Carry the Sky

by Kate Gray

  “Hello,” he says too close to the mic. It echoes behind me in this cave. He backs away. Bends forward. “Hello, my name is Derrick Harney. I’m Kyle’s father, and I hail from Detroit.” He backs away again and looks up. His eyes squint a little.

  ”Kyle’s mother is Niki Harney, and she hails from Nagasaki.” He tilts his head to the left of the mic and nods at Mrs. Harney. She raises one hand barely off her lap, no wave, lifts it, and nods her head.

  “We want to tell you about Kyle,” he says. He’s got the hang of the sound now. His face has deep lines in it, around his mouth. Too many lines for a small man, not old man, late fifties.

  “Mrs. Harney and I met in war, married in peace. Kyle was our blessing when he was ten months old, and we were never so excited to adopt this child, this tiny boy. His whole life he was way ahead of us. The Mrs. and I tried catching up with him. All he wanted was books. That’s why we were so excited he could come here, thanks to the Whites.”

  Mr. Harney’s eyes squint, and his lips curve up, not much of a smile. Right then Japanese Mrs. Harney bends down to reach her purse. Not enough room to bend without falling forward out of the seat, her head almost in Dorothy White’s lap. Reaches into her coat on the back of her seat. Nothing. Dorothy White to the rescue with a tissue.

  Mr. Harney’s voice is slowing down. He looks at the mic. “Niki and I never could catch up. Seems he’s gone ahead of us, again. We’ll miss him so much. Thank you, what you did for him.” He bows his head quick in polite informal Japanese style, and turns to the steps from the podium. The Rev isn’t fast enough to help him back to his seat.

  Derrick Harney lowers himself down. To help him down, Mrs. Harney raises her hand to his shoulder. Spots are all over the back of her hand. He takes her hand as soon as he settles into the seat.

  Next it’s Head-Honcho White.

  “Thank you, Mr. Harney, you and Mrs. Harney bless us with your presence.”

  Ever the grateful.

  “As you all know, Kyle came to us as a Second Former only a few weeks ago.”

  Eleven, to be exact.

  “And from the moment he arrived, he made his mark.”

  Euphemism: He was odd.

  “He excelled in all his classes.”

  Understatement: He blew them away.

  “For instance, Ms. Alta made special note that Kyle’s project on South Africa was the most creative and thorough presentation in the class.”

  Which he destroyed with a mallet.

  “Mr. Song noted that Kyle was always helpful in the dorm . . .”

  Misdirection: He stuck by me because he was afraid to be anywhere else.

  “. . . and Herbert Hofmeister mentioned he’d never seen a student so enamored with the reference section of the library.”

  Misplaced kindness: Kyle listened to the drunk.

  “While Kyle was with us a short time, we’ll miss him.”

  “As if,” Carla would say. What I’d really like to do, besides yell and throw things, is to interrupt this farce to give a demonstration.

  I’d say, “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to show you exactly what this headmaster has done for Kyle. Mr. White, would you agree that the staff at St. Timothy’s is in loco parentis to our students?”

  He would nod, of course.

  “And as the local parent, what did you do for Kyle?”

  Like a dog, he’d raise his ears and tilt his head.

  “Nothing, that’s true,” I’d say. “Now, please be seated in this chair before me.”

  And Wyatt White would look at me with a half-grin because he’s polite, after all. And he’d do what he was told because everyone was watching, and appearances are good for admissions. He’d take a seat in front of the podium, his wool trousers, his Tim-Tim’s blazer flapping open.

  “Thank you, Mr. White. Don’t worry. This won’t hurt a bit.” The audience would giggle.

  Then, I’d take six really thick books, like dictionaries, science textbooks, the school dress code, and pile them on his head. Then, as Mr. Physics-Man, I’d have to stand on a chair behind him, white lab coat, my glasses on, and steady the stack for him. With one hand to steady the stack, my other hand would put a board on top. From my lab coat I’d pull out a nail. One hand would steady it perpendicular to the board, ready to be nailed, and the other hand would get out a hammer from a pocket in my lab coat.

  “Now then,” I’d say, “tell me what you feel.”

