The Rope Walk

by Carrie Brown

  James said then that they would come back that afternoon and again the next day, as there was still more to be done. Wally would be leaving in a couple of days, and James himself, soon after that, but Tad and Harry—James shot them a meaningful look—could stay on and work for a while, if Mr. Fitzgerald needed them. Eli volunteered that he'd continue to come and work in the garden as long as Mr. Fitzgerald wanted him.

  “Not to presume, sir,” James volunteered, “but you might want to have someone come in and … clean. Or paint, even. We can ask Archie or Elizabeth if there's someone in Grange who might be able to …”

  Alice wondered about the cook Mr. Fitzgerald had brought with him, the one with the strange name who'd made the coffee—he'd pronounced it Sih-doe-nee. What did she think of this house? Alice wondered.

  “Yes, yes,” Mr. Fitzgerald agreed. “Of course. Yes, I must do that.”

  After the boys had gone, Mr. Fitzgerald crossed the room leaning on his stick and went to the settee, lifting his legs painfully one at a time to the fur throw and then leaning back against the cushions with a small, almost inaudible groan. He put his arm over his eyes.

  Theo and Alice, sitting at the table, watched him for a minute or two and then looked at each other.

  Is he asleep? Theo mouthed at Alice.

  She looked at Mr. Fitzgerald for a moment and then back at Theo. She shrugged.

  “I'm not asleep,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

  Theo and Alice jumped.

  “I snore,” he said. “That's how you'll know.”

  Another silence followed. Theo made aggrieved faces at Alice, gesturing to the French doors, walking his fingers through the air. She shook her head at him; Mr. Fitzgerald might be watching them. No, she mouthed back. Wait.

  “I told your father that I wanted someone who could read to me, Alice,” Mr. Fitzgerald said suddenly into the quiet. Theo startled again, but Alice had been ready this time, as if she were growing used to the long pauses between his sentences. She waited.

  Alice leaned forward in her chair. Theo did the same.

  “Theo,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “Would you recognize a box cutter?”

  Theo looked surprised and then thrilled. “A box cutter? Yeah.”

  “I thought so.” Another long pause followed this.

  Theo made an aggrieved face of impatience at Alice.

  “I think it's on the floor, near the lamp,” Mr. Fitzgerald said finally. “Can you find it? Now, leaning up against the bookshelves,” he continued. “One of the boxes… it's marked ‘Bridge.’ “

  Theo, box cutter in hand, began inspecting the crates. “Here it is,” he said.

  “Careful,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “Don't drive it deep. Just go gently down the seam on the front.”

  Theo and Alice got the crate open and plied back the lid to reveal a lightweight wooden frame and the back of what looked like a canvas.

  “Careful,” Mr. Fitzgerald said again. “Lift it out gently and turn it over.” He laid still on the settee, his arm over his face. He didn't look at what they were doing, as if he trusted them completely, Alice thought.

  Together Alice and Theo lifted out the frame—it was surprisingly light, though taller than either Alice or Theo. Taped down to the other side was a complex mass of copper shapes and fragile-looking metal arms.

  Alice recognized it instantly. “It's a mobile,” she said. “Like in the library.” She looked back at Mr. Fitzgerald on the settee. “You did make them.”

  Below his sleeve, Mr. Fitzgerald's mouth curved into a smile, but he didn't respond to her comment. “Next,” he said, and then he went on to describe how they should screw an eye hook into the ceiling beam—they could stand on the table for that; Theo would find the tools over there on the bookshelf—and then release the mobile from its board and suspend it with a length of monofilament.

  These maneuvers were accomplished. Once hung, the sculpture fell away like a shower of snowflakes through Alice's hands, springing into shape, floating gently in the air above their heads. Its circumference, over five feet across, was wider than Alice's reach when she stretched out her arms beneath it in both directions. Several of the pieces were hinged together like the treads of an arched Chinese footbridge; Alice was reminded for a moment of Charlotte the whale, her long, curved backbone. Above the bridge floated a long shape like a wisp of cloud, and below it a mass of silvery whorled shapes like the concentric rings made by stones thrown into water. It was complicated, ephemeral; it made Alice feel aware of the air around her, as though she were submerged in lazy currents of water. She twirled slowly beneath it, looking upward. Theo blew a gust of breath up toward it and it moved faster. Beside Alice he stared up at the mobile, too, watching it drift.

