The Children’s Crusade
(The third in the series of Otherwise fantasy adventure novels)
Chapter One: An Unlucky Number
Petey had always hated that number. Never do anything important, major, interesting, or even just iffy on the 13th day of the month. Thirteen to dinner was of course going to end with everybody hating each other, a big food fight, and several divorces. Judas was the thirteenth at the Last Supper, after all. There was never a thirteenth floor on a skyscraper – he knew that because Aunt Marguerite had told him so after returning from her last visit to New York City.
And here he was, thirteen years old! He knew he should never have gotten out of bed this year. It was so unfair! If skyscrapers could go from the twelfth to the fourteenth floor without anybody on the elevator even noticing, why couldn’t he skip thirteen and go straight from twelve to fourteen too? In that case, he would be as old as his best friend Chace Fusillade. He wouldn’t be such a smarty pants then, I’ll bet! thought Petey.
He was still on the pudgy side, and his hair was, if anything, orangier than ever, but he had “shot up” (as his mother said) two full inches over the last year, with no sign of stopping (though Chace had kept pace and still breezily lorded it over him). His parents could hardly keep him in clothes. His pants were too short again and showed an embarrassing line of white skin above his socks. Priscilla Li must absolutely despise him, though he would rather let himself be torn apart by crocodiles (an unlikely prospect in Holloway, “the quietest, quaintest, queerest little small town in New England,” according to a brochure from the ancient 1960s) rather than ever let her know he cared two bits what a girl thought.
And his voice was starting to change – to “break,” as his mother called it, unhelpfully, as though everything about him wasn’t all breaking at the same time! It couldn’t make up its mind whether to be a manly baritone, like his dad’s voice, or a giggly soprano, like Debbie Voinovich’s in math class when she was showing off her latest brilliant solution in algebra—and which identity crisis always struck at the most embarrassing moments: usually when he was talking to a girl! (Not that he cared! But still . . .)
And then there were the pimples.
He stared at himself miserably in the bathroom mirror. There it was, below the bright orange hair and amid the swarm of freckles that, if anything, seemed to be increasing, adding embarrassment to humiliation: a white head ogled him from the top of his right cheek. It had been a measly black head only a week ago. But now it was big and a sickly yellow white surrounded by a bright red ring. Ugh! It made him look like a freak! Or like a zombie half mouldering in his grave . . . Now Priscilla Li would completely hate and despise him.
He hated it! He hated his face! He hated being thirteen!
It’s just a phase, it’s just a phase, it’s just a phase . . . Petey started repeating to himself, over and over, like a mantra. It was what his mother kept telling him, in a futile attempt to console him. It didn’t help that his dad laughed and said, “Your face is just a phase, Petey!” and accused him of having lost his sense of humor like a sock in the laundry when Petey ran angrily from the room. At least his father didn’t see him burst into tears after he got to his room and flung himself on the bed. He would never have lived it down.
And to make it even worse, today was Friday the 13th! All day until midnight – which was hours away . . .
“Peter Myshkin Stephenson!” his mother called from the floor below. “Come down this instant.”
Uh-oh, he must have done something really bad. That was the only time his mom called him “Peter.” And Petey, after giving his reflection a parting look of despair, reluctantly departed the bathroom and padded downstairs.
His mother’s finger pointed sternly at the obvious: no words were necessary. It wasn’t like he had “forgotten” to take the trash out; it was more like a little devil inside him had risen in revolt and refused to take it out. As if it were time for somebody else to burn the damn trash!
Though, honestly, in the deep meditation on his lurid existential state while staring into the bathroom mirror, it had in fact slipped his mind. Was that also part of the hell of being thirteen?
Petey opened his mouth and tried to say, “Sorry . . .” but what came out was a horrible combination of a squeak and a honk. His voice was breaking again!
He dragged the trash can outside, down the little slope in back of the house to the trash pile, and emptied it in a little heap of brown paper bags, a candy wrapper, a spent toothpaste tube, a cereal box, crumpled napkins, several paper towels, a dirty sponge, an unraveling pair of his old socks, and miscellaneous disjecta membra from the family’s last twenty-four hours, then knelt beside it, took out a pack of matches and, lighting one of the crumpled napkins, watched as the fire slowly consumed the pile.
