Lost Love Found in Eagle Cove

by M. L. Buchman

  “That’s a pretty kite.” He’d chosen green paper and painted the balsawood supports brown so that it would look a little like a flying forest. “Does it fly well?”

  “We’ll find out if you help me launch it.” He showed her how to hold it for launching. It felt both strong and fragile. The wind tugged, as if the kite was eager to fly.

  Jerome walked hurriedly backwards, spooling out line as he went. He was so intent that when he caught a heel and fell to the sand, he scrambled back up showing no sign of injured dignity.

  “Okay!” He shouted and pulled lightly at the now taut line. With barely a rustle it soared aloft.

  It was hard to see it straight over her head, so she walked toward Jerome and she wasn’t thinking about the kite. He was watching his kite avidly and he didn’t look like a dip or a jerk. He simply looked very intent.

  “Are you in college?”

  “Uh-huh,” he kept his eyes upward, so focused that he wasn’t looking at her at all and now it was her dignity that felt a little offended. “Just finished my second year at University of Washington. I’m in the brand new aeronautical engineering department.”

  “That’s like designing airplanes?”

  He looked down at her in some surprise, “You know what that is?”

  “Red hair means smart, not stupid.” Cynthia replied, and almost walked away.

  “Actually, red hair only means your parents or grandparents had red hair.” Then he grimaced, “Sorry. I’m told that I’m a bit of a square about science.”

  Cynthia wasn’t sure about the slang, but maybe she was a bit of a square too. Or else she’d still be in the pirates’ clutches.

  “Smart is certainly nice though. Want to fly her?” He nodded toward the sky.

  Before she could protest, he placed the ball of string in her hand. His hand overlapped hers until he was sure of her grip on it. A warm, strong hand that she missed as soon as it was gone.

  The kite tugged strongly so she used both hands. It seemed that it was pulling at more than her hands, as if it was tugging at something in her heart.

  “I never held something that wanted to fly so badly.”

  He reached out and she was afraid that he was going to take it back. Instead, he rested his hand over hers again, then pulled it in until he was almost touching her hip. The kite soared higher overhead, pulling harder as it climbed. Then he eased off abruptly and the kite fell and dipped. She almost cried out, before it resettled at the lower altitude and stabilized once more.

  “Did you design it?”

  “Sure did. I’m going to work for Mr. Boeing’s when I graduate; that’s what us locals call Boeing Aircraft,” he clearly liked that inside bit of belonging. “They took me on as a summer intern this year. He is building the most amazing aircraft of anybody in the world. Why, someday nobody will take a train or a bus anywhere—you’ll step on an aircraft and whoosh! You’ll be there before you know it.”

  She and Jerome spent much of the day down on the beach flying his kite. He talked about college. She felt a little ashamed about going to the new City College of San Francisco. A two-year program to become a teacher didn’t sound very important compared with designing airplanes. But he praised her saying that most girls he knew went to college only trying to find a husband.

  When he went and bought them burgers and a Coca-Cola at the diner, he came back with a floppy hat almost the size of a Mexican sombrero.

  “You’re burning in this sun.”

  She’d noticed, but hadn’t wanted to leave. It was nice that he’d noticed. Though she wasn’t sure about wearing the hat. “You are burning as well, Jerome.”

  He pulled at the hat and she saw that there were two of them nested together. They looked ridiculous, but as they were both wearing them she didn’t care much.

  Jerome landed the kite while they ate. Afterward he fetched a paint set from a small bag he’d brought with him. He started painting on the kite’s upper wing.

  When she started to rise to see what he was doing, he shook his head.

  “No. Stay right there.”

  That’s when she realized that he was painting her portrait on the wing. Cynthia was dazzled by more than the sun.

  She barely heard the call for the bathing beauty contest farther up the beach.

  “Hey! You should go. You’re a contender, Cyn.” She liked his nickname for her, though she’d never liked it before.

  “Do you know what the grand prize is?”

  He shook his head.

  “A trip to the Golden Gate International Exposition. My friends and I are going to it next week anyway. I’m fine staying right here.” And she was. Even more as Jerome inspected her over the wing of his kite again and again while he worked.

  “Well, maybe this will change your mind.” He lifted the kite and almost lost it to the wind sliding along the sand. She grabbed the ball of string to make sure it didn’t get away from them.

  He tried again more carefully. Then she could see what he’d painted. It was her, but not in floppy sunhat and a loose shirt over her bathing suit.

  No, it was her as…

  7

  “Gran? Am I crazy or does that mermaid look like me?”

  Cynthia shaded her eyes to look at the mermaid kite now climbing into the sky above Eagle Cove. It did look like Skylar. Actually it looked—

  She had to hold a hand over her mouth to not scream, but some of it escaped anyway.

  In a moment, Skylar was kneeling beside her chair. “Are you okay, Gran? Should I call the doctor? But how am I going to move you? I’m sorry, I should have gotten that wheelchair. I’m such an idiot—”

  Cynthia moved her hand from covering her own mouth to covering her great-granddaughter’s.

