The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison [42]
The kite dives; Bigelow scrambles off the rocks. The kite shimmies; Bigelow squints at it from under his hands. The kite hits a low current and scoots sideways; Bigelow watches what must be an effect of wind moving over the inlet and onto land, air snaking up over the cliff, invisible and unforeseen.
Then he runs, and for a few seconds the kite and Bigelow are moving at the same speed, both of them heading back down toward the shed, Bigelow chasing, but not so fast he can’t keep pace; he has that in him, anyway, a loping kind of run were he not so banged up, but, as it is, a limping run favoring his left leg, when suddenly he starts gaining on the kite. By the time he catches up to it, all he has to do is reach out, the line is there for him to take.
He has bruises all over, scrapes on his arms and on his forehead, a pulled muscle in his groin, a gash elongating one eyebrow. As for the kite—the kite remains perfect, each face white, taut, and smooth, almost smugly unblemished. Walking it back to the shed, holding its harness and yet not feeling its weight as it glides, enchanted, along puffs and whiffs of breezes, Bigelow has the sense, completely fanciful, of the kite’s vanity, its amused tolerance of himself, hapless acolyte. It’s been places he will never see.
IN THE END, after failing to devise a more sophisticated plan, Bigelow comes with his recordings to the store, where he sits on a barrel and waits. He sits on a barrel, he sits on a box, he returns to the barrel. What he wants is to sit in the sun on the front step, but he is afraid this might be interpreted as a retreat, a waning of his resolve, so he remains in the shadowy store, and Getz walks around him as if he isn’t there, stepping around Bigelow’s feet, standing, arms crossed, conveying his usual impatience, while Bigelow removes himself from the barrel lid when a customer requests some of whatever is swimming in the brine beneath.
Observing the storekeeper, Bigelow is impressed by the grace of Getz’s performance, if performance is what it is, for the man seems not so much blind as indifferent to his presence, regarding Bigelow in much the same way as did the Aleut woman when he first followed her home, when he sat at her table and watched her chew a piece of toffee. It’s only at the end of a day, when Getz closes his store, that he acknowledges Bigelow’s existence, holding the door until Bigelow steps outside, then locking it behind him.
With his recordings under his arm, Bigelow walks home in the summer light. He changes the flags on his new tree pole. He inscribes readings from his instruments into his log. He sits at his table and decodes information from the day’s wireless message. He stands at his window to take advantage of the late-setting sun, tracing lines onto transparencies, and then, during the brief darkness, he lies on his bed and sleeps a seamless black and dreamless sleep.
The next day, he stops at the telegraph office en route to his vigil, stands on the sidewalk until Getz unlocks his store, then steps back inside and sits on the barrel, opera recordings stacked neatly in his lap.
For two days no customer comments on Bigelow’s presence; but on the third, as if having reached an unspoken, perhaps even an unconscious, consensus, there is not one who does not.
“Who’s this? Your new partner?”
“Looks like Getz has finally got himself a cat.”
“Nice pickle lid.”
One even sings: “When froggy came a courtin’, he did ride. Uh-huh. With a somethin’ somethin’ and a pistol by his side. Uh-huh.”
“Watch out,” another warns, cryptically. “Last of her suitors didn’t make out so good.”
Convulsed with laughter, they fall onto the counter and Getz makes change over their heads; he smiles sourly,