Great Circle: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  Susan took off Porper’s sneakers so that he could go wading.

  —There you are, lamb. Don’t mind about the clambake, we’ll have it next week, and you’ll see the ocean and all the dead fishes.

  —What dead fishes.

  —And here are some more scallop shells for you, and a horseshoe crab.

  Warren and I walked along the beach toward the Point, and I showed him the hunting box, all covered deep in dried seaweed. We got into it and lay down for a while. It smelt very nice. There was an old beer bottle in the corner, with sand and water in it, and we took it out and threw stones at it until it was broken. Take that. And that. And that. And that for your old man.

  When we went back, Uncle David had come, and was standing in front of Mother, with his hands in his duck trousers. He was looking down at her and laughing. The parasol had fallen on the sand, she was lying back with her hands under her head.

  —Say that again.

  —Why not?

  —Well, say it.

  They laughed together, and then he turned his head toward us and said, Hi, there: what mischief have you fellows been up to?

  —Andy, why don’t you take your little friends down to the Point and show them your dory. I’m sure they’d like to see it. Wouldn’t you?

  ———at the Company Camp, on the edge of the other oak woods, in the late afternoon, with the long yellow sunset light coming over the stunted trees, Frank Tupper drilled us in a row, Sanford and myself and Gwendolyn and the two Peters girls, Warren sitting on the grass and watching us, because he hadn’t yet been elected. Present arms. Shoulder arms. Port arms. Ground arms. Parade rest. The wooden cannon was dragged out of the hut and loaded with a blank cartridge for the sunset salute. The Peters’ windmill, a Sunbeam, was pumping, and water was spattering down from the overflow pipe to the cement base. Frank looked at his watch, looked importantly at the sky, at the oak woods, behind which the sun might or might not have set, then gave the order to fire. Bang. The sun had set, and the cloud of blue smoke floated quickly away. Gwendolyn hadn’t said a word to me. What had she done with the box of candy. Had she shown it to any one. Was it she, or some one else, who had first found it there on the porch. Did she throw it away. Had she laughed. Was she angry. She stood next to me as we saluted the flag, which Frank was hauling down for the night, the folds winding themselves about his shoulders, but she was careful not to touch me. Did I dare to look at her. No. She was stronger than I, taller, but in the wrestling match I had got her down and held her down, with my hands hard on her shoulders. At the picnic in Pembroke woods, she and I had gone off by ourselves to look for firewood, and had gathered wood in a separate heap before taking it back to the others, but all the while we hadn’t said a word. Why was that. Was she as shy as I was, or was she annoyed with me. What was their house like, inside. I had never been into it. They had a bathing hut of their own, in the Cove, and a long narrow pier which led out across the eelgrass to deep water, with a float at the end, where their green canoe was hauled up. It was near the place where Molly and Margaret went to bathe. Once I had followed them down the road, to watch them bathe there, but when I got to the beach I saw Frank and Gwendolyn there on the float, so I had slunk away.

  —Moved and seconded that Warren Walker be made a private in this Company. All those in favor say aye.

  —Aye.

  ———in the evening, after helping the cat, Juniper, to catch grasshoppers among the hummocks of wild grass, swishing his tail against my leg, and purring, Uncle Tom and Uncle David and Aunt Norah and Mother having all gone to a dance at the McGills’, and Porper in bed, singing to himself in Mother’s room upstairs, and Susan swinging in a hammock on the porch, with one leg out so that she could push herself to and fro, I walked across the tennis court and watched the moon rise over the Long Beach. The tennis court needed hoeing again. And it needed new lines of whitewash. There were lights in the Walker house, and Mr. Walker went from the house to the barn with a pail in his hand. Then we sat at the dining table under the swinging lamp and played jackstraws.

  —I heard Uncle Tom and Aunt Norah talking about Father and Mother.

  —You shouldn’t have listened.

  —I couldn’t help it. They were talking while I was dressing.

  —What did they say.

  —What do you want to know for, if you think I shouldn’t have listened.

  —Oh, well, you don’t have to tell me, do you.

  —They said they had quarreled.

  —Who had quarreled.

  —Father and Mother.

  —I don’t believe it.

  —You don’t have to. And they said something about Father coming down to Duxbury.

  —Andy! He’s coming for the clambake! Is that it?

