On Little Wings (31 page)

“I didn’t!” Darcy called.

“You said you saw a yeti!” Hester retorted hotly.

“A what?” I interrupted.

“I did,” Darcy said with her hand clutched to her heart, “I did see a yeti, up on the cliff.”

“And a giant squid, and a submarine and what else, Hess?” Nathan asked.

“Everything. Every shadow in the water was a shark or a whale or a sea monster,” Hester added.

“I saw a yeti!” Darcy squealed.

“It was a white cat,” Hester replied in a patient, albeit annoyed, tone.

“It was the
ghost
of a cat. That’s why it was white,” Darcy said in a low, mysterious voice.

Nathan groaned. “Thanks, Hess, I almost forgot. No rock for Darcy this year.” He put his face an inch from Darcy’s and imitated her scowl. “You attract too many monsters.”

That erased her frown. “I do?” she asked, deeply honored.

“Jennifer can come with us,” Hester suggested. Silence fell like a heavy, wet blanket. Maybe I was the only one who felt it, because Sarah threw it off easily.

“Yes, take Jennifer! Claude won’t go out there with you and I’ll stay with Darcy and Judith. She would love it.”

Nathan met my eyes. I expected his panicked expression, but he looked surprisingly calm, especially considering the implications: A night row to an island. Stranded with Nathan beneath the fireworks. Even with Hester there, it would be too close. I waited for his excuse. “Don’t you already have plans with Claude?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “She’s watching from the dock with some of her friends. Will is helping his dad with the fireworks.”

Nathan rubbed his face in thought. “It’s the best place to watch them. When the boats start shooting you feel like you have a front row seat to the Spanish armada.”

Still no invitation, but I dared to hope.

“Remember that year the Jacks borrowed that real canon?” He asked Sarah.

“Hah!” she laughed. “I’ll never forget. I thought they’d sink themselves. I could hear Russ’s wife bawling him out from three blocks away!”

I only half heard them, waiting for Nathan’s answer. He seemed to remember I was there and looked up at me. “I don’t mind taking you, if you want to see it from there.” His words were so cool that I couldn’t even imagine romance in them. But his eyes were not cold. They glistened with something warmer, something like anticipation.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll still be here,” I answered quietly, keeping my head tucked over the piece of paper I was cutting. He didn’t reply.

Sarah stood and kicked the scraps aside to make a walking path. “Girls, you need to run home. There’s still some light left, so hurry quick. No stopping to play.” We told the girls good night and watched them from the porch until they disappeared around the curve of the road.

“Like I said, I’ve got nothing,” Sarah raised her empty hands. “Let me just grab my Collins book and I’ll look and pay attention at the same time.”

“How often does she do that?” I asked in amusement as Sarah dashed inside.

“Almost always. She used to cheat by marking a week’s worth, but that’s not fair. You have to find it
that day
,” Nathan’s voice rose and he half shouted through the screen door.

“Not cheating!” Sarah called from inside and we all laughed. “I’m just spontaneous.”

Nathan snorted. “Disorganized.”

“I heard that,” she said as she came back out.

“I can start us,” I volunteered. “I have one ready.” I pulled out the sheet I’d printed from the computer earlier as Sarah settled into her usual seat. “You probably both know it. You both know a lot more than I do. But it’s Robert Frost again. A short one.”

The rain to the wind said,
"You push and I'll pelt."
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt
And lay lodged - though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.”

I looked up at them. Sarah’s face was in shadow, but Nathan looked somber. “I liked that one better than almost any that I’ve read. I know it’s not very complicated, but it says it so starkly. I think it sounds brave.” A heavy pressure clamped down on my heart, the weight of the words.

“It’s the
lodged-though not dead
that lends the hope,” Sarah said, temporarily abandoning her search. “It gives the sense that they’ll be back.”

“But can you … can you
feel
it?” I pressed. “When I read it I think it’s harder to breathe. I
feel
it.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Nathan said softly. “When I hear certain words I feel them in my brain, like a weight, like I’m measuring them.”