  She managed only a hoarse whisper. “The kite doesn’t look like you, sweetheart.” She looked at it again in wonder, “It looks like me.”

  “But—” Skylar mumbled through Cynthia’s hand.

  “Trust me.”

  Skylar pulled her hand away, but held onto it tightly between her own.

  “But how?”

  Cynthia looked up at the mermaid now flying and dancing near the baby whale. She had no idea. But they were going to find out.

  8

  The trip down to the beach was an arduous one, but with Skylar’s good care, Cynthia managed. There was no parking near the ramp to the beach, but Skylar got her seated out of the sun on the porch of The Puffin Diner then went to park the car.

  She’d eaten a breakfast here seventy-six years ago. Now, Judge Slater, who ran the diner in his retirement, was kind enough to come out and offer her some ice tea while she waited. When he asked what had brought her to the beach, she didn’t dare speak. There was such hope in the moment that she didn’t trust herself. She could only pat his hand in thanks and watch the mermaid now flying high above The Flicker movie house.

  Skylar returned with the walker.

  In order to use it, she had to give Skylar the thin leather portfolio she’d kept in her bedside table all these years. It was one of the very last personal possessions she had.

  “Don’t open that, young lady.”

  “Whatever you say, Gran. Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  Cynthia looked at the ramp down onto the beach that ran alongside Grouse Hardware and didn’t know, but she had to be.

  Skylar was patience itself, cheering her along, and helping to move the walker forward through the softer sand. Every time Skylar asked if this was really necessary, Cynthia could only nod, conserving her breath for more effort than she’d expended in five years.

  It took a long time and several rest breaks to reach where the kite lines from the mermaid descended into the crowd, but they made it.

  The moment the crowd opened so that she could see who was flying the mermaid kite, she knew she’d been right.

  A man in his forties and his son were tending the lines together. In the man’s face, she could see hints of his grandfather. But in the b
oy’s she could see Jerome reborn. Just like his long ago relative, he had little attention for them—all he cared about was the kite.

  The man looked at Skylar for a long moment, the shock of recognition was as clear on his face as the confusion.

  Unable to speak, Cynthia reached out a hand and tapped the portfolio that Skylar had carried. When Skylar inspected her cautiously, she tapped it again.

  With a shrug, Skylar untied the string.

  9

  Jerome held the kite up for her to see.

  Cynthia’s face and torso had been painted across the wing. Instead of a bathing suit top, her image wore the scantiest of clam shells. Instead of the bottoms, she wore a long sinuous tail of shining green scales. But most off all, her long red hair billowed across the kite’s wing.

  Looking up from the beautiful image, made with an engineer’s eye, she stepped up to him until they were separated by only the thin paper and balsa of the wing. She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.

  10

  “It was a kiss that I’ll never forget. A girl never forgets her first real kiss, no matter how old she is,” Cynthia said the last to Skylar who only blushed in return. Young girls were kissed and plenty more these days, but by that blush she’d guess that Skylar still hadn’t found the right man to make a memory which lasts a lifetime.

  Thomas had settled her into a folding lawn chair and sat in another. He held the portfolio as he and his son Simon looked down at the painting within.

  “Jerome finished the kite on the beach knowing he had no way to take it home once he had glued it together. It only flew that one day. As the sun set in the waves, right there,” Cynthia pointed out to sea, “he cut out the painting and gave it to me.”

  Simon glanced up at the sky where the mermaid—where she still flew. “Dad kept a few things for me when Great-Grandpop died. The design for that kite was one of them. It was dated August 6th, 1939. It also had your first name on it and ‘Eagle Cove.’ Dad and I decided to try to build it and fly it in his honor. I was kinda named for the kite. Cynthia—Simon,” even his shrug was so much like Jerome’s that it hurt to watch. “Funny. Guess I was sorta named for you, lady. Now that’s kinda cool. Named for Great-Grandpop’s old girlfriend. I’m good with that.”

  And they all shared a laugh, though it took almost all Cynthia had left to join in.

  She didn’t know how to ask, but being an old lady, she knew she didn’t have time to avoid the question either.

  “He never came back,” she told Thomas after his son had returned his attention to the kite. He was showing Skylar tips on how to manage the big kite and how they’d built it.

  Cynthia had come back to the Redhead Roundup from San Francisco in 1940 and 1941, then they had ended with the war. After the war was won she moved to Eagle Cove and taught children for forty years. And every year she had watched the sky during the kite festival hoping to see that unique box kite. Her letters came back marked “Addressee unknown.” If he ever wrote, the letters never reached her. Her parents had moved mere weeks after her return from the Redhead Roundup when she moved into the city for college. So many things had been lost.

  “He was co-opted into the war effort right out of college,” Thomas said softly. “Long before the war. He would have been in England then, helping with their plane designs. Very secret work. I’m so sorry.”

  “No. No. It’s okay. I had a husband and a child. It was a good life. Apparently he did as well.” She patted Thomas’ hand and wondered which of them she was reassuring. Her life had come full circle. For she had come alive in a man’s arms, right here on this same stretch of beach, ever so long ago.

