Great Circle: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  I leaned against the wooden fence and looked at the two new knockabouts in the lagoon, exactly alike except that the Bobkat was brown, with a silver waterline, and the Moujik II was white with a gold waterline. The bowsprits were very short. Mr. McGill, who manufactured oil stoves, owned them both, and one or the other of them came in second in every race at the Yacht Club. Mr. McGill had that new house near Powder Point Hall, with the imitation windmill which had an electric pump inside. That was where the dance had been. Mother had brought back a Japanese lantern and Uncle David had brought home a clown’s mask with red holes for the eyes. He put it on at breakfast. What was that thing he had said to Mother, when we were going round Clark’s Island in the motorboat, something about drowning. To drown with thee. They were both holding the wheel, one on one side, and one on the other. Laughing, as I jumped down from the cabin roof into the cockpit. To drown with thee. It was that Quaker-talk that the old man had talked in Salem, putting his hand on my head. And Mother and Father had been talking it when I went to the top of the stairs that night after the card party in Cambridge. To drown with thee. What had they meant by that.

  I played ducks and drakes, skipping one stone twelve times over the water towards the Bobkat, and then went through the bayberry jungle and the grove of wild cherry trees to the edge of the golf course. Should I try to kiss Gwendolyn or not. Did she expect me to. Was Sanford just trying to get me into trouble when he told me to. When she saw me diving off the end of the dory she laughed, turning her face back toward Dorothy Peters as if she were saying something about me. I swam out a long way into the channel, hoping they would row out toward me, but they didn’t. They went along the shore, very slowly, not looking at me again. And disappeared round the end of the Point, still laughing.

  There were no golf balls in the bayberry jungle, though I kicked the grass in the places where I had found them before, so I went along the west side of the golf course until I got to the bungalows, and then crossed to the road and walked along the sandy bicycle path. The telephone poles were humming in the southwest wind, a little boy was trying to fly a kite on the lawn of the mystery house, behind the trumpet vine arbor, but he couldn’t run fast enough to get it off the ground. A pretty girl was leaning out of a tiny window in a dormer at the top of the house, watching him. I blushed when she looked at me, and walked on quickly, and was opposite the Soule House, where Molly was sitting in the swing, when Father—I was thinking about the box kite, meaning to ask Uncle Tom if we could hitch it to the cart and give Porper a ride over the tennis court——

  He came out from the behind the lilac bushes and skimmed his panama hat at my head, twirling, so that it almost settled on my head, but fell on the path. He took the back of my neck in his hand and shook me, not saying anything. He was smoking a cigarette. Then he threw the cigarette away and sat down on the lawn where the four-leaf clovers were. His brown cigarette finger was tapping on his knee. He frowned and asked me how Porper and Susan were. I said they were very well, and asked him if he had come to the clambake. He wanted to know if Susan had learned to swim. I told him no. Had I played any baseball. Yes. Wild flowers. Yes. Done my Latin with Mr. Dearing. Yes. Was I a member of the Company this year. Yes.

  He got up again, and we walked along the little road that led down to the cove and the dyke, past the henyard, where last year the trap used to be set at night for skunks. We had heard shots in the early morning and gone out to see the dead skunk. The road led through sweetgrass, the kind the Indians made into baskets. Every year they came, selling baskets from door to door, old women and old men. We walked as far as the top of the little bluff, overlooking the cove, and stood by a crab apple tree, talking, and Father asked me how far out into the water I could throw an apple. I threw one, and he smiled, watching it splash at the edge of a mud flat, and then said, Watch me. He took a short stick out of the grass and stuck an apple on the end of it and then whipped it with a whistling sound over his head: the apple went clear across the cove and thudded into the soft mud at the foot of the eelgrass. I tried it several times and sent one apple half way across, into the middle of the channel.

  —That was a good one.

  —Where did you learn to do that, Father?

  —Your grandfather taught me at Jackson Falls.

  —That was where the wildcats were.

  —And the moosewood.

