Whirligig (13 page)

He liked the way she spoke to him as to an adult. “I wouldn't call it crazy.” He noticed that tied to her belt loops were short strips of bright fabric.

“What are those for?”

“Just for color,” she said. “Why not? It's so dreary so much of the year here.” She looked up. “What sort of art do you do?”

“I make whirligigs.” The words had come out without his permission. He wanted them back, then decided they were safe with her.

“Really. How unusual. And how wonderful.” She studied him, grinning, her green eyes bright. “Perhaps you'll become their Arcangelo Corelli.”

He smiled in return and sat on the sand. They talked for an hour, watching the gulls drop shells onto the rocks to crack them, then went their separate ways. By the time Brent returned, his pack was as full as Santa Claus's sack.

He laid his finds on the table and circled it. Ideas for whirligigs streamed through his mind like clouds, in constant metamorphosis. He scrutinized, weighed, and considered his ingredients while the sun dipped behind the trees. The mosquitoes emerged. He kept them at bay with a fire, then boiled water in his pot and dumped in half a bag of noodles. He poured off the water once they were done, sliced slivers of cheese on top with his knife, and felt himself a true French chef.

When the sky overhead became black, he left the woods in search of the stars. The main camping area flickered with fires. Two children were playing badminton by lantern light. Brent walked to the cove. He turned his head up and smiled, as if stepping into a party. The faces there were familiar. He'd missed them. The past several nights had been cloudy. He noticed at once how much higher the Big and Little Dippers were. Riding north from Florida, he'd covered twenty degrees of latitude. Part of the tail of Scorpius was now hidden below the southern horizon. He wondered what new stars he'd gained to the north. He slipped the red cellophane over his flashlight, opened his book to “Circumpolar Stars,” and availed himself of his new view.

At dawn, a barking dog woke him up. He gazed toward the east out the tent's open end. Ten different reds quickly came and went, as if the sky were showing color samples. He studied the clouds' calligraphy, their foreign alphabet indecipherable. Then a dam of light burst and flooded the east, the sun rose, and the dawn display ended. It had all gone too quickly, like a dazzling amusement park flying past the bus window. “The darkness swallows up most of us.” He heard the words spoken in the painter's voice, and suddenly saw his whirligig whole.

He started in then and there, and labored for three and a half days on it. He played his harmonica when he felt like a break and one day walked to the fabled town dump, returning with a small junk shop in his pack. The weather held clear. Each morning he woke to the purring of the lobster boats and each night went to sleep with
Two Years Before the Mast
and his flashlight. After lunch, he stopped in at the office and consulted the shelf of nature guides, searching for shells he'd found or birds he'd seen and writing their names in a notebook. In this way, he knew it was a black-capped chickadee that seemed to be chattering its congratulations at the moment he finished the whirligig.

He contemplated his work over lunch. It was three times the size of the others he'd built. The pinwheels on the front, snipped and fashioned from soda cans, stood becalmed. Likewise the dozen propellers made from golf-motif coasters, linoleum scraps, license plates, and lobster-trap slats. On the blades of one four-bladed model he'd painted Lea's four-part name. He considered the plywood rendition of her face. It was the most faithful of the four he'd made. For the first time, he'd given her a slight smile, painstakingly copied from her photograph. The head was large, giving him room to glue sea glass and red reflectors in her hair. Her skin glistened. Because it was Maine, he'd given the wood an extra coat of varnish. He'd drilled holes in shells and made her a necklace, hanging it over her head along with a set of wind chimes he'd rescued from the dump. Maine summers, like dawn colors, were brief. Darkness and winter predominated. Lea's life had been similarly short. But his clacking, flashing, jingling memorial would give off sound and color all year, holding back the tide of death. It was a kinetic gravestone, painted in ever-blooming greens and yellows and reds. Lea would not be swallowed up.

He walked to the cove. He wanted it mounted there and liked the idea that the first winds to come ashore from the Pacific, Gulf, and Atlantic would turn his whirligigs. He spent an hour hunting for a site that was far enough above high tide as well as safe from campers. There weren't any suitable trees available. He wondered if the campground owner would let him sink a pole in the ground. Then he looked across the water to the south and had a better idea—the painter's house, perched above the water on a treeless point, with no high tides or falling limbs or campers to worry about.

