by Bill Gaston
His uncle got the kite together and laid it on the ground under one foot for it really was quite breezy. He asked Philip to dig him a leg-sized hole and Philip shovelled until told to stop, about two feet down. Uncle Phil tied some clear fishing line to the long stake, placed it in the hole and buried it, with the invisible line protruding. He tied the fishing line to the kite-string handle. It was easy to get the kite airborne — cigarette in mouth, Uncle Phil looked almost athletic running five steps and tossing it aloft and playing out line — and soon the kite was sitting hard in the sky one hundred feet above them. At this point Uncle Phil let go of it completely.
The trick involved what you didn’t see. With the hole smoothed over, what you did see was a kite and its string and its handle, suspended in mid-air, six feet off the ground, held by no one.
Uncle Phil twanged the fishing line, which was taut and holding invisibly well. He slapped sand from his hands. Staring at the eerie floating handle, not the soaring kite, he asked, “So what d’ya think?” He gazed up and down the beach for passersby, though there weren’t any. “They’ll think we brought our pet ghost,” he said, and laughed lightly.
Sasha asked if they could play Save the Queen now.
It was Sasha who began constructing walls around Uncle Phil as he sat there on the sand admiring his kite trick. It was also Sasha who demanded that they had to “bury him all except for his head” when she decided that this king was way too big. Uncle Phil was fine with it, climbing stoically to lounging position in the long hole that was as deep as Philip could get it until the floor became solid water. His uncle shouted as he sat, declaring it “freaking ice” but loudly assuring himself it would warm up.
“You have to keep me in supplies,” he told Philip, meaning his gin and cigarettes. He looked comical, padded collar of the hunting vest framing his jaws, hair weak in the breeze, cigarette bobbing as he talked. Classic disembodied head. Tommy enjoyed his task of leaning in with the Thermos cup and getting the drink in past the cigarette and into his uncle’s mouth. Philip had to admit to pride not only at lighting a first cigarette but learning to do one in the wind. Uncle Phil was a good teacher. “The trick,” he said, “is to cup your hand as close as you can to the flame without burning yourself. The thing is finding that one quarter inch.”
Because this time the queen, or in this case king, was a person, the walls had to be higher, the moats deeper. Sasha and Tommy dug and pushed and moulded to keep their buried uncle from the calamity that roared ever closer, pounding out clouds of mist that turned a blue day cold, backed by ocean that filled the horizon and that your stomach knew never stopped.
Placing the latest cigarette in his uncle’s lips, which reached out for it in a less-than-attractive way, Philip decided against telling him that his lips were turning purple. If the game ended now, with the wave surges not yet at the first moats, his brother and sister would be upset. Also Uncle Phil was still energetic with chatter, always about music. Because of the nearing surf, he had to shout. He really was a sight. Sasha had draped his head with a seaweed crown, a frond of which flipped wind-blown against a cheek.
“. . . because it isn’t English any more, it’s Euro or brown. Now I love brown. Little Richard’s my hero, mate. And I had my Ravi Shankar period. I mean we’ve never had music of our own ’less you want to include fucking skiffle.” He laughed and Philip didn’t know why, but his uncle was talking fast and not really noticing anyone. His teeth were actually chattering. “See you had Elvis translate black for us and these were the first invaders, which we digested and sent back as the Stones and Yardbirds and R and B whomevers, you catch my drift, but now you’ve sent us Britney and it makes me, it truly makes me hostile. All we can send you back this time is a big fucking bucket of sweets.” He laughed again, and coughed. “Jesus, it’s really cold in here, I don’t know if . . .” Then he put his nose in the air to call out again comically, rolling the R, for “Brrrandy!”, at which Tommy said “Yay!”, ceased his scooping and, stepping carefully over the battlements, hurried in with the gin Thermos. Tommy’s offering was unsteady and Uncle Phil shivered as he drank, and some dripped off his chin.
“I’ve met Sting. You know Sting, right?”
“No.”
“Proof that unbridled ambition is all a bloke really truly needs, plus an instinct to go Hollywood at the first ring of the freakin bell. Sure he’s handsome but . . .”
