by Leif Enger
I loved that kite, that cinnamon hound. We were old friends. I had soared and laughed with that kite. It got me out on the perimeter. I felt I had failed it somehow, and Rune too, even though he would’ve offered the string to Leer, just as I had. Thinking it over I became a bit less angry, and more proud of the kite itself: it had refused to be flown by Leer one moment longer. It broke the line and caught the next gust out of town. A perilous beautiful move, choosing to throw yourself at the future, even if it means one day coming down in the sea.
8
IN EARLY APRIL A LETTER CAME BY CERTIFIED MAIL FROM THE LEGAL department at a major movie studio, never mind which. Fergus Flint told me it was coming. It was my first communiqué from any of the studios.
Mr. Wander,
Received the print(s) as arranged and wish to express gratitude for returning our property, even though it took twenty-five years to do so. As you are aware it is a crime to possess a film or any part thereof belonging to studios or their subsidiaries.
The industry faces many challenges. Thank you for your interest. We have no openings at the current time but will keep your information on file. Best of luck in your job search!
I got a huge bang out of the letter, which seemed written by two people on different continents, or by one person on opposite ends of a medical event; a few days later came a second missive from a Hollywood legal department, this one more coherent. It began by reminding me of the studio’s largesse and humanity, also its essential mightiness and power in allowing me, a small-time projectionist and insect of low destiny, to buzz off and live out my rube life unpunished, unless of course they had a change of heart and decided to squash me after all, which they might do, come to think of it, the squash might still happen, mayfly that I was, no doubt at a moment when I felt safe and was looking in the other direction.
Somehow this letter made me even happier. Nadine came over and we took turns reading it aloud, and got delirious doing it—Nadine employed a brilliant faux-Russian accent, like a cartoon Natasha.
Mockery aside, the letter seemed fair. It’s not as if I didn’t keep all those movies all those years; Fergus however found it high-handed, and weeks later the trade magazine Cinematique called me to say it’d got wind of the struggling Empress, shadowy Destin Plate, the biggest film-cache repatriation in twenty years. I said too much to that reporter, Frida LaPlant, who was warm and a bit too familiar—for example, I admitted we’d opened the vault for a Christmas event after being warned against it by my attorney. Later Fergus would upbraid me for that. “You’re a careless person,” he observed, and he’s certainly right. I am more careless than I was before. Tomorrow I might be more careless still, one of the fools God allegedly protects.
Meantime my city work hours spiked as Hard Luck Days came together. Ann had got word out that Greenstone was owning its status. She organized a parade where the idea was to dress up as the water tower that rolled through town, or a frog from the fabled monsoon, “or a person with rabies,” she said, though I entreated her for Galen’s sake not to encourage this. I’d rented four disaster movies including Volcano (1997) and Earthquake (1974) which I recommend as deeply silly. The muni liquor store chartered a twenty-six-foot reefer hoping to profitably anesthetize the all-class reunion. Ann struck a bargain with the tenth-grade shop class to build the music stage—a sturdy platform of dimensional lumber spanning the pavement between the Empress and the Hoshaver Building.
Though, for jinx-related reasons, no one would say so, it seemed our luck might be turning. Storm Warning’s new album, releasing in days, was stacking up buzzy reviews in the music press. They’d “been in the abyss and clawed their way out.” They had a tall weedy front man whose personal tragedy “adds a blue tint to every quavering note,” and a female lead whose leathery voice was “a midnight raid that leaves your heart a smoking ruin.” They had an accordionist and a prancing rock tubist, not to mention a stained-glass artist who occupied one end of the stage and improvised bold designs during the songs, stacking shapes of many colors on a parabolic scaffold evoking European cathedrals. Ann’s hipster niece revealed the band would close the show with a new single called “Jesus Wept”; she said when they played the new number, and lit the stained glass, there would absolutely be weeping, as well as laughter, and abrupt revelations, and heart rates would spike, and babies be conceived, and distant Republicans grow suddenly agitated by inklings of heartfelt compassion. “It’s gonna skid the paradigm,” the hipster niece predicted. After Greenstone, Storm Warning was heading straight to Los Angeles to appear on Jimmy Kimmel. “You know what?” I said to Ann, breaking or perhaps just not caring about unwritten jinx law. “I think the stars are aligning.”