The whirligig was heavy, awkward to carry, and conspicuous in the extreme. He ignored the stares he drew in the campground, decided it would be easier to take the road, and was the cause of much braking and head-swiveling. The day was hot. His arm muscles burned. He shifted the contraption onto his head just as a breeze flowed over him, setting it ringing and spinning. It was engaged with the wind as if by a gear. Making his way up a hill, he listened to his respiration, his own wind surging in and out, and felt at one with the whirligig. The breeze picked up as he neared the woman's house, increasing the clatter and motion overhead. He spotted her weeding and supposed he must look like a demented relative of the Wright brothers. Nervously, he awaited her head's turning.

“Oh, my!” was all she could say at first. She got to her feet, jeans damp at the knees. Her agile eyes took in his strange cargo. Brent feasted on her smile of delight.

“It's wonderful! Truly.” She stroked the chimes. “It makes me feel like a little child. And what painter in the Louvre wouldn't envy
that
power.”

Brent rested it on a metal chair and watched her roam it with her eyes. A gust set it and the strips of bright fabric on her belt loops fluttering. He realized that they hadn't exchanged names. He liked the way she put important things first and left trivialities for last. He was glad he'd come.

“It reminds me of those Tibetan flags that flap in the wind, sending out prayers.” She flicked a propeller and admired the sea glass. “It's a one-man band for the eyes. Bravo!”

“Thanks.” Brent cleared his throat. “Actually, I was wondering if I could put it up here. If you wouldn't mind.”

“You don't want to keep it?”

“I can't. And I made it to be here in Maine. By the coast.” He stopped before he said more than he wanted to.

“I'd be thrilled. And honored.” Her eyes sparkled. “Where do you think it ought to go?”

They strolled her grounds and toured her garden, discussing sites and a dozen other topics. An hour later Brent had removed a decrepit birdhouse from a metal pole and mounted the whirligig in its place.

“I promise you, no birds used that house,” said the woman. “And when it goes to the dump, it might be just what some sculptor needs.” They were drinking lemonade on the porch, both of them facing the whirligig and the long view up the coast. Cicadas droned in the sultry air.

“Now tell me—or don't, you've a perfect right not to. Is the woman someone real? I noticed the name.”

Brent sipped. “She was.” He sipped again, then held the icy glass to his cheek, partially hiding his face.

“She died in a car accident. In Chicago. In May.”

The painter put her hand to her sternum. “Oh, no.”

He was relieved they weren't facing each other. “It was my fault. I'm the one who killed her.” He listened to himself as if to a stranger. “I'd been drinking, actually. At a party.”

The woman inhaled. “I'm so sorry.” She stopped. “You must—”

“I was actually trying to kill myself. I killed her instead, by accident.”

It was like falling down the basement stairs, unexpected and unstoppable. Brent felt dizzy, unsure of where he was. He knew he hadn't let out this last fact before, not to his parents or the police or the psychologists. He felt empty inside, like a chicken from the store with its plastic bag of organs removed. He was glad the woman didn't know his name. He wanted to leave his confession, like his whirligigs, anonymously.

“It's hard to know what to say,” the painter murmured. She set down her drink. They both stared out to sea. “From our chats, you certainly don't strike me as a killer. Or suicidal. Just look at your artwork.” The wind toyed with the chimes and turned the row of pinwheels into blurs. “Only someone with a strong life force could possibly have created that.”

The cicadas pulsed, then were silent.

“I'm sure you know that we all get depressed. Seriously, sometimes. Most of us probably think about throwing in the towel at some point.” She paused. “And, God knows, we all make mistakes. All of the above, in my case.” She looked at Brent. “I could be wildly wrong. But my sense of you is that you're a good person, not a bad one.”

