Carry the Sky

by Kate Gray

  “Don’t assign them,” Kyle said under the blanket.

  Smart kid. “You’re funny.”

  “Am not.” The blanket was red over the lump of his head. “Do you like Mr. Jeffers?”

  I couldn’t see his eyes, if they went clear like he knew nothing, or if they smiled like he knew something about Alex and me in the bathroom at the faculty party. Maybe his eyes didn’t land on anything, and he was dropping depth charges, seeing what came up.

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “No.”

  “Mr. Song?” This kid is younger than I thought.

  “I like all the faculty, the men and the women.” My stomach felt gray like the sky right after saying that. “But not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?” His voice came out quiet from under the blanket.

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “Mr. Song likes Carla.” There was no question in his voice, kind of a statement like a stalk laid out in the cornfield.

  “And you know this because . . .”

  “Like, at dinner, he looks where she’s sitting. They walk around a lot, sometimes at night. And he folds things for her and leaves them in trees.”

  “He does not.” It’s weird what this kid sees.

  “Does too.” He sat up, stripped the blanket off his head. “A week ago, I saw Mr. Song put one in a tree by the boathouse. It was a ­­­dinosaur. I got it.” His face was red. His eyes were big now, not squinty.

  “You took it?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think it would get anyone in trouble. I just wanted to see,” he said. He looked at me square. His eyes were close together. “Honest, I wouldn’t have if I’d known.”

  “No one’s in trouble,” I said, “but you said he left it for Carla.”

  “It was a good guess after you talking about her rowing and uniform motion,” he said. Under the blanket something rustled around. Then, a hand reached out, and a tiny dinosaur was in it, the tight folds, the bright colors of paper, almost silk. “I put two and two together.”

  His palm was a sweaty pillow with brown in the creases. The origami dinosaur looked soft when it should have looked crisp. The purple pattern wasn’t distinct against the white background, the white not so white in Kyle’s hand.

  “Yeah, well, don’t jump to conclusions,” I said. I leaned toward him and gave the side of his arm a little tap. I wanted to grab the dinosaur, ruin any evidence that Jack and Carla were something. And I didn’t know why I wanted to shut the little guy up.

  That touch on his arm shocked him again. The dinosaur launched out of his hand. I ducked, and the dinosaur landed in my lap.

  “Kyle,” I said, “it’s okay.” And I picked the dinosaur up. “Why are you so jumpy all the time?”

  His eyes looked where the dinosaur was. He said, “There’s no time left.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have much time when a nuclear bomb goes off, like if you’re within two miles of the epicenter!” He was talking really fast, like he was six years old and saw a car crash. “A few seconds,” he said. “That’s it. Ninety-eight percent of the population will be wiped out. And if you live more than a mile away, you don’t stand a chance, either. Death comes slower, and you wish you died quick. First, you go blind from the flash, and then, the wind, and then, the skin starts to drip off.”

  “Gross.”

  “Yeah, and listen.” His eyes got bigger. “You should know. You gotta be ready. You got to do something.” He leaned toward me as if he might grab my windshirt, hang on, shake me.

  This kid is weird. But when he talks about death, he’s like a sculler at the start line, total focus.

  “So,” I said, “we’re all going to die.”

  “Not like that. Imagine Mr. Song, with radiation boils all over his body, and if he and Carla got kissy-face, his lips come off on her lips.”

  Horrible. This kid is creepy.

  “Wow, Kyle,” I said, “you’re out of line. What’s going on?”

  A breeze came down the crew-cut rows. It didn’t move the stalks and grass; it moved strands of Kyle’s blond hair, the strands that weren’t stuck to his greasy head.

  “I’m scared,” he said. “I don’t want the geese to die.”

  The flocks of geese in these fields made the ground come alive. Their way of feeding and calling made a hum, something steady. “Why are you talking about death?” His face jerked left like a machine, then jerked right. Without looking at his face, I put the dinosaur on his blanket.

