Whirligig (5 page)

“Lea is gone. I'm learning to accept that. I thought I had nothing I could ask you that would help. You can't bring back her body. Then I thought about her spirit.”

Brent's skin tingled. He stared at the photo, then at her, anxious to hear her bidding.

“This is my only request. That you make four whirligigs, of a girl that looks like Lea. Put her name on them. Then set them up in Washington, California, Florida, and Maine—the corners of the United States. Let people all over the country receive joy from her even though she's gone. You make the smiles that she would have made. It's the only thing you can do for me.” She exhaled. “That's what I ask.”

“You must be joking,” said Brent's mother.

His father strained forward in his chair. “This is crazy!” He appealed to Miss Gill. “That's not the kind of thing you ask for!” He faced Mrs. Zamora. “And how's he supposed to zip around the country? In his private jet?”

She pulled something else out of her purse. “I bought him a Greyhound bus pass. Good for forty-five days. He can go anywhere.”

Miss Gill repeated that restitutions weren't imposed, but accepted voluntarily by the offender. Brent's parents raised one objection after another, from his commitment to the emergency room to his need for his family, his nonexistent carpentry skills, and the cruel and unusual conditions of bus travel. Brent was oblivious of the arguing. In the quiet storm cellar of his mind, he pondered the proposal. Strange as it was, it would get him away from Chicago, his parents, and his recent past. It would also give him a chance to do penance. He'd never traveled on his own before. The idea held sudden appeal. He smiled inside. He cleared his throat. Then he spoke the words, “I'll do it.”

*   *   *

The bus sped down the Cascades like a skier. Then the road flattened. Brent saw a man point. He turned and beheld a peak in the distance that seemed a mirage, impossibly high, snow shimmering on its wide shoulders, the absolute lord of the landscape. The word
Rainier
passed down the aisle. Brent gawked. It seemed too large, as a full moon does when it first rises into view. He'd never been west of Chicago before. He was sure he was there now.

He opened his whirligig book and looked through it between glances out the window. He'd found it in the sixth store he'd tried, a dingy used book shop downtown on Wabash Avenue. It was an old, loose-spined hardback called
Make Your Own Whirligigs and Weathervanes.
A previous owner had penciled tiny, masculine-looking notes in the margins. Brent wondered where the man was at that moment and tried to imagine him from his handwriting. He saw a balding head and glasses. Strange, he thought, that they would never recognize each other if they met.

He flipped ahead to a whirligig of a man milking a cow. He'd read only the chapter on supplies. He knew he should have tried building one in Chicago, but he hadn't. Once his probation officer had convinced Brent's parents that the trip might help him, he'd been in a rush to leave. He eyed his blue backpacker's pack on the rack and felt separate from all the other passengers. Their luggage held shirts and pants; his held slabs of plywood, a saw, a hand drill, dowels, brass rods, pliers, a quart of varnish, nails, paints. He watched his pack closely, dreading his tools spilling out. He'd probably be accused of making bombs. He imagined replying with the truth, that he was a builder of whirligigs. Why not? No one knew anything about him. Here was a chance not simply to alter his past, as he'd done in school, but to actually live a different life. He tried out the words in his head: “I'm a traveling whirligig maker.” It was an interim identity, tied to his previous life. He would cast it off soon, but in favor of what? He was lodged in his own chrysalis but had no idea what he was turning into.

They passed through Preston, then Issaquah. The old man next to Brent was still sleeping. In twenty-four hours they hadn't exchanged ten words. He observed two women in front of him exclaiming over wallet photos and marveled at how naturally some people spun lines of connection, turning a world of strangers into family. He opened his own wallet, took out Lea's picture, and studied it in solitude. He found her entrancing. She looked Hawaiian, her skin the color of cinnamon, smooth as sanded wood, her forehead high, her hair long and straight. Her eyes were faintly Asian. He probed the photo for new information and now saw that she'd drawn her hair, shiny and black as obsidian, to the side with a clip. Her dress was white. Or was it only a blouse? He examined the pattern embroidered on the bodice. She wore a gold necklace, fine as spider's silk, but he couldn't see what hung from it. He scrutinized her smile from close range, almost felt her breath on his face. Strange to think she was now smiling at her killer. Yet she wasn't—her head was turned at an angle. He stared into her cheerful brown eyes, knowing she would never look back at him but always off to the side. This was a relief. Her direct gaze would have vaporized him with accusation.

