THE KITE
by Patricia Highsmith
The voices of Walter's mother and father came in jerky murmurs down the hall to his room. What were they argu¬ing about now? Walter wasn't listening. He thought of kicking his room door shut, and didn't. He could shut their words out of his ears quite well. Walter was on his knees on the floor, carefully notching a balsa wood strip which was nearly nine feet long. It would have been exactly nine feet long, but he had notched it too deeply, he thought, a few minutes ago, and had cut that little piece off and started again. This was the long center piece for the kite he was making. The cross-piece would be nearly six feet long, so only by turning the kite horizontally would he be able to get it out his room door.
'I didn't say that!' That was his mother's shrill voice in a tone of impatience.
A couple of times a week, his father went mumbling into the living room to sleep on the sofa there instead of in the bedroom with his mother. Now and then they mentioned Elsie, Walter's sister, but Walter had stopped listening even to that. Elsie had died two months ago in the hospital, because of pneumonia. Walter now noticed a smell of frying ham or bacon. He was hungry, but the menu for dinner didn't interest him. Maybe they would get through the meal without his father standing up and leaving the table, maybe even taking the car and going off. That didn't matter.
The work under his hands mattered, the big kite, and Walter was so far pleased. It was the biggest kite he had ever tried to make, and would it even fly? The tail would have to be pretty long. He might have to experiment with its length. In a corner of his room stood a six-foot tall roll of pinkish rice paper. Walter looked forward with pleasure and a little fear to cutting a single big piece for his kite. He had ordered the paper from a stationery-and-book shop in town, and had waited a month for it, because it had come from San Francisco. He had paid the eight dollars for it from money saved out of his allowance, meaning from not going to Cooper's for ice cream sodas and hamburgers with Ricky and other neighborhood chums.
Walter stood up. Above his bed he had thumbtacked a purple kite to the wall. This kite had a hole in its paper, because a bird had flown through it as if on purpose, like a bomber. The bird had not been hurt, but the kite had fallen quickly, while Walter had wound in his string as fast as he could to save the kite before it got caught in a tree. He had saved the kite, what was left of it. He and Elsie had made the kite together, and Walter was fond of it.
'Wally-y? . . . Dinner!' his mother called from the kitchen.
'Coming, Mom!'
Walter was now brushing balsa wood chips, tiny ones, into a dustpan. His mother had taken away the carpet last year. The plain wooden floor was easier to sweep, easier to work on when he was gluing something. Walter dumped the chips into his wastebasket. He glanced up at a box kite-blue and yellow-which hung from his ceiling. Elsie had loved this kite. He thought she would admire the one he was making now. Suddenly Walter knew what he would put on his kite, simply his sister's name-Elsie-in graceful script letters.
'Wally?
Walter walked down the hall to the kitchen. His mother and father sat already at the rectangular table which had X-shaped legs. His sister's chair, the fourth chair, had not been removed, and perhaps was there just to complete the picture of four, Walter thought, a chair on each side of the table, though the table was big enough for eight people to sit at. Walter barely glanced at his father, because his father was staring at him, and Walter expected a critical remark. His father had darker brown hair than Walter's, and the straight brows that Walter had inherited. Lately his father had an amused smile on his lips that Walter had learned was not to be counted on. His father Steve sold cars, new and used, and he liked to wear tweed suits. He had a couple of favorite tweed suits that he called lucky. Even now, in June, his father was wearing brown tweed trou¬sers, though his tie was loosened and his shirt open at the neck. His mother's blonde hair looked fluffier than usual, meaning she had been to the beauty parlor that afternoon.
'Why so quiet, Wally?' asked his mother.
Walter was eating his rice and ham casserole. There was a plate of crisp green salad on his left. 'You're not saying anything.'
His father gave a soft laugh.
'What've you been doing this afternoon?' his mother asked.
Walter shrugged. She meant since he had got home from school at half past three. 'Fooling around.'
'As long as he hasn't been-you know.' Steve reached for his mug of beer.
Walter felt a warmth in his face. His father meant had he been to the cemetery again. Well, Walter didn't go often, and in fact he hated the place. Maybe he'd gone there just twice on his own, and how had his parents even found out?
'I know Wally was home-all afternoon,' his mother said gently.
