The house was a blur of memories, though few of their objects remained. Hugh was gone, and he had been most of the memories, as well as their daughter Teresa. Knowing her time was getting short, Cynthia had taken care to give away or sell the things her great-granddaughter wouldn’t want. At first it had been hard to let go of each possession due to the memories wrapped around it.
The agate she and Teresa had found on their last walk together down the beach before her daughter, then just Skylar’s age, had left for college. And the ever so similar one from the last walk her daughter had managed before the cancer took her.
The model ship that Hugh had spent an entire winter building, and had stood on the bookcase for decades—with broken masts after he’d accidentally dropped a book on it that next summer. Weren’t humans curious things. He’d been gone over twenty years, and throwing out that sinking ship had been one of the hardest things Cynthia had done.
It had taken her months, going through these mementos one by one. Each time, after Cynthia had a fresh area cleaned out, she would set a few select items on the well-used maple dining table for Skylar to decide what she wanted. The girl had the good common sense to dispose of most of those as well.
It didn’t matter really. This house wasn’t about what was inside of it.
It was about the wall of windows that faced the wild Pacific. From here she had watched the soaring seagulls and the mating flights of eagles and ospreys. Ducks often paddled about in the small pond that Hugh had installed off to one side for just that purpose. Bird feeders attracted all sorts. The upside-down nuthatches contended with the ever so suave goldfinches with their upright posture and gold-and-black jackets. Feisty Rufous hummingbirds faced off the Stellar jays. The flickers were large enough to ignore everyone else while they clung and pecked at the blocks of suet. It was a whole world.
Unlike her younger days, it often took her half an hour or more to tend all of the feeders. Whether it was familiarity or impatience, the birds often fed from one feeder while she tended the next. Though the chickadees, which had always been her favorites, were the only ones brave enough to regularly feed from her hand if she cupped some seed in her palm.
The weather was always fresh here. The air swept ashore as if it had been invented in the mid-Pacific rather than sweeping in from Japan or Hawaii. It arrived in gentle zephyrs like today, or great wintry blasts. During the 1962 Columbus Day Storm, she, Hugh, and dear teenaged Teresa had retreated to the bedroom, peeking out occasionally from the front windows as they bowed under the pressure of the hundred-and-fifty mile-an-hour blasts off the ocean. They had cooked on the woodstove and read by oil lamps for weeks afterward until the electricity was restored, but the house had stood strong atop the cliff.
Every day was different and she loved them all. She’d miss that even more than she missed Hugh when she was gone. Of course she’d had twenty years to grow accustomed to Hugh’s loss.
Today she especially wanted to sit out on the deck to watch the beach. Eagle Cove had few events that had survived the decades along with her. The annual kite festival was one of them.
A small breeze almost took the fleece throw out of her hands as she was settling at the small table close against the railing. She would take that as a good sign. Some years the wind didn’t come, though that was rare here on the coast. Other years the rain came, and those were hard and sad. Everyone would arrive, but no one could fly.
This year brought warm sun and a growing breeze. Already dozens of kites were in the air and she could see more on the sand, preparing to launch. The excited shouts of children drifted up the cliff. Simple moments of joy.
Cynthia had first fallen in love with the kites of Eagle Cove when she was eighteen and thoughtlessly, deliciously young. Skylar at ten had been more mature than she’d been after finishing high school. The world of today was so different from the world of 1939.
2
Cynthia had first visited Oregon on a dare from her best friend.
“We’re eighteen,” Bea had said pointing at the advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re single and we may never see each other again.”
“That’s because you are going to Vassar College. Do you even understand how far away New York is from everything?”
“Farther than Oregon.”
Cynthia looked at the advertisement again. It was a small inset on the second to last page of the Daily Statistics section.
Redhead Roundup
in Eagle Cove, Oregon
Aug. 5-6, 1939
Beauty Contest
Most Freckles Prizes
Cutest Baby and more!
Skate by the Sea at Hummingbird Roller Rink
It featured a drawing of a woman with long hair and a tight bathing suit diving into the sea. The entire advertisement had been printed in red.
“They put it on the same page as the listings about dead people.”