Though something inside him seemed to in a constant state of rebellion against himself and the world, one of the symptoms being his pretended forgetfulness of doing the chores he had been happily doing for years, he actually enjoyed burning the trash every evening.
It was spring, and the sun was setting. Their house stood at the edge of Halloway, and so there was a view across the hills and woods to the west, and the open sky above was like a magnificent proscenium for the sun as it sank grandly toward the horizon, changing color from moment to moment, dimming from a blinding shapeless blaze to a great calm circle, then to the shape of an egg being squeezed between two enormous fingers, shrinking at last to a small, pressed drop of diminishing light pulling with it a vast multicolored cloak made of clouds and sky, pierced here and there with tiny points of light, that stretched across the immense dome of space overhead; new each day, unique each night, a turbulence of transformation, vast, silent, unpredictable, yet almost tender in its grandeur.
And in front of Petey, in a little corner of darkness at the bottom of the hill, the trash pile burned, with the curious effect of each piece coming alive as it turned into flame, curling, lashing, dancing, breaking away from the mass and flying up toward the darkening sky in streaks of red and yellow embers before fading to ashes and blowing upward and away into the night. It was quite magical to watch. Everything was alive: that was it. It was plain as day, though it was sometimes only made clear with the coming of the night.
“Hi ya,” said a familiar froggy voice nearby. Then it cleared its throat.
Uh-oh, thought Petey. Here comes trouble.
It was his neighbor, Bumper, a little round boy with bangs, who was always hanging around him like he was his older brother or something.
Why me?
“Are you burning the trash?” Bumper asked.
Well, no, I’m ironing my underwear.
“Yep.”
“It’s illegal in California to burn trash.”
That’s why we don’t live in California anymore.
“Hm.”
“But I guess it doesn’t matter if it’s just a little trash.” Bumper paused, then said excitedly. “Mr. Goose was fired.”
“Mr. Gauss.”
“Well, he was sure a goose to get caught with Miss Peckersmith in the library,” Bumper said with a knowing snicker. Then he stopped: “Though why was that so bad?”
“They weren’t reading Harry Potter.”
Bumper considered that for a moment.
“What were they doing then?”
Petey squirmed. The fact is he wasn’t sure himself.
“You’ll find out when . . .”
“When?” Bumper looked at him hopefully.
“. . . when they tell you.”
He fell silent, blessedly. Petey really wasn’t in the mood for either an environmental sermon or a quiz on school scandals from a ten-year-old.
“Are you going to the fair?”
At last, a diversion!
“What fair?”
“The First Swallow of Spring Fair. It’s coming to Leek’s Mill for a week.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Oh no? We used to go before we moved here.” Bumper’s family had moved to Halloway from deep inland a couple of months ago. “It used to be at Pratt’s Falls till the flood. It’s really cool. They have a balloon!”
Petey stirred the fire.
“That’s cool,” he said, indifferently.
Bumper pouted; he was annoyed by how unimpressed Petey seemed.
“Anyway, we’re going on Saturday.”
He paused.
“Want to come?”
“I’m hanging out with Chace.”
“Chace can come too, if he wants.”
The reluctance in Bumper’s voice was only too obvious.
“I thought you hated Chace,” Petey said, with a sly look at Bumper.
“I don’t hate Chace! He hates me!”
“No he doesn’t.”
“But he’s so mean.”
“That’s just his way. He doesn’t mean it.”
“You think so?”
Bumper looked dubious.
“He doesn’t hate you. I promise.”
“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “If you say so.”
“I say so!”
Bumper suddenly looked pleased.
“So, you’ll go?”
“I’ll think about it. Let me ask Chace first.”
The fair did sound like fun. Even if it meant having to put up with Bumper and his weird infatuation. Chace just might be persuaded.
Bumper smiled brightly and stared into the fire with Petey till it had all burned to ash and darkness fell over the yard, and the stars filled the night sky as though all the embers had risen there, and remained.
Chapter Two: All’s Fair
“Or . . . ?”
“Or nothing!’
They were bickering again, as best of friends will do. The subject hardly mattered – whether Barry Bonds was the best batter of all times or Babe Ruth, Oasis or U2 the best band, The Two Towers or The Golden Compass the best movies, MineCraft or Myst the best video games. They marked out spaces, drew lines in the sand, and dared the other side to attack.
“Otherwise . . . ?”
Petey groaned, “Not that again!”