“Yes! Yes!” I cried in excitement. “Just like the words look different on the page, they feel different in my head. Some are heavier. “Lodged” sticks in my skull, hits right behind my forehead.”

“Words in the soul,” Sarah sighed.

Nathan frowned and dropped his head. There was a long silence before he said, “It’s such a bald admission from the poet. That’s what you’re feeling in the poem. The last line. Everything is pastoral until he confesses ‘I know how the flowers felt’.”

His words were subdued. Almost sad. His shoulders seem to droop beneath a great load that made my arms ache. I longed to reach out and squeeze his wrist in a silent message but I sensed that would make it worse. Somehow, my very existence was part of the problem. He spoke again. “Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise. There’s a part where a man is talking about getting beaten up. He says, “
It’s the strangest feeling. You ought to get beaten up just for the experience of it. You fall down after a while and everybody sort of slashes in at you before you hit the ground – then they kick you.”

“You’d know,” Sarah said wryly.

“Well, I’m putting it in context to Frost’s poem. Fitzgerald’s character sees some value to it – the beating.” He paused and smiled. “That sounded masochistic, but I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it in the Judeo-Christian tradition of a little adversity being good for the soul.”

What I really wanted to say was, “How can you just pull a line from a book out of thin air like that?” I held back because I knew he would hate that question. Instead I muttered, “Adversity certainly doesn’t feel very good, even if it’s good for you.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’m officially changing the mood,” Sarah announced. “Good old Billy, he always comes through for me,” She held up her book of Billy Collins poems. “Now listen for a minute,”

“But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles”

“Doesn’t that make you feel better?” she asked. “It doesn’t even matter what he’s talking about. Frankly, I can only guess. But we live in a world, we are part of a race, we are possessors of a language that can say
that
. It makes the world more beautiful.”

“The words might describe things differently, but they are still the same things,” Nathan argued. “If I call it a ‘breast of humus and brambles’, it’s still the same underbrush you’re used to. The words can’t make it something it isn’t.”

“Wrong!” Sarah cried victoriously. “They do change! Words are … they’re like cameras. There’s a million ways to take a picture of the same thing. But only a few have the eye to master it. Only a few people can really see it. And those few can use the camera, the words, to capture it. And when words capture it, and you capture the words, then you own a piece of the world you didn’t have before.”

“I see it!” I said, a frantic pulse in my voice. “I saw what you meant. For a second.”

“God.” I thought Nathan said it in derision until I spun to face him.

“It’s one of those flashes. I saw it, too.” He mused. “Well put, Sarah. A camera.”

Her lips spread into a smile. “Thank you, Nathan. That means a lot coming from you.” Her words seemed to be a benediction on the evening, a close, so I waited for Nathan to stand and tell us good night.

Instead he turned to me and asked, “Do you want to walk halfway home with me?”

The only way to describe how that sentence sounded in my ears is to picture a rabbit in the dead of night. Small and furry, he is nibbling a weed, wrinkling his nose to catch the scent of a predator, aiming his ears to hear the almost silent swoop of owl or hawk. Then suddenly, the world explodes in light and noise and the rabbit raises and freezes in a car’s headlights, because this is something his instincts never prepared him for.

I was that brown rabbit, stunned and immobile. I took far too long to squeak out my hesitant “sure.” Sarah’s eyes widened and for the first time the glint of suspicion flashed in her face. Nathan didn’t wait for the moment to grow more obvious.

“Okay, good. Good night, Sarah. I’ll meet you over here to put the banner up tomorrow.” He sounded professional, relaxed. Not a hint of emotion. The banner was the last decoration we were in charge of. We were supposed to hang it over Main Street at the start of the holiday weekend.

“I’ll be right back,” I mumbled and gave her a quick, baffled shrug before following him. He kept a solid distance, a wall of space between us, his hands crossed firmly over his chest. When we reached the back yard he started to speak.

“You said you
think
you’ll still be here Saturday. Do you think Claire - sorry, your mom - will come before then?” I couldn’t tell why he cared, if it was me or Sarah he was thinking about.

“Not really,” I answered in a wary voice, careful to sound like I was speaking to someone who meant nothing to me. “My dad is taking her down to Kansas City for the Fourth.”

