by Conrad Aiken
—Well if Uncle David thinks I’ll hang round here all afternoon for the pleasure of getting my feet dirty hoeing the tennis court, he’s got another guess coming. I’m going down to see if I can find Sanford. And if I find him I’ll take him out for a row in the dory. You can tell Uncle David to put that in his pipe and smoke it.
—Good-by, and good riddance.
—Keep the change.
Would Father really be coming back to Duxbury, and what did he mean about Mother’s being alone. Was she going away somewhere. And would we stay with Father in Cambridge, unless they bought the new house in Milton. And here it was August already, and no signs of a picnic! I climbed half way up the windmill, and then came down again. The leg nearest the house was getting looser, and ought to be fixed. Uncle Tom said it would have to be bedded in concrete—they would dig a hole and pour concrete in it. In a strong wind, when the windmill was pumping, you could see the whole leg lift up a little, sometimes almost a half an inch.
—Uncle Tom, I thought I’d ask Sanford to come out for a row with me, Uncle David doesn’t seem to be coming back to do the tennis court, and I thought maybe I’d take a bucket along and get some clams for supper. Do you think it would be a good idea.
—Well, I’m afraid as a matter of fact, Andy, your Aunt Norah has already ordered some, from Gerald Soule. Still, if you want to get a few more——
—You bet I will.
—Not too many, mind you.
—Are you fixing the box kite so we can take Porper for a ride in his cart with it. Do you remember the time when it carried him right across the tennis court, and into the field, and upset him?
—Yes, I thought we’d get it out and fix it. All it needs is this one cross strut—and I believe there are some left-over battens down in the bicycle house——
He was pulling his chin and staring at the box kite on the grass, and humming to himself in that queer mournful way without any tune in it, the red cloth of the box kite flickering stiffly in the wind, and I ran then down the hill past the playhouse, and jumped with a long jump over the wall covered with poison ivy and walked through the blackberry jungle, feeling the thorns catch hold of my sneakers and try to rip them.
When I got to the Soules’, Molly was swinging in the swing by herself, as usual, and said Sanford had gone to Plymouth in a motorboat with his mother. He wouldn’t be back till supper time. And not then, if they got stuck in the mud.
—Whose boat is it.
—Mr. Pigeon’s.
—Pigeons for ducks.
—My mother was invited to go, but she couldn’t.
—Didn’t they invite you, Molly?
—No, Sanford doesn’t like me. Would you like to try my swing?
—No, thanks, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to dig some clams.
—Could I come with you?
—Sure, if you like. If we have time, I might take you out in my dory.
We went across the golf links, keeping an eye out for balls, but there weren’t any, and then walked down the drive past Powder Point Hall. Molly kept wanting to hold my hand and then letting it go again. She said that her mother worked in the afternoons at Powder Point Hall, washing dishes, and wanted to stop and look in the windows to see if she could see her, but a lot of ladies were coming down the side steps and I walked quickly ahead, so that she came running after me and took hold of my hand again. We went past the Horse Monument and through the woods, where I showed her our houses, and she would have liked to stay there, but I took her down to the beach near the hunting box and told her to wait there without moving till I fetched the bucket and spade. I told her I was responsible for her, because she was small, and made her promise. If she would promise I might take her back to the houses afterwards.
When I got back, with the spade and bucket, she was crying. She was wiping her eyes with her thin dress, and I could see her white drawers. They weren’t very clean.
—What are you crying about. Do you want to go home.
—No.
—Well, then, what are you crying for.
—I won’t tell you.
—All right, then you can go home. I don’t want any crybabies with me.
—It was your mother.
—What do you mean.
—Your mother, she scolded me. She came out of that little house, and she was angry with me when she saw me. She said I ought not to be here alone, and I said you were coming back, and then she went away——
I put down the spade and bucket on the sand and went to the back of the hunting box, up above it, on the bluff, and looked down at it. Should I go and look into it, to see if there were any bottles there. No, it was like spying, or sneaking. The little door at the back was half open, and there wasn’t any sound, probably there was no one inside, but I didn’t like to go and look. Suppose Uncle David should be there, reading a book. Or drinking out of a bottle. And pretending that he didn’t know Molly and I were right there on the beach.
