The Black House (24 page)

Smiling, Walter walked backward and tripped on a grave marker, rolled over and jumped to his feet again, the string still in his hand. “How about
that
, Elsie?” He meant the kite, way up now. The wind blew his hair over his forehead and eyes. A little ashamed because he had spoken out loud, he began to whistle. The tune was one he and Elsie had used to hum or whistle together, when they were sandpapering balsa strips, measuring and cutting. The music was by Tchaikovsky, and his parents had the record.

Walter stopped whistling abruptly, and pulled his kite in. The kite came reluctantly, then dived a few yards as if it gave up, and Walter wound it in faster, and ran to save it. It had not landed in trees. The kite was undamaged.

By the time Walter mounted his bicycle, it was nearly dark, and he put on his headlight. The cops program his mother had talked about would still be on, but Walter didn't feel like watching it. Now he was passing the Beachcomber Inn, and he supposed his father was there, having a beer, but Walter didn't glance at the cars parked in front of the place. His mother was accusing his father of seeing someone there, or meeting someone there. A girl, of course, or a woman. Walter did not like thinking about that. Was it his business? No. He also knew that his mother thought his father had been spending all his spare time at the Beachcomber, or somewhere with “that woman,” when his sister had been coming down with fever, and so his father hadn't taken care of Elsie. All this had caused an awful atmosphere in the house, which was why Walter spent a lot of time in his own room, and didn't want to look at TV so much any more.

Walter put his bike in the garage against the wall—the car was still gone—cut his headlight, and took his kite and string. He went in quietly by the back door and down the hall to his room. His mother was in the living room with the TV on and didn't hear him, or, if she did, she didn't say anything. Walter closed his room door softly before he switched on his ceiling light. He folded the kite's tail, put a rubber band on it, and set the kite in a corner where two or three other kites stood. Then he moved his straight chair closer to his worktable so there would be more room on the floor, swept the floor again, and removed his sneakers. He felt inspired to measure his rice paper for the big kite. He walked barefoot to a corner of the room and fetched the roll, laid it on the floor and carefully rolled a length out. Rice paper was quite strong, Walter had read in lots of books about kites. This big kite of course had to be extra strong, because a lot of surface would be hit by the wind, and a strong wind would go right through tissue paper of this area, just as surely as the bird had gone through his smaller kite.

From his table Walter took his list of measurements, a metal tape measure, a ruler, and a piece of blue chalk. He measured and marked out with the chalk the right half of the kite. When he had cut the first long line from bottom tip to the right hand point, he felt a surge of pride, maybe of fear. Maybe such a big kite wouldn't even get off the ground, or not get far up, anyway. In that case, he would try to shrug off his disappointment, and he would be hoping that no one was watching at that moment. Meanwhile, Walter whistled cautiously to himself, cut the top line, then folded the triangle carefully down the center line which he had drawn with the blue chalk. He then traced the triangle on the left-hand side.

His mother had lowered or cut the TV and was on the telephone now. “Tomorrow night,
sure
!” came her high voice, then a laugh. “You'd better have it. Basted
and
sewn. I know it's right now. . . . What?”

She was probably talking to Nancy, her friend who did a lot of sewing. His mother did a lot of cutting—of cloth—for coats and dresses. It was a “pastime,” she said, but she earned money from it.
Cutting is always the most important operation
, his mother said. Walter thought of that as he cut as surely as he could in the middle of his chalk lines. Besides making good kites, Walter would have liked to write a good poem, not the kind of silly poems his English composition teacher ordered the class to write now and then. “Tell about a walk in the woods . . . a rainstorm in summer . . .” No. Walter wanted to write something good about a kite flying in the air, for instance, about his thoughts,
himself
, being up there with the kite, his eyes too, able to look down at all the world, and able to look up at space. Walter had tried three or four times to write such a poem, but on reading his efforts the day after, had found them not as good as he had first thought, so he had thrown them all away. He always felt that he addressed his poems to his sister, but that was because he wanted her, would have wanted her to enjoy what he had written, and maybe to give him a word of praise for it.