That, of course, was the Big One: the bone of contention in danger of turning boys into rabid dogs. Was it real or hallucination? A fact or a dream? Truth or lie?
And did it matter?
Even Petey had begun to distrust his own memories under the merciless onslaught of his friend’s skepticism. Even though Chace had been there too, at least the second time Petey’d been. Chace had just been knocked out and lost his memory (how convenient!).
Maybe Petey had been hallucinating all along. It would make a weird sort of sense. The more he thought about it, the more it felt like a dream, just one he could not forget, unlike most dreams, which he could never remember.
He had entirely given up trying to convince people who had not been there. He had tried that once, the first time; then, even more foolishly, the second. All it had done was make everyone think he was half crazy or a compulsive liar. It did wonders for his “popularity, lack of.” His parents even muttered about sending him to a child therapist. That was when he “admitted” he had made it up, “just to get attention,” his mother had said, accusingly (as though there was something so terribly wrong about “getting attention”).
But he hadn’t made it up!
Had he?
He was starting to wonder if he could believe anything he remembered. If that hadn’t been true, what other memories were not true too? Could he believe anything he remembered? Anything he thought?
It was enough to make you dizzy!
“‘Otherwise’ nothing!”
“Petey, old son,” Chace gave him a moue of sorrow. “You disappoint me! Where’s your spunk? Where’s your fight? I never knew such a capitulation to total defeat before the armies of derision and doubt. It’s not like you. What would Priscilla Li think? What would Bumper?”
“The heck with Priscilla Li! Who cares what a girl . . .” But the words stuck in his throat. He did, of course. No matter what he thought he thought. Aargh, it was so confusing!
Maybe he should have gone to that therapist after all, he thought irrelevantly.
Mentioning the ineffable Bumper reminded him, and gave him a convenient offramp from the perilous freeway to Otherwise.
“Bumper invited us to go with him and his parents to the fair at Leek’s Mill next Saturday.”
“But Bumper hates me.”
“No he doesn’t. He thinks you hate him.”
Chace gave Petey another moue.
“Why would I hate Bumper?” he asked, as the idea of hating so insignificant a creature was beyond comprehension.
Petey smirked in his turn.
“Because of that!”
“Let me clear the air, clarify the issue, and straighten out our ideas on this very important matter. I do not hate Bumper. I have never hated Bumper. I do not presume to hate Bumper in future, unless he behaves in ways more shocking than I can imagine him ever actually doing. And I am pleased to know he does not hate me.”
“That’s nice,” said Petey.
“What’s this fair all about?”
“It travels the western half of the state, where Bumper used to live, in the spring. It’s visiting Leek’s Mill, don’t ask me why.”
“Leek’s Mill is such a magnet for the masses,” Chace said archly. “Does it have a Ferris wheel?”
Petey considered.
“We can look it up.”
He took out his cell phone and did a search for The First Swallow of Spring Fair.
“Hm. That’s funny. I think I just broke the internet.”
“Nothing there?”
“Nope.”
“Probably the wrong name.”
Petey didn’t think so, but he tried several variations. He even looked up Link’s Mill’s website for local events. But the website hadn’t been updated in two years.
“Well, we’ll just have to trust Bumper.”
Chace scowled.
“But I must have a Ferris wheel. What’s a fair without a Ferris wheel? It’s like an angel without wings, a devil without horns, a chicken without a grievance.”
Petey stared at his friend.
“Why must a chicken have a grievance?”
“Why wouldn’t it if the only reason for its existence was to give its eggs in the morning and be a roast at night? Anyway, a fair without a Ferris wheel is nothing but a carni barker with pretentions.”
“Bumper said it had a balloon.”
“The only thing worse for a fair than not having a Ferris wheel is a fair not having balloons. It better have a thousand balloons. And enough helium to ride us to the stars! . . .”
Chapter Three: The First Swallow of Spring
It was a gorgeous Saturday morning. The first spring flowers were bursting into blossom in a careless invasion of the country brush, the woods shyly burred in tangles of branches in new leaf, the air fresh and tonic and cool, lanced with sunlight. Birds only seen or heard in spring and fall, heading north or south along the flyway passing above Halloway made town and country echo with exotic sounds that made one pause, wondering at the exotic cacophony.
