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The Thin White Line
A short story by Stephen R. Clark
The thin white line etched across the perfect pale blue
surface of the cloudless summer sky. He extended his giant hand, palm up,
spreading his reedy fingers, allowing the jet trail to thread in and out between
them. Then he pinched it momentarily out of existence between his thumb and
forefinger moving his hand along the flight path, then graciously restored the
jet to the sky, allowing it and its grateful passengers to continue their
journey.
He seemed truly a giant with infinite reach in that moment as
he lay in the grass squishing the jets. The far skies felt close and covering,
like the skin of a tent. And when he turned and put his face into the grass, the
blades seemed a forest and the ants huge beasts, all of which he towered over,
yet he was unregarded even in his domination. The ants ignored him.
He was invisible. Not by choice but still having been chosen
for the part by others. He had tried to be seen but conceded to the role of
unseen since that was what seemed to be desired of him. Unseen, unheard. Much of
the time he felt unreal.
He was seven. Everyone else was older and bigger. The
neighborhood kids, his cousins, and of course his parents, siblings, aunts and
uncles, and the world beyond. All seemed more than he was, in many ways. He
assumed it had to do with his being bad which was apparently the only time he
could be seen or heard. He was told he was supposed to be a good boy, which
meant also, unseen. He complied as best he could. It wasn’t always easy, but
he got better at it over the years.
It was time to wander!
He got up and began to explore around the yard, which was a
good half-acre. Absolutely vast to a seven-year-old second-grader. Nothing about the yard was
unfamiliar to him, except what lay beneath it. To discover that, he would
occasionally dig holes. Invariably he discovered some treasure. Usually odd
chunks of thoroughly corroded metal that had one time been a working part of
some mechanism that had failed and been discarded in what used to be a junk
yard. Now it was his yard.
He often dug to see if he could actually see China. That was
the story that he’d heard. It was years later that he learned that that was one of
those grown up lies fed to gullible children as some sort of joke. The adults
found it really funny. When the truth sparked in his churning mind one day, he
was filled with humiliation as he thought back to all his China excavations. For
now, happily innocent, the digging filled the hollow place inside him that
needed a touch of hope and wonder.
Besides digging, he especially like to ferret around under the
row of long needled pines in the backyard, their heavy lower branches creating
natural hiding places. And what a scent! He scrunched together a wide pile of
fallen brown needles, huddled down, and breathed in deeply.
He was now a giant in a huge evergreen jungle and this was his
pine needle lair. The pine cones strewn about were huge and deadly grenades that
he could toss out on intruders and squish them. He wondered what it would be
like to get squished by a giant pine cone. Probably quite surprising and
painful, he thought. It was not an act he would actually commit. Violence was
not in him. Just residual anger. The summer afternoon was warm and quiet. He
curled up down into the needles and dozed off and dreamed he was a giant.
As he woke, the sizzling drone of cicadas filled his
consciousness bringing him back from his large dreams to his little reality. He
had to pee and he was thirsty. He trudged to the back door, clambered into the
house and zipped to the bathroom.
Aaaahhhhh, he sighed happily as the pee rushed from him to the
toilet, splashing gaily. He felt much better, washed his hands, and headed to
the fridge.
"Maaaa-aaahwm?" He intoned as if he were issuing a
call to prayer. "Can I have a Coke? I’m really thirsty and it’s really
hot outside!" His voice and words were high-pitched and aimed at the whole
house since he had no idea exactly where his mother was.
From somewhere in the house, her sundered voice floated back
with an affirmative response embedded in some sort of parental admonishment
which was lost to him. All he heard and needed to hear was the yes. Before his
mother’s words faded to the other end of the house, he had assembled Coke,
ice, and a glass and was headed back outside.
Back in the out, he ambled to the middle of the yard where
the sun etched a circle of shade around the biggest maple, and sat back
against the trunk, sipping his soda through the bendy straw. He sat sipping,
idly looking about, enjoying the feel of the condensation dripping from the
glass over his hands, thinking about the sky, the jets and birds that flew in
it, the wind that blew under it, the clouds that scuttled across it or
completely filled it, and the dark space that lay mysteriously above it.
He felt very, very small as his grasping mind distended in
thought trying to reach out into the infinite, drawn ever outward past the
atmosphere, past the few planets he knew the names of, among the stars he
watched twinkle each night, on and on in his thinning imagination, holding his
breath as he spun out the query of his soul, and then the neighbor’s dog
barked. The question never fully formed and so went unanswered. He needed more
years in his head before he could pursue it seriously.
He sipped, burped, dropped a few drops of the sweet drink near
a trail of ants, and they sipped with him, joining his communion. He watched
them, wondering if they had names. Did they see each other? Or were they
invisible, knowing the presence of another only through the tickling of
antennae? Were they happy? Did they play games? When they burrowed into the
ground, did they see China?