'Caretaker there-he mentioned it, you know, Gladys?'
'All right, Steve, do you have to-'
Steve bit into garlic bread and looked at his son. 'Care¬taker there, Wally. So why do you jump the fence? ... If you want to go in, just ring his doorbell across the road there. That's what he's for.'
Walter pressed his lips together. He didn't want to visit his sister's grave in the company of an old caretaker, for God's sake! 'So what if I did-once?' Walter retorted. 'Frankly-I think it's boring there.' Ugly and stupid, all those tombstones, Walter might have added.
'Then don't go,' said his father, smiling more broadly now.
Walter looked in rage at his mother, not knowing what to reply now, not expecting that she could help him either.
'Cuck-ool - Cuck-ool - Cuck-ool-'
'And I'm goddam sick of that cuckoo clock!' yelled his father, jumping up from the table at the same time. He lifted the clock from the wall and looked about to throw it on the floor, while the bird kept popping in and out, announcing seven.
'Ha-ha!-Ha-ha-haa-aaV Walter laughed and tried to stifle it. He nearly choked on lettuce, and grabbed his milk glass and laughed into that.
'Don't break it, Steve!' cried his mother. 'Wally, stop it!'
Walter did stop laughing, suddenly, but not because his mother had told him to. He finished his meal slowly. Now his father wasn't going to sit down again, and they were talking about the Beachcomber Inn, whether his father was going there tonight, and his mother was saying she didn't want to go, and asking Steve if he expected to meet anyone there. One person or several, Walter couldn't tell, and it didn't matter to Walter. But his mother was getting more angry, and now she was standing up also, leaving her baked apple untouched.
Steve said, 'Is that the only place in this-'
'You know that's where you were for days and nights-that time!' said his mother, sounding out of breath.
Steve glanced at Walter, who lowered his eyes and pushed his half-eaten dessert away. Walter wanted to jump up and go, but sat for the next seconds as if paralyzed.
'That is . .. not... true,' said his father. 'But am I going out tonight? Yes!' He was pulling on a summer jacket that had been hanging over a chair.
Walter knew they were talking about the time his sister had caught fever. Elsie had had her tonsils out a week or so before, and everything had seemed all right, even though she was home from school and still eating mostly ice cream, and then she had become pink in the face. And his mother had been away just then, because her mother-Grandma Page-had been sick in Denver, something with her heart, and everybody had thought she might die, but she hadn't. Then when his mother had come home, Elsie was already in the hospital, and the doctor had said it was double pneumonia or at least a very bad case of pneu¬monia, which Walter thought nobody had to die from, but Elsie had died.
'Can't you finish your baked apple, Wally?' asked his mother.
'He's daydreaming again.' Steve had a cigarette in his mouth. 'Lives in a dream world. Bikes and kites.' His father was about to go out of the back door to the garage.
'Can I leave now?' Walter stood up. 'I mean-for my room?'
'Yes, Wally,' said his mother. 'That police program you like is on tonight. Want to watch it with me?'
'Not sure.' Walter shook his head awkwardly, and left the kitchen.
A minute later, Walter heard the car rolling down the driveway. Walter crossed the hall from his room into the living room. Here there were bookshelves, the TV set, a sofa and armchairs. On top of one of the bookshelves stood two pictures of Elsie.
In the larger photograph, Elsie was holding the purple kite lightly between her palms, the kite that later the same day had been hit by a bird. Elsie was smiling, almost laugh¬ing, and the wind blew her hair back, blonder hair than Walter's. The second picture Walter liked less, because it had been taken last Christmas in a photographer's studio-he and Elsie in neat clothes sitting on a sofa. His father had taken the kite picture in the backyard just three months ago. And now Elsie was dead, 'gone away,' someone had said to him, as if he were a little kid they had to tell lies to, as if she would 'come back' one day, if she only decided to. Dead was dead, and dead was to be limp and not breath¬ing-like a couple of mice Walter had seen his father take out of traps under the sink. Things dead would never move or breathe again. They were hopeless and finished. Walter also didn't believe in ghosts, didn't imagine his sister walk¬ing around the house at night, trying to speak to him. Certainly not. Walter didn't even believe in a life after death, though the preacher had talked about something like that during the service for Elsie. Did a mouse have a life after death? Why should it have? How could it? Where was that life, for instance? Could anybody say? No. That was a dream world, Walter thought, and a lot sillier than his kites that his father called a dream world. You could touch kites, and they had to be correctly made, just like airplanes.