A knock on his door startled him. Walter withdrew his scissors from the paper, rocked back on his heels and said, “Yep?”

His mother opened the door, smiling, glanced at the paper on the floor, then looked at him. “It's after ten, Wally.”

“Tomorrow's Saturday.”

“What're you making now?”

“Um-m—This is paper for a kite.”

“
That
big! One kite?” She glanced from top to bottom of what he had cut, which did stretch almost from the far wall to the door where she stood. “You mean, you'll fold it.”

“Yes,” said Walter flatly. He felt his mother wasn't really interested, and was just making conversation with him. Her squarish face looked worried and tired tonight, though her lips continued to smile.

“Where'd you go this evening? Up to Cooper's?”

Walter started to say yes, then said, “No, just for a ride around. Nowhere.”

“You start thinking about going to bed.”

“Yep. I will, Mom.”

Then she left him, and Walter finished his cutting and laid the long piece of paper, lightly folded in half, on top of his worktable, and put away in a corner what was left of the rice paper roll. He looked forward to tomorrow when he would tie the balsa strips and glue the paper, and even more to Sunday when he would try the kite, if there was a good wind.

Hours later, the popping sound of his father's car on the gravel awakened Walter, but he did not stir, only blinked his eyes sleepily. Tomorrow. The big kite. It wouldn't matter if his parents quarreled, if his mother and her yackety friends spent all evening over patterns in the living room—and in Elsie's room at the back opposite the kitchen, which his mother was lately turning into her workroom, even calling it that. Walter could shut all that out.

His father looked at the big kite and chuckled. “That'll never fly. You expect that to
fly
?”

This was just after lunch on Saturday. They were in the backyard.

Walter's face grew warm, and he felt flustered. “No, it's just for fun . . . For decor,” he added, a word his mother used quite a lot.

His father nodded, pink-eyed, and drifted off with a can of beer in his hand. Then he said over his shoulder, “I think you're getting a little obsessed on the subject of kites, you know, Wally?—How's your schoolwork these days? Haven't you got final exams coming up?”

Walter, with one knee on the grass, straightened his back. “Yes . . . Why don't you ask Mom?”

His father walked on, toward the back door. Walter resented the school question as much as he did the kite remark. He was first in his class in math, without even trying very hard, and maybe second in English, behind Louise Wiley, who was nearly a genius, but anyway he had A's in both subjects. Walter returned to his gluing. When was the last time his father had looked at his report card, for that matter? Walter pushed his kite nearer the fence. He was working in a corner made by the bamboo fence, the most sheltered spot against the breeze. The grass was short and even, not as good as his room floor to work on, but the kite was too big to lie flat in his room now. Walter weighted the periphery of his kite with stones about the size of oranges which he had taken from a border and intended to put back. The breeze and the sunlight would hasten the glue setting, or so Walter liked to think. He wanted to forget his father's remarks, and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

But there was something else disagreeable: they were going to Grandma McCreary's for tea. Walter's mother told him. Had Walter forgotten? she asked him. Yes, he had forgotten. This Grandma was called Edna, and Walter liked her less than his Grandma Page, who was called Daisy, the one who had nearly died from a heart attack. Walter had to change into better clothes and put on shoes. Edna lived about fifteen miles away in a house right on the coast with a view of the ocean. They got there around four.

“You've grown another inch, Wally!” said Edna, fussing around the tea tray.

Walter hadn't, not since he had seen Edna a month ago, anyway. He was worried about his kite. He had had to take it very carefully into his room and lean it against his worktable. Walter was worried that the glue hadn't set enough, and that something might go wrong, the paper be unusable, and he hadn't enough paper left over for a second effort. These thoughts, and the general uncomfortableness of his grandmother's living room—magazines lying everywhere, and no place to put anything—caused Walter to drop his plate off his pressed-together knees, and a blob of vanilla ice cream fell on the carpet with the slice of marble cake on top of it now instead of underneath.

