The Magic Tape

Rod Aldrich, 1999

Bill deftly marked the end of the tape onto the pavement with a spot of red paint from the spray marker. Then he let go and waved to Melissa with the same hand. He stayed squatting and pulled his palm top out of his holster and clicked "enter" for another run on this leg of the traverse.

He pressed some numbers and function keys to see how many traverses that made today.

Melissa came up beside him scuffing her boots and the fabric tape hissing over the fresh blacktop behind her. Bill thought about telling her again that money for boots doesn't grow on trees, she should stop scuffing her feet. But then he remembered that it was her money now, since he was an independent contractor, and she was his employee.

"Awful warm for December! I still can't believe it." Melissa invoked for about the twelfth time that day.

Bill held back from telling her he was sick of her saying that. Better not make her angry, since he would be working with her every day.

Bill stood up, anxious to get this traverse over with, and felt the sweat between his tight calves and his damp blue jeans.

"You're just sorry that you didn't wear a tank top so you could tan like when you were flagging!" he teased.

Melissa wasn't all that bad, he thought, as she smiled slowly at his attempt.

She worked right along with him. He thought back to when he had interviewed her. She'd done nothing but flagging for seven years for a paver who did government jobs. He was so scared, back then. He had been a telephone lineman for fourteen years, and then last year they downsized. He thought about how he had decided to become an independent contractor. How he had ended up bidding jobs with the cable company.

"That was this morning, Bill."

They both looked up at the thickening clouds that were racing above them. The temperature was dropping, too, as the afternoon went on.

Bill thought about how much more they could get done today. This was pretty good work, compared to the line work that would come later, easy on the back and hands. But there was the constant pressure to beat the clock, especially at this portion of the job.

"Okay, Melissa, enough sunbathing in December. This should be a short one, then we turn the corner."

Bill had often wondered when the cable company would find it was cheaper to shoot the location of each and every pole with a GPS device, stick it in a computer, and be done with this measurement stuff.

Bill started to bend over to pick up his end of the tape. Just then a gust of wind came up and blew the tape at their end out into the street. He felt a little self-conscious, like someone had been watching, or he was in a movie. But only a lone white van was moving toward them on the side street they had been measuring.

Bill let out a little "huh?" for Melissa's benefit. Put his fists on his hips and stared down at the rebellious bright red tape, like he was daring it to move again. Melissa giggled to see him in that pose.

Then he made his move, bending on one leg and putting his other foot behind in a bowling or twisted stance, he swept his hand down in a swooping, scooping motion.

But again the wind came in at just the last moment, whipping and rolling the tape further into the road.

Bill froze, perplexed. The white van came down the street in slow motion. It skirted the first part of the tape, and its breeze began to waft it away in its wake. But one of the ends was further in the road. The front tires passed over it and that section was caught in the under currents. Bill could distinctly see it flap up into the rear wheel well.

And then everything changed, the tape started peeling behind the van. The fold back, that Melissa had created by walking her end back, was coming up the street at an incredible rate. Bill was shocked that as he watched it, he had the mathematical vision to realize that it was traveling at half the speed of the van. And this epiphany was followed by the realization that the traveling end was wrapped around an invisible pulley.

Melissa moved past him in a flash and pounced on the tape that was comparatively still in the slackening wind. She landed on it, near the unhooked end. But as she turned up, triumphant, to look at Bill, the invisible pulley entered her foot, and the last three feet of the tape zipped around her boot, and the end whiffed down the street. The tape had been in the gap between her heel and ball.

Bill started laughing, giddy with the ridiculousness of how this tape had eluded them.

Melissa's face looked so stunned and crestfallen. But suddenly, Bill remembered that without the tape their day was finished. Bill launched down the street after the van dragging the red survey tape and silently cursed himself for not buying an extra tape.

As he ran, the van slowed down for the corner, but with a boulevard stop the van gunned around the corner. The tape zipped against the corner curb and was gone.

Bill ran into the main road watching the back of the van, thinking about how he could have bought an electronic measure, but that didn't seem worth all that expense. He and Melissa had to walk the same distance anyway, so every expense cut into the bid award, so he hadn't gone for the electronic measure.

Now their only tape measure was speeding down the street, stuck to a dirty, white, panel van.

Bill was in shape from working outdoors all the time, but it had been years since he had sprinted.

He bowed his head and slowed into a more moderate pace.

He thought about the odds. Something had to pull it off the van. There were traffic lights to keep it from getting too far ahead of him.

The University was on the left side of the road with its vacant land covered in trim grass. On the right, the old row homes were close. No yards, just wide sidewalks. Some people were sitting on their front steps. He wondered why they had nothing better to do.

The van slowed behind some cars stopped at the first light, but then the light changed. And the little parade went on.

An older black man stood up pointed at him and started clapping. Bill grimaced as he felt the eyes turn to him, and he sped up to get through the intersection just as the light went from yellow to red.

Now Bill was next to the old grade school on the right, behind the imposing, but rusted chain-link fence. At the near end was a decrepit playground that seemed to be filled with kids. He noticed that many had dark skin.