  “Do you like it?” Mr. Fitzgerald spoke from the settee.

  “It's great,” Theo said. “It's50 cool.”

  Mr. Fitzgerald didn't say anything else for a few moments. Alice and Theo stood under the mobile, watching it.

  “Alice?” Mr. Fitzgerald's voice, when he finally spoke again, was faint, as if he spoke from a great distance.

  Alice turned to him. The light in the room had changed, she noticed, the sun having passed around the corner of the house. The room was dim and warm, with just one band of golden light running low around the base of the bookshelves. She was aware of the irises again, their heavy perfume.

  “Alice?” he said again.

  “Yes,” she said. “I'm here.”

  He seemed to sigh a little. “The Lewis and Clark,” he said. “From the beginning.”

  Alice went to the table and found the volume.

  “Time to lie down, Theo,” Mr. Fitzgerald said, as if he were speaking to an unruly dog; he sounded suddenly very tired and short of breath. “Under the bridge. Listen. No interruptions. No questions.”

  Theo, perhaps too surprised to object, perhaps in a kind of trance worked by the mobile and the fatigue of their long morning, the growing heat of the afternoon, the shadows in the room, lay down promptly as ordered, his arms crossed under his head.

  Alice picked up the book and opened it. She looked at the page. It felt as if it were she, and not just Lewis and Clark, who was beginning an expedition. Just days ago, her summer had seemed to promise such ordinary sorts of pleasures; she had even worried that she'd be bored, with all the boys except Eli gone. Many of the children in Grange went away to camp or to a grandparent's or to the beach in the summer, but Archie didn't like to be away from home and they rarely went anywhere.

  And yet now she had Theo—she took a deep breath—and she had this. They could come every day to read to Kenneth, she thought. She wanted to see all the mobiles in the boxes, for she felt sure that's what they contained. Was he an artist? She thought her father had said he did something with the theater.

  He had not frightened her. Wally had told her not to be frightened, and she hadn't been, not really. Kenneth seemed really and truly glad of her company, and Theo's.

  For a moment she hesitated—her eyes felt heavy, and she needed to shake her head a little, clear it—and then she put her finger on the page and began reading.

  “It is full summer on the Missouri,” she read aloud, “which means ferocious heat broken by sudden, violent storms. Storms endanger the boats; so do the many snags past some of which they have to be towed by handline, an operation made risky by the swiftness of the current.”

  Alice stopped and flipped ahead through the first few pages, her eyes skimming the text. Many of the real dated journal entries had been included in the book, and she could see that they had been left just as Lewis and Clark must have written them, with weird spellings and random capitalizations. These were going to be hard to read, she thought, just like Shakespeare was sometimes puzzling. But there was something about the authenticity of those misspelled diary entries that she liked, the real thoughts of these two men, composed at the time without desk or lamp, sitting beside a river and writing in a journal balanced on a knee or a convenient rock or a
fallen branch. It made the hair rise on her arms. She glanced down at Theo—his eyes were wide and unblinking, fixed on the mobile above his head—and then she bent to the page again. “June 29,” she continued. ‘‘Hall given 50 lashes for stealing whiskey and Collins 100 lashes for being drunk on post and for permitting the theft. July 3 first sign of beaver. July 4 celebrated by the discharge of a swivel gun and an extra issue of whiskey, and Joseph Fields bitten by a snake, apparently a rattler…”

  She was not sure for how long she read. She would have said it was a half hour, maybe much less. Lewis and Clark made their way along the river, fighting mosquitoes and shooting deer, facing standoffs with the Indians.

