You’re not in the fog on the lake, not in the beat of the music in the lesbian bar, not in the honey smell when the bay doors of the boathouse open. Last weekend you were buried in the mountains in Colorado. That’s where you are. Rand McNally maps are not so simple any more. Not looking for you any more leaves me with a watermark, like a rowing shell kept out of the water, a gray line along the hull, a mark that won’t go away.
It’s Kyle I’m looking for now. Ever since the choking episode in the field, he’s been hard to keep an eye on.
After the 300 kids in the school went to UD, Wilmington, to see “Master Harold” . . . and the Boys, I made my Geography class make kites. They thought I was nuts. But then, with spools of string and balsa wood and paper and glue all over the tables in the classroom, with Second Formers sticky with concentration, they got quiet. Folding and gluing and tying tails was the world made simple.
After twenty minutes the dozen of us ran into the cold sunny day, the air like tight clothes around us, and despite their St. Timothy’s coats and ties and skirts and blazers, they ran over the lawns in front of the buildings, those prep school buildings with stone blocks this way and stone blocks that way. The Second Formers were kids laughing and yelling to each other. They were thirteen-year-olds, adolescents, wild things allowed to be wild.
The teaching objective was to lift their faces to the sky like in the play. They lifted their voices and ran together. Even Kyle was one of them. Maybe the objective was to make me look up. It’s been awhile. But like everything else this year, something happened instead.
His kite was fold after fold in a design unlike anything. Everyone else made the Charlie Brown kite, the long cross of balsa wood, the newspaper folds at the corners, the little tail off the pointy end. Before we came outside, Kyle made no machine noises from his seat in the back row, simply added another spar across the spine. He took two pieces of newspaper, and folded the corners back, and made a hexagon a little longer than wide. He called it a “Rok,” said it was Japanese, a master fighter. On the underside, he painted tie-dye colors of purple and red and yellow, and in the middle with thick black markers, he made a peace sign.
The other kids acted strange. They didn’t call him Zippy or weird or teacher’s pet. They watched Kyle bring his big, bright kite out on the lawn. They looked at the kite with a different shape, and they didn’t say a thing.
Maggie was the first to launch hers. She put her Charlie Brown kite on the ground and walked twenty feet, then turned to face it. She called to herself, “One, two, three,” and on three, she yanked the kite up in front of her, ran backwards a few steps, and fell hard on her rear, her legs rising up, the kite crashing on the ground.
“Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Tommy Underwood said.
“As if you could do it, dweeb,” Maggie said. Her legs were in a V in front of her.
“Okay, okay,” Tommy said. “Piece of cake.”
His kite was orange, so soaked with paint that the entire Geography class might not get it off the ground. His dad went to Princeton, and many of Tommy’s notebooks and sweatshirts were orange and black. With one hand, he held the kite over his head, and before he even started to run, he roared like the Princeton tiger. It was a few steps before he threw the kite into the air, a little too hard, the kite too heavy, crashing in front of Tommy with a crack.
Still on the ground, Maggie said, “Psych.”
Kyle was quiet, standing in the middle of the lawn, the Second Formers crashing their kites around him. Then, Terence set down his own kite, made from newsprint and no colors, walked over to where Kyle stood with the Peace Rok, a bright slab of color, resting on the tops of his high-tops.
Terence said, “Hey, Kyle, let’s try it, running, with yours.”
Kyle looked at the spool of string in his hands, and nodded, and didn’t look up at Terence, the first boy to team with him in ten weeks of class. Kyle’s lips were a little curved, a smile he tried not to let into his cheeks. Terence took the Rok and walked about forty feet away.
“Ready?” Terence said. One hand was on the long side of the Rok held over his head, and the other hand was where the strings came together from the four points attached to the kite.
“Ready,” Kyle said.
“Okay, on three. One, two, three.” And both boys ran together against the wind, across the lawn, lined with maples bare in the cold. They ran, attached by string, until Terence released the Rok, like releasing a dove, letting it fly above him. Kyle stopped and held the string.
