Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

— Moved and seconded that Warren Walker be made a private in this Company. All those in favor say aye.

— Aye.

— in the evening, after helping the cat, Juniper, to catch grasshoppers among the hummocks of wild grass, swishing his tail against my leg, and purring, Uncle Tom and Uncle David and Aunt Norah and Mother having all gone to a dance at the McGills’, and Porper in bed, singing to himself in Mother’s room upstairs, and Susan swinging in a hammock on the porch, with one leg out so that she could push herself to and fro, I walked across the tennis court and watched the moon rise over the Long Beach. The tennis court needed hoeing again. And it needed new lines of whitewash. There were lights in the Walker house, and Mr. Walker went from the house to the barn with a pail in his hand. Then we sat at the dining table under the swinging lamp and played jackstraws.

— I heard Uncle Tom and Aunt Norah talking about Father and Mother.

— You shouldn’t have listened.

— I couldn’t help it. They were talking while I was dressing.

— What did they say.

— What do you want to know for, if you think I shouldn’t have listened.

— Oh, well, you don’t have to tell me, do you.

— They said they had quarreled.

— Who had quarreled.

— Father and Mother.

— I don’t believe it.

— You don’t have to. And they said something about Father coming down to Duxbury.

— Andy! He’s coming for the clambake! Is that it?

— How should I know. That’s all I heard, nitwit.

— Well, I’ll bet that’s what it is.

— Anyway, the clambake’s been put off again, hang it. We’ll never get to that Gurnett. I think I’ll go by myself. I’m sick and tired of waiting for them to get ready — first it’s one fool thing and then another.

— Well, go ahead, why don’t you. You could row there, couldn’t you?

— Row there! Seven miles there and seven miles back? I guess not. What about the tides. Or what about a thunderstorm. How’d you like to get caught in a thunderstorm in a dory, twit! If I go, I’ll walk.

— Well, you rowed to Clark’s Island, didn’t you?

— particularly also the sense of timelessness, the telescoping of day with day, of place with place, evening with evening, and morning with morning. The thunderstorms always coming from the southwest or west, the sky darkening first to cold gray, then to livid purple behind the Standish Monument, the wind rising to a scream across the black bay, the lightning stabbing unceasingly at the far, small figure of Miles Standish. Then the little house lashed wildly by the horizontal rain, the rush to shut the screens and doors and windows, the doors that would hardly shut against the wind, and the leaks everywhere, through walls and roof, pails and tins set out to receive the rapid pinging and clunking of drops, the struggle to get the hammocks in from the porch, take down the tennis net. Andy! Did you get the net in? The bows and arrows? Where are the rackets? Susan — Susan — where is Susan? Always the same thing. Or, at night, the splendid spectacle of the lightning across the bay, the storm advancing rapidly toward the open sea, and presently the lights of Plymouth far off across the water, like a long row of winking jewels, reappearing once more, and the lights of the Standish House, bright through the rain-washed evening air, as if nothing at all had happened.

Uncle David stared at them through the spyglass, from the wet porch.

— They must have turned the power off.

— Why do they turn the power off, Uncle David.

— Oh, I don’t know — to prevent a short circuit, or something.

— But they don’t turn them off in Boston.

— Well, Plymouth isn’t Boston.

— There they come again.

— Yes, now they’ve turned them on. Take a look, Tom? Here, Doris, take a look.

They all looked in turns through the little telescope, the same one through which they regarded the moon-mountains, sweeping it along the row of distant twinkling lights and the beards of reflected light in the water, Susan and myself coming last. Nothing to see, why bother? It was always Uncle David who went out first to see whether the Plymouth lights had yet been turned on. Or what trees had been hit, or whether a haystack or barn had been set afire. Uncle David this, and Uncle David that. Was it because Uncle David was rich. Or because he had nothing to do. He was always there, he was always in everything, pushing about with his red mustache and blue eyes, as if the world belonged to him. It was Uncle David who made us hoe the tennis court, and mark the lines, and who beat everybody except Father at tennis. This year, he was forever playing Mother, sometimes before breakfast, when the rest of us weren’t up yet, at seven o’clock. Several times I was waked up by hearing them, and got out of bed and went to the window to watch them, keeping back from the window so as not to be seen. Mother dressed in white, with her hair in a pigtail down her back, like a girl, and laughing a lot, and saying, David, how could you. Once she turned her ankle, running out into the field after a ball, and then Uncle David picked her up and carried her round the corner to the front of the house. It was because of those hummocks of wild grass, those hard tufts — it was easy to turn your ankle. But when I asked her about it at breakfast she looked surprised, and said it was nothing. Nothing at all.

— But, darling Andy, how did you happen to see? How did you happen to be up so early?

— I heard you playing, Mother.

— David, that was very naughty of us — we mustn’t do it again — we woke them up.

— Oh, I think the little rascal was up on his own account — weren’t you, Andy. He was probably catching flies for that cage of his.

— No I wasn’t, either. I heard you playing, and then I got up to see who it was.

— It doesn’t really matter, though I often think that on these summer mornings, when the light is so early, we might all get up earlier than we do. But, of course, Norah, we won’t — I know your habits too well. And the children must get their full sleep.

— and the tiny little brown pond deep down in the cleft behind the Wardman house, only a stone’s throw from our windmill, with the black alders around it, and the sumacs, and the frogs, and turtles, the turtles which sidled away into the dirty water when we came, and the high rock at one side. I went down to it in the morning and found a rose quartz Indian arrowhead in the sand at the edge of it, a perfect one, very small and sharp. It was a beauty. How Uncle Tom would be pleased when he saw it, for it was better than any we had found before, better even than the white quartz one we had found out at the end of the Point, better far than the flint ones. I sat there on the rock by the sumacs, and knew that it was Thursday, for on Thursday afternoons I had to go to the village and have my Latin lesson with Mr. Dearing, in the white house at the water’s edge, with his knockabout moored a little way out, in which, perhaps, after the lesson, he would take me for a sail. His house was a nice one, with lots of books and pictures, it was quiet and small like himself, and smelt of lavender. He was like Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom, if Mr. Dearing asks me to go for a sail, can I go. Last time he let me take the tiller, and I learned how to come about. We followed the yacht race, and beat them, on the same course, too, but outside them at every buoy, which made it longer. The course with the first leg toward Clark’s Island and the second toward the Point. You know the one, we’ve often watched them from the porch. Can I do that. Or can I go by myself to the woods on the other side of Standish Hill, to see if I can find some wild indigo, and press it, and see if it turns black in the book. Or would you like to come with me.