Axis of Aaron

by Johnny B. Truant

  “Those are the ramparts,” said Ebon, pulling a term from his abundant fantasy reading. “Where the dungeon is.”

  “That’s stupid. Why would the dungeon be rundown, while the rest of the place is strong and new?”

  “It’s a dungeon. Prisoners don’t care.” Ebon knew a lot about dungeons and castles — far more, surely, than she did. He searched for impressive miscellany, then said, “Do you know how an iron maiden works?”

  “Just pack it tighter. And you can start working on the moat too.”

  Ebon looked up the coast, toward where the carnival was around the bend. Then he looked at the porch of Aimee’s cottage, where a big, solid-looking man with reddish-blond hair sat not quite reading the newspaper. Every few seconds, the man’s gaze flicked around the paper and fixed on the kids playing in the sand. Ebon had seen that gaze earlier and knew the cool blue eyes behind it. Aimee’s father’s words then had seemed kind, but Ebon couldn’t shake the feeling that he was waiting for the new boy to kidnap his daughter.

  “I don’t even want to make a sandcastle. I want to go to the carnival.”

  Aimee looked up and rolled her eyes at Ebon. They were soft green and somehow insulting. “No, you don’t. You just don’t know any better.”

  Ebon felt annoyed. He knew what he did and didn’t want to do. He certainly “knew better.” She was treating him like he was six years old. She wasn’t merely refusing to go to Aaron’s Party with him (he hadn’t asked — though he could, given his pocket of wealth); she was telling him that the carnival was off limits even if he went by himself. He’d been walking past, minding his own business, on his way to ride the famous Danger Wheel and whatever else the boardwalk had to offer. She’d stopped him and asked him to hand her a turret mold that was slightly outside of her reach. He’d been her slave ever since, lectured about the error of his carnival-seeking ways.

  “I ‘know’ just fine.”

  “You’re just a summer kid,” she said. “You’d get it if you lived here.”

  Ebon didn’t know where to begin his rebuttal. He wanted to ask the girl how she could possibly know he was a summer kid (he began to compile lies in his head to convince her he was a year-rounder, if needed), but he also wanted to attack the repeated idea that he’d “know better” if the carnival wasn’t new to him. Why did the year-round availability of something make it mundane, in and of itself? Couldn’t a carnival be amazing and ever-present? Maybe she was the jaded one.

  Ebon considered arguing for the carnival’s amazingness, but Aimee had a distinct advantage. She had been to it before, and although he’d been looking forward to visiting it himself since springtime, he’d never gone. Anything he said about how great it was would be talking out of his butt, and she’d easily lap him if it turned out to be less amazing than Grams, Pappy, Mom, and Dad had made it sound.

  “Why is it so lame, if you’re so smart?”

  Aimee looked up at Ebon, then put her hands on her hips. He wanted to flinch back; the gesture was like a peacock fanning feathers to display dominance. His eyes flicked to the protrusions in her shirt again, and he was reminded that while he was still just a kid, she was a bona-fide teenager. Obedience in such situations had been firmly embedded at home and in school, through subtle social interactions and a few good-natured beatings.

  “Let me guess: your parents or whoever told you all about the carousel.”

  Ebon sensed a trap. Yes, they most certainly had told him about the carousel. Grams had gone on and on about it, going so far as to show them a book of photos that displayed the old thing from every angle, eventually derailing into an even more boring discussion with his mother about how the horses were all hand sculpted and lovingly touched up regularly by the Aaron council. At that point Ebon had gone downstairs to play Sega.

  “What if they did?”

  “They like it because it’s the kind of thing they did as kids, not because it’s what we want. My dad too. He goes on about it like things were better ‘in my day!’” She mocked her father’s apparent know-it-all tone. “But whatever. He watches all these old TV shows too, so it’s not like he’s with the times.”

