Frank (The Square Knot)

"My mother could tie knots," said Frank while stretched out naked on the bed. Kate stepped to the foot of the bed with several lengths of rope. "She didn't teach me, though. She was already dead when I learned how to tie knots." 

Kate wrapped the rope around one ankle and tied the ends to the bed. With another piece of rope, she did the same with his other leg. She repeated this procedure with his right arm. By the time she had tied it to the bed he had freed his feet, lifted his legs into the air and wrapped them around her waist.

Kate laughed.

 "You must have been Houdini's assistant," Frank said lifting Kate's light body with his legs and swinging her onto the bed next to him.

 "Whenever I have done this before the man always pretended, he couldn't get loose," said Kate.

 "I bet he did." Frank jumped out of bed and quickly tied each of her hands to the bed with an overhand sliding loop. Then he gathered her feet together and slid them though the double holes of a Spanish bowline. He pulled them tight and said, "That's better."

"Show me," said Kate as she squirmed on top of the bed. They spent the rest of the night in an intricate interweaving of their limbs, a cat's cradle of lovemaking. One after the other they reached in and pulled the ropes and changed the configuration through an entire night of opening and closing until morning when both they and the ropes lay limp and loose.

Frank's first knot was a square knot. Right over left, left over right. He could feel the symmetry in it, and when he yanked on the four ends, he felt the strength of their join. Mack, the caretaker, was his knot tutor. When Frank's parents died his grandfather sent him ahead to Maine to stay with the caretaker and his wife. As Mack mended the lines of his lobster boat, Frank sat next to him on an upturned bucket and practiced his knots. He was proud that he knew the difference between a square knot and a "granny". He could tell by sight or by feel. The square sitting in perfect symmetry – the granny with its asymmetrical bumps. 

Frank had liked his parents and wanted to recreate their life for himself. All of it, that is, except the end.

While Mack spliced ropes, opening their ends, unwinding them and braiding them back on themselves, Frank took gum wrappers and methodically folded them until they were one-quarter their original width. Then he folded and looped one over the other until he created a square knot that built on top of itself. One wrapper folded into another until the detris of the candy world was transformed into a square rope. Wrapper added to wrapper until it was a foot long, then a yard. By the end of summer, it was twelve feet long. 

As Frank created rope after ornamental rope, Mack told him about his mother. Frank measured the stories on his handmade ropes. Each foot of rope allowed him to reconstruct his mother's life. He never asked Mack how it was that he knew infinite tales of his mother's life not only in Maine, but in Boston, too.

Johnny (The Matthew Walker Knot)

Frank and Johnny spent much of the fall talking each other into dropping out of MIT. Their arguments centered on MIT's roll as part of the military industrial complex and the real and implied role the institution was playing in the Vietnam War. Perhaps it was more the quality of the hashish their housemate brought back from Turkey that colored their decision-making.

Johnny left first, finding a room at the Eagle Hotel in _____, a port an hour north of Boston. Being a hotel in a still active port, the Eagle had its share of prostitutes. Too embarrassed by his performance with them and not having enough money to get the practice he needed, Johnny withdrew to his corner of the bar with a copy of Feynman's lectures on physics. Unlike the intricate workings of the women around him, these lectures laid out the order of the universe in crystalline clarity after a couple of whiskeys and a few beers.

It seemed fitting that the first time Johnny stayed with Kate she wore a dress laced up the back. He described that first night to Frank, unlacing the dress stitch by stitch, carefully pulling the strand out through the holes. He didn't want to just loosen the dress; he wanted to completely untie it. Every strand lay open in a chaotic swirl on the floor. He thought he had her completely undone, but as he pulled the dress off her shoulders another layer lay underneath. This time an old fashioned bustier tightly held her in place with her breasts just peaking out the top. He tried to undo the lace, but it was stuck in a tight knot. He pulled the lace through the holes, tightening the corset around her already small waist, to gain enough slack to undo the knot. Kate held her breath and with his short stiff fingers he was finally able to free her from her boustier. He was about to pull these strings from their holes when she gently pulled away from him and moved to the bathroom. Not knowing what to do he picked the dress lace up from the floor and twirled it in his fingers. She didn't return. He took off his clothes, unlacing his shoes, and got under the covers. When she still didn't come out, he picked up her laces from the floor and began to tie a knot. It was an intricate knot he learned from Frank. He was midway through the knot when she reappeared but unwilling to interrupt the intricate design of the knot he carried on. Right over left, left over right. He tucked the ends in and pulled. The knot formed a beautiful rosette – small when you consider the amount of lace involved. He turned to Kate and stopped cold when he saw that her nightgown, too, was laced at the neck. He didn't remove her nightgown when they made love. Through that first night he dreamt of untying her bodice and pulling the lace out hole by hole, but it was never undone and, in the morning, as in the night there were just as many laces to undo.