  “Why do you like rowing?” he asked. The question was drum roll, cymbal crash, horn.

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.

  It was something to do with not wanting to feel pain but wanting to know pain. Like wanting to know fire. You light it in front of you, the colors all over the place, the heat all over your skin, but you don’t want to burn or anything. I don’t know, but I understand him a little more in the middle of that field, with geese all over everywhere, geese getting along with swans, and all of us finding a place to land.

  Song / Balance

  The Queen of Late-to-Chapel stands in the back, by a column in this cave. Tardy. Too many tardy marks gets study hall. Early in the school year Carla’s starting her yearly bad-girl accumulation. The bad girl with bad curls.

  Rev. Moose sermonizing, already? The cartoons Kim and I watched as kids when we first got to this country, they pop in my head. Charlie Brown, the teacher in the classroom talking, “wah-wah-wah-wah.” Can’t help it. But today, Moose’s words break through.

  “In an age in which shuttles carry the first Afro American into space, humans triumph over bigotry and oppression, send our dreams of equality into space, for all cultures everywhere to see and replicate. Guy Bluford Jr., a young man from Philadelphia, went to public high school, received a B.A. from Penn State, then served meritoriously in the Air Force in Vietnam. A month ago, he launched into orbit and history with the Challenger. With this vision, this drive, you, too, can harness your education for the benefit of America and the good of mankind.” Rev. Moose looks out over the Tim-Tim blazers and skirts.

  “In this age,” he continues, “there is also evil. When science is used to create missiles, ones launched by our enemy at innocent Koreans flying home, when the jetliner is struck out of the sky, that, ladies and gentlemen, is a blow to mankind, to progress and pluralism. It is your moral imperative to work for peace, to intervene on behalf of innocents, and to invent for the betterment of men. Use your education for good. Use science to propel men into new realms, where no man has gone before.”

  Students explode. They giggle, poke each other. A couple flash Spock’s “live-long-and-prosper” sign, the fingers split two and two, a V in the middle. Rev. Moose is not usually au courant. Popular culture, a good device to hook students. His equation: science + democracy = peace is flawed but plausible. Another equation: science + evil = destruction is right on. Here is a chapel talk for me. Episcopalians always connect to politics. Not so with Catholics. No so with Buddhists.

  Our family was very practical. We chose the practices suiting each situation. Church on Sunday, rice and banana offerings on Lunar New Year and Autumn Moon Festival, prayers of healing from our priest, fortune-telling from the shaman. No need to hire wailers when Kim died. As the oldest son, the only son, my wail started the ceremony. The wail came loud, the right opening for the right amount of air. Before the ceremony, many ceremonies. The Korean funeral home in San Diego gave us three days to wash, prepare, dress, collect, and bury her. Not anywhere near our grandfather’s fields in Korea, but in a tomb looking east.

  Three years ago. Year one I kept picking up the phone to call her. Year two I expected her to call. Year three is this year. Every good boy does not do fine. Bad boy with a girl’s bad curls.

  In church sometimes Kim and I mixed American games. Rock-paper-scissors for the daily bulletin. Fist-on-palm, fist-on-palm, paper. Fist-on-palm, fist-on-palm, rock. Whoever wo
n got to use the paper for origami. Not very pretty, but practical. I usually won. Give me a piece of paper and twenty minutes, and I can make about anything. Kim sat back on the pew and watched. The priest would wah-wah-wah, and I’d face the opposite direction, kneel on the floor, and lean on the pew, use it as a desk. Squash folds are cake. Each week I won I’d try to fold squash different ways. Start with a waterbomb base. Bring the top flap over, pry open the paper, and flatten to make the squash fold. Before the “This is the Word of the Lord,” I’d hold the squash in my hand for Kim to see. She clapped. Every time. Our mother looked down on the pew at the two of us, Prince and Princess of Distraction, and she’d shush us, but I could see something else in her tired eyes. Pride is more than light reflected.

