May, 06 | TALes

Red Balloon

On one of those placid afternoons, the kind of day when you forget the coming thunderstorms, the smell of blossoms in the air, on the blue planet earth, tiny winged shadows whisked across the green hills of the County Fairgrounds. Overhead flew a squadron of model flyers controlled by a row of antenna hands. A young boy arched his neck to the sky and followed the graceful maneuvers through the air.

“Anybody with a choice would want to get away from Earth,” he thought.

On the ground, a P-51 Mustang fired its tiny engine. The propeller blurred to a translucent speed and propelled the tiny aircraft up the landing strip. With a small roar, it rose majestically into the blue-stained sky. The buzzing air was alive with danger as the model ascended. A biplane stalled and fell in a fearless air show tailspin. A Tiger Moth burst suddenly out of control as its nose slammed down. It perilously fell, till a reignited engine and a stomped-full rudder pulled it up through a graceful arch. A scale Twin Cessna fell in slow motion as its nose pulled up higher. An engine in the distance throttled to idle and the plane fell like blue snow.

And how the young boy’s thoughts swarmed... He loved the planes, loved them with all his heart.

A little breeze blew across the green as he witnessed such acts of marvel and daring he was without words. He shaded his eyes with a cupped hand and squinted at the sky. The boy stared in amazement at the beautiful planes. He swayed, dizzily, as the tiny wings defied gravity. They blasted through the horizon with their empty cockpits, over fields of harvest corn, much higher than the boy ever dreamed to go. They defied all restrictions and screamed without concern. Barnstorming tempers and easy accessions quickly began to change the boy’s thoughts. No matter how high he reached and how hard he tried, these tiny marvels were his superior. They were free from the world on which he stood.

The boy cleared the cobwebs of hurt from his mind. He pulled his coat tightly around his neck. He knew what he had to do. He quietly walked past more trees and rolling hills. The metallic leaves shimmered in the trees, and rustled under his feet. Like a living current came the fresh air. Oxygen flowed from the trees, and he felt alive in his rage. A bird sang continuously in counterpoint to the crackling of the oak branches.

As he entered the town, his pace quickened. A ribbon-like wave of warmth came down from the climbing yellow sun. Old swings swayed back and forth and back and forth in the gentle breeze. Through the dwellings, he walked past the iron deer and plaster gnomes. Hairy geraniums flashed their colors to an empty audience and lost tractor tires sat as flowerpots in identical lawns. His pace quickened. An apple pie cooled in a window that overlooked a playing child. The air was full of cooking flavors and pollens. He walked faster. Dandelions blew in unison on unkempt yards. Spiders built webs on porches washed in white. The maples made lines both stiff and strong, paralleled by concrete squares with pre-determined destinations. His pace quickened.

The town was dead; its empty avenues betraying the young ones desired life in the city. The electric lines hummed a lonely tune. He passed shop doors left wide open and avenues free from cars. He moved past store fronts displaying forgotten radios and antique clothes, and wax women in designer stores. He crossed the lifeless intersection known as Main Street and proceeded toward the crooked corner drug store.

He opened the door and was bathed in a lonely florescent light that burned all day. A group of men were gathered to discuss the good old yesterdays in front of a wire rack of magazines, unread and turning brown. His feet echoed hollowly across the linoleum floor.

He smelled the overwhelming odor of aspirin and decay. He passed the store shelves with their cans of sardines and Vaseline. He passed the ice cream counter and passed the icebox. He rounded the corner at the end of the store and stopped. There on a dusty shelf were two bags of colored balloons. The boy reached into his pocket and removed a dollar bill to cover the ninety-nine cent charge. He looked at the bill, paused, and picked up one bag of balloons.

The old man, with milkshake-making-hands, accepted his money and clanked his ancient cash machine. The boy put the balloons in his pocket and retraced his steps.

The boy was no longer pretending to hide his hate. There under the buzzing canopy, the boy kneeled in the gentle green grass. In his mind, a plane sat quietly in the air. The image played over and over in his head. The propeller of that beautiful plane snapped to silence, garbled in a sticky mass of red balloon. It fell, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Then, in one terrific moment it stopped. The impact became fire, and the Earth began to burn. Flames rose over the horizon. The gentle oaks crackled and glowed orange and red. The apple pies burned and the flowers wilted. The little rows of houses became kindling and the people fled. This was war, and he would destroy all that he found beautiful.

With malice and determination, he blew up one red balloon. Using an index finger, he carefully tied. He began to whistle softly. He watched the sky and patiently waited. As the P-51 Mustang curved into a graceful landing pattern, the boy timed his moment with the greatest precision. Then without hesitation he let the balloon go.

The wind whipped it around, first vertically, but mostly in a horizontal swirl without much altitude. Then, as though the wind was changed by the very depths of his anger, the balloon jerked upward directly into the path of the oncoming plane. The balloon floated soundlessly through the air with a crest of light on its side. The plane snarled its nose upward and stalled its wings. In a beautiful moment of grace the plane directed itself up and over the balloon to safety, and flew brilliantly on through the sky.

Higher and higher the balloon flew, till it was well out of danger of the growling planes.

The boy watched helplessly. On a field of green, in a summer breeze, his knees soaked up the moisture in the blades beneath him. It was still one of those placid afternoons. The smell of blossoms was still in the air, and the little noisy shadows streaked across the fields of the County Fairgrounds uninterrupted, and quite unaware.

Sickened by his inability to destroy, the boy left the rest of the balloons there, in the field, and quietly walked home.

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