“Utshay upway,” Ann hissed, and her eyes were watery moons.
The day before the festival was cool and bright with a light south wind. I was on the streets early, double-checking everything. The city crew had managed a thorough park cleanup, repairing electrical hookups, replacing spent lightbulbs, and trimming the campsites. Carnival trucks had arrived with trailers of folded airborne teacups and spidery Ferris wheel trusses. The grass was mowed around early drifts of daffodils. Song sparrows lit up in the shrubbery. I did a circuit of the carnival, then of Main Street. At one end of the block the beer tent was taking shape; at the other, high-school sophomores marked the pavement with chalk, getting ready to set up the stage. Despite empty storefronts the downtown did not look terrible. The Agate Café had plumped for some sidewalk tables shaded by blue canvas umbrellas. I was about to knock at the door of the Hoshaver and attempt talking Jerry into removing ALMOST when I spied Ann moving at command stride and chose to get scarce. I strolled to the marina, then turned past the pier, past the Shipwreck, which had opened early to serve a glut of carnival workers, down the public beach toward the ore dock.
I was nearly to Slake when I saw the man on the water.
The sea was a little confused, the waves kicked up by the southerly wind colliding with residual swells from the east. He stood nearer shore this time—a lot nearer, it suddenly seemed. For the first time I had a good look at his face. It wasn’t all that portentous; in fact it was fairly pedestrian. He looked pale and temperate, was roughly my size, with large hands you’d call capable despite their clammy whiteness. He watched me in silence and I him; and suddenly I got it back. I remembered, that is, the first time I saw him.
The actual first time.
The slushy road, “Mysterious Ways,” the big wet flakes swarming up in the lights—all these memories had already returned. Now the event spooled forth like a continuous dream: the safety rail tearing away, the airbag’s attack pinning me to the seat with my face turned right—and there next to me, completely at home, the man on the water, only then he was in the passenger seat. Though not belted in, he was fully composed. His fingertips lightly touched the dash. His face wore a weathered gratitude as though I had asked for his company. To see him was to realize I’d thought of him often. He was always known but never met. I didn’t exactly plan to steer over the edge—it was more an impulse, born of long yearning. Maybe that is what called him. I don’t know. Maybe that’s how it works, or worked that day. In any case we endured that snowy arc together. He smiled, and I calmed myself. He had eye bags and crow’s-feet and his teeth were slightly crooked. He wasn’t what I thought Death would look like—he was not so different from myself—but then maybe he is no one’s Death but mine. Maybe I’m his only charge, and yours will look like you. What I’m saying, he was there to assist. If it were mine to die in the lake, then into the lake he would go. Snow struck the windshield, the spinning wheels made a rising disconnected whine. As we neared the water concern crossed his face. I saw that I had become his responsibility. Then we hit.
The next thing I noticed was Marcus, choking the bejeebers out of my neck while water burbled up all around.
Watching the man on the water now, he didn’t frighten me. He didn’t curl his lip, or peer at my soul, or seem to resent my having
thrown rocks at him that one time. He stood there invitingly. Looking down I was knee-deep in the lake. I couldn’t feel the water or my feet. I looked up. He put his hands in his pockets and stood ever so slightly contrapposto. The wavelets brushed the hem of his pants. He looked ready to accept my company at last and take us forward. He knew the way. I’d been thinking of him all these months as threat or harbinger but that was wrong. He was an attendant. When Marcus intervened, he simply stepped aside and waited patiently. Eventually he would guide me on.
A voice said, “Mr. Wander, geez.”
I looked round. Bjorn was onshore in his scabby wetsuit, board under his arm.
“Hi, Bjorn.”