When he heard his mother's step, Walter slipped across the hall into his own room.
Within two or three minutes, Walter was ready to leave the house with a red and white kite some two feet in length, and a roll of string. It was still daylight, hardly eight o'clock.
'Wally?' His mother was in the living room and had turned on the TV. 'Got your homework done?'
'Sure, Mom, this afternoon.' That was true. Wally went reluctantly to the living room door, having dropped his kite out of sight in the hall. 'I'm going out with my bike. Just for a few minutes.'
His mother sat in an armchair, and she had pushed her shoes off. 'That program you like's at nine, you know?'
'Oh, I can be back by then.' Walter snatched up his kite and headed for the back door.
He took his bike from the garage, and installed the kite between two rags in one of the satchels behind the seat. Walter rolled down the driveway and turned right in the street, coasting downhill and standing on the pedals.
Walter's school friend Ricky was watering his front lawn. 'Going up to Coop's?' Ricky meant the hamburger-and-ice-cream place.
'Naw, just cruisin' for a few minutes,' Walter said over his shoulder. Walter had no extra money at the moment, and was not in the mood for Coop's with Ricky, anyway.
The boy rolled on, through the town's shopping center, then turned left, and began to pedal harder up a long slope. The wind was picking up, and blew against him as he went up the hill. Houses grew fewer, then there were more trees, and finally he saw the spiked iron fence of Greenhills, the cemetery where his sister was buried. Walter cycled around to the right, had to walk his bike across a grassy ditch, then he walked several yards more until he reached a sheltered spot concealed from the road by a big tree. He leaned his bike against the fence, poked his kite and string through the bars, and climbed the fence, bracing his sneakers against the bars. He eased himself over the spikes at the top, dropped to the ground, and picked up his kite and ran.
He ran for the pleasure of running, and also because he disliked the low forest of mainly white tombstones all around now. He felt not in the least afraid of them, or even respectful of them, they were simply ugly, like jagged rocks that could block or trip a person. Walter zigzagged through them, aiming for a rise in the land a bit to his left.
Walter came to Elsie's grave and slowed, breathing through his mouth. Her grave was not quite at the crest of the hill. Her stone was white, curved at the top because of the figure of an angel lying on its side with one wing slightly lifted, MARY ELIZABETH MCCREARY, the stone said, with her dates that Walter hardly glanced at. The dates did not span ten years. Something below about a LAMB GATHERED. What baloney! The grass over her grave had not grown together yet, and he could still see the squares cut by the gravediggers' spades. For an instant, he felt like saying, 'Hi, Elsiel I'm going to try the red and white. Want to watch?' but instead, he set his teeth and pressed his lips together. Trying to talk to the dead was baloney, too. Walter stepped right onto her short grave and over it, and walked to the crest of the hill. Even here the ground was not free of gravestones, but at least they lay flat on the ground, as if the owners of the cemetery or whoever controlled it didn't want tombstones showing against the sky.
Walter dropped his roll of string, took the rubber band off the rag tail of the kite and shook it out. This was also a kite that Elsie had helped him make. She had liked to cut the paper, slowly and cautiously, after he had marked it out. This tail consisted of parts of an old white sheet Walter had taken from the rag bag, and he recalled that his mother had been annoyed, because she had wanted the sheet for window polishing. Walter took a run against the wind, and the kite leapt promisingly. He stood and eased the kite up with long tugs on the string. It was going! And Walter had not been optimistic, because the wind was nothing great today. He let out more string, and felt a thrill as the kite began to pull at his fingers like something alive up in the sky. An upward current sent it zooming, took the string from his hand, and Walter had to grab for it.
Smiling, Walter walked backward and tripped on a grave marker, rolled over and jumped to his feet again, the string still in his hand. 'How about that, Elsie?' He meant the kite, way up now. The wind blew his hair over his forehead and eyes. A little ashamed because he had spoken out loud, he began to whistle. The tune was one he and Elsie had used to hum or whistle together, when they were sandpapering balsa strips, measuring and cutting. The music was by Tchaikovsky, and his parents had the record.