  At this point, Mr. Polite might squirm. “Very funny, Mr. Song, I’m sure your demonstration has merit,” he’d say, “but I think we’ve had enough.”

  I’d press the stack down harder so he couldn’t move. “Oh no, Mr. White, we’ve had far too much. Sit still.”

  That’s when the hammer would hit the nail. Over and over the thunk echoing in the chapel. The nail inching down into the wood, through the wood, into the first book.

  “Feel anything?”

  “Why, no,” he’d say. And he’d try to turn and look at me, but he wouldn’t be able to.

  “Of course not, Mr. Idiot,” I’d say. Politeness is not a part of the demonstration. “The force of the hammer is resisted by the books. The books provide the inertia. This is your brain at the bottom of the stack. This is your brain on denial. You felt nothing. Still don’t. You don’t miss Kyle. We’ve had far too much inertia.” And I’d whack the hammer again for dramatic effect.

  “Don’t pretend you feel anything,” I’d say.

  I don’t know what would happen after that. But even thinking of it helps me get through whatever else Mr. Inertia is saying. He’s left the podium. The bagpipe’s back. Buttons and Rambo are crying. Carla is nowhere in sight.

  Mrs. Harney helps Mr. Harney get up from his chair, but then, Mr. Harney puts her hand on his forearm. Mr. Inertia and the Rev dwarf the little couple from behind. When they turn to come down the center aisle, that’s when I see her. Niki Harney has pink, puckered skin across her face, almost the yin-yang symbol, one eye sagging. The telltale keloid scarring. Mrs. Nagasaki, probably she was Kyle’s age when Bockscar dropped the Fat Man.

  Sir Kyle, young prince of his mother’s protection.

  Mr. Anti-Nuke, with nuclear annihilation on his notebook.

  Not to see the TV show The Day After. Not tonight. Not ever.

  Bent-over Mr. Harney and radiation-poisoned Mrs. Harney shuffle down the aisle. I meet them with the wrapped package of a hundred cranes.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Harney, my name is Jack Song. It is an honor to meet you,” I say.

  Mr. Harney straightens up. His eyes are blue dots in deep wrinkles. He takes his hand from behind his wife and extends it to me. His hand is callused and fits my hand like a pipe wrench.

  “Mr. Song,” he says, “we’ve heard a lot about you.”

  I pull in my elbows, make my feet parallel, and bow low from the waist to Mrs. Harney. The eye that doesn’t sag is bright. She smiles and bows back slightly, both scarred hands laid flat on her skirt.

  “Please accept these from our students who folded them.” I hold out the box, and Mrs. Harney’s eyelashes descend over her eyes, the eyes glowing white with cataracts. She knows what the box contains.

  Mrs. Harney says, “Arigato Gozaimasu.”

  “You’re welcome” in Korean sounds like “Chairman Mao.” I bow again, the arms-to-the-side, head-down-to-the-knees traditional bow, long enough to feel the pull of hamstrings, the need for a haircut.

  From students’ hands to my hands to their hands to fire, what we couldn’t give Kyle in this lifetime will fly into the next. Earth on us turns fire, then flight.

  Taylor / Nothing to Say

  During the three days Carla was hospitalized, TV crews in the parking lot of Winn Dixie, Norma’s Family Restaurant, and Bi-Mart kept us from driving the flat black driveway through maple trees to the world outside. On public property, the reporters talked to residents of Surrey, Delaware, especially ones who worked at St. Timothy’s. Members of the kitchen staff and cu
stodial staff and local contractors talked to reporters. The cameras caught Mr. Leonard, the bartender and handyman and mentor, going into True Value Hardware, but he brushed by them. He held up his hand, said, “No comment,” and kept walking. On TV his gray hair was short and clipped perfectly. His face was lined, though, and his eyes tired. The loss of a student was hard on everyone.

  But from those interviewed, the whole country soon learned of bruises and pranks and flies. St. Tim’s was Castle Elsinore, where plots were devised and carried out and young men died. Fiction was fact.

