? Here… let me go get it…” What he brought out to show me was an old newspaper clipping. There was a big picture of a two guys and a telescope. Jell pointed to one of them “That’s your dad Rheticus” and it was. I could tell. Even though the paper was yellowing and dim he had that same smile that he had in the other group shot. The article named the other man, some professor at the University, a professor in astronomy and cosmology it said. The article went on to explain that the professor was giving the telescope to my dad as a gift because of some big prize the professor won. The professor had discovered the presence of another planet-like body moving in the outer solar system and because of the help my dad provided it looked like this was a major new discovery in the make-up of the solar system and maybe even the universe. The two men in the picture were looking at each other very proudly. I looked at the picture for a long time before I headed back to Colt’s. I told Colt about all of this and the next day he insisted we go to the library and look up my name. Wow. You know there was a guy named Rheticus who was pretty much responsible for saving Copernicus’ theory of the heliocentric model of the solar system (heliocentric…. cool word. Colt wants to use it in a poem he said). That was the understanding of the solar system that Rheticus promoted and was proven by Galileo’s direct observation almost a hundred years later. Copernicus was kind of a withdrawn guy who lived out in the boonies in what is now Poland and Rheticus was a young math guy from some city in Germany who heard about Copernicus and traveled to him in spite of being forbidden to do so because he was Lutheran. Can you believe it? He could get arrested, beheaded even, for crossing a border because of what he believed about the heavens. I guess Copernicus didn’t give a shit about all that, in fact, even though he was a church official who wasn’t supposed to have sex he had a long-term thing with his housekeeper, it sounds like they were in love, and Rheticus was pretty close to Copernicus too at least that’s what it sounds like especially if you found out other stuff about Rheticus who stayed with Copernicus working out the details of the theory for a long time preparing his theory for publication, which was a very big deal back then since the printing press was pretty much a brand-new invention. If it wasn’t for Rheticus Copernicus and his ideas might have never ushered in the scientific age. The renaissance of science or something. Weird. Everyone was forced by the church to believe that the earth was the center of everything even though it was turning out to be wrong. Rheticus was kind of unstable I guess and after Copernicus died, he kind of lost it and people think he had a nervous breakdown or something… and later, when he was just starting to get his shit together and start doing his own work in astronomy and math again (hey… I’m no good at math, but this stuff is really cool) some assholes had him kicked out of town for fucking around with one of his students. Sodomy they called it. Colt thought all this was wild. Shit. I don’t know. Plenty of that goes on all over. You know? I guess it always has. Still, people could get really fucked up for doing it… or at least for talking about doing it. In some ways it’s still like that. I guess it's getting better. Though I don’t know how many people I could tell I sleep with Colt the way we do without it being a big deal, especially religious people. It’s none of anyone’s business in one way but then, no one should get killed for it. Stupid shit. Some things never really change. We talked all night in bed about all this. Colt and I. I couldn’t sleep. Rheticus. It’s a good name. Colt turned out the light that night, leaned over and gave me a big kiss. I didn’t know what to think, but hell… I didn’t really mind. When I finally went to sleep that night I had very vivid dreams. My Dad waving me out to where the telescope sat in the yard, though it was in the middle of a city I’d never seen before; like I could see the entire city like it was inside this huge starry globe and in this dream the telescope was a huge mother fucker. I could sit in a chair and look through it. And suddenly we were all suspended there, out in space, like moons or asteroids or what they called exoplanets like the one my father helped detect; me, my dad, a woman who was beautiful, really beautiful, warm and loving and who I think was my mom. Colt was there and even Jules and Dellah, and the professor who gave my dad the telescope. We were all drinking coffee, coffee or tea or something. I don’t even like coffee. We could fly. Kind of. Kind of. But it wasn’t really flying. Crazy. ***
It turns out that Jules was just fined and put on probation. That’s good. I started painting with him again. Colt actually started taking more classes at the community college. Writing classes. We both still like to read stuff about astronomy and I’m thinking I might see if that professor is still around. You know, the one in the picture with my dad. Uncle Jell thinks it’s a good idea. Uncle Jell and I are pretty close. In the meantime I’m thinking of saving up for a nice telescope. But I don’t know. Things are pretty tight and the damn car needs a new alternator.