And Petey and his two friends bounced along the black country road in back of the ancient, firetruck-red pick-up owned by Bumper’s dad. Bumper was beaming from ear to ear, Chace lounged like a young prince against the back, and Petey was pretending not to be enjoying himself as much as he was, but failing ignominiously. He was having the time of his life, the wind in his hair and scrubbing his face to a burnished red.
They had been riding half an hour up and down hills, twisting and turning through the woods west of Halloway, crossing the Metawny River and past half a dozen hamlets, when they made one final turn, the hills settled down into a broad valley and the woods ended, and the sleepy town of Link’s Mill, with its Kiwanis Club sign, two churches, water tower, abandoned mall, and the remains of the old watermill by the local stream appeared before them.
“Just what I was afraid of,” Chace shouted from the back, with a stentorian sigh. “No Ferris wheel!”
Bumper looked at Petey with a grin.
“But I told you there’d be a balloon!”
Above a field of booths and tents and flags at the edge of the town where the fair had put in stakes, there rose toward a monument of clouds a balloon in red, white and blue, like an enormous teardrop in reverse. Petey could see a tiny carriage at the bottom, attached to the balloon with long ropes, with a stand and an illegible sign below it.
In red letters was a sign above the fair entrance with the words “The First Swallow of Spring”; above the letters there was a picture of a swallow in flight.
“I guess nobody told them,” Chace shouted from the back.
“Told them what?” Petey asked, wearily, knowing from long experience he was being set up for one of Chace’s “witticisms.”
“It takes more than one swallow, old son, to make a spring.”
Petey groaned.
Chace added, drily: “And more than one spring to make a thirsty man swallow.”
“Stop it!” Petey cried.
Bumper’s jaw sagged open.
“That’s . . . deep!” he said.
“Well, don’t drown in it,” said Petey.
Bumper gave him a puzzled look, but smiled gamely.
“Hokay, Petey!”
You could tell Bumper was memorizing Chace’s wit and wisdom, filing it away, as he muttered silently to himself, for future use.
There wasn’t just a balloon, of course. What met the trio of boys (and Bumper’s parents – a little jolly father and a tall, thin waspish mother) after they entered the canvas-covered storm fence surrounding the fair was a little town of pleasures, jokes, and forgetfulness far from the nuisance of reality. The first thing Petey noticed was a combined smell of corn dogs, funnel cakes, and cotton candy: now, that meant “carnival”!
Off to the left was a carousel, with a herd of enamel horses, swans, zebras, unicorns, and a long Chinese dragon pumping up and down in a perpetual race to nowhere, and a banner unscrolling from its crown. To the right was a Tilt-a-whirl, dipping and plunging like a drunken beast, tickling and terrifying a dozen riders holding on for dear life like a host of flies at the whip ends of the ties as they were flung like planets around a sun. Straight ahead was a drop tower, inching up its pack of passengers, then dropping them with a collective scream at the last possible moment, only to catch them with a casual gesture and a “Well, you don’t think I’d just let you all break your necks, do you?” a second before crashing to the ground.
But the real screams were reserved for the foldable rollercoaster dominating the center of the fair: a serpentine entanglement of wood and coaster rails, precipice and chasm, soar and dip that sent out a regular tocsin of scream and shout, laughter and screeches fit to raise the dead in the six surrounding counties.
Around the feet of these dinosaurian gamesters and gynormous playsets was clustered a toy city of tents and booths, from shooting galleries to raffles, from a strongman’s hammer bell to a petting zoo, from a faux freak show (where the “freaks” showed they were all in amiable disguise) to a very real funhouse constructed of misdirection and mirrors, from an escape room to a hot-dog eating contest to a demolition derby in a torn up pasture at the far back and a pig race next door. And don’t forget the magic show, the acrobats, the puppet show, and the juggling act on the main stage near the carousel.
Or the food!
Aside from the aforementioned that tickled Petey’s nose upon entry, there were turkey legs and buffalo wings, nachos and churros, samosas and adobo, barbecue, burgers, hot dogs, knackwurst, bratwurst, liverwurst, tacos, enchiladas, and burritos, deep-fried zucchini, deep-fried pickles, deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Whatever, salt-water taffy and ’smores, crystallized pineapple and caramel apples, and an infinite array of ice cream with sprinkles and M&Ms and whipped cream and butterscotch and chocolate chips and chocolate syrup, and who knows what else?