  Ebon said nothing. He didn’t watch modern TV shows at all either. He’d found a station that played black-and-white reruns from the '50s: Mr. Ed, Donna Reed, My Three Sons, Leave It To Beaver. He liked them a lot better than contemporary television but wasn’t about to bring that up now, with this girl leading the conversation. She’d either think his worldview was quaint and babyish or lecture him about how women shouldn’t spend all their time clacking around in heels, cooking for their husbands while the men of the house smoked pipes and wore cardigans. There was no way to win that argument, good old days or not.

  “My great-gramma and grandpa paid for it, you know.”

  Ebon looked over.

  “The carousel,” she clarified.

  Ebon turned back to the sandcastle. He wasn’t interested in the castle, but it had just become the lesser of evils. He’d only known Royal-Aimee-of-the-Sand for a half hour, but she’d already blabbed on about the island’s illustrious history and how her family had carried it forward. The great-grandparents in question had practically owned the island; her grandparents had built the cottage just up the sand from them now; the whole family (including, apparently, her father) seemed to be quietly wealthy in an island sort of way — well beyond the dreams of mere mortals like Ebon anyway. And now they’d bought the carnival. Ebon didn’t want to hear it.

  “They were just starting to get the Party up and running,” she went on, “but knew it needed a carousel because little kids like them. They figured they could get parents to buy them rides or whatever.”

  “But you don’t like it,” said Ebon.

  “It might have been okay when I was littler, but it’s whatever now. They’re even talking about taking it apart. Something with the gears and stuff inside. They don’t want to fix it because it’s too expensive. I heard they’re going to do an auction for the horses on it.”

  Ebon blinked. His grandparents talked about the carousel like it was the heart of Aaron’s Party. And the way they talked about Aaron’s Party — having spent their own summers here long before Ebon was around — it was like the Party was the heart of the island.

  “Well, whatever,” Ebon said. “I’m more into the Danger Wheel.”

  Aimee shrugged. Ebon sensed a tiny victory. Her small movement hadn’t held any real condescension, almost as if she hadn’t yet grown too cool for the Danger Wheel.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “My dad hates it.” Aimee turned halfway toward the man on the porch across the sand, who then peered around his newspaper. “He says it ruins the spirit of the Party or something.”

  “How can a Ferris wheel ruin the spirit of a carnival?”

  “He says he’d be okay with a normal Ferris wheel, but not a ‘fancy, newfangled’ one.” Ebon found himself doubting that Mr. Frey had said it exactly that way, but Aimee continued. “Maybe if it were made of old wooden cars and played oldies all the time.” She rolled her eyes again, her crooked tooth reasserting itself as she half smiled, half grimaced. The way Aimee usually held her face, Ebon could tell she was self-conscious about the tooth, but he found it interesting. Just like how he found the mole on her chin interesting. Despite her bossiness, a lot about Aimee was interesting.

  “Is it scary?” Ebon had walked past the boardwalk before, during the daytime, when the colored lights weren’t flashing as a distraction. The huge red-metal structure, wheels on wheels, had still looked terrifying. He was old enough to not be scared by rides, but secretly wasn’t sure he wanted to ride it. Or rather, he both wanted to ride it and didn’t in equal measure.

  Rather than making fun of his question, Aimee returned her attention to the castle, stirring dry and wet sand together and lumping another wing onto Ebon’s side of the palace. Without looking up, she shrugged. “A little. But I don’t know, like, I guess it’s not bad.”

  Ebon didn’
t say anything. His gut wanted to ask Aimee if she wanted to go there with him — just to ride the Danger Wheel, of course; the rest of Aaron’s Party was lame and for babies — but he was sure it would come out wrong. He wasn’t asking her to go on a date or anything and didn’t want her to think he was. But she’d said herself, after she’d accosted him walking the beach, that Aaron’s Party was only fun if you went with someone else. That was how they’d met: with her coming inches from inviting herself along on his errand, using his money for admission.

  “Maybe we could go later,” she said. “Just because, for something to do. You know. So by the way, what are you going to do for work, like when you grow up?”

  Ebon felt he’d missed some of the conversation. Aimee had switched course like a train off its tracks.