Uncle Phil wasn’t talking to anyone but himself any more and Philip wished he would stop. An eagle was up in the snag behind them and at Philip’s pointing Uncle Phil tried turning to look, but not really, and on he talked. Now three ravens — Philip’s favourite bird — came to chase the eagle off and take its place in the trees, and though the ocean was loud he wanted his uncle to hear their croaks and screams and other sounds, especially the one exactly like a hugely amplified drop of water landing in a pool in the depths of a cave: Plooink. Sometimes ravens would make this sound back and forth, using different tones that seemed to mean something, or sounded intentionally funny, and Philip wanted to tell his uncle that at such times it was possible to believe that these birds carried the spirits of dead native elders who, it seemed, were comedians.
When a surging tongue from a big wave travelled up with a hiss, leapt two moats, and knocked through the first wall as if it weren’t there, it was almost like this was a signal to Uncle Phil. The only sign of his struggle was his head lifting, straining to rise above the sand.
“It’s — it’s very cold actually.” He laughed out of a bed of weakness, and no hint of a smile. He seemed embarrassed. “I think I — Philip? Well, I don’t think I can feel my . . . Actually, I think I have to — Phil?”
Uncle Phil’s voice trailed off. He gritted his teeth and stretched his blue lips out away from them. His gums were grey. In the middle of that he appeared to go to sleep.
Philip could see that, barely halfway to the parking area, Sasha and Tommy had grown tired and had slowed to walking. A few people were moving about near the cars. Philip couldn’t see their arms so he knew they couldn’t see his either, so he stopped waving. He had tried one steady scream but it was nothing, he could barely hear it himself in the roar of the surf that was so close now.
At first they’d dug out Uncle Phil’s arms and tried pulling, but it was immediately obvious that they weren’t moving him at all. They’d dug some more, and got him clear to the waist, but still he wouldn’t budge, and now Tommy had to kneel behind and plant himself and struggle to keep Uncle Phil’s head propped out of the flats of wave that rushed in and submersed Tommy to his chest. Sasha fell prone to plug a breached wall, like two years ago, but this time there were no screams of delight, just hardly heard coughs of “Quick, quick.” Tommy, big-eyed and grim, knew his uncle wasn’t playing and that all this panic had something to do with time. A bigger, quicker wave came in and Tommy lost his grip on his uncle’s head and shoulders and Uncle Phil stayed under for a while because Philip was off feeling for the shovel. When the wave receded and his head reappeared and not being able to breathe didn’t seem to have troubled him, that’s when Sasha and Tommy saw it for real and started crying, and that’s when Philip told them to run to the parking lot for help.
Philip knelt holding his uncle’s head up as waves came in and went out. It was loud, and exhausting, and hard to know the true passing of time — maybe fifteen minutes went by before Tommy and Sasha reached the parking lot. By now the surges were up to Philip’s chin, and his uncle’s head was under half the time anyway, so finally Philip mumbled several words he couldn’t hear himself mumble, let his uncle’s head fall, and walked backwards, watching, to higher ground.
Philip knew he had miscalculated in some way. He had failed at something huge, something beyond him, and he wondered what his mother would say. He wondered how loud Aunt Sally would be, and when she would leave them and return to England. Would she stay with them tonight, or go to a motel? Tomorrow there would be no crispy bacon. His father no longer had a br
other.
He stood ankle-deep and blank-faced as each wave hit, his uncle mounding the clear rushing water, like a boulder under the surface of a fast, broad river, a river that slowed to a stop and reversed before running over the boulder in the other direction. Each time the water receded and his uncle appeared, Philip looked for signs of revival, but nothing changed, except for the strand of seaweed rearranged at his uncle’s neck and shoulders, and his thin hair which itself seemed like a pathetic variety of seaweed. Then a new wave hit, and then another, and Philip had to backstep to higher and higher beach until, deep carnival, all he could see of this relative was, just to the right, his kite trick.
FORMS IN WINTER
He should have worn a scarf. It’s only late November but it’s too cold, early cold that feels unwarranted, like punishment. It has hardened the soles of his shoes and the sidewalk jars his feet to the bone. It would feel warmer if there were snow. There’s no one else out walking and his crisp footsteps echo almost comically — or is it a sinister sound, he can’t tell which.