  No one came to the door to check on them. The house was quiet. The mysterious cook Sidonnie did not appear, nor Miss Fitzgerald. Nor did Alice's brothers return, though every now and then she heard their voices in a distant room or the sound of the truck's engine. Alice could hear the buzz of the bees in the irises and every now and then the rough cry of a bird outside. Otherwise, it seemed to her that she and Theo and Kenneth might have been the last people on earth, forgotten by the world. She sat, aware of her own pulse. Her throat was dry. Not a sound came from Kenneth or Theo.

  After a minute, she closed the book and leaned over to look down at Theo. His eyes were closed, his face relaxed, his cheeks flushed from the heat. His mouth had fallen open. How could he be a black boy? she thought again. He was so like the color of a lion, all butter and syrup and honey. Suddenly, his eyelids fluttered open, and he was staring up into her face; he looked confused for a moment, as if he didn't know who she was or where they were. Then his face cleared and he smiled up at her; quickly he turned his head to look at the settee on the far side of the room. As if on cue, a snore came from the figure reclined there—it sounded almost like a groan, finishing on a shuddering note of discomfort.

  Theo swiveled his head back toward Alice and then sat up on his elbows. “Come on,” he whispered. He rolled over and began to crawl toward the French doors and the terrace outside on his elbows and knees, a guerrilla fighter moving through the underbrush.

  Alice glanced at Kenneth on the settee and then, after a minute, dropped to her knees and crawled after Theo.

  Out on the flagstones, Theo scrabbled up to his hands and feet and did a scuttling crab walk toward the grass, dropping off the edge of the terrace in a low roll like a soldier ducking from enemy fire.

  Alice followed and rolled right on top of him. The two of them burst into hysterical giggles.

  “Shhhhh.” Theo reached up and clamped his hand over her mouth. “Shhhhhl”

  Before she had thought about it, Alice's tongue darted out into the sweet saltiness of his hand. She licked him, the marshmallow white color of his palm.

  For a moment he held his hand to her lips, his eyes wide and looking into hers, and then like a wrestler he flipped her over; she felt him against her, beginning to laugh again. And then he sprang off her and crawled away into the grass.

  Alice lay on her back for a moment, breathless, and then she rolled over, too, and followed him. When they got to the edge of the woods they scooted behind a tree and then peered back at the open French doors. They had left a little trough in the grass, but otherwise nothing had changed. No one appeared on the terrace, shielding his eyes against the sun and looking for them. The black metal chaise longue on the terrace seemed to float along the waving tops of the golden grasses like a strange Egyptian vessel, a pharaoh's empty boat headed for the open sea.

  Alice raised her hands and made her imaginary camera, her fingers forming the box in front of her eye. With one finger, she depressed the pretend shutter. She clicked her tongue once against the roof of her mouth.

  Theo looked over at her when he heard the click. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just taking a picture.”

  SEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, Alice and Theo stretched out on their stomachs on the sun-warmed floor of the porch. Lorenzo lay beside Alice, steaming in the sun like a black seal. Discarded on the porch floor were the remains of the panniers Theo had spent some minutes after breakfast trying to fashion for the dogs, paper grocery bags threaded by coat hangers and roped onto a saddle made out of an old bath towel. It had been his thinking that Kenneth could use the dogs, or perhaps a dog of his own that might be trained accordingly, for fetching and carrying things. “Saint Bernards and Newfoundlands are excellent at that kind of work,” he had told Alice. “I saw a show about them on TV.”

  When a battered panel truck rumbled down the driveway, scattering stones into the grass, the dog lifted his head sleepily.

  Theo sat up. “Who's that?”

  “It's Mr. Moon,” Alice said. It seemed a shame to Alice that Mr. Moon, who did odd jobs for people in Grange, looked nothing like his name. He was as red-haired as Alice, with long, old-fashioned coppery sideburns and bulging muscles in his forearms. His hands were knotted with arthritis—they looked to Alice like dragon claws—but the condition did not seem to interfere with his ability to work. He raised bees and had told Archie that he took bee pollen for the inflammation in his hands and made sure to get himself stung every day as some sort of treatment, a prescription that struck Alice as terrible. He stuck one arm out the window as he drove past the children, his cudgel of a fist raised in greeting.

  Alice and Theo ran down to the garage, where Mr. Moon had stopped the truck, to investigate.