  “Um … ”

  “I’m going to be an artist. Perfect for living here, you know? Lots of artists live on islands.”

  “Like who?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. But lots of them. Because you just kind of look out at the ocean and get inspired. Like my mom. She was an artist. Not my dad though. She drove him nuts. He still talks about her, like he’s giving me a tour, as if I might forget her and he wants to make sure I don’t.”

  Ebon was looking mostly down, digging the moat, unwilling to engage in what sounded like an uncomfortable topic.

  “It’s been seven years, and he still cries sometimes,” she said matter-of-factly. “I think it’s why he gave me her old studio and doesn’t care how messy I keep it, even though he always likes things neat.”

  Ebon thought of what she’d shown him, unasked, a few minutes after he’d met her. She’d taken him on a whirlwind tour of the gray-shingled home behind them. They hadn’t gone upstairs (Mr. Frey had followed them inside to observe the tour from a distance, and Ebon got the distinct impression that heading up toward his bedroom or (God forbid) his daughter’s would have been six kinds of forbidden), but he’d seen the downstairs in full. Every room but one had been immaculate and laid out with a mathematician’s precision: every corner squared, everything in its place. The final room — a large, open space filled with in-progress sketches and sculptures and garbage everywhere — was either an art studio or a hobo’s nest.

  “Anyway, it’s not like I’ll need to make money, and that makes it easier. I suppose I could refuse to accept Dad’s money when I’m older, but why? Did you know my gramma started a flower shop?” Ebon opened his mouth, wondering if he was actually supposed to answer, but Aimee forged on before he could. “It’s downtown. But it’s not for money. It’s because she loves flowers and needs something to do. Or needed anyway. She and Grandpa moved to the mainland a year ago when they started having to go to a lot of doctor’s appointments. But don’t worry. They’re doing fine.”

  Ebon gathered that he was supposed to be relieved, but remained mute.

  “So she hired some kids to work in it. I work there sometimes. It’s cool. Mom liked flowers too. But it also gives me something to paint. I like gerbera daisies best. Because they’re so bright. Have you ever painted fresh flowers — like, professionally arranged ones, not just some crappy bouquet someone threw together?”

  “I … ” Ebon began.

  “Even if I don’t need to sell art to live, though, I’ll still want to. My dad threatened to send me off island to work at a McDonald’s if I didn’t ‘learn to appreciate the value of money.’ It’s funny; my rich side is his side, and Mom’s side is the poor side — well, not poor, but you know, not like rich or anything — but he’s still the one who acts like having money isn’t all that great, like it’s not everything, you know?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Ebon agreed.

  “So that’s pretty beaten into me. I started working at The Stalk Market (that’s what it’s called, but ‘stalk’ like ‘stalk’ — ” enunciated carefully, so that Ebon could almost hear the l, “ — not ‘stock,’ get it?) and being responsible and stuff, but I still want to find a way to sell paintings and sculptures and things. Do you do the World Wide Web?”

  Ebon shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “It’s computers and stuff. Dad thinks everyone will shop there eventually, like instead of stores. So I figure, why not find a way to do that? With art and stuff?”

  “How?” Ebon asked, not really caring.

  Aimee shrugged. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “What are you going to do when you grow up?”

  Ebon bristled. He didn’t like the implication that he wasn’t as grown-up as her. Then he wondered if playing Sega counted as a career choice. He didn’t have family money, but thought that a warning job at McDonald’s was a real possibility.

  “Dunno.”

  “Well, what are you into?”

  Another shrug.

  “You have to be into something. Whatever you like, that should be your job.”

  Ebon thought about his parents. According to Aimee, both of them had done it wrong. His mother was a lawyer, and his father talked to people about the thoughts in their heads that bothered them. Neither seemed to have much fun other than on weekends and infrequent vacations.