  He took out his packet of Sweet Caporals and lit another cigarette. We started walking back slowly towards the Soules’.

  —Did you come down for the clambake, Father? Are we going to have it this week?

  —No. I don’t know.

  He took off his spectacles and polished them with a blue silk handkerchief. He was frowning again.

  —I don’t know how long I’m staying: I’m staying at the Soules’. I don’t want you to say anything about having seen me—understand? I may go back tonight, or I may stay for a week. But I don’t want you to say anything about it. I suppose you go for the mail every morning, don’t you.

  —Yes, usually.

  —Come here tomorrow morning to see if I’m still here. And now run along back.

  He stood watching me, and I ran the whole length of the narrow bicycle path to show him that I could do it this year without slackening once. When I got to the end, by the crossroads, I turned round, but he had gone. I was out of breath, but it wasn’t because of the running. Did he mean that I couldn’t even tell Susan? Probably not, because, of course, the twit would get excited and say something without meaning to. What was it all about. Why was he staying at the Soules’ instead of coming to Uncle Tom’s. Why was he keeping it a secret. Did he want it to be a surprise, and did Mother know about it or not. Gwendolyn and Dorothy Peters coo-eed from the door of the Silliman barn, but I didn’t stop. Let them coo-eee. I took the short cut past the Wardman house and the little brown pond, dropped a twig close to a frog so that he dived into the warm soupy water, and then ran up the slope past the windmill and round to the front porch. Mother was cutting Porper’s hair, and laughing, and I didn’t dare to look at her when I gave her the letters. Uncle David was mending the tennis net with a reel of white cord.

  —Why not use a bowl. Clap it on the young feller’s head and then cut round it.

  ———particularly also the food, the wonderful and perpetual sense of delicious and abundant food, the great jugs of rich cocoa, the great deep dish of blue-misted blueberries, the piles of muffins with their warm fragrance under the fresh napkins, the hot sweet corn wrapped in damp linen, the mountain of steamed clams. Porper beating with his spoon and saying second help, third help, fourth help, fifth help. The floating island pudding with the little white islands of stiff-beaten white of egg, which vanished on the tongue like sea fog, and the brown column of griddle cakes, Molly laughing as she brought in a new batch. This is the grub that makes the butterfly. Every time we had griddle cakes Uncle David said that. And the procession of covered carts that brought the food every morning, standing at the kitchen door by the corner of the tennis court—Mr. Crowell’s shiny white one with all kinds of meat in it, hanging on hooks, and the red board at the back where he cut it up, which he always scraped with a knife when he had finished; and the little blue fishcart, and the great truck of vegetables and fruit. Aunt Norah always standing with her hands on her wide hips and chaffing with Mr. Crowell or Mr. Peterson. You ought to grow vegetable marrows, they’re as easy to grow as squash, and have a much more delicate flavor. Why is it, Mr. Chase, that when we come to live by the sea we never can get fish. Or have to pay through the nose to get it. And those little mackerel—why they’re not big enough for the cat, let alone Porper here. Shall we buy Porper a whale?

  —What whale.

  —Juniper won’t need any fish heads or fish tails today, he had a mouse this morning.

  —What mouse.

  —But he never eats them, Aunt Norah.

  Juniper followed me on to the tennis court, and I caught a grasshopper for him, which spat tobacco juice
in my hand. What’s the use, what’s the use, chew tobacco and swallow the juice. I gave Juniper the grasshopper, and he purred, crunching it, and swished his striped tail against my leg. He ran after me, crying, when I went to the stone wall by the sumac, I bent down the loose strand of barbed wire to stoop through to the other side, and he stood on a lichen-covered stone as I walked away across the field toward the front beach. The silly little cat, always expecting me to take him with me, wherever I went. And now he would probably be sick on the porch, leave a little waffle of grasshopper legs and wings for me to clean up when I came back. Andy, the cat’s been sick again. Andy, will you turn on the windmill, the tank’s low. Andy, will you get out the targets, we’re going to have some archery practice. Andy, will you mix some limewash for the tennis court. Andy, you shouldn’t feed him grasshoppers, you know it always makes him sick. But he likes them, Mother. He likes them, Aunt Norah. All right then, but you must expect to clean up after him when he makes a mess.