  No fortune-teller told us what cells would unfold in Kim’s veins. And when she was sick we made offerings to our ancestors, to the sun and moon and Newton. Nothing helped. My father, the chemist in Korea, me in physics, science was in our blood. Mom insisted on candles and incense, on offerings and tithing. There are things that can’t be explained. Einstein knew that. How about the exact size of the moon to fit the sun perfectly for eclipses? How about the perfect way that rays of the sun bend in our atmosphere so they do not sear our flesh? Something designed the universe so that we can exist. No amount of science can explain everything. No amount of religion can, either.

  How can I explain what exists between Carla and me?

  Taylor / The Pair

  Looking for you in the library was easy. Your carrel was third floor, left from the staircase, right at the end of the stacks, left at the corner of the inner courtyard. It was prime real estate, the sunken desks right by the windows, Beach Front, we called it.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I was ten steps away. The people around us looked up.

  Your brown hair hung slightly below your shoulders, and your head was bent over history books. A ten-page paper due tomorrow.

  You didn’t turn around. “I don’t hear you,” you said.

  So I was tiptoe and quiet sign to the girl studying behind you. Stepping on her desk, between her books and notes, I launched over your head, landed on your desk. It didn’t break, but the sound was bigger than breaking.

  You jumped. Everyone on the Beach Front yelled “Hey” and “Cut it out” and “Grow up.” You grabbed my arm and pushed me into the stacks.

  “What are you doing?” You tried to be quiet.

  “Studying,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” you said. Too long hair and bangs swooping up like horns, your face was hidden behind glasses too big. You stuck your face in my face like if you got closer to mine, you’d understand.

  “Let’s go,” I said to the glasses and hair.

  “Where?” Your hand was still on my arm, thumb and forefinger light on my tricep, the grip through my flannel shirt. My hands took both your shoulders. They filled my hands, the muscle of so much rowing. I turned us in a dance in the library stacks.

  “Tell you when we get there.” I turned you down the stacks toward the stairs.

  My light blue VW wagon started like a lawnmower, pull, pull, turn over. You in your stained sweats, me in my flannel shirt and sweats, we sat there waiting for the engine to warm up. That Sunday morning in April was cold and blue, and the blankets from the back seat were all the heat we had. We wrapped up.

  The drive to the lake was away from Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts, which made you laugh because in Colorado, you lived at a higher elevation than the mountain’s peak. Then we passed alongside the Taconic Ridge, which the farmers called the train of elephants, one hill, the mother, touching the next hill, the child. The hills rolled for miles in their slow New England train. We didn’t talk. The crocuses in clumps in front of farm houses. Cows standing in a foot of mud. Ice still in the marshes.

  No one was at the boathouse. The dock stretched into the blue-black of the lake, turning the green hills of the nearest shore into purple on the surface. I lifted the cinder block to reach the hidden key.

  “How did you know where that was?” you said.

  “We have ways,” I said in my best imitation of Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes.

  The handle of the big bay turned clockwise, kicking the lock open. After we lifted the door up, the smell of wax on the eights was honey around us. The April morning light was a thick yellow line down each hull stacked on the right-hand racks. The smaller shells were on the far left rack. I headed left.

  “No way,” you said. Standing in the bay put the dock and the lake and the reflection of green behind you.

  “Come on. Just because we both row port doesn’t mean we can’t row a pair.” A pair takes a perfect balance of port and starboard. One of us switching sides meant rolling the blade up with a different hand, like writing with a different hand. We could flip.

  “Surely you jest.” You were taking Shakespeare.

  “Hands on.” I gave the command. Since you knew I’d carry the shell by myself and smash it if you didn’t get there, you ran to the rack.

  Once out of the rack, the shell rested on our shoulders while we walked to the dock. Up and over our heads and up, we rolled it down to the waist and down, and down to the water, no splash. We got the oars, tied in, and pushed off the dock.

