Setting Free the Kites

by Alex George

  Then without warning Nathan reached into his pocket and pulled out a penknife. Before I knew what was happening, with one quick motion he cut through the line. The kite spiraled upward until it vanished into the clouds.

  “What did you do that for?” I demanded.

  “My dad wouldn’t have wanted his kites trapped in that workshop.” Nathan smiled at me sadly. “He may be buried in the ground, but I can still set his kites free.”

  —

  IN THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED, Nathan and I walked back to Sebbanquik Point most days after school. I never saw Mrs. Tilly on those visits, but I certainly heard her. The door to her study remained shut, but the rhythmic clatter of typewriter keys could be heard throughout the house. I marveled at her industry; she never stopped, not even when she lit another cigarette—which, judging by the wisps of smoke that were always curling beneath the study door, she did every few minutes. I thought about Nathan’s theory that there was never any paper in the typewriter. I imagined Mrs. Tilly hunched over the keys, telling stories to nobody but herself.

  Nathan and I didn’t spend much time in the house. Each afternoon we hurried out to his father’s workshop and took another brightly colored kite off the wall. We trooped down to the beach and, standing amid his mother’s silent crowd of stone onlookers, launched each one heavenward, feeling the caress of the late-summer breezes shiver down the line.

  While we watched the kites dance over our heads, Nathan told me stories from before they’d come to Maine. He told me about epic fishing expeditions with his father, crazy road trips, and domestic adventures involving exotic species of wildlife I’d never heard of. He told me about driving into the Texas desert in search of the dry winds that whipped across the hot, empty scrubland. They would pull off the road and throw his father’s kites into the huge white sky. My own stories about growing up in Maine seemed pedestrian in comparison, but Nathan was interested in hearing about the amusement park. He wanted to know everything about the place. He made me promise that I would take him there soon.

  It was only when Nathan pulled out his penknife that we stopped talking. He would cut the string, and then we would silently watch as the kite climbed higher and higher into the sky, until we could no longer see even the faintest speck of color.

  We walked back to the house without saying a word.

  SIX

  My father, Samuel Carter, was a serious man who had the misfortune to be destined to be involved in an unserious business. It was a burden that he did not wear lightly.

  This burden manifested itself in physical form: specifically, thirteen acres of less-than-prime real estate, located just south of the Haverford city limits. On those thirteen acres there existed a magical world, full of enchantment, excitement, and fun. That, at least, was what the brochure said.

  The name of this magical world was Fun-A-Lot.

  From Memorial Day to Labor Day, the elaborately filigreed gates of Fun-A-Lot opened to welcome visitors who had had their fill of the natural glories that Maine had to offer and were looking for some man-made entertainment.

  And what entertainment it was. At Fun-A-Lot a person could step back in time to the days of Arthurian legend. The court of Camelot had been re-created on the coast of southern Maine—OLDE ENGLAND IN NEW ENGLAND, as the legend above the gates put it. Teenage knights clanked about in ill-fitting plastic armor and damsels swept up and down the pathways in bodices garlanded with ribbons. There were jousting contests every afternoon: park employees mounted two tiny Shetland ponies and charged gently at each other, wielding plastic lancets for the edification of the watching crowds.

  All the traditional amusement park entertainments were on offer, as well. There were devices designed to make visitors lose their lunch by sending them rocketing skyward or plunging toward the earth at unnatural velocities and angles. There was a Tilt-a-Whirl, bumper cars, and a large Ferris wheel. A roller coaster built on an elaborate scaffold of crosshatched wood soared over the other attractions. The excited screams of the riders could be heard throughout the park.

  There were also more sedate pleasures to be enjoyed: booths where visitors could throw darts at playing cards, or pitch a baseball, or try to hook plastic ducks with a wooden pole. And because this was fantasy, not real life, every stall had a large sign that read: PRIZE GUARANTEED EVERY TIME. Children all longed for the five-foot-tall furry lobster on display in each booth; instead they won rivers of Taiwanese flotsam: giant sunglasses, glow-in-the-dark whistles, and erasers shaped like footballs.

  All park employees wore medieval costumes and were required to talk in English accents and address guests using antiquated turns of phrase—the air was ripe with verilys, sires, and prithee, fair maidens. My father insisted on teaching all new recruits this mangled argot himself. His own English accent was a hybrid of down-east Maine and faux Cockney. It made Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins sound like Laurence Olivier. In a way it was perfect, this mauling of the English language. From the logo of the local dentist that was emblazoned in the center of every knight’s shield to the faded pennants that flew from the molded plastic turrets, the whole place was a riot of artificiality, a festival of cheese.

  But authenticity was never really the point. When I was younger my father had bought a miniature golf course from an amusement park that was going out of business in Oklahoma. He had shipped the whole thing halfway across the country on two giant trucks and rebuilt it, hole for hole. Unfortunately the park in Oklahoma had had a Wild West theme, and consequently the golf course was decorated with cacti and teepees and gin joints in dusty border towns, rather than castles in the English countryside. Every winter my father promised himself that he would turn all the gunslinging cowboys into wizards and court jesters, and the squaws into medieval maidens, but he never had the time. And so the cowboys and Injuns remained amid the tranquillity of Arthurian England, rifles drawn and tomahawks raised, like a weird glitch in the space-time continuum.