Walter stopped whistling abruptly, and pulled his kite in. The kite came reluctantly, then dived a few yards as if it gave up, and Walter wound it in faster, and ran to save it. It had not landed in trees. The kite was undamaged.
By the time Walter mounted his bicycle, it was nearly dark, and he put on his headlight. The cops program his mother had talked about would still be on, but Walter didn't feel like watching it. Now he was passing the Beachcomber Inn, and he supposed his father was there, having a beer, but Walter didn't glance at the cars parked in front of the place. His mother was accusing his father of seeing someone there, or meeting someone there. A girl, of course, or a woman. Walter did not like thinking about that. Was it his business? No. He also knew that his mother thought his father had been spending all his spare time at the Beachcomber, or somewhere with 'that woman,' when his sister had been coming down with fever, and so his father hadn't taken care of Elsie. All this had caused an awful atmosphere in the house, which was why Walter spent a lot of time in his own room, and didn't want to look at TV so much any more.
Walter put his bike in the garage against the wall-the car was still gone-cut his headlight, and took his kite and string. He went in quietly by the back door and down the hall to his room. His mother was in the living room with the TV on and didn't hear him, or, if she did, she didn't say anything. Walter closed his room door softly before he switched on his ceiling light. He folded the kite's tail, put a rubber band on it, and set the kite in a corner where two or three other kites stood. Then he moved his straight chair closer to his worktable so there would be more room on the floor, swept the floor again, and removed his sneakers. He felt inspired to measure his rice paper for the big kite. He walked barefoot to a corner of the room and fetched the roll, laid it on the floor and carefully rolled a length out. Rice paper was quite strong, Walter had read in lots of books about kites. This big kite of course had to be extra strong, because a lot of surface would be hit by the wind, and a strong wind would go right through tissue paper of this area, just as surely as the bird had gone through his smaller kite.
From his table Walter took his list of measurements, a metal tape measure, a ruler, and a piece of blue chalk. He measured and marked out with the chalk the right half of the kite. When he had cut the first long line from bottom tip to the right hand point, he felt a surge of pride, maybe of fear. Maybe such a big kite wouldn't even get off the ground, or not get far up, anyway. In that case, he would try to shrug off his disappointment, and he would be hop¬ing that no one was watching at that moment. Meanwhile, Walter whistled cautiously to himself, cut the top line, then folded the triangle carefully down the center line which he had drawn with the blue chalk. He then traced the triangle on the left-hand side.
His mother had lowered or cut the TV and was on the telephone now. 'Tomorrow night, sureV came her high voice, then a laugh. 'You'd better have it. Basted and sewn. I know it's right now.... What?'
She was probably talking to Nancy, her friend who did a lot of sewing. His mother did a lot of cutting-of cloth-for coats and dresses. It was a 'pastime,' she said, but she earned money from it. Cutting is always the most import¬ant operation, his mother said. Walter thought of that as he cut as surely as he could in the middle of his chalk lines. Besides making good kites, Walter would have liked to write a good poem, not the kind of silly poems his English composition teacher ordered the class to write now and then. 'Tell about a walk in the woods ... a rainstorm in summer . ..' No. Walter wanted to write something good about a kite flying in the air, for instance, about his thoughts, himself, being up there with the kite, his eyes too, able to look down at all the world, and able to look up at space. Walter had tried three or four times to write such a poem, but on reading his efforts the day after, had found them not as good as he had first thought, so he had thrown them all away. He always felt that he addressed his poems to his sister, but that was because he wanted her, would have wanted her to enjoy what he had written, and maybe to give him a word of praise for it.
A knock on his door startled him. Walter withdrew his scissors from the paper, rocked back on his heels and said, 'Yep?'
His mother opened the door, smiling, glanced at the paper on the floor, then looked at him. 'It's after ten, Wally.' 'Tomorrow's Saturday.' 'What're you making now?' 'Um-m-This is paper for a kite.'
'That big! One kite?' She glanced from top to bottom of what he had cut, which did stretch almost from the far wall to the door where she stood. 'You mean, you'll fold it.'