He turned the photo over and read her full name, Lea Rosalia Santos Zamora, written in her mother's curlicued script. She'd given him the picture as a model for the whirligigs, along with a disposable camera. Strangely, she wanted photos of them but didn't want to know their locations. The idea of coming upon one, she'd told him, rusted or vandalized or fallen over, lifeless like her daughter, was too forbidding. She preferred to see them in her mind, where they could spin forever, safe from all harm.

Suburbs appeared out the window. Then the bus nosed its way through a long tunnel and emerged into downtown Seattle. The streets were hilly. Brent glimpsed Puget Sound. He wanted a longer view, but the bus turned, following its usual labyrinthine path to the station. He glanced at his United States map. Interstate 90 ended here, the same road that led all the way back to Chicago, that passed a few miles from his house. He felt himself a departing sailor, leaving the sight of land behind. The bus found the station. The brakes sighed. He grabbed his pack and climbed down.

His voice sounded odd in his ears when he asked for directions to the water. He tightened down his sleeping bag, struggled into his pack, and set off, staggering like a grizzly walking upright. It was early in July and sunny. He sampled the air, amazed at how light it felt, so different from the weighted, humid heat he was used to. He followed bustling Stewart Street, viewing the cars and pedestrians curiously. How like the afterlife it all was: a populous city, reached only after a long journey toward the setting sun, here all along but never seen until now. Was Lea here somewhere? Walking on, he jerked at the sight of a face vaguely resembling hers, then arrived at tourist-thronged Pike Place Market. He passed up the chance for a squidburger, bought two hot dogs instead, and watched a juggler while he ate. The crowds bothered him. It felt more like Chicago than the pristine Pacific Northwest he'd heard of. He left, following signs to Waterfront Park. This turned out to be piers and amusements. He looked over the water. A line of blue mountains floated above the clouds in the distance. That was the Washington he wanted. Lea's mother hadn't specified where in the four states he should put the whirligigs. He bought a map and some groceries, walked back to the station, and took the next bus north.

He got off in Mount Vernon and pored over his map. He broke his promise to his parents not to hitchhike, found a ride with a fisherman heading west, then walked three miles to a state park on the water only to find that the campground was full. He hadn't realized it was Fourth of July weekend. Seeing that he'd walked, the ranger suggested he try asking if he could share a site. Slowly, Brent meandered through the campground. Every site was a separate country, baseball blaring from a radio in one while the next was occupied by a couple playing duets on soprano recorders. It struck him that every family was a universe, with its own peculiar natural laws. Free of his own family, he imagined himself part of each one he passed, trying on identities like a quick-change artist. He neared the end of the campground. He paused, stealthily eyeing a bearded man unloading his tent from a bicycle. He was tall, fit, looked to be in his thirties, had a thoughtful, sunburned face. The man noticed him, stopped, and turned. Brent felt like a stray dog begging scraps.

“I was wondering…” His voice was rusted from disuse. He cleared his throat. “If you'd mind…”

“If you picked out a corner for yourself? Be my guest.”

“I'll pay half the fee,” Brent added quickly.

“No need. Glad to have the company.”

The site was on the water and more private than most. Brent was pleased. He took off his pack, pried off his sneakers, waded in up to his calves, and washed his face in Puget Sound.

It was too late to begin on the whirligig. He pulled out his tent, an open tube of plastic meant to hang from a rope strung between two trees. He'd been sent to a camp for a week a few times, but not lately, and had never camped out on his own. He stood with his rope, unable to find flat ground furnished with properly spaced trees. He hoped the cyclist wasn't watching him and saw the man's dome tent suddenly spring up like a magician's illusion. Brent scanned the sky. It didn't look like rain. He put the tent back and unrolled his sleeping bag.

“And what brings you here?” the cyclist asked over dinner.

They'd collaborated on the fire. Brent stirred his pan of beef and barley soup. “Just seeing the country,” he answered offhandedly. “What about you?”