  Stroking was what you were born to do. Your back read like the scriptures you included in notes to me: “Love one another as I have loved you . . . greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Your notes were shoreline, evening light, moon. How we talked to each other was stream. This note with this Bible verse was the one I read over and over, memorized, as if its moon shadow would lead me where I wanted to go.

  At the catch position, you sat up, your back a V-shape. On command we set the blades and pulled, but we tilted left, then right. I barely got my blade out at the finish of the first stroke, my right hand unsure how to roll up, my left hand unsure what to do with the handle of the oar.

  By twenty strokes we were beginning to move together. When I dragged the oar or when I caught water with the tip, you said, “Oh?” like “Are we going in?” But through the dips left and right, your back was sure. Your back was part of something bigger, bigger than the pair, the lake, Mount Greylock in the distance.

  “Hey, kiddo,” you said, “we’re getting it.”

  “Oh yeah, Olympic trials, next stop,” I said. It was hard to talk and row.

  We rowed past the cove we used for practicing starts. We rowed past the boys’ camp used in the summer. On the other side of the lake, I steered us to a dock.

  “Way enough,” I said. The angle wasn’t right, and we were coming in too fast.

  “Hold water,” I said. You dug in your blade. We turned into the dock without crashing the bow.

  “Nice landing,” you said.

  “Ready?” I said and put one foot up to stand on the dock.

  “For what?”

  “Your turn.”

  “Nyet.” You were taking Russian, too.

  “Oui, si,” I said, “whatever.” I knelt down to hold the pair off the dock.

  With one foot under, you stood up on the dock. You said, “Okay, you asked for it.” One step to get behind me, one step to bend down, the shove was not too hard, but enough to throw me off balance.

  The way a girl learns to dive, kneeling at the edge of a pool, pointing her alligator arms at the blue, then rolling, I rolled far enough out to miss the pair. The water was ice. It was blue slivers in my lungs. I came up yelling.

  Hard laughs made you hold your thighs. I kicked up from the water, used my arm as a bat, and batted the water to cover you with spray. Drenched, your hair was no longer horns; glasses dripping, you took them off and put them on the seat in the pair.

  “You’re in big trouble now,” you said. Your knees came up into a cannon ball. I had enough time to take two strokes to the dock, so when you came up, I was sitting on the dock.

  “You brat,” you said when you saw me waiting.r />
  You gave me your hand to get help out of the water. Even with the cold of too-cold water, your skin held its tan from summers out west, in the Canyonlands, in the Grand Tetons, the desert. The water rushed down the T-shirt, rounding your breasts.

  You stepped into my arms. The hug was water to water.

  “There,” you said, “in case you weren’t wet enough.” Stepping back and shaking your hair in my face, you wanted to be double-sure. I still felt the press of you on me.

  A breeze turned our bodies to ice. We ducked down and stretched out on the warm planks of the dock and lay on our backs like we might make snow angels, with feet apart and arms away from our sides. But it was April, and the sun felt new.

  Maybe it was a draft or a leaf. It was something covering my hand. Maybe a shadow. That something was your hand covering mine. I didn’t move my hand in case your hand was a butterfly and flew away.

  “Our Father,” you said, “who art in heaven.” Your words were slow and sure.

  My eyes were the April sky. I was supposed to join in, but my mother was the last person I prayed with and back then I was four and held her hand at Mass.

  “Hallowed be thy name,” I said. The words were a tape recording, lines rehearsed. The words were goose bumps. But I warmed into the words.

  We said the Lord’s Prayer on a dock on the lake, a long ways away from Mount Greylock. The words were different with you lying next to me, praying together in wet T-shirts. Your hand on my hand, our words together, I let the sun into a place in my chest.

  That place was the place for forever.

  “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, now and forever,” you said, but I didn’t. That part wasn’t the Catholic part, so I stopped.

  “Amen,” you said.

  “Amen,” I said.