'Yes,' said Walter flatly. He felt his mother wasn't really interested, and was just making conversation with him. Her squarish face looked worried and tired tonight, though her lips continued to smile.
'Where'd you go this evening? Up to Cooper's?'
Walter started to say yes, then said, 'No, just for a ride around. Nowhere.'
'You start thinking about going to bed.'
'Yep. I will, Mom.'
Then she left him, and Walter finished his cutting and laid the long piece of paper, lightly folded in half, on top of his worktable, and put away in a corner what was left of the rice paper roll. He looked forward to tomorrow when he would tie the balsa strips and glue the paper, and even more to Sunday when he would try the kite, if there was a good wind.
Hours later, the popping sound of his father's car on the gravel awakened Walter, but he did not stir, only blinked his eyes sleepily. Tomorrow. The big kite. It wouldn't matter if his parents quarreled, if his mother and her yack-ety friends spent all evening over patterns in the living room-and in Elsie's room at the back opposite the kitchen, which his mother was lately turning into her workroom, even calling it that. Walter could shut all that out.
His father looked at the big kite and chuckled. 'That'll never fly. You expect that to fly}'
This was just after lunch on Saturday. They were in the backyard.
Walter's face grew warm, and he felt flustered. 'No, it's just for fun . . . For decor,' he added, a word his mother used quite a lot.
His father nodded, pink-eyed, and drifted off with a can of beer in his hand. Then he said over his shoulder, 'I think you're getting a little obsessed on the subject of kites, you know, Wally?-How's your schoolwork these days? Haven't you got final exams coming up?'
Walter, with one knee on the grass, straightened his back. 'Yes ... Why don't you ask Mom?'
His father walked on, toward the back door. Walter resented the school question as much as he did the kite remark. He was first in his class in math, without even trying very hard, and maybe second in English, behind Louise Wiley, who was nearly a genius, but anyway he had A's in both subjects. Walter returned to his gluing. When was the last time his father had looked at his report card, for that matter? Walter pushed his kite nearer the fence. He was working in a corner made by the bamboo fence, the most sheltered spot against the breeze. The grass was short and even, not as good as his room floor to work on, but the kite was too big to lie flat in his room now. Walter weighted the periphery of his kite with stones about the size of oranges which he had taken from a border and intended to put back. The breeze and the sunlight would hasten the glue setting, or so Walter liked to think. He wanted to forget his father's remarks, and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.
But there was something else disagreeable: they were going to Grandma McCreary's for tea. Walter's mother told him. Had Walter forgotten? she asked him. Yes, he had forgotten. This Grandma was called Edna, and Walter liked her less than his Grandma Page, who was called Daisy, the one who had nearly died from a heart attack. Walter had to change into better clothes and put on shoes. Edna lived about fifteen miles away in a house right on the coast with a view of the ocean. They got there around four.
'You've grown another inch, Wally!' said Edna, fussing around the tea tray.
Walter hadn't, not since he had seen Edna a month ago, nyway. He was worried about his kite. He had had to ake it very carefully into his room and lean it against his worktable. Walter was worried that the glue hadn't set enough, and that something might go wrong, the paper be unusable, and he hadn't enough paper left over for a second effort. These thoughts, and the general uncomfort-ableness of his grandmother's living room-magazines lying everywhere, and no place to put anything-caused Walter to drop his plate off his pressed-together knees, and a blob of vanilla ice cream fell on the carpet with the slice of marble cake on top of it now instead of underneath.
His mother groaned. 'Wally-you're so clumsy-sometimes.'
'I am sorry,' Walter said.
His father gave a soft chuckle. He had taken a glass and poured a couple of inches of scotch into it from the bar cart a few minutes before.
Walter was diligent with the sponge, and tackled the spot a second time. It was more fun to be doing something than to sit.
'You're a helpful boy though, Wally. Thank you,' said Edna. 'That's really good enough!' Edna took the sauce¬pan and sponge from him. She had pink-polished finger¬nails and smelled of a sweet perfume Walter didn't like. Walter knew her very blonde hair was dyed.
'... misses his sister,' Walter heard his mother murmur¬ing, hissing, as she and Edna walked into the kitchen.