  —How should I know. That’s all I heard, nitwit.

  —Well, I’ll bet that’s what it is.

  —Anyway, the clambake’s been put off again, hang it. We’ll never get to that Gurnett. I think I’ll go by myself. I’m sick and tired of waiting for them to get ready—first it’s one fool thing and then another.

  —Well, go ahead, why don’t you. You could row there, couldn’t you?

  —Row there! Seven miles there and seven miles back? I guess not. What about the tides. Or what about a thunderstorm. How’d you like to get caught in a thunderstorm in a dory, twit! If I go, I’ll walk.

  —Well, you rowed to Clark’s Island, didn’t you?

  ———particularly also the sense of timelessness, the telescoping of day with day, of place with place, evening with evening, and morning with morning. The thunderstorms always coming from the southwest or west, the sky darkening first to cold gray, then to livid purple behind the Standish Monument, the wind rising to a scream across the black bay, the lightning stabbing unceasingly at the far, small figure of Miles Standish. Then the little house lashed wildly by the horizontal rain, the rush to shut the screens and doors and windows, the doors that would hardly shut against the wind, and the leaks everywhere, through walls and roof, pails and tins set out to receive the rapid pinging and clunking of drops, the struggle to get the hammocks in from the porch, take down the tennis net. Andy! Did you get the net in? The bows and arrows? Where are the rackets? Susan—Susan—where is Susan? Always the same thing. Or, at night, the splendid spectacle of the lightning across the bay, the storm advancing rapidly toward the open sea, and presently the lights of Plymouth far off across the water, like a long row of winking jewels, reappearing once more, and the lights of the Standish House, bright through the rain-washed evening air, as if nothing at all had happened.

  Uncle David stared at them through the spyglass, from the wet porch.

  —They must have turned the power off.

  —Why do they turn the power off, Uncle David.

  —Oh, I don’t know—to prevent a short circuit, or something.

  —But they don’t turn them off in Boston.

  —Well, Plymouth isn’t Boston.

  —There they come again.

  —Yes, now they’ve turned them on. Take a look, Tom? Here, Doris, take a look.

  They all looked in turns through the little telescope, the same one through which they regarded the moon-mountains, sweeping it along the row of distant twinkling lights and the beards of reflected light in the water, Susan and myself coming last. Nothing to see, why bother? It was always Uncle David who went out first to see whether the Plymouth lights had yet been turned on. Or what trees had been hit, or whether a haystack or barn had been set afire. Uncle David this, and Uncle David that. Was it because Uncle David was rich. Or because he had nothing to do. He was always there, he was always in everything, pushing about with his red mustache and blue eyes, as if the world belonged to him. It was Uncle David who made us hoe the tennis court, and mark the lines, and who beat everybody except Father at tennis. This year, he was forever playing Mother, sometimes before breakfast, when the rest of us weren’t up yet, at seven o’clock. Several times I was waked up by hearin
g them, and got out of bed and went to the window to watch them, keeping back from the window so as not to be seen. Mother dressed in white, with her hair in a pigtail down her back, like a girl, and laughing a lot, and saying, David, how could you. Once she turned her ankle, running out into the field after a ball, and then Uncle David picked her up and carried her round the corner to the front of the house. It was because of those hummocks of wild grass, those hard tufts—it was easy to turn your ankle. But when I asked her about it at breakfast she looked surprised, and said it was nothing. Nothing at all.

  —But, darling Andy, how did you happen to see? How did you happen to be up so early?

  —I heard you playing, Mother.

  —David, that was very naughty of us—we mustn’t do it again—we woke them up.

  —Oh, I think the little rascal was up on his own account—weren’t you, Andy. He was probably catching flies for that cage of his.

  —No I wasn’t, either. I heard you playing, and then I got up to see who it was.

  —It doesn’t really matter, though I often think that on these summer mornings, when the light is so early, we might all get up earlier than we do. But, of course, Norah, we won’t—I know your habits too well. And the children must get their full sleep.

