Chapter 35 thirty five

Louis came to believe that the last truly happy day of his life was March 24, 1984.It was a Saturday afternoon and he was at home with Gage in the afternoon while Rachel and Ellie went shopping.They went with Chad in his car.Not because Louis's own car broke down, but because the old man liked them to go with him.Rachel asked Louis if he could take care of her son, and Louis told her it was fine.He happily sent his wife and daughter out, and Louis thought that after a winter in Maine, mostly in Luther House, Rachel should indeed be out and about as often as possible.Rachel kept joking about it, but from Louis' point of view, she was a little excited, and it was nice to be out of Luther House.

Gage awoke from his nap around two o'clock that afternoon, stretched and looking out of sorts.He often looked like this at two o'clock in the afternoon.Louis thought of a few tricks to try to amuse his son, but Gage wasn't interested.To make matters worse, the kid always had a tendency to swallow things into his stomach.When Louis saw Gage grabbing a blue marble, he decided he couldn't let him scratch.Ellie's blue glass marbles, if swallowed by her son, would have choked him.He put the glass beads away, but it didn't interest Gage much, probably until his mother came back.

Louis listened to the early spring wind blowing around the house.He suddenly remembered the eagle kite he had bought on impulse on the way home from get off work five or six weeks ago.Did he buy some rope for the kite?Thank God, he remembered that he bought it himself. "Gage!" Lewis called.Gage found a green crayon under the couch and was scribbling on one of Ellie's favorite books.This would be a shame for Ellie and Gage's quarrel, Louis thought, grinning.If Allie complained about Gage scribbling on her book and Louis didn't snatch it away to protect it, Louis would mention the only treasure he had just found among his son's pets—the green crayon, Who told Elle to throw green crayons around?Just as Louis was thinking, he heard his son reply cleverly: "What!" Gage could speak quite a few words now.Louis had thought that the little boy might actually be slower to learn to speak.

"Would you like to go out?" "Want to get out!" Gage agreed happily. "Want to get out, Daddy. Where are my shoes?" Louis was often surprised by what Gage said, not because the words were cleverly answered, but because he thought children learning to speak sounded like a mess like immigrants learning a foreign language, but children learning to speak are cute.He knew that infants could make all the sounds that a human vocal cord can make, those glides, nasals, and fricatives that are common in French and German, but as soon as they learned to speak English, they lost the ability to make them. .More than once Louis wondered if in childhood children forgot more than they remembered.

Gage's shoes were finally found under the sofa, too.It occurred to Louis, too, that in homes with young children, there would be a strong mysterious attraction in the living room and under the sofa, which would eventually draw the children into everything from bottles.Diaper pins to green crayons and old Sesame Street magazines. But Gage's jacket wasn't under the sofa, it was on the stairs.Gage's red hat was the hardest to find, and Gage refused to go out without it.Finally Louis found it in a closet.Of course, that was the last place they went. "Where are you going, Dad?" Gage asked kindly, holding out his hand to Louis.

"Go to Mrs. Winton's field," said Louis, "and fly a kite, my little man." "Kite?" Gage asked suspiciously. "You'll like it," Louis said. "Wait a minute, boy." They went into the garage, and Louis found the keychain, opened the small storage closet, and turned on the lights.He rummaged around and found the eagle kite, still in the bag with the price tag still on it.He bought it in mid-February when he was feeling down, hoping it would bring some hope. "That?" Gage asked, which was Gage's substitute for "Dad, what the hell are you holding?"

"This is a kite." Louis said, taking the kite out of the bag and unfolding the folded eagle kite.Gage watched with interest. The eagle kite, with its wings outstretched, may be five feet long and is made of hard plastic.At the front of the kite was a thin pink neck with a small eagle's head painted on it, with a pair of red bulging eyes staring at them. "Bird!" Gage yelled. "Bird, Daddy, it's a bird!" "Yes, it's a bird." Louis nodded yes.He put the spool in the back pocket of the kite and rummaged in the closet for the 500 feet of rope he had bought that same day.He looked back at Gage and said again: "You're gonna love it, lad."

Gage did like it. Together they went into Mrs. Winton's field with the kite, and Louis flew the kite into the sky at once, although he hadn't flown a kite for a long time.Since 12 years old? 19 years ago?God, it's been so long. Mrs. Winton, who was about as old as Jud and especially frail, lived in a brick house at the end of the field but seldom came out.Behind the house is the woods, which lead to the pet cemetery. Gage screamed, "Daddy, the kite is flying!" "Yeah, watch it fly!" Louis yelled too, laughing gleefully.He put the rope down too fast, the rope was a little hot, and there were some red marks on his palms. "Look at that eagle, Gage! Great!"

"Brilliant!" exclaimed Gage, also grinning gleefully.The sun moved out from behind a cloud, and the temperature seemed to rise by 5 degrees at once.Louis and his son stood in the field of Mrs. Winton's house, watching the eagle kite above his head fly to the blue sky and rise, Louis felt that he had returned to his childhood.He felt that he had risen with the kite, entered into the kite, looked down on the true face of the world, and saw the scenery of the whole region. "Watch it fly, Gage!" cried Louis, laughing. Gage looked up so hard that he almost fell on his back.With a happy smile on his face, he was waving his hand towards the kite.