Walter shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his back on his father, went over and stared at a bookcase. He declined another helping of ice cream and cake. The sooner they could leave, the better. But then they had to file out and admire Edna's rose bed, all freshly turned with black, wet-looking earth and yellow, red and pink roses all starting to bloom. Then there were more mumblings, and his mother said something about kites, while his father went into the living room for another drink.
It was after six when they got home. Walter went at once, but not hurriedly so as not to cause any more remarks, to check on the kite. He saw two small gaps between paper and wood, touched them with some of his brown-colored glue, and held them with his fingers for several minutes, standing on his straight chair to reach the spots.
From the living room Walter heard a low, grim hum, the tone that meant his parents were quarreling again. 'I didn't say that!' This time it was his father saying the words.
When Walter thought the glue was reasonably firm, he got down from the chair, changed back into jeans and sneakers, and started making the kite's tail. He hoped an eight-foot length might do. It was the weight not the length that mattered. He had bought two great rolls of nylon cord, light and strong, each of three hundred yards' length. This purchase had been wildly optimistic, he realized, but even now he was inspired to tie the end of the first roll-which he found loose in its center hollow-to the start of the second roll. He could take them both on his bike, one in each satchel. The kite he would have to carry with one hand as he cycled. Walter cut four strands and tied these to the four wooden pieces (already notched for this purpose) at the back of his kite, joined the four ends, and tied this to the starting end of the first roll of nylon. He then uncoiled what he estimated as two hundred yards of cord, and fixed a stout eight-inch long stick in the cord, tying it with an extra piece of nylon. This was for him to hang on to, if the kite was very far up, and a stick was also easier on his hands than holding plain cord. He added two more such sticks at intervals, then decided that was enough.
The evening promised rain. Clouds and a gusty wind. But tomorrow who knew? He gazed at his kite-it was upright now, its point nearly touching the ceiling though it slanted against his table-and he bit his underlip. The long strips of balsa looked clean and beautiful. Should he turn the kite around now and write E L S I E on it with water-color paint? No, it might be bad luck to do it so soon, like boasting. Walter's heart was beating faster than usual, and he looked away from the kite.
But the next morning, Sunday, inspired by the brilliant sunlight and the strong and steady wind, Walter wrote ELSIE in blue watercolor on the leading side of his kite. It had rained during the night. The wind came from the south mainly, Walter saw. He set out on his bike around ten o'clock. His father was not yet up. Walter and his mother had breakfasted together, his mother looking a bit sleepy, because Louise and another friend had come over after dinner, and they had stayed up late.
'Wow, that's a monster!' Ricky was again on his front lawn, tossing a Frisbee around.
Just at that moment, Walter had to get off his bike and take a better grip on the kite. He had made a loose but reliable noose or sling out of ordinary string by which to hold the kite while he cycled, but the bottom point of the kite was still apt to touch the ground, and the least breeze made his bike wobble. Walter said nothing at first to Ricky, and was a little embarrassed as he tried to tighten the string without hurting the kite.
Ricky was coming over to look. A car passed between them, then Ricky came nearer. 'You're not gonna try to fly that. It'll bust!'
'And so what?' Walter replied. 'But why should it bust?'
'Not strong enough, I bet. Even if it gets up, wind's gonna tear it. You think you know all about kites!' Ricky smiled with a superior air. His voice was changing, and lately he was trying to treat Walter as if he were a much smaller kid, or so Walter felt.
'My problem, anyway,' said Walter, and got back on his bike. 'See you, Ricky!'
'Hey, Wally, where're you going?' Ricky wanted to join him.
'Haven't decided yet. Maybe nowhere!' Walter was on his way, coasting precariously down toward the shopping center.
He knew he would soon have to start walking, and walk all the rest of the way with his big kite, because it caught so much wind, he could not control his bike. There were only two heights within reasonable distance, Greenhills, where Walter didn't want to go, and the hill beyond Cooper's, which Walter headed for. He walked his bike along the very edge of the road, holding his kite on the right side of his bike, so he could see passing cars and keep clear of them. One car driver laughed at him and made some remark that Walter didn't catch. At last he arrived at the base of the hill he wanted. The footpath faded into grass, and Walter lowered his head and trudged the rest of the way, still holding his kite close to his bike, and leaning his weight against the push of the wind.