  ———and the tiny little brown pond deep down in the cleft behind the Wardman house, only a stone’s throw from our windmill, with the black alders around it, and the sumacs, and the frogs, and turtles, the turtles which sidled away into the dirty water when we came, and the high rock at one side. I went down to it in the morning and found a rose quartz Indian arrowhead in the sand at the edge of it, a perfect one, very small and sharp. It was a beauty. How Uncle Tom would be pleased when he saw it, for it was better than any we had found before, better even than the white quartz one we had found out at the end of the Point, better far than the flint ones. I sat there on the rock by the sumacs, and knew that it was Thursday, for on Thursday afternoons I had to go to the village and have my Latin lesson with Mr. Dearing, in the white house at the water’s edge, with his knockabout moored a little way out, in which, perhaps, after the lesson, he would take me for a sail. His house was a nice one, with lots of books and pictures, it was quiet and small like himself, and smelt of lavender. He was like Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom, if Mr. Dearing asks me to go for a sail, can I go. Last time he let me take the tiller, and I learned how to come about. We followed the yacht race, and beat them, on the same course, too, but outside them at every buoy, which made it longer. The course with the first leg toward Clark’s Island and the second toward the Point. You know the one, we’ve often watched them from the porch. Can I do that. Or can I go by myself to the woods on the other side of Standish Hill, to see if I can find some wild indigo, and press it, and see if it turns black in the book. Or would you like to come with me.

  —No Porper, I can’t take you to the Horse Monument this afternoon, because Uncle Tom and I are going to the woods to look for wild flowers.

  —But I want to see the Horse Monument.

  —But you’ve seen it dozens of times, Porper.

  —I want to see it. I want to see where the horse was buried.

  —Why don’t you take him, Susan?

  —Oh, Porper—why do you want to see it. You know what it’s like—it’s just like any other tombstone, only it’s made of bricks, and it’s because a horse was buried there, a man’s favorite horse, and he put up a monument for it when it died. He was a nice man, wasn’t he?

  —I want to see the Horse Monument.

  —Go on, Susan, and take him. It’s your turn. I took him last time.

  At Mr. Dearing’s, the clock ticked on the white-painted wooden mantelpiece, between the model of a ship and a barometer, the clock ticked Latin, and Mr. Dearing’s gentle voice asked me questions, went through my exercise, alternately chastened and sustained me, while through the open window, on the side of the house toward the bay, the soft sound of the waves came, lapping among reeds and eelgrass, and the knocking of a dory against the float. If I turned my head I could see Mr. Dearing’s knockabout, with its boom, the mainsail neatly furled, propped up in its shears of wood. Now that declension again. You’re a little shaky on that declension. Those ablatives seem to bother you, don’t they? And those verbs. You must get them into your head. Utor, fruor, potior, fungor, and vescor. They have a nice sound, Andy, don’t you think? Utor, fruor, fungor, potior, and vescor.

  Uncle Tom had on his white yachting cap, with the green vizor, and the tin cylinder hung from his shoulder, and as we climbed the sandy road over Standish Hill, I asked him if he had heard the bell ring, the bell of the Unitarian Church. We were passing a clump of sumacs.

  —These aren’t poison sumacs, are they, Uncle Tom?

  —No. But what about that bell?

  —I rang it myself, at ten minutes past two.

  And I told him how it had happened. The village barber was cutting my hair, and said that he was the church sexton, and that he had to go and wind the clock, and asked me if I’d like to see how he did it, it was just across the road. We unlocked the church and went in, and climbed up two flights of dark stairs in the tower, and then two ladders which went straight up through narrow trap doors until we got to a shaky landing beside the machinery of the clock, where there were lots of cobwebs and dust. The barber wound a crank, and we could hear the clock ticking very loud. Then he asked me if I would like to strike the bell, and gave me a short rope and told me to pull it: I gave it a pull, and the machinery began grinding to itself, a sort of growling, and then suddenly came the huge ring of sound, shaking the belfry, everything trembled with it, and I thought of the bell sound traveling all the way to Powder Point, and every one wondering what time it was.

