Kate Day - In the Quick

Step by step, slowly and methodically, she simulated the actions of the manual rotation, dragging the empty suits behind her, and as she went she adapted the placement of the tether anchors. She clipped them in place and then unclipped them. Looped them around an antenna, above an equipment panel. Clip, unclip, clip.

I saw what she was doing and followed along. I walked right and then left inside the theater. I even motioned when I saw the correct way to place the anchors at the base of the array—but then remembered the glass was only one-way.

Once she found the best positioning, the best order, she didn’t stop. She repeated the motions involved, over and over. Three times, five. Ten. She kept going. Finally she stopped. I counted twelve times she’d gone through the full circuit before she unhooked herself and the empty suits and rose slowly to the surface.

When the last video clip of the Inquiry crew ended I got up from the floor and went to my bedroom. I pulled my invention out from under my bed, took it apart, and laid all the pieces on the carpet. Then I reconstructed it, slowly this time. I scrutinized each step, each choice. I changed the length of the toes slightly. The height of the heel by a quarter of an inch. The tilt of the basket by an eighth.

I thought of the loping hop of the dogs as they ran up the stairs, and of the abstract painting that hung in my room—the airy lift of the black lines. Their seeming weightlessness. That was what I wanted to create, how I wanted my basket to move, and it was uncomfortable, this gap between my idea and the thing I’d made.

Early the next morning before my aunt and John were awake I roamed the house opening closets and drawers and cabinets. I picked things up and considered them and then put them down. A wire whisk was too thin. A blade from a table fan was too wide. Then I remembered a toy my uncle had made for John, a helicopter kept in a glass case in his room. Its propeller was exactly right.

I went into John’s bedroom and the work was done in minutes. I put the toy, now missing its elegant metal blades, back in the case and installed the propeller in my walking basket. When I was done my invention looked like a bird with two tails. I tried it on the cardboard stairs. Better. I tightened some screws. And again—the best yet. I went out into the hallway, to the bottom of the staircase, and set it carefully on the hardwood floor. I pressed the button on my remote control and the feet started to move, slowly at first, and then faster. It climbed one step, and then another. The propeller gained speed, and the basket bounded up the stairs not like a machine at all but like a living creature.

Then John’s footsteps sounded in the hall. I heard my aunt telling him, Wipe your feet for heaven’s sake.

John still had his coat on; his nose was red from the cold. What’s that?

Something to help Aunt Regina.

My aunt came into the hallway carrying her heavy coat and John’s backpack and violin.

I made something for you, I said, and set the basket on the stairs, put a book inside it, and closed its lid. I turned it on and the propeller began to whir. When I pressed the button it bounded up the stairs in five seconds flat.

I beamed, turned the basket around, watched it climb back down.

Very creative, my aunt said, and started hanging things on the coatrack.

It’s to help your feet, I said.

But she’d picked up a magazine from the side table and wasn’t listening.

John came closer and pointed at the propeller. That’s from my helicopter.

It’s not.

It is!

It’s better like this, I said. It does something now.

John grabbed the basket and twisted hard to get the propeller loose. I tried to pull the basket back but he dropped it before I could. Its feet snapped off; its toes scattered. I blinked tears and grabbed at the pieces.

John looked surprised, and maybe sorry.

The metal dug into my palms, sharp and hot. I ran at him, my head down, my fists out.

June! My aunt dropped the magazine and grabbed me. She pulled me away. June, calm down. The metal in my hands scratched her cheek, but it was an accident. I lunged for John again and he pushed me back. My head hit the banister and pinpricks of light exploded behind my eyes.

My aunt told me to go to the bottom basement step and count to one hundred. I didn’t want to go but her voice was high and tight. So I climbed down the stairs and didn’t cry. The basement was dimly lit and full of shadows, but its damp air was cool against my hot cheeks. I sat on the bottom step; the back of my head throbbed. I pressed my hand to it and when I pulled my hand away there was bright blood.

I’m bleeding, I called upstairs, but no one answered.

Nearby stood an old boiler with a vent like a mouth and I tried not to look at it.

I called again, I’m hurt. I want to come up.

My aunt called back, Count to one hundred.

I started counting. At thirty-two a watery vibration sounded from a wall nearby, an eerie roar that rose and fell. My limbs were full of pins and needles and I had the childish thought that if I turned to run up the stairs the boiler would leap at me.

I looked at it. Wide as a car and taller than my aunt, it seemed to crouch in the shadows, its pipes reaching like arms. But it was only a machine. It was as old as the house, my uncle had told me, and used to heat its rooms with steam before the house was switched to electric and then to geothermal heat. I used to come down here with him—he had a workbench in the far corner that was gone now. The boiler was like a huge pot that simmered, he said, and he drew me a picture of how it worked. I remembered the scratch of his pencil on the paper and the smell of WD-40 and epoxy glue. The basement didn’t smell like that anymore; it smelled only of wet concrete.

When he finished the drawing he wondered aloud if he could get the boiler working again, just for fun. It would make a mess and your aunt won’t like it, he said. But I bet we could do it if we put our two minds together.

His tools were still down here, locked in a cabinet. I got up from the stair. My head had stopped bleeding. I found a wire hanger forgotten on the floor, twisted it into the shape I needed, and picked the cabinet’s lock. The shelves were full of drills and sanders and pliers and screwdrivers, and it smelled like I remembered, like oil and glue and also a whisper of something burnt.

I imagined my uncle standing beside me, his broad face and wispy hair. His wool sweater. In my mind he said, A flashlight, a wrench, and a box of matches. With those things in my hands I turned back to the boiler.

The sun had gone down. The narrow windows at the top of the concrete walls were black and my flashlight made a small yellow circle in the darkness.

Only one way to find out how it works, my uncle’s voice said.

Take it apart, I said, and I imagined him nodding and handing me the wrench.

I climbed onto a crate and loosened one of the pipes at the joint, then shined my light inside. There was insulation stuffed in there and I pulled it out. I blew air into the hole and it made a low, vibrating note.

I went from one pipe to the next until they were all clear. I studied the box’s metal pressure gauge, unscrewed its cover, pulled out its wiring. Then I put it back the way I found it.

Not much to it, is there? my uncle’s voice said.

Will it work?

Let’s find out, he said, and I lit my way to a bag of charcoal sitting under the stairs. The boiler’s heavy drawer groaned when I opened it. I tipped the charcoal inside, struck a match, and dropped it in. I struck more matches and let them fall into the pile of coal until the coal began to cinder and glow.