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer.
“You all right?” he said.
“Sure.” I was listening to Bjorn, but watching the man on the water. I don’t mean to portray the event as one in which I had a choice—for example, to stay or go. Something would happen and a decision be made, but I didn’t feel part of it or have a preference one way or the other.
Bjorn said, “Are you having some kind of a deal?”
Some kind of a deal. I had to smile. I glanced down and noticed water up to my waist.
The man out there was sure serene. I’ve always admired the unhurried. How kind of the attendant to come in a form that puts the attended at ease, like a guest from far off who comes to visit, but learns your language first.
“Listen, Mom said you should come for supper. She said she invited you already, but to remind you if I saw you. She wishes you’d get a cell phone again.”
“Ah,” I said—that’s right, I was invited. Nadine had invited me.
I turned from the man to Bjorn. There was resistance. Part of me wanted to stay in the water. I was up to my chest but felt light, not cold. There was Bjorn, though, watching with what looked like growing discomfort. Abruptly I remembered the particulars of Nadine’s invitation.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh yes—how could I forget? Happy birthday, Bjorn!”
“Thanks,” he replied. He peered around as though not wishing to be seen accepting birthday wishes from a cheerful moron up to his chin in the freezing sea.
“Eighteen!” I exclaimed. “An important year! A very big one indeed!”
“That’s what they say,” Bjorn replied, cautiously. “Maybe you want to come in now,” he added.
And with that I turned to Bjorn and started wading back to shore. Halfway in I lost my balance and cracked my shin on a sharp boulder, which brought some feeling back and made me laugh and swear a couple of times. I felt goofy and hungry. I did want supper, and I wanted it with Bjorn and Nadine and Rune, Lucy too if she was around. I wanted to be in on Bjorn’s eighteenth, which it seemed I knew something about—I’d got him a present, I suddenly recalled. What a relief, the thought of a warm kitchen, the giving of gifts, the awkward singing and generational strain. How gorgeous and lush and difficult. When I came out of the water and started to shake, Bjorn said, “Is something really large wrong with you, Virgil, or just something small, do you think?”
It was the first time he called me Virgil instead of Mr. Wander. I liked it. I said, “I’m guessing small,” but then had to quit talking because the shakes got hold of me, and together we walked up the beach, the turtle-like stones shifting under our feet. At some point I realized Bjorn had his arm around my shoulders and was keeping me upright. He was strong, it was easy to miss that. What a strange world. In a movie I would take a quick glance back and the man on the water would be gone—there would just be the waves, and the hard sun looking down, and a little mist or sea smoke drifting along. You know that’s how it would go. But this wasn’t a movie. I didn’t turn around.
9
BJORN WALKED ME HOME AND WAITED IN THE KITCHEN WHILE I turned up the steam and showered some vigor back into my limbs. I knew he was worried about me—he hadn’t let go of my shoulder until we reached the stairway. He was probably calling his mom that moment with news of this oddball episode. I felt foolish but then I am foolish, sometimes.
When we arrived for his birthday supper Ellen Tripp was already there, at her sunniest and most affectionate, helping Nadine prepare short ribs and potatoes and roasted brussels sprouts with a hot-honey glaze. Rune pulled from his pocket a small box in plain tissue and set it on the counter by the chocolate cake. Lucy DuFrayne soon appeared, which is always like someone throwing confetti—she’d liked Bjorn the moment she met him, and seemed to want him to think of her as a sort of wild auntie with something up her sleeve. You’d have to say the party skewed old, but Bjorn was a good sport and things balanced a little when Lily Pea came by with Galen, to whom Bjorn was a god among men since the rabies event. It was an early dinner because despite his birthday Bjorn insisted on screening that night’s movie, and I had a few last-minute oddments to hang in the lobby in advance of Hard Luck Days. We therefore did the feast efficient justice and got right down to presents.