“But then …?” he looked confused.

“I’ve sort of been looking for flights home, but not until after they’re back. Maybe Monday.”

“But your mom …” he stopped walking and turned to face me, taking a step closer.

I pretended not to notice and kept going, “I don’t think that will work out. I’m getting homesick.”

“Do you mean you’re not going to try to get her here? When Sarah wants to see her? I thought …” he was loping beside me, trying to pull in front of me.

“I’ll talk to her when I get home. I’m going to try to get her to come for the holidays this winter. I think I can convince her.” Nathan’s calloused hand caught my shoulder and I flinched, but stopped. He stepped in front of me.

“Why are you homesick?” He looked guarded, but sincere. A teacher addressing his student.

“No specific reason. I just miss it. I miss my friends. I miss my house. I’m ready to go,” I whispered the last part, refusing to look at him. Refusing to show him.

“Jennifer,” his voice saying my name made my eyes gloss with tears. I blinked several times and managed to command them back to the heartache from which they came. “Won’t you miss …” he cast his eyes around zealously, “the ocean?”

“The ocean?”

“Yes, won’t you miss it?” He passed through the break in the underbrush that led to the beach and I followed him. Not wanting to walk any farther, I sat on the sloping hill that looked down to the water and he joined me.

“I get a little claustrophobic here, actually,” I told him.

“Here?” he asked incredulously, looking out to the endless plain of water.

“Yes, here. I know it’s big, but it’s not like Nebraska. It’s not like the fields.” He turned his curious eyes to me. “Here - this,” I gestured to the waves, “A person feels small. You feel like you live in the shadow of something bigger and stronger than yourself. You feel like the world just ends and you could just drop off, drown. Here, the ocean feels endless.”

I pictured the winter wheat. It would be harvested by now, the muddy field looking like a shorn schoolboy without a cap to hide his bare head. “But in Nebraska, a
person
feels endless. You look out over the fields and you turn in every direction and there’s nothing to stop you. You feel like the world is just waiting for you to strike out in any direction. When I sit beside my wheat field it encourages me. When I sit beside the water she intimidates me, reminds me that she’s bigger and tougher.”

“You’re plenty tough,” Nathan muttered. “Are you sure you won’t stay? Wait for your mother? Just a little longer?” His words were so soft that I think if I had turned to him, given him my face, he would have kissed it again. Maybe just as an experiment. I shuddered and watched the tide drop her arms full of foam on the waiting beach. I don’t know if it was pride that stopped me, but something kept my eyes trained forward.

“I’m pretty sure, Nathan.” My stomach was diving, but I sat still, waiting for the dizzying sensation to pass.

“But you’ll still come to the rock, right? You’ll stay for the Fourth, right?” He was more open than I’d ever seen. I knew he wanted me to say yes.

I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “Nathan, why do we do this? This back and forth? This pretending?” His eyes widened in baffled innocence, but there was guilt in the set of his mouth. He swept his eyes over the beach, calculations running through his head. As curious as I was for his answer, I knew it wouldn’t be real. He was weighing every word. Every reaction. Lying to both of us, slowly and wisely. I sighed my defeat. “I’ll come see the fireworks.” Before he could convince himself to leave me once again sitting in the night, I rose up. “I told Sarah I’d get right back.”

“Wait. I’m trying,” the words struggled to his lips, but his mind fought harder, tying them to his tongue.

“I know. Good night, Nathan. See you in the morning.” My stomach sank and my heart dropped in complaint. My body wanted me to stay, regardless of pride, in spite of reason.

He nodded, something like regret in the set of his chin. This time I left him and made my heavy way back to my home that was not my home.

Ten o’clock Friday morning found me shifting my weight outside the Sturgeon while Nathan tried to obey Sarah’s shouts from the ground on how high to hang the banner. The words on the sign rippled, making a red, white and blue wave on the air that spanned from the brick roof of the restaurant to the top of a light pole across the street. I was following their progress, trying not to look as useless as I felt when a car horn beeped sharply. I turned to see Claudia leaning over Will to call out of his open window.