He wondered what China looked liked. Did all the men there
really have long skinny mustaches that extended around their lips and down to
their knees like black licorice whips? Did all of the women wear elaborately
embroidered dresses that were so tight they scooted along on tiptoes in tiny
steps? Did a Chinese boy actually swallow an entire lake? Did a Chinese emperor
actually stroll through his town naked? And how, he wondered more deeply, did
they manage to eat soup with sticks? They must know magic, or else the sticks
were actually hollow like straws, he decided. Like bendy straws.
He slurped loudly drawing every last drop of soda from the
bottom of his glass. He burped again and laughed. It was a really good burp. The
neighbor’s dog barked in response, and that made him laugh even harder. He
bumbled up and into the house, the back door slapping shut just missing his heel
and he took the empty glass into the kitchen, stopped by the bathroom again, and
headed into the basement.
It was time to build a tent!
He rummaged around in the shelves he was not suppose to get
into, pulled out the small tarp, some rope, a mallet, and a dozen tent pegs,
lugged them all up the steps and into the back yard. He retrieved the poles he
had stashed under the pines. Slowly, methodically, he tied the poles together,
put them up and balanced them between pegged ropes, threw the tarp over the
simple frame, pegged the corners and sides, and made various adjustments until
he achieved the desired result.
When it came to tents, he was absolutely
precocious.
The tent could completely close up providing
him further invisibility, but on his terms. Inside, he felt safe, secure, real.
He loved his tent creations and the peace they provided. Since no one could see
him, neither could they see through him. Here he felt he had some substance. He
felt as if all the pieces of himself were truly his. He could rest in peace.
Which he did on the blanket he had dragged out as the final touch and on which
he again dozed. Tent making was tiring.
He woke all hot and sweaty. It was hot inside the tent with
the flaps closed. He had to pee again really bad. He blopped out of the tent,
his body slightly uncoordinated with remnants of sleep, bumbled into the house
and to the bathroom, reaching the toilet and unzipping his pants just in time.
"Splop, splop. Whiz, whiz. Oh what a relief it is!" The reconstituted
commercial jingle played over in his head as he urinated causing him to giggle.
He started to head back outside when he heard his name called
followed by, "It’s dinner time! Where on earth have you been? We’ve
been calling you forever. Get in here and sit down. The food’s getting cold
and your dad’s hungry."
The voice rattled on as he edged down the hall to the dining
room and slid up into his chair. He had barely settled into his seat when the
prayer was done and the others started eating. After everyone else had taken
what they wanted from the passed plates, someone would finally plop a ladle full
of this and that on his plate, without asking him what he wanted or didn’t
want. He ate silently only half listening to the hum of dim conversation around
him. All finished and moved into the living room to watch TV. He was always left
at the table to clean his plate, which he did as best he could, then begged to
be released, which he always was after being admonished for leaving food behind.
He hated beets, lima beans, yams, and a few other absurd vegetables, which there
was always at least one of for each meal. He could never finish everything. It
would make him sick. Sometimes, to prove his point, it did. The results were
always colorful.
He changed into his pajamas and then lay on the floor in front
of the TV watching propped up on his elbows. After a couple of hours he was
shooed off to bed where he lay listening to the sounds of the night seeping
through the window screens and then he slept, soundly, deeply, dreaming. He
dreamed about what it would be like to seen and heard.
===
The morning came quickly, but never quickly enough for him.
His favorite breakfast was Rice Krispies with banana slices. That’s what he
had nearly every morning. This was the way the best mornings began. Today, that’s
what he had, plus a powdered sugar donut! This was really the best. What could
the day hold?
He wrestled into the same clothes he had on the day before and
with shoelaces flying loose, flew out the back door and straight into his tent.
The blanket was damp so he pulled it out into the yard and
threw it over the clothesline to dry. He tied open the flaps of the tent
allowing the air to blow through and dry out the grass inside.
He ran back inside and collected a box of plastic Army men and
a couple of Tonka trucks, and zipped back out to stage a small war in the soil
next to the edge of the vast back porch.
As he played he heard the "Ka-ching, ka-ching" of a
bicycle bell. It was the kind of bell that no self-respecting boy would allow on
his bike. Boys used the more offensive sounding bulb horns that sounded like a
goose farting. He looked up to see an all pink bike bearing a blonde headed girl
coasting down the incline of the street. "Ka-ching, ka-ching."
He had never seen the girl or the bike, but it seemed she was
making certain everyone saw her as she rang her bike bell over and over. He
ignored her and went back on the attack driving his Tonka dozer through a whole
regiment of green soldiers.
"Hey! Boy! Who are you?" The girl on the pink bike
with the obnoxious bell had pulled up right onto the edge of the yard, dropped
her bike in the grass, and was walking toward him. She was wearing red sneakers,
denim shorts neatly fringed, and a white T-shirt top. Her hair was pulled back
in a bouncing ponytail wrapped in a pink stretchy. She strode right up beside
him and stood staring at his battle maneuvers.