He is on his way to talk to the McGonnigals because he believes that, whatever one’s own failings, and despite the possibility that one might make a bigger mess of things, it remains one’s human duty to try to ease another’s agony.
He picks his spots. The McGonnigals. Knowing so little about them he’s aware that he might make that mess. He might get his nose broken again. But he’s on his way to the McGonnigals, and he persists in this and in all needful things because of Andrew — Andy — fifteen years ago.
Of course there were those times, before Andy, when he didn’t act and should have. One was on the south shore of the Island of Crete, when he was in his early twenties, in that small village — Aghia Ghalini. For a month he’d slept on a nearby beach with other, ever-changing travellers, and an outdoor taverna was their base for telling stories, and the long evening’s retsina. Then at some point a waiter told them about the captive girl up the hill. In bits and pieces they got the story: a sixteen-year-old Australian girl who had lost her parents in a car accident had been sent to Greece to live with her next of kin, a Greek uncle, here in this village. From Sydney, she was a typical city teenager. At first she had been allowed out to the market, and to school, but she had been seen with a boy. Now her uncle kept her locked indoors. A rumour said he made her wear all black. Lately she had been sending notes — sometimes paper airplanes out the window! — begging for rescue, asking the Australian government for help. A waiter, Georges, had seen some of them himself. There was little sympathy for her in this village of arranged marriages and men-only tavernas, but Georges whispered that he was “her fren’” because she wasn’t really Greek, and that people had heard her screaming, and in any case the uncle was “assahole.” The girl’s name was Cindy. Shaking his head, Georges added that Cindy “no eeffen speak a Greek.”
The travellers talked about her. They were Canadians, Americans, a New Zealander. One night two Aussies drifted in and were outraged by the story. After much beer they walked the hill and pounded on the door of Cindy’s prison and got into a shoving match with an older man and his sons. It was never determined if they got the right house. In any case the rest of them talked about what should be done. She was a minor, living with legal next of kin. Fate had landed her in a set of backward customs. The phrase “weird karma” had some of them nodding sagely.
He sometimes still wonders about Cindy. She’d be in her late forties now. He imagines her married, at a kitchen window peeling potatoes, long resigned to her fate. She speaks Greek now, of course. She’s married to a man who treats her well enough because he knew from the start that she was different. She has not had children of her own.
But he didn’t think about Cindy for years. Actually he didn’t remember Cindy until after they found Andrew in the cement.
He’s three blocks from the McGonnigals’ street and he wonders if he’s ever walked it, McRae Street, before. While his mission often takes him new places, the story is generally the same. He’s going to ask them to hear their daughter’s side of things and not to punish her. He’s going to suggest that they ask her forgiveness. What he’s going to remind the McGonnigals tonight is that their daughter is beautiful in every way.
He sometimes sees girls her age on street corners. Rarely, but he does, whenever he makes a point of searching for them. He’ll spot one and pull up to the curb and roll his window down and she will step through the ghost of her own breath, closer. He feels doubly sorry for them in winter, when they dress just warmly enough not to freeze to death yet still show off their bodies. There is something not visually right about a girl in a tiny skirt and sheer pantyhose breathing white plumes of breath into the night air, something incongruous about a girl shivering and yet smelling of luscious, fruity perfume. When they approach his car window they are too out of it to care, or desperate for their next fix, or just stunned myopic —but some study him clear-eyed to see if he’ll be a danger. What they see in his eyes often does scare them, but of course it’s not what they think. Only when he tells them, “Someone loves you very much. Please — please— go home,” do they know what kind of danger he represents.
Sometimes he feels guilty for making them remember what they might be working so hard to forget. He does understand that they might in fact have no one at home who loves them. He knows their home might be the foulest cesspool of hurt, and he has just shouted another lie at them from his car window. But he likes to believe, has to believe, he did the right thing. It’s crucial to be positive in these matters.
Otherwise why is he walking to the McGonnigals? He’s on foot tonight because McCrae Street is only a mile from Glendale Apartments. He’s lived in Glendale Apartments ever since they opened, because the building site is where they found his son, Andy. His wife, Andy’s mother, never did join him here. They split rather quickly after Andy died. He learned this wasn’t uncommon. It does feel quite wrong to stay together, as if the death somehow issued from the union itself. Indeed everything felt wrong for a time, as wrong as things can feel wrong, and their marriage blew apart like two dry leaves. He still thinks kindly of her and he senses she thinks the same of him, though years ago she moved off to a distant city and then, so he’s heard, to another. So her method has been opposite to his. Here he stays, camped right on the spot. He even chose the northwest ground-floor corner unit, directly over the wall in the parking garage where they discovered him.