  In the three days after Kyle died, students had nightmares about flies in the whites of eyes rolled back. The Second Formers said that’s how they knew Kyle wasn’t kidding. Three nights I went from dorm to dorm and from room to room. One student, feeling guilty, tried to remember Kyle’s face, the grease for hair, the small eyes and teeth, and couldn’t. Another student, trying to forget, was guilty of jumping Kyle’s back and pounding him, holding him down to the lab table, or ignoring him on purpose.

  Tommy Underwood dropped out the day of the memorial service. The grapevine reported he wasn’t eating, he couldn’t sleep, and, if asleep, a scream jerked him awake.

  Maggie Anderson took it all on. She said she should have been nicer. Most of us figured there was something we should have done, too, but Maggie said it out loud.

  “If only I had talked to him, really talked,” she said. At one in the morning, she wrapped her arms around an enormous stuffed dog, one of the many stuffed animals making her bed a zoo of soft, furry forms. I sat on the floor and wrapped my arms around my knees.

  “And what would you have said?”

  “I’d say he’s smart.” She didn’t wince at the present tense. “And I’d listen.”

  “But Maggie, did Kyle talk? Remember his head on the desk?” My smile tried to pry her eyes off her fuzzy slippers.

  And we played “what if” for awhile until she slept.

  It was Terence who was both still and rushing.

  “Ms. Alta,” he said, “what if Kyle survived?”

  On the bench under birch trees, we overlooked the lake, the lake where the crew didn’t row any more, the lake where I didn’t look for Sarah.

  “You mean, came to?”

  Terence sat at the edge of the bench, his legs tucked under, his heels moving back and forth with his toes dragging on the ground.

  “Yeah, what if he didn’t die, and he remembered Tommy and me bumping him, and Mr. Jeffers trying to save him, and the ambulance?”

  Terence looked across the lake where the fog crept up in the morning. His cheek was smooth, and his forehead smooth. Our down jackets made us round and soft in the December cold.

  “You got me there, Terence.”

  “I think he’d be the same way.” Terence didn’t look at me or his feet or anything. His chin was up, and he held steady the far shore. “I think he’d talk typewriter, say, ‘Ter-ence, you-should-have-cut-me-down, Zip, Ping!’”

  Terence had the metal voice, the movement of the chin from left to right, the staccato words. Kyle’s voice through Terence made my fingers tingle.

  “We would have talked like that.” Terence kicked the dirt under the bench. “But maybe people would’ve helped him after that.”

  His eyes left the far shore, and he looked quick at me, then looked down at the dirt. “You know what else we did?”

  “No idea,” I said. Their spending time together was news to me.

  “We fixed Donny.” He took one hand out of the jacket pocket and covered his smile with it. His dark hand didn’t quite cover his whole smile.

  “You mean the thing with Donny when we flew kites?”

  “Yup, that was us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Terence’s feet were swinging under the bench, and his shoulders were forward, and his hands rested on the bench on either side of him.

  “Well, you know how Donny was testing Hamlet? Kyle wanted to test something about ghosts and revenge and subliminal suggestions during sleep. Mr. Hofmeister let us check out a tape recorder, and every night we made tapes.” He covered part of his smile again, and this time his pink gums showed bright.

  “One night Kyle said Donny’s uncle was going to kill his father, and that he was going crazy. One night I said he was going to pee in bed and he better go to the bathroom. And he got up to go. I swear.” Terence looked at me, then tried to make his mouth not smile.

  “Problem is he didn’t make it to the bathroom. He peed in the hall. Somebody saw him, and the guys, you know, called him ‘bed wetter’ and ‘baby’ and stuff.” Terence wasn’t smiling any more.

  “Where did you put the tape recorder?” I said.

  “Outside his window, under his bed, in his closet. We had to change how loud we talked.”

  “How did you get in his room?” Fifth Formers would notice Second Formers.

  Terence shook his head. “I got a lot of tardies to dinner.” He smiled down at his feet.

  “So, that’s why Donny couldn’t sleep?”

  “Yup.” Terence puffed out his chest and sat up on the bench. “I know Donny really knocked Kyle hard. I kind of should have said something.”

  “And get shoved, too?”

  He shook his head. “Donny came to the cubbies that night before lights out, before the wrestling. He found the library card for the tape recorder with our names on it. He figured it was us.”