  Refreshments, too, were anachronistic and of an unmistakably American variety. The concession stand did a brisk trade in plastic baskets of fried chicken, hot dogs and hamburgers, and alarmingly yellow popcorn.

  My father had a joke he liked to tell. How do you make a small fortune in the amusement park business? he would ask. Well, you start with a large fortune . . . I had heard him deliver this line more times than I could count, and he always told it with the same wry smile that meant it wasn’t really a joke at all. The profit margins were impossibly narrow. It cost an awful lot to deliver a summer’s worth of fun on that scale, and my father had only a handful of weeks each year to recoup the money to pay for it all. He fretted his way through every day of the summer season. He was spoiled for choice when it came to things to worry about, but there were two fears that particularly weighed down his already embattled psyche. It was entirely typical of my father that they were the two things he was incapable of doing anything about.

  Fear of fire was the thing most likely to keep my father awake at night. Ever since amusement parks had been built, so had they been incinerated. Entire parks had been swallowed by infernos, razed to the ground by a single wayward spark. My father would gloomily stare up at the roller coaster’s immense wooden scaffolding and call it fun-size kindling. He compulsively checked fire extinguishers and ran weekly fire drills, yelling at staff with the apoplectic zeal of an army sergeant.

  But no amount of precautionary drills could do anything about the weather.

  When it rained, nobody came. People didn’t want to watch jousting contests or go on the Ferris wheel if it meant getting soaked by drizzle whipping in off the Atlantic. It took only a few wet days more than the seasonal average to wipe out the park’s profits for the year. The little transistor radio in my father’s office was tuned to an oldies station that gave the local forecast every fifteen minutes, and his eyes were always flickering skyward, on the hunt for the first treacherous whiff of dark cloud. The gloomier
the meteorological outlook, the more morose my father became. Whose bright idea was it to start a business in Maine that depends on sunshine to make money? he would complain every time it rained. Who would be crazy enough to contemplate such a thing?

  —

  MY GRANDFATHER, Ronald Carter, had been crazy enough, although it’s doubtful he ever thought about the weather. He was never in it for the money.

  Grandpa Ronald had been toiling quietly away behind a desk in an insurance adjustment agency in Augusta, processing claims and checking boxes, when he discovered that a wealthy second cousin in Peoria, Illinois, had died without leaving a will, and that he was her closest living relative. It did not take him long to decide what to do with the money that had unexpectedly landed in his lap. As a youth, my grandfather had loved tales of Arthurian legend. He used to lie in his bedroom reading those stories of heroic derring-do, ardently wishing that he lived centuries ago and half a world away. Now—this was in 1946—he bought a parcel of land by the coast and spent a sizable portion of his inheritance turning his childhood obsession into his own peculiar reality. Visitors were always welcome to pay the entrance fee and enjoy the attractions, but my grandfather built Fun-A-Lot for himself. He spent every waking hour in the park, cocooned within those plastic ramparts. He was always too busy enjoying himself to spend much time with his only son.

  When my father realized that he would never be able to compete with the park for Grandpa Ronald’s affections, he began to hate the place. While he was growing up, he was the only kid in his class who didn’t have a summer job there. Instead he took backbreaking work on blueberry farms, harvesting the crops. After high school he escaped to the University of Maine, where he studied fine arts. I’ve always suspected that his choice of degree was really an act of self-defense, as far removed from my grandfather’s world as he could get. During the summer months he bused tables at restaurants in Orono, refusing to return to Haverford while the park was open. He began to envisage a future for himself, one free of cotton candy and penny arcades.

  Over the years Grandpa Ronald developed an inviolable routine of unabashed hedonism during the summer season. Each morning he sat in the front car of the roller coaster for the first ride of the day. He gripped the metal bar and screamed and yelled along with everyone else as the cars hurtled through corkscrew turns at stomach-churning speeds. The morning of June 23, 1959, was no different. He strapped himself into the safety harness and waved to the ride operator as the roller coaster trundled away from the platform and began its first climb into the sky.

  Perhaps it is possible to have too much fun. Perhaps there is a limit on the amount of delight that one person is permitted in their lifetime, and Grandpa Ronald had just used up his quota. Perhaps his daily diet of greasy, high-cholesterol fare from the concession stand came home to roost. Whatever the reason, when the cars came to a shuddering halt two minutes and forty-seven seconds later, my grandfather was no longer shrieking along with his fellow fun seekers. As the rest of the crowd clambered out of their seats, none of them noticed that the passenger in the front car was no longer moving. Somewhere along those swooping parabolas, a massive heart attack had ripped the life out of him. Thanks to the tight-fitting safety harness, he remained bolt upright in his seat, and nobody realized what had happened. He was sent on two more rides before the operator noticed that the boss’s head was slumped forward as the cars pulled in.