Louis loosened the rope, allowing Gage to hold out his hand.Gage stretched out his hand without looking, his eyes were on the kite flying in the wind. Louis wrapped two turns of the rope around Gage's hand, and now Gage was actually looking down at the rope, curious and amused by the rope pulling his hand. "What?" he said. Louis told him, "You're flying a kite now, hold on to the string, my little man, here's your kite!" Gage asked, "Gage flies a kite?" It seemed that he was not asking his father, but himself.He tried to pull the rope, and the kite staggered in the air.Gage pulled harder and the kite dived.Louis and his son laughed together, Gage reached out with the other hand, groping, and Louis reached out and grabbed his son.They just stood together in Mrs. Winton's field, looking up at the flying eagle kite.It was a moment with his son that Louis would never forget.Just like when he flew a kite when he was a child and felt that he was flying into the sky and into the kite, Louis found that he seemed to have entered the body of his son now, and the eyes of his son who always looked out the window seemed to be his eyes, looking at Hao Miao curiously. , brilliant world.

"The kite is flying!" Gage yelled to his father.Luis put his arms around Gage's shoulders and kissed his son's face, which was flushed red by the wind. "I love you, Gage," Louis said.Only the two of them heard this, but it didn't matter. Gage was still squealing and yelling gleefully, "Kite fly! Kite fly! Daddy!" Little did he know he had less than two months to live. Rachel and Elle were still flying the kite when they got home.They flew the kite so high that almost all the strings were run out, the kite was just a small black shadow in the sky, and there was no eagle to be seen at all. Louis was very happy to see his wife and daughter back, and Ellie also came to play.For a moment she let go of the rope, and running across the grass she caught it again before the kite was about to fly away.Louis couldn't help laughing. Twenty minutes later, Rachel said that she thought Gage had had enough of the cold wind and was afraid he would catch a cold. Louis didn't feel too sorry, and took the children to put away the kite, tucked it under his arm, and went home.The kite was returned to the small storage room.That night, Gage worked up an appetite and ate several hot dogs, and when Rachel put him to bed, Louis took his daughter Ellie aside to talk to her about the fact that she shouldn't be throwing marbles around.In normal times, Louis would probably have yelled at Ellie for being arrogant and rude when she made a mistake and being criticized, which she always was when she was criticized.Louis is always angry, but because of the kite flying, he was in a good mood tonight, and Ellie also seemed very sensible.She promised to be more careful in the future, and went downstairs to watch TV.She watched it until 8:30, and she could only watch it so late on Saturdays. She cherished this kindness towards her very much.Well, this matter is settled, and it may bring some benefits to the son.Louis thought, not knowing that the glass marbles weren't a problem, that the cold wasn't a real problem, that the real problem was a big Orinco truck, that the real problem was the road—just like the first August As he had warned them the other day when they met Chad. Fifteen minutes after Gage went to bed that night, Louis went downstairs to see his son and found Gage lying still, still awake, drinking what little milk was left in the bottle and looking at the ceiling thoughtfully. "The kite is flying, Daddy," said Gage. "It was really flying, wasn't it? Flying high in the sky, my little man," Louis said, with tears in his eyes for some reason. "The kite is flying, in the sky," Gage said. He rolled over, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.He just fell asleep on his side. Louis walked into the hall, looked back, and saw a pair of yellow-green eyes staring at him from a closet in Gage's room.The closet door was open... just a crack, and Louis' heart almost jumped to his throat, and he curled his mouth in a bitter expression. He opens the closet door, thinking (Zelda, it's Zelda in the closet, sticking out her long dark purple tongue), he's not quite sure what it is, but of course it can only be Church, The cat was hiding in the closet. When the cat saw Louis, it arched its back, opened its mouth and bared its sharp teeth, and sizzled menacingly at Louis. Louis whispered, "Get out." Church hissed and threatened again, without moving. "I said, get out." Louis grabbed Gage's toy beside him, a plastic locomotive, and waved it at Church.Instead of moving, the cat hissed and threatened Louis. Louis suddenly threw the toy at the kitten without even thinking about it, not joking, not at the cat, but with all his strength, like nails, at the kitten.Louis was angry and scared because the kitten looked like it should be hiding in a dark closet in his son's room, as if it had a right to be there. The locomotive hit the cat hard in the center of its body.With a shrill cry, Church staggered and ran away, slamming against the door. Gage was a little startled, grunted a few times, changed his sleeping position, and became quiet again.Louis felt a little uncomfortable, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Rachel's voice yelled from downstairs in panic, "Louis, did Gage fall off the crib?" "He's all right, dear. It was Church who knocked over some of Gage's toys." "Oh, is it?" Louis felt—somewhat irrationally as if he had seen a snake crawl over his son or a large rat squatting on the bookshelf by Gage's bed.Sure, it's irrational, but the cat hissing at him in the closet was like that— (Zelda, do you remember Zelda? Do you remember Worth the Great?) Louis closed the closet door and pushed some toys in through the underside of the closet door, and Louis heard the latch on the door snap shut.He hesitated, bolted the door again, and walked back to his son's bed.The child had already kicked both blankets up to the knees while turning over.Louis straightened his son, pulled the blanket down to cover him, and stood there looking at him for a long, long time.