And don’t forget the coke and lemonade and fruit juices and Mexican drinks and Asian bobas, and coffee for the jolly father and tea for the waspish mother, to wash it all down with.
The five marauders from Halloway were drunk with delight after less than an hour, going from ride to ride (the boys insisted on trying every single one, vying with each other over who had the loudest scream), from booth to booth (Chace, naturally, won the shooting gallery and graciously gave the huge stuffed T. rex he had won to Bumper. “Thanks, Chace!” said the diminutive ten-year old. “I think . . .” he whispered to himself as he embraced a fuzzy dragon almost as big as he was), from food stall to food stall, resting only to concentrate on lunch on the benches clustered near the haunted house.
“I never had so much fun since . . . since Paddy and Patricia’s wedding!” the jolly father said, nudging his thin waspish wife with a wink.
“Arnold! The children!”
The father grinned.
“How about you boys?” he said, turning to the trio.
The boys mumbled through mouthfuls of burrito, hot dog, and samosa.
“It’s great!” Petey got out, with genuine enthusiasm. It far exceeded any expectation he had had. He had even managed to forget his pimple, which had burst overnight and made looking in the mirror this morning even more agonizing than usual.
Bumper grinned at Petey and half-choked out a seconding “Yeah!”
Even Chace smiled happily and waved his samosa.
“They say all’s fair in love and war. I say all’s love in this fine fair.”
“Clever boy!” said the father.
The mother gave Chace her first smile of the day. The truth is, she hated fairs and carnivals and circuses. Give her a book and a quiet corner; that was her idea of a good time.
A passing zephyr caught the wax paper in Bumper’s hand and blew it away. The ever-conscientious little boy ran after it—but every time he grabbed at it, another zephyr caught and blew it just past his hand; he stooped and grabbed, and jumped and grabbed, and ran and grabbed, to no avail. It was quite infuriating! It was like it was teasing him.
“Give it up, Bumper!” It was Chace’s voice, shouting after him amiably. “It’s just playing with you.”
But he wasn’t going to stop till he’d caught it and put it into the litter bin, where it belonged. So he ran and ran. No sir! I’m not going to stop till . . .
Chapter Four: The Balloon of Dr. Sazerac
He felt a shadow fall over him and looked up, startled, as the paper danced and blew away on an updraft, disappearing into the sky,
He was frightened at first. Then he gasped.
It was the balloon, rising high between him and the noonday sun, and rocking slowly in the breeze.
At the bottom was a little striped tent with a banner flying at the top, and a stand where the balloon’s carriage sat, with a long, thick cable attached to the stand, and a large sign, printed in extravagant, old-fashioned lettering:
“Dr. Sazerac’s Aerial Wonders, Exploits, Prodigies, Amazing Sensations and Preposterous Presdidigitations. Pay a Visit to the Sky! Nod Acquaintance with the Clouds! Get an Eagle’s Eye View of the Whole Country! Rides: $2”
The only thing that was a little strange was that, unlike all the other rides, there was no crowd. In fact, there was no sign of anyone.
Bumper ran back to the benches where everyone was finishing lunch.
“I found the balloon! It’s big! It’s huge! It’s wonderful! I want to take a ride! It’s only two dollars! Can I take a ride, daddy? I’ll never smoke a cigarette again!”
He had once been found smoking a cigarette behind the garage. He’d been forbidden any use of his computer for three days. It had been hell.
“That’s quite a promise, Bumper,” said the jolly little man dubiously. “And we will most certainly keep you to it! But you’ll have to ask your mom. What do you say, May?”
May looked even more doubtful than her husband.
“A ride in a balloon! It sounds awfully dangerous,” she said.
Of course, that was partly the point: everything interesting was a little dangerous. But Bumper had learned the hard way, when he had asked if he could climb the hickory tree when he was seven, not to emphasize that general truth. Indeed, it was best to deny it totally, especially when it was obvious.
Petey and Chace traded a glance. If Bumper was going to get a ride in a balloon, there was no way they’d be left out. But they had to play their cards right; let the little runt do the heavy lifting.
“Oh it’s really safe!” said Bumper. “There’s long rope attached to the ground so it can only go so far. I saw it! It’s really strong!”
His mother’s look of doubt only deepened.
“Well,” she said, smoothing her skirt. “I suppose we can at least go look at it.”