  The long grass combed and seething in the southwest wind, the dry whistle of the sand in the wind, the sea grass hissing as it bowed in green waves, and the short quick waves of green-and-white water rushing up amongst the bared brown roots of the eelgrass. The fiddler crabs hurried away, clicking, as I approached the edge of the mud flats, or farther off stood and waved their little fiddles, dancing absurdly on their hind legs, and when I trod beside the air holes in the mud, the clams squirted water like little geysers. We hadn’t had clams for a week. The clambake looked farther off than ever. This year I would help to build the fireplace of round stones, and fetch the driftwood myself, and lay the fire, and gather the wet seaweed, and put in the clams and sweet potatoes, the yams, the green corn. And we would take our bathing suits and bathe in the surf, the surf that came all the way from Provincetown. And after lunch, while the others dozed in the warm hollows among the sand dunes, Porper with his dolls and Susan with her collection of razor shells, and Uncle Tom reading Gray’s Botany. I would walk all the way to the Gurnett, see the twin lighthouse at the end of the Long Beach, come back in triumph and tell them about it. Look, Susan, I found this shell at the Gurnett. Look, Aunt Norah, I found this new kind of seaweed, one that we never got before, at the Gurnett. Mother, do you think Father will like this, it’s very fine, and a lovely red, do you think it will mount well, when it’s spread out.

  There was a mullein wagging in the wind above my head when I lay down in the grass at the top of the beach, it was in flower, a tall one, but not as tall as the one Susan had found in the field between the McGills’ and the Horse Monument. Why did she always call them Grandfather Jacksons. And niggerhead grass, why was it called niggerhead grass, and who had invented the game of niggerheads. Uncle David always won, was it because he held them with a shorter stem, was it cheating, or did he pick out the good ones. Brothers looked very much alike, Uncle David looked like Father, but with red mustaches, like a Visigoth; he was taller too, and stronger, but his face was long and funny; I didn’t like it, and he looked at you with narrow blue eyes as if he didn’t like you. Why did he speak so much more quickly than Father, always making jokes. Why did he have so much money, and a motorboat, and an office in Boston that he never went to. And staying here all summer, making me help him hoe the tennis court.

  I counted the flowers I could see from where I lay. Mullein. Marsh rosemary. Beach-plum. Vetch. Three kinds of goldenrod. Milkweed. Beach pea. Hawkweed. Button bush. Dandelion. Butter-and-eggs. And when we got back to Cambridge the chicory would be in bloom, with its large stars of pale blue, or deep blue, or sometimes pink——

  ———the quarreling hour after supper, the croquet hour, when we took down the soapbox sailboat, lowering the spritsail, which was made of gunny sack, and coiling the ropes, and putting the soapbox under the porch—and the wickets and posts put into their worn holes, among the crickets and grasshoppers, and our favorite mallets chosen. The black one was cracked, I always took it because it was cracked and no one else liked it, but it was heavy, and I liked it. The handle was too long for Porper, he bumped his chin and cried.

  —Oh, Porper, how many times have I told you, why don’t you hold it by the end, not the middle.

  —How can he, twit, he couldn’t get anywhere near the ball.

  —He could, too.

  —Here, Porper, like this.

  —And don’t try to hit the ball so hard.

  The long sunset light lay glistening on the humped grass of the slope, golden and ruddy, and clear amber through the gap in the oak woods. The crickets chirped faster and faster. What were they doing now. What were they talking about now. Why had we been sent out right after supper, like that, and told to play croquet for half an hour. Why half an hour, exactly. And why had they all stayed in the sitting room instead of coming out on the porch as they usually did. Did they know that Father had come, or think he was coming. The croquet balls went clop and clap and bounced over the hummocks and went along the worn familiar grooves and pathways. Mosquitoes hung in a cloud round Porper’s legs. I slapped them off with my handkerchief.

