The Balloon Ride

by

©2007 by Paul-William Gagnon

This story took place about forty years ago, somewhere in central Pennsylvania, in a town not much bigger than a thimble.

It was a warm July morning; the thin clouds were spun out across the valley like strands of yarn; tendrils of heat rose from the road on invisible ladders. The girl wore denim sneakers stained dark grey with coal dust and a beige sundress with a high back that covered most of her shoulders. The dress clung empty against her bare skin except for the bulge of an object the size of a screwdriver in her hip pocket. The county road ribboned down from the terraced hills behind her; the chime of a carousel organ rose from the valley ahead. She was nearly there.

In her right fist the girl clutched a sweat-polished half dollar, her fourth finger pressed against the profile of the American bald eagle. The coin seemed to trying to squeeze itself out of her hand, slick as a periwinkle frog. The tighter she clutched the coin, the sweatier her hand got, and she transferred the coin from one fist to another now and again. A few cars passed her. She did not wave when waved to, or smile, or even take her eyes from the road. That she moved ever so slightly inward, away from the swish of approaching traffic, was the only indication that she was not deaf or oblivious. The girl picked up her pace when the arc of a Ferris wheel appeared above the tree canopy.

The carnival was perishable; that is to say it was the kind of carnival that arrives unannounced, stays for an uncertain span of time but usually no more than a week, then moves on. It was a dying breed of entertainment, nearly extinct in the United States today; at that time only tolerated in the tiny hill towns that could not hope to attract a professional, insured circus. It came with a small Ferris wheel, a carousel with real ponies, an inflatable fun house, a fried dough and cotton candy booth, a fortune teller, several luck-and chance games with stuffed animals as prizes, and a “hot air balloon ride.”   

The balloon ride was more of a balloon lift than a ride. The balloon was tethered in place. It rose on hot air and was brought down by rope, pulley, and mule. A ten minute lift to a perch two hundred feet above the ground cost one dollar per adult or fifty cents per child under sixteen. After three o’clock, the fares were doubled.

The girl, frowning, marched directly through the carnival, ignoring the still sleepy calls of the game barkers, and came to the little chicken wire fence that surrounded the balloon ride. The balloon was as big as a house, red, with a yellow patch here and there, the canvass worn and soiled but as tough as the hide of an elephant. Below the balloon sat the wicker gondola, just big enough for four or five people. Next to the gondola, with its snout stuck under the balloon, was the propane fired burner that gave the balloon the hot air it needed to rise. Next to the balloon and tied to it via rope, stake, and pulley, was a sad-eyed mule.

The attendant was sixteen or seventeen, wiry and thin, with a sharp jaw, a havoc of black hair, and a peculiar squint to his eyes that seemed to project doubt and ridicule at all that came within his scope. The sleeves of his T-shirt were rolled up tight around his shoulders. He cocked his head at the girl, flushing hair from his face, but she turned away and looked at the Ferris wheel.

She hadn’t expected that there would be anyone in line this early, but there were two, and so she waited, far enough from the fence that surrounded the ride that the boy attendant would not challenge her to step up. To be sure, she sat with her back to the ride, listening for the sound of the ropes being tugged and the clomp of the mule’s hoofs cutting sod.

The girl heard the balloon rise on the squeaking pulley, its silent occupation of the air, the gasps of its occupants, and again the pulley as it was pulled down by the mule under the direction of the boy attendant. She heard the balloon’s passengers disembark and walk away.

The boy coughed. “Scared,” he said, under his breath, just loud enough for the girl to hear but not so loud that she could be certain that he was addressing her and not merely talking to himself. He wasn’t looking at her when he said it, so he did not notice that the girl had already risen and had begun walking toward him. 

She handed him her sweaty coin before he could say, “Fifty-cents,” marched up to the balloon, and stood waiting for him to open the basket for her. The sound of the burner drowned out the boy’s footsteps; then his hand was on her shoulder, his other hand on the gondola door.

He touched the latch but he didn’t open the basket. “It’s really safe, you know. No need to be scaredy.”

The boy glanced at the girl’s hands where they clutched the rim of the basket door. The soft, nearly hairless skin of her forearms was gooseflesh.

The boy chuckled. “Well, look at you!” He opened the door. The girl entered the basket, stood facing away from the boy, who swung the door half shut then hesitated.

“Not going to pee your underwear, are you?”

The girl said nothing, her hand on the bulge in her dress pocket, her left hand on the basket rail.

“Oh, come on, I didn’t mean it. Look, you don’t have to go up alone, you know.”

Leaving the door open, the boy turned the lever that made hot air blow into the balloon. As the ropes grew taught, the girl white-knuckled the rail. It was only when she heard the gondola door shut behind her, the ropes cinch through the pulleys, and the light hand of the air pressing down on her head as she moved upward through it, that the tension left her hands and shoulders. She was watching the gap between her body and the ground part; it seemed less a letting go of and more of a gentle rifting the way two magnets will drive each other apart when placed with the same poles side by side. The balloon was already thirty feet in the air.