I gave Molly the bucket to carry, and I took the spade, and we went down through the beds of eelgrass to the mud flats, and began walking to and fro, pressing the mud with our feet, to see where the clams squirted. I began digging, and got some clams, but we put back all the small ones.
—Which way did my mother go.
—She went straight across to the pine woods.
—And there wasn’t anybody with her, Molly.
—No.
—And you’re sure she came out of the hunting-box?
—Yes.
—You saw her come out of it?
—Yes.
———and it wasn’t that I hadn’t tried to do my Latin lesson, either, because I had sat in my room all evening, with the kerosene lamp on the table beside the wildflower book, turning the flame down to stop it from smoking, and the mosquitoes humming on the hot window screens as loudly as if they were in the room, and Susan thrashing about in her bed in the room across the hall, and talking in her sleep, or groaning—how could I remember. Susan, will you keep still, please. Well, how can I get to sleep with this light on my ceiling. You’ve done it before, you can do it again, it isn’t my fault if they didn’t build the partitions up to the ceiling, is it? Well, anyway. Well, anyway! And how can I study Latin if you make all that noise. Who asked you to, I don’t care about your Latin, I want to go to sleep. Well, for goodness sake, go to sleep and let me learn this verb.
—I’m afraid you’ve got to do better than this, Andy. You’ve got only two weeks now till I have to examine you, you know. I think you’d better begin reviewing. And I think we’d better not do any more sailing.
He told me to tell Uncle Tom, and to ask Uncle Tom to hear me recite the verbs and nouns. I had a chocolate milk shake at the drugstore, and ate the thick brown froth off the top with a spoon. On the way home, I watched the tide spilling out over the dam, and afterwards went into the long bowling alley, at the edge of the marsh, to watch the livery stable men bowling. Smiley let me throw one of his balls, but I missed, and it went along the groove at the side. I didn’t want to go back to Powder Point at all. I wanted to go to Boston. I walked slowly along the Point Road until I got to the Soules’, and went down to the dyke, where Father had shown me how to whip-throw with apples. Then I walked all the way along the beach until I got to the Tupper landing stage, with the canoe on it. It was wet, and the paddles beside it were wet, somebody had been out in it. Perhaps Gwendolyn. I had never been out in a canoe. Why did they never ask me to go. Was it because I had been so foolish about Gwendolyn. I took up one of the paddles, and found it was much lighter than my oars. That must be because a canoe was so much lighter than a dory. I put it down again and looked quickly up towards the Tupper lawn to see if any one was there, but there was nobody, and I climbed up the grass slope past the imitation windmill and pushed through the oak bushes on the other side of the road and went down to the little pond below the Wardman house. Had the Tuppers been up into the marshes towards Brant Rock, along my favorite channel. And at low ti
de, too. Where Uncle David was always taking Mother. In that deep, steep channel, with the sides of stiff, red mud and the marsh reeds growing out of it. Where the tide was so swift that you could hardly row against it. Was that where they had been. Did they go up all the way, and find that last hidden turning, the narrow one that led almost up to the Long Beach. Perhaps a canoe could go even farther up, at high tide, than a dory. And much farther than a motorboat, of course.
I sat down under the cherry tree by Plymouth Rock Junior, and felt tired. I wanted to lie down. I wanted to stretch out as if I were in bed. I put the Latin grammar on the grass, and ground my forehead against it, as if it were a pillow, pressing my feet against the base of the rock. I wanted to be asleep. I wanted to be dead. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I closed my eyes and counted to five hundred by fives, and then said first the worst—second the same—third the best of all the game—the rhyme Mother always said for Porper when she blew out the light. One—two—three! Out. Goes. She. But I couldn’t get to sleep, so I opened my eyes, and watched the cherry leaves moving against the sky, and the clusters of wild cherries, which would soon be ripe. And I remembered the time when Susan and I had eaten too many, and Father made us drink a cup of mustard and water and we were both sick.