For a week Frank and Johnny worked day boats together. When they were not hauling in nets and pushing fish into the hull, Frank organized the lines. He untangled and coiled them. He redid the stopper knots at the ends of the lines. Once when the engine of the Plumed Serpent broke down, they sat anchored out from shore and as the mechanic worked on the engine. Frank took a length of thin rope, unwound the three strands and lay in a Matthew Walker knot. The knot sat like a bump in the middle of the rope. This knot, it seems, saved the convicted criminal, Matthew Walker, from his death. When Walker tied this knot that could neither be tied or untied, the judge delighted by this physical riddle, spared his life. Frank retwisted the strands on the other side of his knot and then tied another. He did this until he put the Matthew Walker knot at equal intervals from one end of the thin rope to the other. He then spliced the ends together. Having finished his handiwork, he tossed it to Johnny and said, "Here you go, a Sailor's Rosary. Pray for me." 

Frank and Johnny (The Turk's Knot)

Johnny leaned across his booth at the bar and wove a Turk's Head bracelet on Kate's wrist. The braided strands wove around her wrist in a continuous connection. 

"Here. Let me make one for you," said Frank as he brought his beer to the table. He wrapped several lengths of twine around Johnny's wrist and then twisted and tucked them until he had strands of interconnected eyes. He continued weaving and adjusting the strands, then he doubled the knot and trimmed and seized the ends of the twine. By the time Frank finished, Kate had picked Johnny's knot loose from her wrist. 

"Give me your forearm," said Frank. Johnny raised his right arm and let his elbow rest on the table. Frank held up his left arm next to Johnny's and proceeded to put a clove hitch around the two arms with his right hand. Frank lashed their arms together, pulling the rope tight at each turn. He passed the rope between their arms and made two frapping turns. Johnny's hand throbbed. He yanked it toward himself to undo the knot. Frank jumped out of the booth suddenly and pulled Johnny to his feet by his tethered arm. "We're hitched now," Frank said twisting Johnny's arm to his left in an unfair Indian wrestle. Johnny jerked his arm forward. Frank, anticipating his movement, pulled him towards his body and held him there in a rigid stance inch from his face. Frank's beard touched his cheek. Johnny, blood exploding in his head, pulled back until he felt himself backed against the wall. Frank brought their arms up over Johnny's head and pinned him there. Slowly, slowly, his head descended toward Johnny's. Johnny closed his eyes and again felt Frank's breath on his face. Johnny was breathing hard with blood throbbing in all of his extremities. He felt Frank's lips pass his lips. Then everything relaxed. Frank dropped Johnny's arms and stood back. He immediately unhitched Johnny's arm. He wound the rope around itself and backed out of the room.  

"What the hell was that about?" asked Kate.

Johnny was still breathing hard. The blood slowly left his head and reentered his arm. Kate took his arm between her hands and rubbed it until the grooves from the rope disappeared.

Kate (Untying the Knot)

"Frank, Frank, are you there?" Kate tapped the windowpane in the door of the small cabin. She leaned her nose against the wet pane and looked into the room. A pair of legs dropped from the ceiling. Kate stepped back startled. Frank leapt from the loft and staggered to the door.

"Kate," Frank said as he put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into the room. "Kate, you found me."

"It wasn't too hard Frank, but I wish you had told me yourself where you were going." Kate fingered the buttons on her jacket, undoing and doing them.

"I'm sorry Kate. I just felt that I had to leave." Frank took Kate's hands and continued to pull her toward him.

"Frank?" Kate whispered as he kissed her forehead and touched her hair. "Frank, I need your help." Kate shivered and Frank unbuttoned her damp coat and hung it on a hook on the wall.

"What is it?" he asked, but as he did so he turned from her and opened the mouth of the wood burning stove to put in a log.

"I'm pregnant," she said to his back, "And I need an abortion."

Frank and Kate (The Overhand Knot)

After Kate's call Johnny flew east and drove immediately to the cabin. As he touched the door handle, he felt twine laced around it. He undid the latch and pushed the door open. At first what he saw nearly choked him. Every surface, every cup handle, piece of silverware, every knife, the chair legs, the curtain rods, the lamps, every picture, the telephone, everything was covered with disturbingly beautiful, intricate knots. He stopped for a moment and slowly inventoried the room again. This obsession opened itself to him just as elegantly as a mathematical formula distills the workings of the universe. These knots spoke to him with a structure, a clarity, and a syntax clearer than any spoken language.

The knots circled the small living space. As they drew closer to the center, they became more complex and precise. Their meaning seemed to shift, and this tangle of ropes developed into clear models. The logic of the progression through the knots was so clear that Johnny found himself devising text to these illustrations. At the end of this path, he came upon two ropes twisting around one another with multicolored spliced lines between them. It was a model of DNA. Right next to it lay a very thick rope, each of its two wide strands twisting around itself in a double helix. The end of the rope had been untwisted into its two strands, then each strand was further untwisted into little strings, and then each tightly coiled string was untwisted until all the fibers of the rope lay out like the white head of a dandelion, ready to be picked up and blown into the wind. 

Frank had made it to the source. There was nothing left, but to start over. 

Johnny lifted the rope and twisted the soft fibers between my fingers. A tiny cottonseed fell into his hand. 

He looked up and in the center of the room stood Kate, a baby in her arms; its belly tied with the simplest knot of all.