Submitted The Kite Flyers

[lavivi]

I just submitted The Kite Flyers in an email to The New Yorker.  I keep scrolling over my Sent copy of it, just as I did before I hit "Send," making sure everything's perfect...

Oh God.  Should I have double-spaced it?  I only double-spaced between paragraphs.  Will they automatically delete it because of that?  Please no.  I know it said nothing about double-spacing on their submission info page. 

 

Dear Sirs:
I am submitting the following short story for your consideration.  Thank you.

[insertpersonalinfo]

 

The Kite Flyers

 

The sand was dirty.  Not at all the gleaming white, or even off-white, you see in pictures, advertisements for vacations.  The beach was dark brown, and scattered with small stones and pieces of trash.  The sky was almost completely overcast – not many people out today.   It was almost deserted, in fact.  There was only the long expanse of dark sand and gray-blue waves washing over it.

 

            It was windy, too, another reason why the beach was deserted.  A boy sat beneath the stairs of the beach-front store, arms crossed over his knees.  His hair was dark like the sand and tangled from the wind.  He liked to skip school to go down to the beach – there weren't as many people on weekdays.  His mother knew where he was.  She didn't care if he skipped, as long as she knew how to find him.

 

            He was wearing a red shirt and jeans.  The jeans were threadbare at the knees, and the shirt had a small hole, just big enough to stick his thumb through, on the shoulder.  He always wore scruffy clothes to go down to the beach.  When he had arrived, he had found a smooth stone on the bottom step of the stairs, and was absentmindedly turning it over in his hands now.

 

            So far, he had only seen a few older, teenage boys show up in a pickup truck – skipping school too.  The boy, whose name was James, had stayed still behind the wooden stairs, out of view.  Not that he really thought they would harass him – real troublemakers didn't hang out at the beach. They had only stayed for about fifteen minutes, smoking and talking, then drove off again.   James watched the seagulls flutter down and pick at the cigarettes left behind.

 

            But now something else was approaching – a blue SUV.  James turned his head and watched as it drove down onto the beach, moving slowly toward him, and then come to a stop.  After a moment, the doors opened and a girl and a boy, the boy his age and the girl younger, jumped out.  An adult followed more slowly with a lawn chair.  They weren't wearing swim suits – the man was wearing pants, and the children shorts, which had to feel chilly in this weather, especially if they were going to go into the water. 

 

            The girl immediately set about doing exactly that – she ran straight into the waves, but dashed back before they hit above her knees.  She skipped backwards and began darting back and forth, playing a game to see how close she could get and not have her feet washed over by the smallest waves, while her father set up his lawn chair, facing the ocean, and sat down.  The boy had taken something that was rolled up out of the back of the car – as he unwound it and shook it out, James saw it was a kite.  The bright yellow of it almost made him squint.

 

            The little girl continued to run down the shoreline, dancing in the waves and picking up seashells, returning to show them to her father, who sat in the lawn chair without a book or anything, staring into the waves.   He did turn to see the shells his daughter would hold up to him, and that seemed to please her well enough, for she left them in a pile like an offering at his feet.  The boy, working alone, straightened out his kite and with practiced skill launched it in the air. 

 

            James's attention became centered on the kite flyer, and less on the girl and man.  The boy looked to be just his age, and even resembled him, to a degree – they had the same coloring.  James watched as he handled the kite with careful expertise, studying it in the air.  He looked very serious about it, as though the kite wasn't just a toy.  It was such an odd, grave expression, it made James glance back at the man in the lawn chair, who was still staring off into the waves as though there were a television in front of him, and the girl who was getting farther away now, still playing with all her childish carelessness. 

 

            The yellow kite flew stiffly in the gusty wind.  It was clearly taking all of the boy's attention to keep it steady.  James watched as it dropped and swerved, trembled and held in place as though pinned there by an invisible force.  The particularly strong force of the wind that day made it shudder more than James had usually seen kites do.  It gave the impression of being trapped, and for a moment James felt sorry for the kite – then he felt silly, and pushed the thought away.

 

            The kite's tail, which was yellow and orange, was whipping back under the wind, looking strained.  James wondered a couple of times whether it might come off – and then it did.  In the blink of an eye, it snapped free from the high kite, fluttered and twirled free in the wind, and slowly made its way down – toward the stairs of the beach store and James.

 

            James watched it come toward him, feeling a little annoyed that he would be discovered now.  The tail sailed toward him, but eventually came to settle above him under the top of the stairs, wrapped partially around one of the wooden poles that held up the store. 

 

            Almost without thinking, James dropped the stone in his hands and jumped up, climbing the stairs toward the kite tail, seeing out of the side of his eye the boy slowly reeling in his kite and walking toward him.  The store and stairs were old – the stairs had been rebuilt at some point, and the railings didn't quite connect.  There was a gap between the railing from the top stair and the railing that went around the porch of the store.

 

            James crouched down at the gap.  He was a thin boy, and he was able to duck his head and squeeze through.  Hanging onto the base of one of the wooden railings, he lowered himself down so he was almost upside-down.  He reached, but couldn't quite grasp the fluttering end of the kite tail.  Hooking his leg around another railing and moving his hand to grasp the rough edge of the wooden floor instead, he shifted, reached out again, and snatched it. 

 

            He pulled gently, and the tail came unraveled easily.  Gracefully James pulled himself back up onto the stairs and walked back down. The kite flyer was waiting at the bottom, holding the kite.

 

            "Thanks," the boy said.  James gave a half-shrug and held out the kite tail.  The boy didn't take it, however, but looked at him for a moment, and asked, "Want to help me tie it back on?"

 

            Taken by surprise, James didn't respond for a few moments, but then he nodded.

            The boy took the kite to a nearby wooden table, and while James held the kite end the boy tied the kite tail back on, adding extra knots.   Then James went with him back onto the beach, watching as he let the kite back into the wind, the boy making a point to demonstrate how it was done.  Then, when the kite was at a stable height, he held out the spindle to him.

 

            "You do it."

 

            Uncertainly, James took the ends of the spindle.  He had never flown a kite before.  He immediately felt the tug in the spindle, the constant pull of the kite in the wind.  He looked up at it, fluttering high above him.  James tentatively experimented, holding the spindle higher and lower, then, with the boy's encouragement, let out more string.  The kite went higher and higher, but it was never enough for the kite – always he felt the pull in his hands, the want to be released into the wind, like the kite tail had.

 

            Finally, the kite was just a yellow speck in the sky.  He looked up at it, straining to keep it in sight.  He could still feel the tug in his hands, even with the kite so very far away…

 

            "Go on," the boy said.  Reluctantly, James looked at him, away from the kite.  The boy looked very serious.  "Go on.  Let it go."

 

            James looked up at the kite, which was just a dot now, just a yellow dot, but the pull was the same as when he could see every detail, and he released the spindle.

 

            For a moment the small yellow dot was there, and then it disappeared into the background of a gray cloud.  The boys stood side by side, staring up into the sky, while the man gazed into the ocean and the girl crouched down to pick up another seashell.

 

*crosses fingers very, very tightly*