The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison [60]
“There’s a storm, and I have to fly it. I have to fly it now. I can get it up higher if the wind is right. Higher than before.” He tries to move around her, but she gets underfoot, purposefully she steps in his way.
“Look!” he says.
She flips her book open to a prewritten message. I know about the woman.
Bigelow doesn’t answer. He goes on gathering what he needs. When she grabs his arm, he shakes her off. “I’m leaving,” he says. “We can talk about this later. Tomorrow.”
Miriam follows him out the door, and on up the bluff. Over and over he tells her to go home, shouts at her and points, tells her that whatever her father said, whatever she thinks he owes her, is canceled out. “By perfidy!” he yells, but she ignores him. She walks resolutely in his footsteps, head down and hands hidden in the too-long sleeves of her parka, and he turns his back, hurrying, hurrying to catch the storm.
When he reaches the shed, the gusts are so strong that they snap the door open, pin it back against the wall. It’s still clear, visibility for three miles at least, but wind whistles and screams over the roof as Bigelow sets the instruments and latches the hood over the module. No time to fuss with the hurricane lamp, he works in half-light, his right hand still clumsy, slow.
“Out of my way! Out of my way!” he yells at Miriam, and he pushes her into a corner. He tries to pull the kite out of the shed, but the force of the wind is too great, so he goes around behind, to the aft cell, and pushes until the front noses out of the door. He barely has time to take out the cotter pins and release the wheels before the kite pulls out of the shed and into the sky.
Bigelow stands panting in the open door, watching as wind sucks wire out of the reel’s mouth. Behind him, kneeling over her notebook, Miriam is writing.
She’s not your secret. I’ve seen her. She’s native. She’s not one of us.
“You shouldn’t be up here,” Bigelow says. He feels in his rucksack for his snow glasses but they aren’t there. Distracted by Miriam, he’s forgotten them, and his water. Lucky he remembered anything. He opens his field book and notes the line angle, the wind speed, and then, leaving Miriam standing among his clutter of tools, he goes outside to sit with his back against the side of the shed. He cups his hands around his eyes to watch the kite.
He’s almost managed to forget Miriam when she steps in front of him, flapping with excitement, pointing toward the reel side of the shed. Bigelow gets up and follows her, sees what she’s seen. Sparks leap off the wire as if from the end of a fuse, blue, mesmerizing.
“Not grounded,” he says. “The line’s not grounded. I told you not to come up here.”
Miriam tilts her head.
“Atmospheric electricity,” he answers. “It comes down the wire.”
Too late to do anything now; he doesn’t dare touch any part of it, not even with insulated gloves. And anyway, as he tells Miriam, “The reel’s mounted on a wood platform. Wood can’t conduct electricity.”
Bigelow watches the kite leap another five hundred feet into the sky and disappear, slip like a pale knife into the belly of a cloud.
“God!” he cries, reaching up. “Beautiful!” He looks at Miriam, but she’s missed it. Either that or she doesn’t care. He turns away, disgusted, hugging his coat closed, considering the situation he’s created. One o’clock in the afternoon and dark as dusk, snow falling, except that it isn’t; it’s blowing parallel to the ground, stinging his face and eyes, no snow glasses, so another hour and they’ll burn so badly he won’t want to open them. At least the air temperature will keep the wire from getting hot enough to damage the reel, all those metal parts.
Miriam goes back into the shed and, after a few minutes, comes out with a question. Wood keeps you absolutely safe from electricity?
“Yes,” Bigelow says. There’s something in her lifted face— fear?—and he makes himself put an arm around her. Fifty-six flights without incident, data recorded and copied meticulously into his field book. He was thinking about a new page of