  And that must have been the tipping point for Donny, the boys kidding him, him not kidding the boys. Second Formers had made a show of him, Second Formers, Kyle, the weirdest little bright boy.

  “Him and the others,” Terence said, “they filled up the commons. Donny didn’t do much, mostly pointed at Kyle, like his arm was a rifle. Stupid stuff. He went, ‘No one messes with Donny Zurkus. Not Zippy. Not Song. Not nobody. I’m going to get you for good.’ A regular Godfather. And Kyle giggled. He thought Donny was funny. Or something was funny, anyway. Donny left. That’s all.”

  Terence’s feet skimmed the dirt under the bench, one foot at a time. There was so much going on in his legs and so little in his face.

  “You know you didn’t make Kyle do anything,” I said. The eye in the profile of Terence’s face was a window into classrooms he and Kyle shared, into dorms, into the dining hall where they sat small in their chairs.

  “Didn’t stop him, either.”

  “He’d made up his mind.”

  “Maybe.”

  That’s all he said.

  Leaning back on the bench, I crossed my legs, swung my foot a little faster than Terence’s feet swinging under the bench. We faced the lake, the wind picking up, the sting of winter on our faces.

  His legs swung. My leg swung. The lake was all there was.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Alex Jeffers said. He came around the bench from my side and blocked the breeze picking up. The scent of lime and sweat wrapped around me. Looking up at the tall guy so close was too hard, so I smiled hello and dropped into looking at the lake.

  “Not yet,” I said. Terence stopped swinging his legs.

  “It’s freezing out here,” Alex said.

  “Yeah, going in,” Terence said. With his palms around the end of the bench, he pushed off. He didn’t look at me. “Later, Miss Alta.” Terence folded his arms in front of him, closed his St. Tim’s blazer around him.

  Alex walked in front of me, blocked out the lake, then sat beside me, one arm around the back of the bench. “He okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You?” I said. Alex’s jawline was cut sharp. The muscle flexed and relaxed. He looked down at his enormous hands.

  “Not really,” he said.

  “I wonder why,” I said.

  His thin lips spread into a smile. “No reason.”

  “Yeah, kid dying, no sleep, no problem.” My weight shifted toward him, and his arm left the bench and draped around my shoulders. He leaned his weight toward me. And the warm of his lime and
sweaty body on one side, his arm heavy on my shoulders pushed out the cold breeze lining my right side.

  “I have just the thing.” A brown paper sack, crumpled, came out of his blazer pocket, and the bottle of Jack Daniel’s inside looked small in his hand.

  “Shit, Alex,” I said, “on campus?” Suddenly I was underage and sneaking and sure I’d get caught.

  The angles of his face softened. “So let’s boogie,” he said. His smile was young, too.

  “Now? Leave?” There had to be something wrong with what we were doing.

  “Sure,” he said. He put the bottle back in his pocket. “No study hall. We’re free until check-in.” He had a point.

  “Deal,” I said. His hand outstretched was warm in the lake breeze. His hand made my hand small. I wanted something big to wrap around me.

  Walking past the bench on the way to the parking lot, we dropped hands. In a boarding school, we’re never alone. Except we’re always alone wherever we are, but there may be someone watching. The loneliness we feel is as sure as water. It changes into fog and rain and a frozen lake, but it’s always water. No matter where we are on campus, we see the lake, the water caught by an evening breeze on the way to winter. And someone else sees what we see. We don’t know if they’re there for us. We’re alone. Someone else is alone, too.

  It must have been in the eighth grade, about the same time of day when light is strained and cold, when Phil Fenton told me he had something to tell me. It was carpool and time to go home. Phil Fenton had blond, curly hair, played lacrosse, and wore jeans with rips in the knees. Under his straw hat his long blond curls hung down the sides of his face.

  “Over here,” he said, and he pulled me into Mrs. Wishert’s room, the eighth-grade English class.

  “What?” I said. “Mrs. Harris is here, carpool, got to go.” There was something in my chest that wouldn’t let me breathe. It was cold, like scared, like dark when you go outside to let the cat in and the street is too quiet. Something else in my chest was too warm.