He remembered when this was mostly Italian with some Irish. The buildings had all seen better days.

He felt good about the fact that he and his wife had bought a home well out of the older homes, about twenty years ago. It had been a real strain on their budget at first. They had actually postponed having kids because their budget was so lean at first. But now his sunny fourteen year old girl and her eleven year old sister were in a really good school.

A cold gust of wind swept up from behind and pushed him down the hill. The sweat was really making his clothes feel heavy now. But he saw that the van had actually stopped for the next light.

It was turning left just before the Catholic church on the corner.

Then Bill's wish seemed to come true. A green small car was coming through the intersection toward him, and it drove over the tape. The tape snapped dead and seemed to hang nailed to the street. Bill grinned as he bore down in a sprint again.

He ran so fast he didn't feel the gust coming up behind him. A green mini-van came up the same path as the green car, and the tape whirled into the air behind it. Bill stumbled into large slowing steps and watched, aghast, as the tape whirled up into the air above another white van.

Then a really huge gust of wind hit Bill with a thud he could feel and the tape floated down the street toward the end of the church. It was really high up now, in danger of landing in the trees or the wires.

Bill stopped at the lead edge of the intersection, a person standing in a road where cars belonged. He clenched his eyes shut in a grimace and held his hands palms out. He felt cursed and caught in a bizarre movie. He slumped at that spot to get his breath under control.

"Beeeeeeeeeeeep!" The blast from the horn from behind him shocked him, and he spun around to see a big dark-brown panel truck barreling down on him. He dove and scrambled for the curb.

After he watched the van receding away, he looked back down the side street. The tape was nowhere in sight. He crossed the intersection before the light changed again and started down past the church. Right up against it were really old row houses. Somewhere a stereo was playing Fat Boy Slim. He remembered this was college overflow housing by absentee landlords.

When he got in front of the second house he looked at the door that was open a few inches, and couldn't believe his eyes.

The tape was going in the mail slot.

Bill stopped dead in his tracks and watched the end of the tape go up the last step, across the worn gray porch floor boards, and up the beat up and weathered brown door, and flipped into the slot.

Bill loped over to the porch and up to the door. Forgetting his manners, he pushed the door open, and there was a man.

Bill didn't know why he was the shocked one. There had to be someone there, logically. The tape couldn't be alive like a snake, and jump through the mail slot.

There was a guy with metal things in his eyebrows and his ears, and one smooth silver ball centered between his mouth and his chin. He had a navy blue sweater with white and sky-blue horizontal stripping at chest level. He had huge baggy shorts and scruffy sneakers, no socks. He was holding a cell phone to his ear with one hand and he actually still had the tape in his other hand.

"Dude!" He shouted it.

Bill's lips moved like he was going to say something.

The guy just kept grinning at him.

Bill finally gathered himself up and then shot out his hand.

"My name's Bill, and you've got my tape."

The guy smiled and laughed with his whole body as he gripped Bill's hand full force.

"My name is the ghost of Christmas present . . . the high priest of the winter solstice, and this "tape," as you call it," and then he spoke in a hushed voice, "which I prefer to call a magical ribbon, marked with ancient Arabic incantations, I might aaaaaadd," and then he went back to booming, "was dropped from the sky . . . By the wind god on this auspicious occasion, on which we celebrate the birth of all things new . . . and innocent . . . full of light!" His hand let go of Bill's at the end, and he flourished it in arcs over the curled red piles, while he bent at the waist and grinned wide across."

Bill stepped back toward the steps and stammered, "We . . . well, I, I know what must have happened," Bill said finishing meeting the guy's eyes. "But you see we're working this job up on Hill Street, and this tape got blown into the road . . . and then it got caught on a van, and then when it came off, this awful gust must of brought it in front of your house."

The guys grin vanished. "Hill Street?"

"Yes" Bill found himself getting uncomfortable that his story sounded more implausible than this demented college geek's.

The guy grinned again, "Aw come on, Duuuude, that's at least a mile from here."

"No shit, Sherlock." Bill snapped. "Look I've got a contract to finish. I can't stand here debating with you all day."

The guy's vision suddenly looked behind Bill, really far away. He pressed the receiver to his ear more firmly, since his arm had slackened some. "No, Tawny, don't hang up. This dude is being rude, but we can do your calculus, sunshine. Just hang in."

He cocked the flip phone away from his ear and said, "Peace, really, peace. Take it. It's on you if you disappoint all those kiddies!" He turned, with a nervous smile, and walked back further in the hall and pressed the cell phone back to his ear, and said "Sorry, Tawny. Where were we?"

Bill stepped firmly into the hall, and bent over to find the end of the tape.

The guy said, "Wait, Tawny, you've got to remember the big picture. Integrals are the opposite of differentials. Integrals just go the reverse of differentials. Okay?"

Bill started reeling the tape around his forearm in firm loops.

"Look, Tawny, look at some of the examples at the start of that chapter, and see how if you take the differential, you'll just come back to where you started. Really, integrals are not a big deal."

Bill glanced at the interior door that was also open, wasting heat, he groused to himself.

"Okay, you do that and after the party I'll come over and we'll work a few of the homework problems."