  “I like working with people.” Then he added something his father had said once, offhandedly, after watching Ebon organize a group of sparring kids into a team at a science fair. Dad had said it as a joke, but Ebon had thought about it later, mulled it over, asked around, and decided he found it interesting. He repeated his father’s sarcastic phrase to Aimee now, this time straight-faced: “‘Making connections.’ Getting the best out of people, so they can do cool things together.”

  She almost laughed. “But you’re so quiet!”

  Ebon felt himself gain the upper hand. So there was something on which Aimee of the Sand wasn’t an authority after all. But still, as much as Ebon wanted to show off, the sandcastle suddenly felt more important than holding the spotlight under her insistent gaze.

  “Do you think it needs another wing?” He pointed across the sand. “Over there?”

  Aimee seemed disoriented, but then shoved the molds at him and pointed to a different place. “No. There.”

  “Why?”

  “There’d be a main house, wouldn’t there?” She’d already argued for a realistic sandcastle several times. Ebon suspected it came from a desire to frame the endeavor as sculpture rather than childish play. He liked to putter, and had made several failed sandcastles near his grandparents’ place, where the cottage-dwellers shared a common public beach. He was aimless when he worked alone, content to see where things went. Aimee, on the other hand, was clearly more focused and intentional … at least until her focus and intention inevitably drifted to leave another unfinished project behind.

  “Okay,” said Ebon.

  The career conversation forgotten, Aimee again became the overbearing foreman. She pointed and nudged, commanding Ebon to do all the work while she sat back and squinted, making a film director’s framing fingers as if assessing a shot. She ordered him to mix sand, add sticks into the molds for support, told him where to dig sand away and where to leave it lest it cause a collapse. She had definite opinions as to what should go into an otherwise arbitrary castle and what shouldn’t.

  “Good enough,” she finally said, looking down.

  Ebon followed her gaze. It actually wasn’t very good at all. The castle had a lot of sprawl, but it was clearly unfinished. Aimee had grown bored. He’d be free to head down to Aaron’s Party now, if he still wanted to go. She’d flit to something else, her itch scratched enough to leave him alone, their work completely incomplete.

  Ebon was up on his knees, molding one of the keep walls. He sat back down then looked up and said, “So when you work at the flower shop … that’s just like tossing a bunch of roses together, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’re just reselling stuff. I was wondering why you’d like it if it’s just, like, being a clerk. Especially if you don’t have to be there. W
ouldn’t you rather stay home and make art or something?”

  Aimee blinked. “Arranging flowers is an art.”

  “Like how stacking books in a pile is an art.” Ebon half laughed, then looked up and saw that Aimee was serious.

  “No, really. Do you know what ikebana is?”

  “Icky what?”

  “Ikebana. The Japanese art of flower arrangement. I don’t like it, really, too many straight lines and rules for me. You’d probably like it fine. But they get the idea right, and they understand what I guess you don’t. It’s more than just shoving flowers in a container, you know. It’s a way to get closer to nature by doing art, so long as you’re paying attention. It’s just like any art though. You get some basic materials, which happen to be branches, leaves, grasses, and blooms. And then the artist — ” she put her tented fingers against her chest, “ — has to find the right color combinations and stuff. You know: the most organic shapes, the most graceful lines. And most importantly, the meaning in it all.”

  “Oh,” said Ebon.

  “A lot of people don’t know that.”

  Ebon sure hadn’t. Nor did he care. But she’d been moving her hands in the sand as she’d been speaking, making subtle corrections to the castle without conscious thought, shifting elements by millimeters until they were nearer to perfect. As she’d been working the castle, his hands had been behind hers — refining edges, adding just the right shell accents, following her lead with improvement.

  “Now,” he said, “I think it’s done.”

  Aimee looked down. She seemed surprised. “Oh.” Her fingers trailed the wall, along the parapets, down into the large sandy courtyard. Watching her, it looked like she was seeing something new, something she’d never seen before. But Aimee’s hands had shaped most of it while her mind had been elsewhere. Ebon’s eye had made it better.

  “Do you agree it’s done?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Better than before?”

  Another nod. Then she looked up. “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”