Nadine—well, she gave Bjorn a car, which sounds more indulgent than it was. The 1996 Ford Escort boasted 127 horsepower at its upper range, but this specimen had endured a quarter of a million miles. Clearly most of the horses were no longer in the corral. Bjorn was deeply pleased and gave Nadine a searching look—I suspect he understood that she’d sold most of her upstairs furniture in order to buy it. Lucy’s present was a puck-shaped container of a surfboard embellishment proudly labeled Sex Wax, which made Bjorn bark with laughter, and Nadine cover her eyes. As for me I’d ordered him a surfboard rack, which we later installed on the roof of the Ford with medium twisting and agony; Nadine had told me about the car, and I figured anywhere he drove it he’d want that board along. Rune gave him an Opinel knife he’d got from a French sailor in the Tromsø harbor when he was ten years old.
“But it’s your kite-making knife,” Bjorn objected.
“It was already yours,” Rune replied. Seeing Bjorn’s puzzled expression he said, “Well, you’re my grandson. Except for you, I would be the last post in the fence. Therefore all I have is yours already. There isn’t a thing I can do about it.”
“Oh—all right then,” Bjorn said, “I’ll use it right away,” and opening the knife he went for the cake, and that was pretty much that.
That night Jerry Fandeen swung into the Empress lobby. His face was lined and he stank of petroleum and asked if I had any Gojo.
“Gojo.”
“You know, the strong soap. My bulk tank leaked, spilled fuel oil all over the basement. Got it cleaned up but I’m out of Gojo.”
I had none, only a bar of grainy soap that wanted to take your skin off. Jerry used the men’s room a long time and came out with pink sore hands. He still smelled like fuel oil because of the long dark stripe of it on his shirtfront.
He stood looking at the candy display. “Can I have some of them Milk Duds?”
I reached down and tossed him a box.
“How much?”
“They’re on me, Jerry.”
“Hey! Thanks, Virgil.”
His pleasure at free Milk Duds made me heartsick. His sadness seemed complete. It had left him nothing, no proper enjoyment, no Saturday mornings. Sadness wore him like a tailored suit.
I said, “You probably shouldn’t stay there tonight.”
“Stay where?”
“The Hoshaver. Because of the fumes.”
“It’s fine. I can’t even smell it.”
“It’s more dangerous if you can’t smell it,” I pointed out. “You want me to step over there and check it out?”
Jerry had thrown a handful of Milk Duds into his mouth. He had to work mostly through them before he could answer. Eventually he swallowed and said, “Virgil, you got to stop looking out for me.”
Next morning I went to the office. I felt slightly anxious. It was festival day—any number of shoes might drop. We might get a shoe monsoon. There were notes from Lydia and from Ann Fandeen. The carnival had hooked up to city power and blew a bunch of fuses. Two food ven
dors, corn dog and snow cone, had been promised the same prime location. I did not have the wisdom of Solomon.
By noon I slipped the civic leash. The day was warming and Greenstone was nearing capacity. The all-class reunion was at full tilt. Streams of middle-agers and old-agers and a few millennials strolled into and out of the school. I blended in long enough to hear remembrance of specific football games, blizzards, and squatting hairy meat loaves in the school cafeteria. I went to a school reunion once—people start with polite fondness, then recall how overjoyed they were to leave in the first place. The inevitable beer garden looms up quickly. I went into Betsy Shane’s and bought two rhubarb tarts. The carnival midway rumbled, with fried smells and dappled light and jubilant dogs tearing around amid the doinky music. When I spied Nadine it was nearly two. She was sitting under a parasol at the face-painting booth. A bony-armed youngster with thick glasses and the smile of a human shark dabbed at her cheeks with a long brush. He was painting, of all things, constellations—not bunny whiskers or skeleton teeth, just a spray of tiny golden stars across her cheekbones. She paid the surprisingly restrained artist and turned up her face to me.
“I’m going as the night sky,” she declared, maybe the sexiest thing a person can say. “Is that a rhubarb tart?”
Her cell rang. It was Bjorn, calling with the scantest of signals from the side of a county road.