Bill saw about forty white paper shopping bags standing open on the floor in what had been a living room at one time. The sparse and beat up furnishings almost didn't qualify it to be called by that name.

"Bye. And remember" and then he practically shouted, "Yule Rules!"

Bill had stopped winding the loops. He wondered could the bags be for drugs? For door to door sales?

"What's the hold-up?" the guy was slipping his cell phone into one of those deep pockets.

Bill said, "Nothing." Then in a tone that was harder than he had meant it to be, he blurted, "Who's Tawny? Your girlfriend?"

The guy's face reduced to a trace, "No, dude. She's a high school girl I tutor. She goes to Hamilton Hill. No girlfriend. We can't go there, now can we?"

"Her parents rich?" Bill forced himself to look at the guys eyes, and not the silver ball in the center of his chin.

"Oh, the almighty dollar again, dude. You really got a one track mind. For your in-for-ma-tion, she's an "A" grade scholar at Hamilton Hill, growing up in the closest thing a small city can have to a ghetto." His smile was gone and he pulled himself up tall. "My plan is to send her so fast at the glass ceiling, she shatters it. Catch my drift? Think globally, act locally." His grin returns.

"Oh." Bill was stumped.

"That's Okay, Dude. You're not the only one around here that doesn't ride my dream boat."

"Whadya mean?"

The guy took Bill's shoulder and turned him to face the room that should have been a living room. With his other hand he pushed the door open so Bill could see all the bags.

"I went everywhere today trying to get donations for these. They're going to the Boy's and Girl's Club. Six, seven and eight year olds." He scrunched up his lips in a pucker with a frown across the bottom. "Well all I got was some donut holes, some french fry coupons, and some pencils."

Bill turned away and said "They say when things are at their best, they're at their worst, for the little guy."

The guy blurted a single laugh and said, "Yah, I guess they done run out of stock certificates."

Bill shrugged and turned his attention back to finishing wrapping up the final tape loops.

"Sorry man." Bill offered weakly and turned toward the front door.

Out in the late afternoon gloom, Bill could see white particles swirling around in the gusts. He took two steps toward the door and stopped with one foot on the sill.

Bill said very softly, "What were you going to do with this tape?"

"Forget it, dude. It's yours. You need it, I'm sure."

Bill turned firmly and locked his eyes on the guy. "I said," and then dropped his voice a little, "what were you going to use it for?"

The guy flared his nostrils and met the challenge. "I was going to cut it at every ten foot mark and use it for ribbons on the handles of the gift bags for the youngest ones."

The air hung with expectancy.

Bill said, even softer, "That's it? That's all?"

"No."

Bill stepped closer, and said almost inaudibly "Well?"

The guy alternately batted his thumb and pinky of one hand against his thigh, and stared at Bill.

"I was going to tell the kids to keep them and teach them how to do measurement, estimations and math problems."

Bill let out his breath, looked away, then back. "You're really into math, huh?"

"Either that or theater." The guy held his lips tight and pursed.

"I'm kinda into math. I realized it in the service."

"Cool!" The guy's eyebrows went up, and he smiled, looking relieved.

"Never got as high as calculus, though. Life moves too fast, yah know. I just wanted to get out."

"Hmmmm." the guy said and they just stood there.

Bill suddenly thrust the tape at the guy's chest. The guy folded his arms around it in reflex.

"Dude, you don't have to . . . "

"No!" Bill interrupted. "We can get another one tomorrow morning." He turned toward the front door. As he took several steps, he saw that the snow was getting thicker and the light dimmer.

He stopped at the sill and turned back. "Is that party you mentioned giving them . . . is it tonight?"

"Party?" the guy said, "No, I'm going to this professor's party tonight, so I'll be out early. The kid's party is tomorrow night."

________________________________

Later, Bill got back up the hill to find Melissa pacing on the corner up on Hill Street.

She was steaming mad, but when she saw his face and no tape, she took it easy on him. "What? Gone for almost a half hour and no tape?"

"No, that one was a magic tape. It flew in the mail slot of a door." He was grinning from ear to ear, and she realized she hadn't seen his face with so few wrinkles since she met him.

"Oh . . . well in that case, I guess we get to go home a little early. I'm nearly frozen. Feels like the temperature is dropping fast."

"Yep . . . but we have to work double time tomorrow morning."

She couldn't help groaning out loud.

Bill just grinned wider, if it was possible and began laughing.

She tilted her head sideways, and gazing at his demented joy, she couldn't help feeling a smile forming on her face.

Bill continued, "Cause tomorrow afternoon, you can either have the afternoon off, or you can help me help some crazy imp that I met, make some kids very happy at their Holiday Party!"

"Really," Melissa's grin broke out, "and how will we do that?"

"Well, for starters I think we'll pay some visits to some high minded businessmen we've met in this high tech business! People who understand the value of a math education."

They laughed, Melissa shook her head, still not really comprehending, and they turned and fell in, side by side, to walk up the hill back to their trucks. Bill noticed that in some places the damp sidewalk, was beginning to look mat. Soon the snow would be sticking.

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