———the day of the storm, when the thunder went and came all day, moving in a great circle round the shore of the bay, crossing darkly over Kingston and Plymouth, from behind the Standish Monument, but never getting as far as South Duxbury, and then moving out to sea over the black hills at Manomet, the lightning stabbing down vividly from the belly of black cloud into the mass of white rain that hung over Plymouth and the sea, the thunder almost continuous. Before lunch, the wind rose to a steady scream, but on Powder Point the sun still shone brightly, and we tried to have archery practice. The wind blew the arrows every which way, blew our words back into our mouths, and Porper was always being flung down on the grass, and saying that he couldn’t breathe.
—Porper, you silly, stand here behind the corner of the porch, it’s nice and quiet here, you can watch the lightning just as well from here.
—What lightning.
—You see, the lightning over there, over Plymouth. And just listen to the thunder it sounds like lions.
—Where are the lions.
—At the zoo, don’t you remember?
—I want to see the lions.
Uncle David went in and got the box kite with the two enormous reels of twine, and Uncle Tom said we ought not to try it, the wind was too strong, and it might break away, but Uncle David laughed and said no, it was all right, he would hang on to it, and hitch it to the cart and give Porper a ride across the tennis court, or even down to the end of the Point. The wind almost blew it out of his hands when he took it out to the tennis court, and then he lifted it up over his head, staggering, and let go of it, while Uncle Tom ran past the porch with the cord, and the red kite gave a swoop to one side and then began to go up so fast that Uncle Tom just let the cord whizz through his glove, while the reel danced up and down on the ground at his feet.
—Andy. Susan. Go and get the cart. Where is the cart.
I pulled the cart from under the porch, but as soon as we tied the cord to the handle and tried to let it go the kite dragged it over on its side and yanked it in leaps and bounds over the tennis court, so that we had to sit on it and stop it. Uncle Tom and Uncle David both had hold of the cord, but it kept on pulling them step by step towards the Walker house, while Mother untied the cart again. It was hard to hear what people were saying in the wind.
—We’ll never be able to get it down.
—Of course we can.
—Everybody take hold, come on Doris, and you, Andy, and we’ll see if we can pull it back and make it fast to the porch.
We all pulled, but we couldn’t budge it. We stood there, holding it and watching it. It was high up, and seemed almost halfway to the end of the Point.
—Can we send up some messengers, Uncle Tom.
—No, I don’t think we’d better—we’ve got our hands full as it is——
—Susan could cut them out.
—We might manage to make it fast to the Walkers’ barn——
Susan was just running in to cut out the paper messengers, the little rings of paper to send up the cord, when suddenly there was a twang, the cord had snapped, and we all took a step backward, so that Uncle Tom almost had to sit down.
—It’s gone. As I thought.
We stood there, all of us, in the wind, and watched it go. It got smaller and smaller and in a few minutes we couldn’t see it at all. It was going straight out towards Provincetown, across Massachusetts Bay.
In the afternoon the wind dropped almost as suddenly as it had begun, but the clouds were gathering again behind the Standish Monument, getting blacker and blacker. Everything became silent. The trees and bushes were as still as if they were listening. We played bean bag in the sitting room with Porper, until Porper got silly and wanted to throw the pine-needle cushion at the board instead of the bean bag, so then we played the battleship card game, but Porper always wanted to have the Amphitrite and the Vesuvius, so he and Susan played croquinole, while I went down to the playhouse to study Latin. When I went out, Mother and Uncle David were standing on the porch, looking across the bay with the telescope.
—Are you going to the playhouse, Andy?
—Yes.
—Ten to one you’ll get wet on the way back.
—I don’t care.
In the playhouse it was almost too dark to read, so I left the door open; and I could watch the lightning behind the monument, and see the oak leaves beginning to stir again in an icy-cold draught of air that seemed to come very low over the ground. This was going to be a humdinger, and no mistake. What Aunt Norah always called a shingle-ripper, because it sounded as if the shingles were being ripped off the roof when the lightning and thunder came so close. Utor, fruor, fungor, potior, and vescor. The ablative absolute. Who wanted to know about ablatives. And what silly names they had for them, anyway. I went through the fourth declension three times, reciting it’ aloud while I bounced a cracked Ping-pong ball against the partition of the bicycle shed. That. And that. And that. And that. And then suddenly the wind came, and whirled half the pages in the book, and the window screen whistled, and when I went to the door I saw that the water in front of the Standish Hotel had gone completely white. I was afraid, but excited. Perhaps I’d better go back to the house, and be with the others. Before the storm actually got to us across the bay.