  Shad bush, wild sarsaparilla, St. John’s Wort, sand spurrey, wild indigo, and checkerberry. The goldenrods belong to the composite family, there are forty kinds in New England; but this sort, solidago sempervirens, which grows in the salt marshes, or near them—the heaviest, the strongest, the most fragrant—the one that the bees love, and the flies——

  ———or again to remember the first arrival, the arrival at the end of June after school was over, that first and sweetest deliciousness of escape and renewal, the foresight of so much delight, the largeness and wideness and brightness, the sun everywhere, the sea everywhere, the special salt spaciousness, which one felt even at the little shabby railway station, three miles inland, at the bottom of the hill, where the road turned. Even the weatherboards of the wooden station seemed to be soaked in salt sea fog, the little cherry trees had about them a special air as of knowing the sea, and the old coach, the Priscilla or the Miles Standish, with Smiley driving it, or Bart Cahoun, waiting for us there with its lean horses, had on its wheels the sand of Powder Point. In the very act of getting down from the train we already participated in the rich seaside summer—our trunks, lying on the platform, on the hot rough pine planks, shared in the mystery, became something other than the humble boxes into which we had put our bathing suits and sneakers. The world became dangerously brilliant, ourselves somehow smaller, but more meaningful; in the deep summer stillness, the country stillness, it seemed almost as if already we could hear the sea. Our voices, against the little cherry trees which the coach was passing, their boughs whitely shrouded by tent caterpillars, and the gray shingled cottages covered with trumpet vine, and the stone walls and the apple orchards, were different from our Cambridge voices. Even Mother became different, was smaller and more vivid. Would it all be the same again. Would the tide be out or in. Would the golden weathervane still be there. Would the dam under the village bridge be opened or closed. Would it be as nice living at Uncle Tom’s as at the Soules’. It was nearer to the end of the Point, nearer the long bridge, nearer the sea——

  —Now you must remember, children, it’s not quite like staying at the Soules’, we are visitors, and Uncle Tom has built a nice play house for you, and you must try to play there as much as you can, so that the house can be qui
et.

  —Can Porper kneel up, Mother, he wants to look out.

  —You can keep all your toys there, and on rainy days it will be very nice for you. It’s a nice little house, painted green, down at the foot of the hill, near that rock——

  —You mean Plymouth Rock Junior.

  —Yes.

  —What’s Plymouth Rock Junior.

  —Oh, Porper, you don’t remember, but you’ll see.

  —Susan, will you keep hold of Porper’s hand?

  —Is that Plymouth Rock Junior.

  —No, that’s just a rock in front of the library. That’s where Andy goes on Wednesdays to get books, don’t you, Andy.

  —I’m going to read Calumet K again. And Huckleberry Finn again.

  Would there be any new books. To carry home under my raincoat in the rain, past the house that was always to let, and the bowling alleys, and then along the lagoon to King Caesar’s Road.

  —Will Uncle David be there, Mother?

  —Yes, I suppose so. He has a new motorboat.

  —We must have a picnic on the outer beach soon, Mother, we must have two of them this year, not one like last year.

  —Will we have blueberries and cream, and blueberry muffins?

  —Yes, yes, now don’t bother Mother, Mother’s thinking.

  —Why are you thinking.

  —Andy, for goodness sake take Porper’s other hand. Sit still, Porper. Look, do you see the weather vane? It’s a rooster made out of gold.

  ———the particular breadth and suggestion of sea-wonder that began always when the coach turned north at the fork of the road, under the weather vane, and then rounded the lagoon toward King Caesar’s Road, and passing this, rattled along the rutted sand Point Road—we were getting nearer the sea, there was now water on both sides of us, water and marshes, we were going out into the Atlantic Ocean. We were getting nearer to the outer beach, and the long red bridge that led to it, nearer to the Gurnett, with its squat twin lighthouses. How soon would the picnic be. There would be steamed clams, and sweet potatoes, and corn, hidden in the nests of hot wet seaweed, on a bed of charred stones. We would gather shells. We would find fragments of driftwood and take them home with us in the little cart which Porper would sit in, with his legs spread out. We would climb the dunes and slide down the slopes of hot loose sand. There would be new breaches in the wall of dunes, where the sea had broken through during the winter, wide flat beds of stones. Where I went wading last year with Gwendolyn, and she held her dress up high, and I saw her garters, the quick exciting flash of silver. We were looking for live horseshoe crabs. I pretended to look for crabs, holding my head down, but was really watching her knees, and she knew that I was watching her, and held her dress higher. Andy, I’ve found three, and you haven’t found one. And look, here’s the smallest one yet—! She held it up out of the water by its beak, and it arched itself almost double, small and transparent. I took it in my hand and we looked at it together, and holding up her dress she leaned against me, and I heard her breathing.