  Cynthia sat in the chair and watched Simon and Skylar flying the mermaid that looked like her and her great-granddaughter.

  They stood so close in the afternoon sun that the light didn’t pass between them.

  As close together as she and Jerome had once stood, flying a kite in the sky.

  My Apologies

  My small town of Eagle Cove has stolen the twice-yearly Kite Festival from Lincoln City, Oregon, which indeed has a family of life-sized great whales. Eagle Cove has also laid claim to the “Redhead Roundup” from Taft, Oregon which was held as an annual fundraiser for the town on the first weekend of August throughout most of the Great Depression.

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  Russell locked his studio’s door behind the last of the staff, leaned his back against it, and turned off his camera.

  He knew it was good. The images were there; he’d really captured them.

  But something was missing.

  The groove ran so clean when he slid into it. First his Manhattan high-ceilinged loft would fade into the background, then the strobe lights, reflector umbrellas, and blue and green backdrops all became texture and tone.

  Image, camera, and man then became one and they were all that mattered—a single flow of light, beginning before time was counted, and ending its journey in the printed image. One ray of primordial light traveling forever to glisten off the BMW roadster still parked in one corner of the rough-planked wood floor worn smooth by generations of use. Another ray lost in the dark blackness of the finest leather bucket seats. A hundred more picking out the supermodel’s perfect hand dangling a single shining and golden key—the image shot just slow enough that the key blurred as it spun, but the logo remained clear.

  He couldn’t quite put his finger on it…

  It would be another great ad by Russell Morgan, Inc. The client would be knocked dead—the ad leaving all others standing still as it roared down the passing lane. This one might get him another Clio, or even a second Mobius.

  But…

  There wasn’t usually a “but.”

  And there definitely wasn’t supposed to be one.

  The groove had definitely been there, but he hadn’t been in it.

  That was the problem. It had slid along, sweeping his staff into their own orchestrated perfection, but he’d remained untouched. That ideal, seamless flow hadn’t included him at all.

  “Be honest, boyo, that session sucked,” he told the empty studio. Everything had come together so perfectly for yet another ad for yet another high-end glossy. Man, the Magazine would launch spectacularly in a few weeks, a high-profile mid-December launch, and it would include a never before seen twelve-page spread by the great Russell Morgan. The rag would probably never pay off the lavish launch party of hope, ice sculptures, and chilled magnums of champagne before disappearing like a thousand before it.

  He stowed the last camera he’d been using with the others piled by his computer. At the breaker box he shut off the umbrellas, spots, scoops, and washes. The studio shifted from a stark landscape in hard-edged relief to a nest of curious shadows and rounded forms. The tang of hot metal and deodorant were the only lasting result of the day’s efforts.

  “Morose tonight, aren’t we?” he asked his reflection in the darkened window, stories above the streetlights of West 10th. His reflection was wise enough to not answer back. There was never a “down” after a shoot; there was always an “up.”

  Not tonight.

  He’d kept everyone late—even though it was Thanksgiving eve—hoping for that smooth slide of image-camera-man. It was only when he saw the power of the images he captured that he knew he wasn’t a part of the chain anymore and decided he’d paid enough triple-time expenses.

  The next to last two-page spread was the killer—shot with the door open against a background as black as the sports car’s finish. The model’s single perfect leg wrapped in thigh-high red-leather boots was all that was visible in the driver’s seat. The sensual juxtaposition of woman and sleek machine served as an irresistible focus. It was an ad designed to wrap every person with even a hint of a Y-chromosome around its little finger. And those
with only X-chromosomes would simply want to be her. He’d shot a perfect combo of sexuality for the guys and power for the women.

  Even the final one-page image, a close-up of driver’s seat from exactly the same angle, revealing not the model but instead a single rose of precisely the same hue as the leather boot, hadn’t moved him despite its perfection.

  Without him noticing, Russell had become no more than the observer, merely a technician behind the camera. Now that he faced it, months, maybe even a year had passed since he’d been yanked all the way into the light-image-camera-man slipstream. Tonight was a wakeup call and he didn’t like it one bit. Wakeup calls were supposed to happen to others, not him. But tonight he could no longer ignore it, he hadn’t even trailed in the churned-up wake.

  “You’re just a creative cog in the advertising machine.” Ouch! That one stung, but it didn’t turn aside the relentless steamroller of his thoughts speeding down some empty, godforsaken autobahn.

  His career was roaring ahead, his business’ growth running fast and smooth, but, now that he considered it, he really couldn’t bring himself to care.

  His life looked perfect, but—“Don’t think it!”—his autobahn mind finished despite the command, it wasn’t.

  Russell left his silent reflection to its own thoughts and went through the back door that led to his apartment—closing it tightly on the perfect BMW, the perfect rose, and somewhere, lost among a hundred other props from dozens of other shoots, the long pair of perfect red-leather Chanel boots that had been wrapped around the most expensive legs in Manhattan. He didn’t care if he never walked back through that door again. He’d been doing his art by rote; how pathetic was that?