His mother groaned. “Wally—you're so clumsy—sometimes.”

“I
am
sorry,” Walter said.

His father gave a soft chuckle. He had taken a glass and poured a couple of inches of scotch into it from the bar cart a few minutes before.

Walter was diligent with the sponge, and tackled the spot a second time. It was more fun to be doing something than to sit.

“You're a helpful boy though, Wally.
Thank
you,” said Edna. “That's really good enough!” Edna took the saucepan and sponge from him. She had pink-polished fingernails and smelled of a sweet perfume Walter didn't like. Walter knew her very blonde hair was dyed.

“. . . misses his sister,” Walter heard his mother murmuring, hissing, as she and Edna walked into the kitchen.

Walter shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his back on his father, went over and stared at a bookcase. He declined another helping of ice cream and cake. The sooner they could leave, the better. But then they had to file out and admire Edna's rose bed, all freshly turned with black, wet-looking earth and yellow, red and pink roses all starting to bloom. Then there were more mumblings, and his mother said something about kites, while his father went into the living room for another drink.

It was after six when they got home. Walter went at once, but not hurriedly so as not to cause any more remarks, to check on the kite. He saw two small gaps between paper and wood, touched them with some of his brown-colored glue, and held them with his fingers for several minutes, standing on his straight chair to reach the spots.

From the living room Walter heard a low, grim hum, the tone that meant his parents were quarreling again. “I didn't
say
that!” This time it was his father saying the words.

When Walter thought the glue was reasonably firm, he got down from the chair, changed back into jeans and sneakers, and started making the kite's tail. He hoped an eight-foot length might do. It was the weight not the length that mattered. He had bought two great rolls of nylon cord, light and strong, each of three hundred yards' length. This purchase had been wildly optimistic, he realized, but even now he was inspired to tie the end of the first roll—which he found loose in its center hollow—to the start of the second roll. He could take them both on his bike, one in each satchel. The kite he would have to carry with one hand as he cycled. Walter cut four strands and tied these to the four wooden pieces (already notched for this purpose) at the back of his kite, joined the four ends, and tied this to the starting end of the first roll of nylon. He then uncoiled what he estimated as two hundred yards of cord, and fixed a stout eight-inch long stick in the cord, tying it with an extra piece of nylon. This was for him to hang on to, if the kite was very far up, and a stick was also easier on his hands than holding plain cord. He added two more such sticks at intervals, then decided that was enough.

The evening promised rain. Clouds and a gusty wind. But tomorrow who knew? He gazed at his kite—it was upright now, its point nearly touching the ceiling though it slanted against his table—and he bit his underlip. The long strips of balsa looked clean and beautiful. Should he turn the kite around now and write
ELSIE
on it with watercolor paint? No, it might be bad luck to do it so soon, like boasting. Walter's heart was beating faster than usual, and he looked away from the kite.

But the next morning, Sunday, inspired by the brilliant sunlight and the strong and steady wind, Walter wrote
ELSIE
in blue watercolor on the leading side of his kite. It had rained during the night. The wind came from the south mainly, Walter saw. He set out on his bike around ten o'clock. His father was not yet up. Walter and his mother had breakfasted together, his mother looking a bit sleepy, because Louise and another friend had come over after dinner, and they had stayed up late.

“Wow,
that's
a monster!” Ricky was again on his front lawn, tossing a Frisbee around.

Just at that moment, Walter had to get off his bike and take a better grip on the kite. He had made a loose but reliable noose or sling out of ordinary string by which to hold the kite while he cycled, but the bottom point of the kite was still apt to touch the ground, and the least breeze made his bike wobble. Walter said nothing at first to Ricky, and was a little embarrassed as he tried to tighten the string without hurting the kite.

Ricky was coming over to look. A car passed between them, then Ricky came nearer. “You're not gonna try to
fly
that. It'll bust!”