Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

— and beyond the golf links, where I always left the bicycle path, paved with broken clamshells, to walk along the edge of the course, among the bayberry bushes and cherry trees, hoping for lost golf balls, prodding in the poison-ivy with a stick, beyond this the boarding house kept by old Mrs. Soule, where we had stayed last year and the year before, with the hen houses at the back, and the little sandy-rutted road which led down to the cove and the stone dyke where beach plums grew. The floors were painted gray, with white speckles, the whole house had a marine smell like a ship, conch shells lined the path and stood against the doors, and on the lawn, among the croquet wickets, I had found four-leaved clovers. Molly Soule always sat alone in the swing, large-eyed, pallid, her thin little hands around the ropes, looking sadly at us, because we never played with her. Nobody ever played with her, because her name was the same as her mother’s, and she had no father. She was always hanging about and watching us from a little distance, and would run away and cry if we said anything to her, especially the Sanford boy, who asked her so many times what her name was. This was where I played baseball with Father in the evening, or ran races with him from one telephone pole to another. Was it true that he was coming again this year. Why was it that this year we were staying with Uncle Tom, and Aunt Norah, and Uncle David, instead of at the Soules’. Though it was nice, particularly as Uncle Tom knew so much about the wild flowers, and had that nice little tin cylinder to bring back the flowers in, the one he had brought all the way from Switzerland a long while ago. It hung over his shoulder on a strap, and we had found swamp pink in the marsh near Pembroke woods, and arrowhead, and ghost-flower. Jewelweed, on the way to the Standish Monument, pickerel weed, and buttonbush. If only he could go more often — we already had more than fifty kinds, pressed in the blank book, it would be easy to get a hundred before the summer was over. Why was he so thin, and his knees so funny, and he always wore that funny yachting cap with the green vizor, his ears sticking out at the sides, walking in his bathing suit over the humped grass to the Point with the rowlocks jingling in his hand. I said to him that I thought I was getting fatter. He gave that nice little chuckle and said, No danger, Andy. Why was it he and Uncle David had never learned to swim properly—

— when we got to the oak woods we decided after all to go to the pine woods instead, because the oak woods were smaller and closer together, there were no logs to build with, and no room anyway; so we took Warren and Gay with us and we sat in the houses of logs while it rained, and only a few drops of rain came through the roofs, which we had made out of pine boughs. Susan was in one house with Warren, and Gay was in the other with me. I asked if we should take our clothes off and go to bed, pretending it was night, but she said no and began to cry. Warren and Susan had taken off theirs. Warren didn’t mind, but Gay said she wanted to go home, and I was afraid she would tell her mother. So I told her about the villages we made of shells on the beach, and the dead seal.

— It’s swarming with maggots.

— What are maggots.

— Little white worms, millions of them, and it smells so bad that you can smell it all the way up to the house when the wind is right.

— Do you go bathing every day, we go every day, and we have a sailboat at the Point.

— I have a dory of my own, and my uncle has a motorboat which he takes us out in. It has a real cabin with doors that lock.

The smell was so bad that we couldn’t get very near to the seal without feeling sick, but I showed her the maggots. Then Mother came down the hill walking very slowly, with Porper holding her hand. She was carrying a red silk parasol over her head.

— Porper wants to see the village. Show him how you build houses, Andy and Susan, I want to read my book. Are these your little friends? What are your names, children? Oh, you’re the little girl and boy who have just moved in next door, aren’t you.

We made houses out of rows of quartz pebbles in the sand, in between the beds of eelgrass. First they all had to buy their land from me with shells for money: scallop shells were five dollars, clam shells were one dollar, toenail shells were fifty cents. Mother had made a pile of dried eelgrass to lean against, and was reading a book under her parasol. Warren sold quartz pebbles to us for building material. Susan kept the bakery shop where we bought bread and cakes, Gay was the grocer. I built a house for Porper, and showed him how to go in and out of the imaginary door, and where the bedroom was, and how to go along the streets without stepping into the other houses by mistake. The tide was way out, all the mud flats in the bay were showing, and a little way out two men with a dory were digging clams.

— Shall we dig some clams for supper, Mother?

— Not today, Andy.

— When are we going to the Long Beach for a clambake, and to see the Gurnett. Tomorrow?

— Not till next week, I’m afraid. Now don’t bother Mother, she’s reading. And she may take a nap, she’s very tired and sleepy, so don’t disturb her.

Susan took off Porper’s sneakers so that he could go wading.

— There you are, lamb. Don’t mind about the clambake, we’ll have it next week, and you’ll see the ocean and all the dead fishes.

— What dead fishes.

— And here are some more scallop shells for you, and a horseshoe crab.

Warren and I walked along the beach toward the Point, and I showed him the hunting box, all covered deep in dried seaweed. We got into it and lay down for a while. It smelt very nice. There was an old beer bottle in the corner, with sand and water in it, and we took it out and threw stones at it until it was broken. Take that. And that. And that. And that for your old man.

When we went back, Uncle David had come, and was standing in front of Mother, with his hands in his duck trousers. He was looking down at her and laughing. The parasol had fallen on the sand, she was lying back with her hands under her head.

— Say that again.

— Why not?

— Well, say it.

They laughed together, and then he turned his head toward us and said, Hi, there: what mischief have you fellows been up to?

— Andy, why don’t you take your little friends down to the Point and show them your dory. I’m sure they’d like to see it. Wouldn’t you?

— at the Company Camp, on the edge of the other oak woods, in the late afternoon, with the long yellow sunset light coming over the stunted trees, Frank Tupper drilled us in a row, Sanford and myself and Gwendolyn and the two Peters girls, Warren sitting on the grass and watching us, because he hadn’t yet been elected. Present arms. Shoulder arms. Port arms. Ground arms. Parade rest. The wooden cannon was dragged out of the hut and loaded with a blank cartridge for the sunset salute. The Peters’ windmill, a Sunbeam, was pumping, and water was spattering down from the overflow pipe to the cement base. Frank looked at his watch, looked importantly at the sky, at the oak woods, behind which the sun might or might not have set, then gave the order to fire. Bang. The sun had set, and the cloud of blue smoke floated quickly away. Gwendolyn hadn’t said a word to me. What had she done with the box of candy. Had she shown it to any one. Was it she, or some one else, who had first found it there on the porch. Did she throw it away. Had she laughed. Was she angry. She stood next to me as we saluted the flag, which Frank was hauling down for the night, the folds winding themselves about his shoulders, but she was careful not to touch me. Did I dare to look at her. No. She was stronger than I, taller, but in the wrestling match I had got her down and held her down, with my hands hard on her shoulders. At the picnic in Pembroke woods, she and I had gone off by ourselves to look for firewood, and had gathered wood in a separate heap before taking it back to the others, but all the while we hadn’t said a word. Why was that. Was she as shy as I was, or was she annoyed with me. What was their house like, inside. I had never been into it. They had a bathing hut of their own, in the Cove, and a long narrow pier which led out across the eelgrass to deep water, with a float at the end, where their green canoe was hauled up. It was near the place where Molly and Margaret went to bathe. Once I had followed them down the road, to watch them bathe there, but when I got to the beach I saw Frank and Gwendolyn there on the float, so I had slunk away.