I closed the window and door and ran up the slope. By the time I got to the house the wind was so strong that it almost took me off my feet. I saw Uncle Tom standing at the base of the windmill, looking first upward at the top of it, with his eyes shaded by his hand, and then down at the foot. When I joined him he pointed to the leg of the windmill nearest to the house and then put his mouth close to my cheek and shouted.
—I’m afraid it will go over. We’ll have to lash it. Do you think you could climb—I’ll get the clothes line.
He went into the kitchen, while I stood and watched the windmill. The slender steel leg was heaving out of the ground and then settling again, four inches at a time. The mill was shut off, but spinning just the same, and pumping slowly; the wind was so irregular that whenever it caught the wheel broadside on, it whirled it and at the same time pushed it so violently that the whole frame of steel seemed to tug out of the ground. The diagonal struts were singing like telephone wires. I stood on the lowest strut and the leg lifted me right up with it.
Uncle Tom came back with the coil of clothes line.
Do you think you could climb up. You’re nimbler than I am. Are you afraid.
—No.
—All right, then, take this, and climb up to the third crosspiece and make it fast to this leg, above and below the crosspiece, and then carry the rope round the next leg, that one and then back again round this one. Do you see what I mean?
I took the co
il of rope and climbed up the little galvanized iron steps, one at a time, with my khaki trousers flattened against my legs like boards, hardly able to breathe, and stepped out on the crosspiece. The whole windmill was rocking like the mast of a boat. I lowered myself to straddle the gray crosspiece and dropped the coil over the corner of it and brought it up, twice, and made three square knots, the way Mr. Dearing had showed me, and then slid along to the other leg and looped the rope twice over and under the crosspiece there.
—Now the same thing with the first one again.
I slid back and did it.
—Now drop me the rope. And come down. Before you get blown down.
He yelled this up at me, grinning, and I dropped the coil to him, and he went towards the kitchen porch with it. When I got there he had taken half a dozen turns round a post with it and was knotting it.
—That ought to hold. What do you think.
—If the post will hold, Uncle Tom.
—Oh, the post will hold all right. I’m not so sure about the rope.
We went back to the windmill and watched it. The leg was still lifting, but not so much, the rope was holding it down. The first rain was beginning, coming in large fierce drops, almost horizontally, separate and stinging, and smacking against the side of the house as loudly as hailstones. Aunt Norah came round the corner to the edge of the porch and shouted something.
—What did you say?
She put her hands to her mouth.
—If it’s all right——
—Yes, it’s all right.
—You’d better come in—Doris and David——
—What?
—Come in.
—All right, we’re coming.
It got dark very suddenly, and as we ran along the side porch I saw a lightning-flash crawl quite slowly down behind the statue of Miles Standish, a pale lilac color, very bright, and almost as slow as if it were being drawn down with a pen. I remembered what Father said about counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder, a second to a mile, and started to count, but the crash came between the first count and the second, a terrific shingle-ripper, and so low and close that it seemed to go right over my hair. As I dived round the corner to the sheltered part of the porch at the front the rain made me shut my eyes, but I could still see the little black figure of Miles Standish with the sword stroke of light behind him. What was this about Doris and David. Uncle Tom was holding the screen door for me, but it got away from him just as I went in, and clapped back against the wall. Then he pulled it shut by main force, against the wind, which sang through it, and closed the inside door, and we were in the dining-room-and-sitting-room, where everything seemed quiet by contrast, and the lamps were lit, one of them hanging on chains over the dining-table, the other over the table at the other end of the room, with a bowl of bayberry leaves. I could hear Porper shouting to Susan upstairs. Aunt Norah was holding her spectacles in her hand and wiping the rain off her cheek.