  I’ve often thought Grandpa Ronald probably wouldn’t have objected to those last valedictory spins around the roller-coaster track. He went out doing what he loved best. But his unexpected death condemned my father to precisely the fate he had been working so hard to avoid. My grandmother had tolerated her husband’s obsession with the park with resigned patience, but she had no interest in overseeing operations herself. The morning after the funeral she begged Sam to abandon his studies and return to Haverford. Revenues were steady, expenses under control—it was a viable, modestly profitable business, she told him, but any sale now would be disastrous. The vultures would be circling, sensing blood. The rides could be dismantled and sold, but she wouldn’t get more than a few cents on the dollar for them. And nobody would ever want to buy the land.

  As Sam listened to his mother, a small geyser of disappointment welled up inside him, and it had been bubbling away quietly ever since. To his chagrin, he found himself skewered by both guilt and filial duty. Even in death his father was as selfish as ever, derailing his plans. He couldn’t allow Grandpa Ronald’s dream to be sold off at a knockdown price. Besides, the town needed the park. Without it, the tourist trade would pass Haverford by. Kids needed summer vacation jobs. Nobody came knocking, begging him to save the town, but my father knew what he had to do. He quietly packed up his dreams, quit his studies, and drove back to Haverford, to his destiny.

  —

  IN THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED, Sam remained a reluctant steward of his father’s legacy, but he discovered consolation in unexpected places.

  During his second season in charge, he noticed the green-eyed beauty in admissions who tallied up each day’s take. When he finally summoned up the courage to talk to her, she told him that her name was Mary and that she was home for the summer, staying with her parents and saving as much as she could before her final year at Smith. He had laughed anxiously at that. They had dinner two nights later. When she left for Massachusetts that fall, Sam was not sure how he was ever going to live without her. At Christmas, he gave her a ring. My parents were married a week before Fun-A-Lot opened its gates for the next season. They never had a honeymoon.

  The frenetic chaos of the summer months was nothing but a torment for my father. He spent every minute of those long days wheeling from one potential disaster to the next. By Labor Day he was like an exhausted boxer, pummeled and on the ropes. The park was not much better. Sun-faded paint peeled off every surface; tired motors coughed and spluttered. Every fall my father gently tended the place back to health. He repaired whatever had broken over the course of the season, a process that took a little longer each year. He stripped down and rebuilt each tired piece of equipment, trying to stave off decrepitude. Fixing things with his hands was its own reward, and he relished the solitude of the deserted park after the crowded hysteria of the summer. But his greatest pleasure he saved for when winter descended, and the cold and snow drove him inside to the workshop.

  Unlike his father, Sam never rode the rides himself. He regarded them primarily as contraptions that were liable to go wrong. There was one exception: my father adored the park’s antique carousel. As a child he’d been bewitched by the spectacle of the wooden horses prancing by, three abreast. He had loved to cling on to those elegant equine necks and ride in ceaseless, ecstatic orbits. He loved the bright pipe organ melodies and the delighted squeals of his fellow riders—these gentle pleasures were far more intoxicating than the daredevil thrills on offer elsewhere. He could stay there all day, riding his chosen mount as it moved up and down its silver pole.

  The carousel’s charms had never faded for my father. It stood in pride of place at the center of the park and still drew the longest lines every summer. Like everything else, it was in need of constant care and attention. The horses were old, their saddles worn thin by the backsides of thousands of holidaymakers. And so each winter, when the snow came, my father retired one horse from duty and carved a new one from scratch. Every Memorial Day there would be a gleaming new steed waiting to be ridden, still smelling of fresh paint and varnish.

  But Sam loved the old carousel horses too much to let them go. He kept them all in a corner of his workshop, a cavalry of retired stallions. Their painted coats were faded, but still they stamped and snorted, teeth bared and forelegs raised for the next step that would never be taken.

  SEVEN

  If my father’s sentiments about the amusement park were mixed, my own were less complicated. I loved the place, simply and without equivocation.

  When I
was younger I spent all my summers at Fun-A-Lot. During the season my father would bring me to work with him every day while my mother stayed home with Liam. I would roam up and down the gravel pathways from morning to dusk, free to go wherever I liked. By the time I was six I knew every inch of the place as intimately as I knew the corners of my own bedroom. The smell of pastry baking in the kitchen every morning for that day’s cream horns was more familiar to me than my mother’s own cooking. The fact that there were a couple of thousand strangers swarming everywhere didn’t make it feel any less like home.

  But for all that I was surrounded by people all day, my existence was a solitary one back then. I was allowed to clamber on and off the rides as I wished, as long as there was no line. I learned the ebb and flow of the crowds and knew which rides were most popular at which time of day. There were children everywhere, of course, but I was too shy to talk to them. Instead I constructed epic adventures in my head, creating new worlds out of the one I knew so well. There was a secret trapdoor in the haunted house that led to a magical place where the ghosts were real. If you gripped the handles of the Tilt-a-Whirl in a particular way, it would spin you into another dimension so that when you climbed off the ride, you had stepped back in time. I discovered that if I ate cherry-flavored cotton candy while walking counterclockwise around the carousel, I became totally invisible for ten minutes.