The words worked their way through Brent's brain. That he might in fact be like everyone else was a foreign idea, never considered. That he could have done what he'd done and still be good was an even more startling notion. He remembered the note from the motel maid: “No one is alone with Jesus.” Jesus forgave you no matter what you'd done. But that was his business, and the priests' and ministers'. They were professional forgivers. They said “It's okay” the same way your parents said they loved you, whether they meant it or not. This, though, was different—hearing himself forgiven freely, by someone he trusted. He wasn't sure, though, that she knew enough to forgive him. He told her the story in detail. It didn't seem to change her mind.

The sun lowered toward the hills. Brent declined the woman's offer of dinner. He felt talked out. Producing the camera, he took four pictures of the whirligig from various angles and distances, the last one with the painter beside it. They exchanged farewells.

Brent continued into town. He bought groceries, then scented food coming from the diner nearby and decided he couldn't wait to eat until he made it back to the camp. He stepped in and took a seat in the front corner, watching the comings and goings out the window as if he were in a trance. He couldn't quite believe the world was his to enter. He felt dazed and stayed on at his table long after his meal had been cleared. Across the street, cars were parking and people walking into the Town Hall. He paid, drifted out, heard music, and followed the others as if under hypnosis.

A pianist was pounding out chords on a stage, surrounded by a fiddler, a flutist, and a woman plucking a stand-up bass. Beside them, a gangling man was calling out steps to the two rows of dancers below. The music was brisk, bouncy, and infectious. Brent watched inconspicuously, leaning against the wall. Except for a few teenagers, the hall resembled a reunion of some sixties commune, with plenty of beards and ponytails in view. The caller's promptings, like an auctioneer's spiel, seemed almost to be in a foreign language.

“Allemand left. Now ladies' chain. Left-hand star. Back to the right. Actives down and back. Cast off. Everybody swing!”

Couples turned in circles, skirts rippling. Brent stared. It was a human whirligig, set in motion by music instead of wind. He sank into a chair and watched dance after dance. Suddenly, a young woman rushed up to him.

“We need one more couple.” She held out her hands.

To his great amazement, he agreed. A few people clapped when he got to his feet. As before, the caller walked them through the dance slowly, without any music. Brent now recognized some of the steps. Knowing hands turned him left instead of right and pointed him toward the proper partner. Then the music started up at full speed and the dancers, like clock parts, began to turn. Arms reached for his. Faces whizzed past. He was instantly enmeshed with the others. Wordlessly they corrected him, adjusted his grip, smiled at him. He'd always been gawky. This hadn't changed. But the pattern of steps, repeated over and over, slowly began to sink in. The galloping tune had an Irish feel. It was exalting to be part of the twining and twirling, and strangely thrilling to touch other hands and to feel them grasping his. He felt like a bee returning to a hive, greeted and accepted by all. He clapped with the others when the music stopped, stood outside to cool off, and was promptly asked if he wanted to do the next one. His partner called the event a “contradance.” It felt to Brent like his rite of reentry. He stayed all the way to the waltz at the end.

*   *   *

He slept late. When he woke, he could still hear the music and see the wide smile of the woman who'd driven him back. Birds were busy in the trees around him. He looked outside. The day was clear. He lay there for half an hour. Then he realized that he'd finished Lea's mother's task.

He built a fire and cooked himself some oatmeal, peering into the flames. The guilt hadn't magically vanished overnight. Four whirligigs wouldn't accomplish that. He knew it would reside in him like the ashes after a fire, unconsumed. But something had changed. He felt oddly buoyant. He discovered as well that a new view lay before his mind's eye. He saw himself returning to Chicago and to his parents. Delivering the photographs. Starting at a new school in the fall. These had been beyond the horizon until now. He began readying himself to meet them. He felt that he was up to it.

He put out his fire and packed his tent, then took out Lea's photo. It struck him now that the crash wasn't only something that he'd done to her. When they'd met, he was longing to be swallowed by the blackness. She'd set him in motion, motion that he was now transferring to others.

He replaced the photo and took out his bus pass. It didn't expire until August seventeenth. He had another three weeks left. He wouldn't mind seeing New Hampshire and Vermont. Then maybe camping on Lake George, in New York. Someone he'd met at the dance had just come back from a canoeing trip there. He thought he might build some more whirligigs. Maybe he'd start on a lifetime project of putting one up in every state.