“Riding south from Canada. Heading down the coast to San Francisco. Seeing the country, like yourself. Studying the strange customs of the natives. No offense meant.”

“Where are you from?”

“Prince George, British Columbia. Halfway up toward the Yukon.”

The name raised visions of the far north in Brent's mind. He'd never met a Canadian before and felt like an explorer who's just heard tell of an unknown continent.

“Ever play Go?” the man asked. “The game.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Like to learn?”

After dinner the cyclist produced a folding board and two tiny boxes of stones, black and white. “It's from China originally, like most things. I'm still learning myself. Brought a book about it, to study on the trip.” He gave Brent the white stones, shaped like flying saucers, polished and identical. “Supposed to be excellent training for generals. Some say it won the Vietnam War for the North. Wheaties for the brain.”

He explained the rules and they began a practice game. The object was to secure territory, arranging groups of stones into living communities that couldn't be extinguished by your opponent. Brent felt he was practicing constructing his new life. Out of nowhere, the word
karass
came to mind, from the Vonnegut book he'd read in English, a term for a disparate group of people linked together without their knowledge. Your family and friends weren't part of your
karass.
You couldn't choose its members, and might never know who was in it or what its purpose was. Brent felt certain that Lea was a member of his. Was the cyclist part of it too?

Sunset flared orange on the water. Firecrackers began going off.

“Ah, yes,” said the man. “Noisemaking devices to dispel evil spirits on this important day.”

Brent couldn't reveal why he shared the same distanced perspective. This second time around, he saw everything from the outside. Much that he'd taken for granted before now struck him as curious: handshaking, the Pledge of Allegiance, neckties on men, sports teams named for animals …

The sky shifted to shades from the spectrum's outer edges, then went black. The cyclist lit a tiny gas lamp that hissed and glowed like a shard from a star. By its light they played another hour, then retired. Brent climbed into his sleeping bag. Radios, firecrackers, voices subsided, replaced by the chirring of crickets, a breeze's passage through the trees, the waves' steady respiration. The nonhuman world was emerging, a world he'd rarely noticed, another hidden city. Was Lea now a citizen here? He wondered if the creature he heard creeping over dry leaves could be her. He imagined her fully fluent here, able to hear and comprehend what he couldn't, her sense of smell greatly magnified, this bit of shoreline known to her as it never would be to him. He looked up at the stars, glinting silently, a movie without a soundtrack. Or was he simply deaf to their music? He realized he knew no constellations. Likewise the names of trees, flowers, rocks, birds, insects, fish. He was a foreigner here. He wished he knew some names.

When he awoke, the cyclist was just leaving. It was cold. Brent's bag was damp with dew. Huddling within, waiting for the sun to top the trees and warm the world, he understood why people had worshiped it. Two hours later he'd taken a shower, breakfasted on French bread and cheese, skimmed three chapters of the whirligig book, and picked the simplest project offered—an angel whose spinning arms played a harp.

He studied the diagrams apprehensively. Neither he nor his father was the
Popular Mechanics
type. There were practically no tools in his house; those he'd brought with him had all been bought new. It had been four years since he'd taken woodshop, where he'd spent weeks on a simple hinged-top box. Maybe he'd changed in that time. He felt Lea and Mrs. Zamora watching him, and hoped that he had.

He walked to his pack. He'd brought four pieces of plywood, one foot by two feet, marine grade, half an inch thick. He drew one out, sat at the table, and sketched the angel's outline on it, then erased it all. Freehand drawing was not his forte either. It took half an hour to get it right. He tightened the wood down to the table with a clamp, started in with his D-shaped coping saw, and promptly broke the thin blade. He inserted the only spare he'd brought, feeling like a soldier down to his last bullet. He worked gingerly. The blade survived. The file that followed the same path not only smoothed the wood's edge but snapped off a sizable chunk of the angel's wing. He slammed the file onto the table. He hated wood. He took a break, frightened by his anger in the face of this setback. There was no channel-changer here. He picked up the whirligig book and stared at the previous owner's patient, precise script. He almost felt the man was with him, telling him to settle down and conquer the project calmly, step by step.