Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

— No Porper, I can’t take you to the Horse Monument this afternoon, because Uncle Tom and I are going to the woods to look for wild flowers.

— But I want to see the Horse Monument.

— But you’ve seen it dozens of times, Porper.

— I want to see it. I want to see where the horse was buried.

— Why don’t you take him, Susan?

— Oh, Porper — why do you want to see it. You know what it’s like — it’s just like any other tombstone, only it’s made of bricks, and it’s because a horse was buried there, a man’s favorite horse, and he put up a monument for it when it died. He was a nice man, wasn’t he?

— I want to see the Horse Monument.

— Go on, Susan, and take him. It’s your turn. I took him last time.

At Mr. Dearing’s, the clock ticked on the white-painted wooden mantelpiece, between the model of a ship and a barometer, the clock ticked Latin, and Mr. Dearing’s gentle voice asked me questions, went through my exercise, alternately chastened and sustained me, while through the open window, on the side of the house toward the bay, the soft sound of the waves came, lapping among reeds and eelgrass, and the knocking of a dory against the float. If I turned my head I could see Mr. Dearing’s knockabout, with its boom, the mainsail neatly furled, propped up in its shears of wood. Now that declension again. You’re a little shaky on that declension. Those ablatives seem to bother you, don’t they? And those verbs. You must get them into your head. Utor, fruor, potior, fungor , and vescor . They have a nice sound, Andy, don’t you think? Utor, fruor, fungor, potior , and vescor .

Uncle Tom had on his white yachting cap, with the green vizor, and the tin cylinder hung from his shoulder, and as we climbed the sandy road over Standish Hill, I asked him if he had heard the bell ring, the bell of the Unitarian Church. We were passing a clump of sumacs.

— These aren’t poison sumacs, are they, Uncle Tom?

— No. But what about that bell?

— I rang it myself, at ten minutes past two.

And I told him how it had happened. The village barber was cutting my hair, and said that he was the church sexton, and that he had to go and wind the clock, and asked me if I’d like to see how he did it, it was just across the road. We unlocked the church and went in, and climbed up two flights of dark stairs in the tower, and then two ladders which went straight up through narrow trap doors until we got to a shaky landing beside the machinery of the clock, where there were lots of cobwebs and dust. The barber wound a crank, and we could hear the clock ticking very loud. Then he asked me if I would like to strike the bell, and gave me a short rope and told me to pull it: I gave it a pull, and the machinery began grinding to itself, a sort of growling, and then suddenly came the huge ring of sound, shaking the belfry, everything trembled with it, and I thought of the bell sound traveling all the way to Powder Point, and every one wondering what time it was.

Shad bush, wild sarsaparilla, St. John’s Wort, sand spurrey, wild indigo, and checkerberry. The goldenrods belong to the composite family, there are forty kinds in New England; but this sort, solidago sempervirens , which grows in the salt marshes, or near them — the heaviest, the strongest, the most fragrant — the one that the bees love, and the flies—

— or again to remember the first arrival, the arrival at the end of June after school was over, that first and sweetest deliciousness of escape and renewal, the foresight of so much delight, the largeness and wideness and brightness, the sun everywhere, the sea everywhere, the special salt spaciousness, which one felt even at the little shabby railway station, three miles inland, at the bottom of the hill, where the road turned. Even the weatherboards of the wooden station seemed to be soaked in salt sea fog, the little cherry trees had about them a special air as of knowing the sea, and the old coach, the Priscilla or the Miles Standish, with Smiley driving it, or Bart Cahoun, waiting for us there with its lean horses, had on its wheels the sand of Powder Point. In the very act of getting down from the train we already participated in the rich seaside summer — our trunks, lying on the platform, on the hot rough pine planks, shared in the mystery, became something other than the humble boxes into which we had put our bathing suits and sneakers. The world became dangerously brilliant, ourselves somehow smaller, but more meaningful; in the deep summer stillness, the country stillness, it seemed almost as if already we could hear the sea. Our voices, against the little cherry trees which the coach was passing, their boughs whitely shrouded by tent caterpillars, and the gray shingled cottages covered with trumpet vine, and the stone walls and the apple orchards, were different from our Cambridge voices. Even Mother became different, was smaller and more vivid. Would it all be the same again. Would the tide be out or in. Would the golden weathervane still be there. Would the dam under the village bridge be opened or closed. Would it be as nice living at Uncle Tom’s as at the Soules’. It was nearer to the end of the Point, nearer the long bridge, nearer the sea—

— Now you must remember, children, it’s not quite like staying at the Soules’, we are visitors, and Uncle Tom has built a nice play house for you, and you must try to play there as much as you can, so that the house can be quiet.

— Can Porper kneel up, Mother, he wants to look out.

— You can keep all your toys there, and on rainy days it will be very nice for you. It’s a nice little house, painted green, down at the foot of the hill, near that rock—

— You mean Plymouth Rock Junior.

— Yes.

— What’s Plymouth Rock Junior.

— Oh, Porper, you don’t remember, but you’ll see.

— Susan, will you keep hold of Porper’s hand?

— Is that Plymouth Rock Junior.

— No, that’s just a rock in front of the library. That’s where Andy goes on Wednesdays to get books, don’t you, Andy.

— I’m going to read Calumet K again. And Huckleberry Finn again.

Would there be any new books. To carry home under my raincoat in the rain, past the house that was always to let, and the bowling alleys, and then along the lagoon to King Caesar’s Road.

— Will Uncle David be there, Mother?

— Yes, I suppose so. He has a new motorboat.

— We must have a picnic on the outer beach soon, Mother, we must have two of them this year, not one like last year.

— Will we have blueberries and cream, and blueberry muffins?

— Yes, yes, now don’t bother Mother, Mother’s thinking.

— Why are you thinking.

— Andy, for goodness sake take Porper’s other hand. Sit still, Porper. Look, do you see the weather vane? It’s a rooster made out of gold.

— the particular breadth and suggestion of sea-wonder that began always when the coach turned north at the fork of the road, under the weather vane, and then rounded the lagoon toward King Caesar’s Road, and passing this, rattled along the rutted sand Point Road — we were getting nearer the sea, there was now water on both sides of us, water and marshes, we were going out into the Atlantic Ocean. We were getting nearer to the outer beach, and the long red bridge that led to it, nearer to the Gurnett, with its squat twin lighthouses. How soon would the picnic be. There would be steamed clams, and sweet potatoes, and corn, hidden in the nests of hot wet seaweed, on a bed of charred stones. We would gather shells. We would find fragments of driftwood and take them home with us in the little cart which Porper would sit in, with his legs spread out. We would climb the dunes and slide down the slopes of hot loose sand. There would be new breaches in the wall of dunes, where the sea had broken through during the winter, wide flat beds of stones. Where I went wading last year with Gwendolyn, and she held her dress up high, and I saw her garters, the quick exciting flash of silver. We were looking for live horseshoe crabs. I pretended to look for crabs, holding my head down, but was really watching her knees, and she knew that I was watching her, and held her dress higher. Andy, I’ve found three, and you haven’t found one. And look, here’s the smallest one yet—! She held it up out of the water by its beak, and it arched itself almost double, small and transparent. I took it in my hand and we looked at it together, and holding up her dress she leaned against me, and I heard her breathing.