“And newborns,” Bea had protested. Her best friend would be gone ten days later. She was bound to meet someone back East. New York City was just a short train ride away from Vassar and Bea made it sound so exciting. Who knew if she ever would return. Cynthia was staying in San Francisco for college. It might truly be their last chance to have an adventure together.
So, Cynthia had climbed aboard a Trailways bus.
“See, it’s a sign!” Bea had crowed with delight as she pointed at the red-and-yellow paint design. “Redheads. Red bus. Perfect!” Bea’s favorite adjective about everything.
At first Cynthia hadn’t noticed. But the farther north they rode on the winding cliff-side Highway 101, the more and more of the passengers had red hair. They had started with a half dozen of them in San Francisco, but two more had boarded in Bodega Bay, another three in Fort Bragg, three in Leggett.
By the time they crossed out of California, the bus was crowded with men and women all traveling to the Oregon Coast. There were women with hair so dark that red was only a bare hint. Others were carrot-orange, so bright that “red” didn’t really apply. There was one boy who was certain that he had the Most Freckles contest already won; Cynthia didn’t doubt him for a moment, he was more freckle than boy.
She became more and more self-conscious as they went. Her long red hair and fair complexion had earned her attention at the school dances; her proverbial dance card was always full until she had to beg off to preserve her feet from being worn to tatters. But aboard this one bus there was every variety of redhead imaginable. Big men who were Swedish in build, slender women with green eyes and Irish accents, and Bea with her stylishly curly mop who was comfortable in the center of every group.
Dizzy and sore from so many hours on the hard seats of the noisy bus, for they had ridden straight through, she let Bea lead her to a tiny cottage where five of them shared two twin beds and a couch. The couch was too short, but she had it all to herself and that was a relief.
3
Over the years, Cynthia had loved watching the evolution of the kites that flew above Eagle Cove. What they could now make with nylon fabric and plastic parts was magical. For years she had needed binoculars to make out the hand-painted art on the child-tall paper-diamond kites.
Now, even with her failing eyesight, there was no need.
The small triangular wing kites were quick, darting splashes of color and little more. Their wings snapped like angry bees in the growing wind. But the new kites were so large and rather than paint, the fabric itself was the kite-builders’ medium.
A brilliant orange octopus was the first big kite aloft. Two stories high with cartoon eyes and eight long legs, it soon flew up until it was staring almost directly at her. She waved at the kite and fancied that the sea creature now floating in the blue sky waved its legs back at her.
A great spinner flew aloft next. It looked like a child’s pinwheel built ten feet across with a dozen pointed tips all whirling abo
ut.
She could see the next giant kites being rolled out on the beach, but she didn’t lean out to peek. Cynthia wanted to be surprised by each one as it lifted.
“Gran! You should have called me!” Skylar hurried out onto the deck. She was a surprise every single time Cynthia saw her. It was like looking in the mirror and seeing her younger self, but dressed in shorts and a tight-fitting tank top with no bra underneath that she’d never have considered wearing herself. Her great-granddaughter was tall, slim, and her shock of red hair tumbled over her shoulders just as Cynthia’s had at that age.
Skylar hustled back inside and in moments the cozy afghan was wrapped around her despite the warm day. Her walker now stood close to hand and a cup of herbal tea rested on the table.
“Oh wow!” Skylar’s attention finally swung out over the rail.
“Oh my,” Cynthia couldn’t help but agreeing. “I’ve always loved the whales.”
A gray whale family of two adults and one youngster rose up from the sand. The kites were life-sized and while they’d been coming to Eagle Cove for a decade, they didn’t often fly. The wind had to be strong enough to lift them, but not so powerful that they might damage the fifty-foot long works of art. And they were never brought out in the rain, of course. They slowly swam their way into the sky with long ripples down their flanks and lazy flapping of their big tails. The more adventurous half-sized youngster flew almost as high as the octopus that kept a cautious eye on the trio.
Soon there were frogs bigger than the ridiculous Lincoln Continental that Hugh had purchased in 1958. After all, how much car did a family of three need. “But it’s beautiful!” Hugh had been enamored. Giant squids rose into the air and creepy spiders with legs a story tall were offset by a car-sized puppy dog and a slender dragon as long as the biggest whale but instead ducked and weaved sinuously about the sky.