  “Something for you,” Mr. Moon said to Alice from the driver's seat. He opened the door of the truck and climbed down. “From Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  Alice gaped at him.

  “There's one for him, too.” Mr. Moon gestured at Theo, and then went round to the back of the truck and began rolling up the rear gate. “If his name is Theo.”

  Alice and Theo exchanged a mystified look.

  The crates in the back of the truck were the size of freezer chests. Theo craned around Mr. Moon. “They're mobiles,” Theo said in excitement. “They're in the same kind of box as the other ones. But these are big!”

  A thrill fountained up inside Alice's stomach. Kenneth had sent them two of his mobiles. Were they a gift?

  “Someone home could give me a hand?” Mr. Moon asked Alice. He climbed up into the truck and began winding a leather strap around the first crate.

  At that moment James stepped out onto the porch, followed by Archie, blinking into the sunlight and tucking a book under his arm.

  “They're for us,” Theo called to them in excitement. “They're mobiles.” He raced up and down alongside James and Archie as they walked down to Mr. Moon's truck. “I know how to open them,” he said. “I can do it. I opened one before.”

  “Kenneth sent them,” Alice said, in response to Archie's questioning look.

  He looked at her blankly.

  “Mr. Fitzgerald,” Alice said quickly.

  Archie's eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Ah,” he said finally, regarding her. He kept his gaze on Alice for a moment before turning away to climb up into the truck and examine the crates.

  “Here's the letter,” Mr. Moon said. He held it out as if he wasn't sure who to give it to.

  Archie took it and looked at the envelope. “It's addressed to you, Alice,” he said.

  Under his gaze, Alice felt the heat blossom over her neck. She hadn't asked for the mobiles, she thought. She would never have done that. She looked up into the truck at the two enormous boxes. No one except Helen, who one winter had ordered Alice a glamorous white fur muff and mittens from a department store in New York, had ever sent her anything. Harry and Tad, holding their hands cupped piteously like little paws against their chests and putting on pathetic, buck-toothed expressions, had told Alice that the muff and mittens were probably made of baby rabbits. Alice had been so horrified that she couldn't even look at the gifts after that, let alone wear them. Archie had made Tad and Harry write letters of apology to her for spoiling her present— Archie believed that writing about something was
the surest way of learning it, and all the MacCauley children had been forced to pen letters of contrition over the years—and he had promised her that the fur wasn't real. Not a single hair on a rabbit's head had been harmed for her lovely muff, he told her. But it was too late. She couldn't bring herself even to open the box.

  Mr. Moon and James carried the crates onto the lawn.

  “I know how to open them,” Theo said, dancing around the men. “All I need is a box cutter.”

  When James headed for the porch to go inside and find a knife to open the crates, Theo scampered along behind him. “All we need is a box cutter,” he said again. “I know how to do it.”

  James leaned over and clamped a hand over his mouth. “I'm going to cut a box,” he said. “A voice box.” He threw Archie an exasperated look.

  Alice sat down on the steps of the porch. Suddenly she felt deflated, as though the lovely pleasure of Kenneth's gift to them was being ruined, exactly as Tad and Harry had ruined the muff.

  “Go ahead.” Archie gestured toward the letter. “Open it.”

  Alice looked down at the envelope in her hand. Carefully she took out the heavy paper and unfolded it. Kenneth's handwriting was large and heavily slanted, veering unevenly across the page as if he might have written it with his eyes closed, feeling for the margins with his fingers.

  Dear Alice, he had written. I would be honored if you and Theo would accept Monkey Man and Old Soldier's Beautiful Daughter. They are too large to hang inside an ordinary house, but a tree branch is fine. It wont hurt them to be outside. I hope you will come see me today. There is no one to talk to except my loony sister (!) and Sidonnie, who I fear does not like Vermont and will be leaving me soon. There was a little break on the page before the writing began again, like a postscript. Word of the day: I think you and Theo will become my camarilla. He had underlined the word camarilla. Do you remember yesterday's word? You're it. Rara avis. Your friend, K.F.