He turns onto McRae Street, and he decides his footfalls are neither comic nor sinister. They are the hard, nighttime sound of someone planting winter seeds.
He got his initial details about Rebecca McGonnigal — fourteen, Grade 9, brought home in a police cruiser, drunk — from the civilian dispatcher he befriended during Andy’s disappearance. The rest of the information has been bled from the reluctant school counsellor who remains sympathetic because he had been Andy’s counsellor, and who is consulted only rarely and whose name will be forever protected. The situation is that, since Rebecca’s big night, her parents have grounded her, made her take a pregnancy test, have not let her return to school — eight days so far — and are even considering pulling up stakes and moving to another neighbourhood. The McGonnigals, says his source, are very religious. His source also informs him that Rebecca is an average student, moderately popular, and wryly but self-consciously witty. Her best friend is older, in Grade 10. His source doubts that she has ever kissed a boy, and suspects she may in fact be lesbian, or shamefully curious about that possibility.
None of this will he throw in the McGonnigals’ faces. He will stay positive and keep to general principles. If given time he will tell them his own story. He hopes they will let Rebecca come out of her room to hear it.
On McRae Street the houses are noticeably more well-to-do and they appear somehow alien. But he decides that’s him, and he’s uncomfortable straying this far from Glendale Apartments. He feels it in his abdomen and he thinks it has to do with being on foot and drawing steadily awa
y from where it is Andy hid and clung to those last days.
They used to live in a nice bungalow several blocks from where Glendale Apartments is now. He can see the attraction the building site had for Andy. For one, it was close to home should he decide to return. At the time, they were building the underground parking level, and the roofless pit of tall wooden wall-forms would keep him hidden at night. Apparently Andrew built at least one fire in there. Otherwise it’s difficult to know what those long days and nights had been like for his son. He has never been able to find out if Andrew was alone or with others. A single muddy blue sleeping bag was found. He doesn’t know if Andrew partied, or sat hugging his knees to think, or perhaps cry. He doesn’t know if Andrew got stoned, or walked the streets in a steady, health-seeking way. He does know his son was angry because what his parents had done to him made no sense. But he likes to think that Andrew felt warmer staying close to home. It was January.
It began on January 1. Actually, December 31. Andrew had broken his New Year’s Eve curfew, which was eleven o’clock. Though he’s tried, he cannot remember if this particular time was his or his wife’s idea, but the point is they hadn’t told Andrew that one reason — the main reason? Wasn’t it the main reason? — they chose eleven was to have him back to celebrate midnight with them. They had never given in, never negotiated matters of curfew, and he remembers Andrew’s sullen shrug of agreement when they informed him. He thinks he suspected even then that Andrew was going to break it, that Andrew had already decided to break it, even while slouching out of the kitchen. He remembers Andrew’s hair still wet, and tightly combed. And the slight smell of a hopeful cologne. He remembers too how small Andrew looked, and how young, and how it was still odd for them and somehow difficult to hear his newly deepened voice. He believes now that Andrew being small for his age made it easier for them to impose curfews that may have been more suited to someone a year or two younger. It’s a mistake he’s been admitting for many years. But he didn’t admit it that night, when Andrew came in quiet as a mouse at two a.m. smelling of beer, guessing wrong that they’d be asleep. They grounded him indefinitely, banning all visits from friends. The more he fought against it, the more they dug in. They were conventional parents, and felt it vital to win this fight, if only to set the correct precedent. In the ensuing battle he and his wife had each other to bolster sagging spirits, assuage doubts. Andrew had no one. It’s easy to see this now. In any case, two days later, Andrew left home. “Ran away.” Their decent little Andrew. Or, Andy. Only since his death has he called him Andrew. It might be that, in the cement, his face stressed like that, he looked older. Maybe he’s simply projecting an adult life onto the face, seeing an “Andrew” at a university. Though he’d have been long finished university by now.