  —Andy, you cheated, you didn’t keep your foot on the ball.

  —I did too. It slipped. But I’ll play it over if you like, and you’ll see. It was a split shot.

  —Let’s play poison.

  —All right, let’s play poison. Porper, you can be poison. Try to hit my ball with yours. You can have two turns.

  Molly and Margaret came out of the kitchen door, which slammed behind them on its spring with a double clack. It was their night out, and they were going to the village, dressed in dark blue. They looked over their shoulders at us and went quickly round the corner. I pretended to make a golfing stroke with my mallet, aiming toward the house, and let go of the handle, so that my mallet flew up on to the porch and skidded along the boards to the wall. When I went up to get it, I looked in through the long dining-room window. Mother was at the other end of the room, with her back turned, standing at the seaward window as if she were staring at the tennis court. Aunt Norah was rocking in the wicker rocking chair. Uncle Tom and Uncle David were walking to and fro, in opposite directions, along the long room, with their hands in their pockets. Nobody seemed to be saying anything. The lamps hadn’t been lighted. I dropped my mallet to the grass, and slid down under the porch railing. The boards of the porch were still warm under my hands.

  —Oh, I’m sick of playing croquet. Let’s go down to the playhouse.

  —But it’s Porper’s bedtime.

  —Porper doesn’t want to go to bed, do you, Porper.

  —No.

  —But, Andy, you know perfectly well——

  —Stop arguing, will you? They’re busy in there.

  We sat on the doorstep of the playhouse, and made cups and saucers out of green acorns for Porper.

  —Look, Porper, we’re having tea, this is what Grandfather showed me how to do.

  —Where is Grandfather.

  —Grandfather has gone away.

  —Where.

  —Oh, a long way, never mind. Drink your cambric tea.

  —What’s cambric tea.

  —Oh, you know what it is, Porper. It’s hot-water-sugar-spoon.

  —What’s hot-water-sugar-spoon.

  —It’s cambric tea. Andy, what were they doing.

  —Do you always want to know everything.

  —If you go spying you might at least tell me.

  —I wasn’t spying.

  —You were, too. You did that on purpose.

  —Did what.

  —Threw your mallet up there on the porch.

  —What if I did. They weren’t doing anything, if that’s what you want to know, they were just talking.

  —What about.

  —How do I know. Nobody was saying anything when I looked in. But they looked as if they were having a quarrel.

  —Is it about Father do you suppose.

  —Why should it be about Father.

  —Because he isn’t here. Because he hasn’t come to
Duxbury this summer.

  —Why should they quarrel about that.

  —But if it isn’t Father, what is it.

  —Look, I can squash my cups and saucers.

  —Why so you can, Porper. Would you like some more? Give him a Ping-pong ball, Andy.

  —There aren’t any. He’s lost or squashed them all. Look Porper, I’ll show you how I climb up into the bicycle shed. Watch me.

  —I want a Ping-pong ball.

  —But there aren’t any more Porper, they’re all gone. We’ll get some more tomorrow.

  He began to cry, and Susan took his hand and led him out again.

  —Would you like to sit on top of Plymouth Rock Junior. And see the frogs and turtles.

  It was getting dark when the horn blew to call us back to the house, the long sad tin horn that Uncle Tom blew from the porch to call us in for meals. But it was Mother who had blown it.

  —Why, Porper, you’ve been crying—my poor lamb—what have you children been doing to him——

  —Nothing, Mother, he’s tired.

  —My poor tired Porper—did you hear Mother blow the tin horn?

  —Let me blow it.

  —We’ll take the horn up to bed with us, shall we?

  —Yes.

  She lifted him up and kissed him, and gave him the horn, and kissed him again, ruffling his short hair with her hand, and put her face against his cheek while he tried to blow the horn. But he only spat into the horn, as he always did, and made a whiffling sound. She opened the screen door with one hand and her foot and took him into the house.