“Most girls are afraid,” said the boy, from behind her. 

The girl started and turned.

“Thought you might want some company,” the boy said, smirking.

Her face twisting, the girl pressed herself against the back of the gondola. She clutched the hip pocket of her dress. She was shaking.

“Hey, don’t worry! All I have to do is whistle and that mule will pull us down. And we can’t go up too far, because there’s a knot in the rope. Only a two hundred feet.”

The girl didn’t say a word but her lips hardened.

She’s about to cry, the boy thought. He felt a flash of anger run through him as the girl turned away from him again. Frowning, he reached out and touched her shoulder, moved up until his hip brushed hers. Her skin was as soft and warm as a blanket. It struck him that, because there was little room in the basket, the proximity of his body to hers could not be avoided; this pleased him so much that his face flushed.  

”I could make us go higher, you know. Untie the knot and let it up another fifty feet.”

The girl said nothing.

“Or a hundred.”

Still the girl said nothing, would not look at him, and the boy felt the stab of anger again.

“It’s a ten minute ride, you know. But we could stay up longer. This time of day, no one’s here yet. We could stay up twenty minutes. Or longer. Would you like that?”

Still the girl did not respond. The boy pressed his hip against hers. Her skin smelled fresher than laundry detergent; it smelled like sunlight itself. He leaned over so he could see the girl’s face. Her eyes were knotted closed.

He nudged her. “Hey, open your eyes. You paid fifty cents and you won’t open your eyes? C’mon, open your eyes.”

He nudged her again, but she did not open her eyes. He put his arms on the edge of the basket, one on each side of the girl. His hips were pressed against her buttocks now.

“Look,” he said, this time sounding a bit perturbed, “You’re not going to fall. I’ve got you. I’ll protect you.” He leaned over the girl’s shoulder again, to see if she was crying; he wanted her to cry now. As his breast brushed up against her right shoulder, he felt something odd beneath her dress, an incongruous ridge, hard but yielding, like the edge of a bicycle seat.  Dismissing it, he thrust his hips forward instead. 

“You know, last year, in another carnival—not this one—someone threw a little kid from a balloon. Yeah, threw him right out.” He made a whistling then a splatting sound.

No response.

The boy waved a hand in front of the girl’s face. He frowned, pulled back from her for a moment, stepped aside of the anger that began to inflate him the way the hot air had filled the balloon and lifted it from the ground. But her refusal sucked his anger forward. To the boy, she was an opening like a vacuum that (so the boy assured himself) naturally wanted to be filled the way any empty space must want to be filled, occupied, inhabited. If she was scared then she must allow him to conquer her fear. If she was not scared enough that she would allow him to conquer her fear, then she must be made more afraid. 

“So are you deaf?”

No response.

“Wanna see my dick?” The boy laughed, zipped and unzipped his fly several times.

The girl shook her head but did not take her eyes off of the gap between ground and air.

A response! “Huh! So you’re not so deaf. Where do you live? Point to where your house is.”

The girl shook her head again, and the boy moved his hips. He did not notice her knuckles go from white to red as her hands relaxed then let go of the basket rail entirely. 

“Go on, point to it,” the boy demanded, more with his hips than with his words. He reached down and put a hand on the girl’s waist, at the hip pocket of the sun dress which was now empty.

The girl pointed, but she did not point horizontally; she pointed straight up.  

The boy laughed. She’s closed her eyes again, he told himself. He moved his head so he could see her face, but her eyes were not closed. “Scaredy cat,” he said.

The girl suddenly straightened. She reached a hand over her shoulder, tugged the strap of her summer dress over her left shoulder and off, reached over her right shoulder and did the same thing. Pure instinct alone forced the boy to move back enough to allow the dress to easily fall from the girl’s shoulders and slip from her hips.

The boy’s groin had a sliver of an instant to respond before withering. He gasped.

The girl leaned over, toward the rope that held the balloon tethered to the ground. As she did so, she turned and looked at the boy for the first time. “I’m not afraid of heights,” she said.

The boy did not seem to notice as the girl reached out and sawed through the rope with the paring knife that she had carried in the hip pocket of her dress. Not at all did he notice how the frayed end of the rope shot from the pulley with a snapping sound or how the balloon jerked free of its tether and began to rise again, shocking in its rejection of gravity.

But it wasn’t the pale aurora of the girl’s nudity that held him. The boy was staring at her shoulders where twin wedges of flesh and bone had been had been jaggedly hacked long ago, each amputation still peppered by a stubble of long, tan feathers. So fixated, he could not redeem himself by lifting his gaze and facing what he had so callously interpreted as fear: jutting from the girl’s face, a resolve and longing as sharp and unconquerable as the eyes of a hawk.