At the top of the hill, Walter laid his bike on the grass, and sat down with the kite flat on the grass beside him. He held his right wrist in his left hand, and gazed between his knees at the splendid view below: lots of little white houses, green lawns, winding gray streets, and way over to the left the blueness that was the Pacific, disappearing in a haze at the horizon. An airliner was coming in from the north, still rather high because it was going to land south of here in Los Angeles, but it was heading into the wind already. The wind was from the south, as it had been earlier that morning. Walter got to his feet.
'Hoo-o!-Hoo-o!' the wind said in his ears. It sounded warm and friendly, nicer than a human voice.
He shook out his string, and took a position from which he could run a few yards to launch the kite, but he did not need to. The kite rose at once toward the north. The tail flipped around wildly at first, the nose of the kite pointed right at him as the kite flew flat in the wind, then the tail pulled it upright, and the cord ran through his hand.
He held the cord with both hands, and let it slip for nearly a minute. The kite was a flyer! He had hardly to coax it at all!
'Yee-hoo-oo!' Walter yelled into the wind. No one was near him to hear, to stare, to heckle-or even to admire his kite. Walter leaned his whole weight back against the kite's pull. Now the pinkish diamond-shaped kite looked happy, waggling a little in the blue emptiness, and climbing ever higher. Walter let out more cord, until he felt the first wooden stick jump into his hands, and he held on to it.
This was fun! He could tug slowly and hard, then feel the kite pull against him even harder, lifting him forward, off the ground for several feet until his weight and his efforts with the stick got him back to earth. He was just about a match for the kite. That was an exciting thought.
A dog barked in the distance, down where the town was. The kite looked smaller now, like an ordinary kite, because it was so high. Walter pulled at the cord with all his strength, leaning back until his body nearly touched the ground. Then the kite pulled him up slowly and gently and lifted him off his feet. Walter moved his feet, thinking to find ground under them, then the kite gave another playful and powerful tug, like a beckoning, and Walter was flying.
He glanced behind him, and saw the roll of cord dancing around on the ground, unwinding itself, and the second roll near it, as yet motionless. Then the nylon twisted, the stick turned, and Walter saw the trees on the hill diminishing under him, and a valley below that he had been unaware of before, with a thin railroad track snaking through it. Walter held his breath for a few seconds, not knowing whether to be afraid or not. His arms, bent at the elbows, supported him quite comfortably on the stick tied in the nylon. Below him he saw another stick he had tied in the cord, and he tried for this with his feet, missing a couple of times, then he had it.
Now he was twisting again, and he could see to the southwest the town where he lived, the round white dot of Cooper's hamburger-and-ice-cream place on a green rise. The town where he lived! That was funny to think about while he floated high up in the air like a bird, like a kite himself.
'Hey, looka tha ...!' The rest of the faraway voice was unintelligible to Walter.
Walter looked down and saw two figures, both men or both in trousers anyway, pointing up at him.
'Wha' you . .. doing}' one of them yelled.
Walter was silent, as if he couldn't reply. He didn't reply, because he didn't want to. He looked up, and pulled comfortably now at the pink kite, sending it a bit higher, he thought, straight up. Walter attempted to steer it more to the right, the east, but that didn't work with this length of cord. The kite seemed to have its own ideas where to go. Walter saw one of the men on the ground running now, looking like an insect, maybe an ant, moving up the gray thread of street. Walter felt in a more beautiful atmos¬phere. The nylon cord hummed musically now and then in the wind. Elsie would have loved a flight like this. Walter wasn't dumb enough to think Elsie's 'spirit' might be with him now, but her name was on the kite, he felt somehow near to her, and for a few seconds wondered if she could be aware that he was flying now, borne by a kite? Even the white clouds looked close, tumbling over themselves like somersaulting sheep.
And the ocean! Now as the cord twisted, Walter had a slow, sweeping view of its blueness. A long white ship was sailing southward-maybe to Acapulco! 'Shall we go to Acapulco, Elsie?' Walter said out loud, and then laughed. He tugged southward, westward, but the kite wanted to go northeast. Walter saw rows of fruit trees, maybe orange trees, and a low rectangular building whose silvery roof reflected the sunlight. Cars moved like ladybirds in two directions on a road down there. Walter saw a cluster of people beside what looked like a roadside diner. Were they staring up at him? A couple of them seemed to be pointing at him.