For a moment the world was a kite going up and a dozen people on a lawn. For a moment, the maple limbs were not the only things reaching into the sky. The thirteen-year-olds were quiet and watched the kite.
Then they exploded with “Woo-hoo!” “Up, up, and away!” and “Awesome, Kyle.” The kite kept going up and up. A couple boys did high-fives. Kyle’s kite was the only one to fly.
Kyle fed the kite. He let it rise. It rose to the tree tops. It rose higher.
And we looked up. Maggie, the one girl in class, and I, and all the boys raised our eyes. It felt good to see the sky and branches without leaves and the sun in the fading light of November, near December.
But I didn’t see Donny coming.
He came really fast, his arms out in front and pumping. He came for one reason.
“Son of a bitch,” Donny said. His hands out in front of him, his forearms plowed into Kyle.
At five feet ten inches, Donny outweighed Kyle by a good fifty pounds, and even if Kyle hadn’t been looking up above the trees at his Peace Rok, he would’ve flown through the air. Kyle rolled, but kept his hand gripping the string. His body was a spindle spinning. He wasn’t hurt. But no matter how careful he was, the string tugged the kite. The Rok dove and rose, made drunken loops, plunged toward the maples. His classmates covered their eyes.
Kyle down on the ground, his kite diving, I ran. My voice wasn’t going to stop Donny, but from thirty feet away, I said, “Donny Zurkus, stop.” Donny took three steps to where Kyle landed, and he rammed his knee into Kyle’s stomach. His elbow cocked up, his fist at the end of it, I grabbed his shoulders and jerked him back. Donny went down on his side. Kyle twisted away and stayed on the ground, held the string, kept his eyes on the kite. Donny spun around on all fours like a cat attacking.
“Stop it,” I said.
Donny went still, the still of muscles taut, the type of still that’s ringing. “He’s totally dead,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Kyle?”
“Totally.”
The Second Formers gathered around the three of us, their kites in heaps on the lawn. The three of us, Kyle on the ground, holding on to his kite, still flying. Donny kneeling on the ground, sitting back on his heels, and me standing above the boys.
“Why?”
“He knows.” Donny looked down at Kyle. His greasy hair sticking straight up, Kyle still held his kite, still watched it. The line was almost all let out, and the kite a speck in the sky.
“Okay, let’s go. Both of you go see Mr. White.”
Donny swung his arms out from his sides and spun like a corkscrew. “Why?” Donny said. “He’s the one who did something.” His voice was not the menacing voice in English class. It was smaller. It let in the picture of him as a boy. He was not the muscular teenager, pinned by a desk.
“We’ll see,” I said. “Just meet me there at the warning bell for dinner. Now, get to your class.” Donny turned toward the main building.
“Okay, everybody. Get your kites and head back to class. We’ll be right there.” The Second Formers turned away from us and shook their heads, scattered across the close-cut lawn to collect their kites.
Kyle was winding the string. He started his noises. “Zzzzz,” he said. Like the string was a fishing line, and he was reeling. Whole breaths were Zs. One after another.
“Kyle,” I said. But he kept making his Z noises. “Meet at White’s.”
Kyle had no response to being sent to the headmaster’s, no response to Donny. He wound the string of the kite into a ball, kept wrapping the string, reeling in the Rok. Terence stopped before heading into the building. He stood behind Kyle and said nothing. He turned to face me. His eyes were dark when the sky was fall bright. His eyes looked to see if I knew what would happen next, but I didn’t know. In the breeze of that afternoon, an afternoon of kites and friends making kites fly, Terence showed me with his eyes that he didn’t need me to know.
All the other Second Formers had Charlie Brown kites, now pieces. All the others went back in the building of stone blocks this way and stone blocks that way. Kyle never came in. He didn’t come to the meeting at the headmaster’s office at the warning bell for dinner. I checked the table he was assigned for dinner, and he wasn’t there.
The next day, Kyle’s kite, caught in the maple limbs reaching into the sky, made a flapping sound. Without leaves any more, the maples made no sound. With a kite torn and caught in the limbs, the maples beat the blue sky.