Tempting Fate

Twenty-Two

“A kite,” Mattie Witt explained to her sister a week after she’d come home to Cedar Springs, “is a heavier-than-air object that requires lift-wind-for it to defy the forces of gravity. Now, contrary to popular opinion, there doesn’t need to be a great deal of wind, as there isn’t today. Here, I’ll show you.”

With her back to the wind, she held the simple nylon kite up by its bridle. It immediately snapped into a flying position.

Mattie was delighted. “There, you see? Enough wind.”

Naomi dubiously eyed the kite and her sister. “Then we’re in business?”

“You bet.”

They walked down West Main to the field behind the old military academy. Jackson Witt had forbidden them to play there when they were children. It was a perfect place to fly a kite. Naomi had taken a bit of convincing. She worried about catching a chill and old Doc Hiram coming by and thinking they’d lost their minds. Mattie had been her most persuasive. When Naomi came downstairs in a skirt and pumps and one of those plastic rain bonnets over her neatly coiffed hair, Mattie had withheld comment. She herself had on her favorite orange flight suit. Naomi said she looked like an escaped lunatic.

“It’s rather cool out here,” Naomi said.

Mattie was sweltering. She gestured to the sweater she’d brought along and tossed onto the grass; it was one of Nick’s castoffs. “Put that on.”

“Oh, Mattie, I couldn’t. It’s a man’s sweater-”

“Then catch a cold.”

Clucking to herself, Naomi scooped up the sweater and picked off bits of grass before she put it on. It was even bigger on her than it would be on Mattie. She neatly turned up the sleeves. “I suppose it won’t look too tacky from a distance.”

Mattie was getting the biggest kick out of her sister. They’d been together for a week, and Mattie felt as if they were kids again; and yet their relationship felt new at the same time. She couldn’t explain it. They would fuss at each other and giggle and cry and argue about anything. That morning they’d gone all through breakfast debating whether Billy Cook and Pearl Butterfield had married, though Billy and Pearl both were dead now. Every night, Naomi dragged out scrapbooks and photo albums and told her sister about virtually every birth, death, marriage and divorce that had occurred in Cedar Springs since Mattie had left.

“Let’s get this kite into the air,” Mattie said.

“Now, Mattie, you can’t be running across this field as if you were ten years old. If you trip, you’re likely to break a hip. At your age your bones must be brittle.”

Mattie loved the way Naomi said “your” age, as if she weren’t in her seventies herself. “I’m not going to run. That’s not an effective way to launch a kite.”

“Oh?”

She had Naomi’s interest now. She came in closer. “If there’s enough wind,” Mattie explained, “you can launch a kite from your hand. It’s just a question of getting it above the ground-air turbulence until it soars. But there’s not quite enough wind for that today.”

“So what do we do?”

“Well, you take the kite and walk downwind about fifty feet. I’ll hold on to the line. When a gust hits the kite-you’ll feel it-you let go. I do the rest.”

“I think I can do that.”

This was false modesty, Mattie knew. In her own way, Naomi was one of the most self-confident people Mattie had ever known. She took the kite and walked gingerly across the field, Nick’s pilled sweater hanging loosely from her tiny frame.

“If the kite spins and dives,” Mattie yelled, “it’s too light for the wind conditions. But I don’t think that’ll be the case.”

“We’ll soon find out, won’t we?”

Naomi stood on her tiptoes and held the kite up as high as she could, and when the gust came, she released it fast-as fast as Mattie would have-and her sister pulled the line. Naomi squealed and ran back to her. “Mattie, it’s working! It’s working!”

“Yes, yes!”

Mattie could feel the Tennessee wind at her back, Naomi laughing at her side, clapping her hands, as their kite rode the wind, and finally-just a speck of bright yellow in a clear blue sky-soared high above Cedar Springs.