'... kid, not a man!' one of them said.
'Hey! - Can you get that thing down}'
Walter noticed that one man in the group had bin¬oculars, and after staring up, passed the binoculars to another person. He floated over them and beyond, motion¬less with his hands on the stick and his sneakered feet on the stick below.
'Sure it's a kid! Not a dummy! Look!'
Over more fruit-tree fields, the kite soared in an updraft, northward. A bird like a small eagle zoomed close on Walter's right, as if curious about him, then with a tilt of its wings went up and away again.
He heard the hum of a motor, thought it might be from the plane he saw coming from the northeast, then realized the plane was much too far away to be audible. The sound was behind him, and Walter looked. There was a heli¬copter behind him, nearly a mile away, Walter estimated. Walter was higher. He looked up at his kite with pride. He could not be sure at this distance, but he thought that every inch of his paper must be holding to the wood, that the length of tail was just right. His work! Now was the time to compose a poem for his sister!
The wind sings in your magic paper! I made a bird that the birds love ...
'Hey, there!' The voice cut through the helicopter's rattle.
Walter was startled to see the helicopter above and just behind him. 'Keep clear!' Walter yelled, frowning for emphasis, because he couldn't spare a hand to wave them back. He didn't want the copter blades snarling his cord, cutting it maybe. There were two men in the copter.
'How're you getting down? Can you get 'er down}'
'Sure!'
'You're sure?-How?' This man had goggles. They had opened the glass roof of their compartment and were hovering. The copter had something like SKY PATROL on its side. Maybe they were police.
'I'm okay! Just keep clearV Walter suddenly felt afraid of them, as if they were enemies.
Now the boy saw more people on the ground, looking up. He was over another little community, where twenty or more people gawked up. Walter did not want to come down, didn't want to go back to his family, didn't particu¬larly want to go back to his own room! The men in the copter were shouting something about pulling him in.
'Leave me alone, I'm okayV Walter screamed in desper¬ation, because he saw now that they were lengthening something like a long fishing rod, pulling out sections of it. Walter supposed it had a hook like a boathook at one end, and that they were going to make a try for the nylon cord. The cord trailed away, out of sight under Walter's feet.
'... above!' came one man's voice on the wind, and a second later the copter rose up, climbed to the height of his kite and maybe higher.
Walter was furious now. Were they going to attack his kite} Walter pulled defensively at his kite cord-which was so long, the pink kite scarcely bobbed. 'Don't touch that, don't touch it!' Walter yelled with all his force, and he cursed the noisy chopping motor that had probably drowned out his words. 'Idiots!' he screamed at them, blinded by his own tears now. He blinked and kept looking up. Yes, they were grappling with that long stick for the cord not far below the kite, or so it looked to him.
If the kite rose suddenly now, it would hit the blades and get chopped to bits. Couldn't the idiots know that? The long stick reached to the right of the copter, and slanted downward. Walter assumed it had a hook at the end-impossible to see, because the sun was directly in Walter's eyes now. Besides the copter's chopping noise, the people on the ground were yelling, laughing, shouting advice. Still, Walter screamed again:
'Keep away, pleasel Keep awaa-aay'
The helicopter was still higher than the kite. The man had caught the cord, it seemed, and was trying to pull it toward him. Walter could see his tugs. The kite waggled crazily, as if it were as angry as Walter. Then there was a roar from the people below, and at the same time Walter saw his kite fold in half. The crosspiece had broken-from the idiot's tugging!
'Stop it!' For a couple of seconds his kite, folded and flat, was almost invisible, then the kite opened and spread, but in the wrong way, like a bird with broken wings. The kite flapped, leapt and leapt again and failed, as the beige stick drew the cord toward the copter.
Then Walter realized that he had pitched a bit forward and that he was dropping fast. He gripped his stick harder, terrified. Now the trees were zooming up, and ground also, faster and faster.
A shout, a groan like a big sigh came from the people below who were now quite close to Walter and in front of him on his right. Walter crashed into branches that punc¬tured his body and tore off his shirt. He screamed in panic, 'Elsie!' Upside down, he struck a heavy branch that cracked his skull, then he slid the last few yards to the ground, limp.
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