“You have done well, Jose.” Max shook his hand.

“I owe much to you, Señor Max. I much grateful all my life.” Jose threw his arms about Max and kissed him grandly on both cheeks.

45

The Kite-Flying Contest

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, several weeks after the restaurant opened, the ladies, their menfolk, children, and friends piled into cars and vans and drove to the big open field beyond Caster Elementary School. Wide oaks and tall poplar trees rimmed the area, providing shade for picnic tables and chairs, as well as for those who chose to spread blankets on the ground.

At one end of the field, six steps above the ground, a grandstand with a canvas awning had been erected. Arranged in rows, chairs had been set up from which the judges observed the proceedings.

On the field, twelve boys and girls stood holding their kites. Each had a helper nearby, someone to carry the kite a hundred feet away and hold it high to catch the wind. Tyler’s friend Tommy Ullman waited to help him launch his kite.

Running to launch a kite was the hardest way to do it, Tyler had explained to Hannah. The kite might dive and crash before it even got started. Hannah crossed her fingers. Some of the kites were larger than Tyler’s and some were smaller, but all were bright and colorful, with exotic dragon designs, though none were as fierce as Tyler’s dragon.

A kite-flying contest, Tyler had explained to her, was not like a contest where someone shot off a gun or yelled “Go” and everyone started for a finish line. It was about waiting for the wind, judging its velocity, and catching the wind, then easing out your line, keeping your kite aloft, and seeing that it did not tangle with another kite or in a power line or in a treetop. Kite flying was not a silly game but a serious sport, with clubs and organizations dedicated to this craft and art and with statewide, nationwide, and international contests.

This had all been news to her. When she was a girl, Hannah, her father, and her brother had made kites with tissue paper and thin sticks. They had tied long strands of cloth left over from her mother’s sewing box as tails, and run about a field chasing them.

Today, the wind was fickle, one moment stirring among the branches, the next moment still. It didn’t take gusts of twenty-five miles an hour to raise the type of kites being flown, but on this fine summer day when wind should be moving among the trees, and flags should be fluttering, the air was stagnant.

Parents and friends waited anxiously, hoping for the slightest stir of wind. In the field, the boys and girls shifted from leg to leg. Under the awning, the judges, binoculars in hand, shifted in their chairs. The tension could be cut with a knife. And still no wind.