“It’s magnificent,” Skylar whispered out on a soft breath as she sat to enjoy the view. She dropped the fleece throw over her own legs and settled in to watch the show.
4
Cynthia remembered the Redhead Roundup more like photographic flashes than a continuous memory. It wasn’t that her mind was going or the seventy-six years that had intervened; it was the nature of the weekend itself.
The big Saturday-morning, twenty-five cent pancake breakfast in the sparkling new Puffin Diner had to be eaten so quickly because the redheaded line at the tiny seaside café was out the door.
Splashing about in the cold water where the high tide had overridden the mud flats for the “clam-digging” contest. Prizes had been hidden beneath the sand in clam shells, but by the time the tide was down low enough on Sunday, no one could quite remember where the prizes had been buried. Most of the clams that were dug had been real ones which were cooked on the beach that night.
She’d been swept up by “Erik the Red” and the Coos Bay Pirates, much to Bea’s frustration as she was left standing on the sand. The pirates’ jokes at first seemed quite rude until she found the rhythm of their humor and decided that they were just being campy. They were pirates amidst a field of redheads after all; though she did wish that they pinched her behind a little less often. When she declined to kiss any of the “surly louts,” they laughed but finally “set her free to wander the world in lonely solitude to pine after her time on the high seas.” Cynthia noted that the next redheads they scooped into their celebrations were not so disinclined to accept the pirates’ attentions.
She’d completely lost track of Bea, but did watch the boy from their bus indeed claim honors among the most freckled.
Bea found her again at the crowning festivities for the Queen of the Redhead Roundup. Queen Norlene Haworth’s smile was amazing as the dainty sixteen-year-old knelt in her white-satin gown clutching red roses while being crowned by the Secretary to the Governor himself.
“I want to be her,” Bea whispered in her ear with a sad sigh.
“There’s still the beauty contest tomorrow,” Cynthia reminded her.
“You have to enter, Cyn. You’re sure to win.”
After her adventures with the pirates, Cynthia would enjoy less attention rather than more. At the night’s big bonfire on the beach that was a problem as well. Ultimately she was the first to retreat back to their room. It was some hours later before the rest of her roommates returned. One of them, a girl named Julie Ann from some place called Wenatchee and who had very willingly joined the pirates’ celebrations, never came back at all.
Cynthia was the first out of the room and on the beach the next morning.
5
Look at that one, Gran!”
A scantily-clad mermaid fluttered into shape below. Her generous figure dressed in under-sized seashells and the green scales that sheathed her from the hips down left little to the imagination. But her hair was long and flowed as red as Sklyar’s did and her own had so long ago.
That was what had captured Jerome’s attention.
6
The sun had only just climbed above the bluff to strike the beach when Cynthia had ventured out into Day Two of the Redhead Roundup. It was still cool, so she’d worn a light shirt and slacks over her two-piece bathing suit for her walk. She hadn’t particularly noticed the boy and his kite until she’d heard a soft, “Wow!” after she passed him by.
A glance back revealed that his attention was riveted upon her.
She arched her eyebrows at him, but instead of being cowed, he had smiled.
“Sorry, but your hair is gorgeous.”
Cynthia had always tried not to be vain about her hair though she was rather proud of it. The boy’s exclamation made her feel better than all of the pirates’ gropings.
“And now,” she asked, “that you see the face that goes with it?” She didn’t know what prompted her to speak so.
“Even better,” and again that wonderful smile. He was her age or near enough. He wasn’t a big, strapping redhead like Erik the Pirate King. Nor was he some hollow-chested teen. He looked, she decided, nice. His mop of hair was a dark red and a touch unruly. Like it wanted a girl’s fingers to comb through it.
And then she noticed his kite.
Dozens of kites had been flying over the Roundup yesterday. Simple box kites and diamonds had dominated. There had been a few more elaborate multi-level kites, including a terribly intricate one that looked like the original Wright Brothers craft.
But this one was an unusual design she hadn’t seen yesterday. It was as if the box kite and the multi-tiered one had been blended together.
“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. She’d seen them romping up and down the beach followed by clouds of redheads. She would much rather be where she was.
“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 can say ‘Jack Sprat’.”
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.
The Ides of Matt 2016 Page 17