"Who are you? Hey, boy!" She demanded again.
He looked up at her, squinting a bit since the sun was a
little off to her left. She had nice eyes, he thought. Greenish a little like
his favorite marble. Her nose was small and freckled. Her skin was white without
being pale. Freckles were scattered up and down her arms. She seemed okay.
"What do you mean, Who am I? Who are you?" he
demanded as he squinted up at her, thinking himself to look like one of those
ornery western cusses on Gunsmoke.
"Kinsey Morrisey. I live in the green house up the
street. We just moved in a couple of days ago. We used to live in Michigan. Who
are you? Can I play with you?"
"I’m Noble. Noble Ray."
"Noble? That’s a funny name! Is that really your name
or are you just fooling me?"
"What’s wrong with Noble? Don’t you know what noble
means? It’s a good name and it’s mine. I like it. It’s my middle name.
Everyone calls me by my first name, though. It’s Victor. And don’t call me
Vick. I hate Vick ‘cause it sounds like Vicks and I don’t stink!"
"I like Victor. Victor Noble Ray. Pretty good name. Do
you like mine? Kinsey? My whole name is Kinsey Susannah Morrisey. Do you like
it?"
He rolled the name around in his head for a moment, listening
to the way it sang in his thoughts. He did. "Yep. It’s pretty nice, I
guess."
"Thanks. I like it. Are you playing war? Is that your tent
over there? Did you make it all by yourself?" The words streamed out of her
pretty mouth as she scooted over to the tent and ducked in one end and popped
out the other. "Neat! Can we play in it? Can we use that blanket over there
to sit on in the tent and talk?"
"Sure," Victor replied answering nearly all of her
questions with the single word.
They spread the blanket inside the tent and plopped down at
either end and talked. She told him about moving and Michigan and her parents
and her pet rabbit Floppy and the brother that died when she was three and he
was one and about her Barbies. She missed her brother and her friends in
Michigan, left behind because her dad’s company made them move here.
He told her about the school where they would be in the second
grade together and his friends across the street Sam and Allen and the ice cream
guy that peddled down Forest Lane every afternoon in the summer around 3 o’clock
and the Strawberry Man that came into the neighborhood about once a week selling
strawberries singing out loudly "Straaww-ber-eees! Fresh, ripe
straaww-ber-eees!"
"Really? He sings it?"
"Yes. He’s loud and that’s how we know he’s
here."
"What kind of ice cream do you like? I like the ice cream
sandwiches."
"I like dreamsicles. You know, the orange ones."
"Those are good, too."
"Did you see your brother die?"
"No. We were all asleep. He never woke up."
"Did you see him dead?"
"Yes. But it just looked like he was sleeping." She
started crying. "I don’t want to talk about him anymore. It makes me cry
but I’m not sure why. It happened a long time ago."
"It’s okay. I cry sometimes, too."
"Why?"
"I never know. I just have to."
"Yeah, me too. This is a really neat tent! I like it a
lot. You’re good at making tents."
"Yeah, I know. I like tents a lot. I like being inside
them. In the winter when I can’t make tents outside, I make them inside in the
basement. Sometimes I just go in the closet and pretend it’s a tent. It’s
nice. I listen to my transistor radio with the lights off. Sometimes I listen to
it with my earphone under the covers when I’m in bed."
"Neat. I do that, too. Sit in my closet. And listen to my
radio late at night when they think I’m asleep. It makes me feel grown
up."
"Would you like a Coke," he asked?
"Sure!"
He took her into the house and hunted down his mother.
"This is Kinsey. She just moved into the green house up the street. Can we
have some Coke?"
While Kinsey and his mother chatted he went into the kitchen
and assembled two glasses with ice, bendy straws, and Coke. "Come on,
Kinsey. Let’s go back outside."
They sat in the tent sipping their sodas and talking. The
afternoon took on a quality that he’d never experienced before. He sensed it
but didn’t stop to contemplate it until he’d gone to bed that night and he
lay in his bed listening to a distant station thinking of Kinsey’s eyes.
They put their empty glasses on the porch and lay in the grass
facing the huge blue sky. He showed her how to let jets string her fingers and
how to squish them. "That’s funny!" she giggled as she pinched out a
jet and watched the thin white line weave in and out between her fingers.
"Do you think they can see us from up there?"
"Maybe. But I doubt it."
They went back in the tent and pulled the flaps closed and
whispered secrets to each other. They swore to always be best friends. One
yawned and then the other. She laid down on the blanket and said, "I’m
tired." And then she was asleep. He looked at her. Laid down beside her,
slightly touching her. As he drifted off, he felt himself changing. He dreamed
he was becoming visible. He dreamed that Kinsey stood above him whispering,
"I see you."
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