Bumper beamed. To see it was to want to ride it! It was half the battle.
So they all walked past the last booths to the western edge of the fairgrounds, where the balloon loomed, dominating the sky.
“Very impressive,” said the jolly little man as he bent his head back, appraising the enormous presence, which seemed to nod at them as it moved with the wind.
“Impressive, my foot,” said the mother. At a look from her husband, she added quickly, “There’s no way you’re getting me up there.”
“I wanna go! I wanna go! I wanna go!” Bumper whined, knowing from experience how effective, at the right time and place, chanting that phrase over and over could be. It was so embarrassing! Anything to shut him up! Too bad there weren’t more people around, to stop and stare at him and his folks. “Can Petey and Chace go with me?” he added on a sudden inspiration. Maybe if his friends came with him, it would be easier for his parents to say yes.
Petey and Chace traded another look: no doubt the prospect of all three of them being killed would close the case for sure.
“Please? I’ll be good, I promise.”
And of course “being good” would make the ride safer.
The jolly little father chimed in.
“It looks less dangerous than the Tilt a Whirl.”
May glared at him.
She had one card left.
“What if Petey and Chase don’t want to go? You are not going alone.”
“Of course we’ll go,” said Petey, with a false show of reluctance, as though it were an unpleasant duty but someone had to do it. “We’ll take care of Bumper. Won’t we, Chace?”
Chace pulled his most solemn face. “All for one. And one for all.”
The jolly little man nearly split his sides hiding his laughter.
May gave them a look. She knew when she was beaten. If she said no now, she would never hear the end of it.
“All right, all right,” she said, with a defeated sigh. “But don’t come running to me when you break your necks.”
“We won’t!” shouted Bumper. “I mean, we won’t break our necks,” he added to his mother’s sour glance. “Thanks, mommy,” he diplomatically added the cherry on top with his most winning smile.
“Our little friend’s learning the ropes,” Chace muttered as he shared a grin with Petey.
Bumper’s dad went to the booth to pay for the ride and came back with three tickets he distributed with a flourish. The gate to the steps leading to the balloon carriage opened as if by itself and up the boys went.
Petey gaped at the immense balloon above his head, the ropes attaching the balloon to the carriage, the pie-shaped red, white and blue sections, the gentle swaying in the light breeze, the white grandness of cloud rising high above like its own country. The band that had been playing in the distance up to now stopped, and in the silence that followed he could hear two robins calling to one another and the chirp of a blackbird in the field nearby.
As the three boys stepped onto the top of the stand, a door opened on the opposite side, and someone joined them.
To say “someone” is an understatement. It was a tall middle-aged gentleman dressed in the resplendent attire of a Victorian panjandrum. The first things Petey noticed were a tall silver-gray top hat and an elegant jacket with embroidered lapels, a double row of gold buttons and gold shoulder fringe, a black cross strap with gold bars, a tall white collar embellished with a purple tie above which were a smile adorned with a long imperial and an extravagantly curled moustache and two sparking eyes decorated with a thickness of eyebrows Petey had never seen outside an old Hollywood movie. He looked to Petey a little like a cross between San Francisco’s Emperor Norton and Uncle Sam.
The gentleman bowed.
“Doctor Sazerac, gentlemen” he said. “At your service.”
Bumper stared. Chace smirked. Petey did the courteous thing.
“Hello!”
“And hello to you,” Dr. Sazerac returned, graciously. “And hello to you all.”
He again bowed, as though he were greeting a crowd and not just three small boys gaping at this apparition.
“I welcome you young gentlemen to an experience it is my promise to you that you shall never forget! An experience you will hand down to your children and to your grandchildren that will leave them with bated breath and pounding hearts! An experience for the ages! Welcome to your journey in this ascending bubble, this gaseous sphere, suspended in air, beneath air, above air, this air within air, this wonder of the age, this sign of wonders to come! Such mystery! Yet so simple! Are you ready, young gentlemen, for the experience of a lifetime?”
Without waiting for an answer, he opened a door to the balloon carriage and bowed again.
“Please, gentlemen,” he said. Then, with a little cough: “Your tickets, please.”
They got into the carriage, handing the tickets to the gentleman, who tucked them into his jacket, then entered himself.
The carriage was entirely open to the air, surrounded by a parapet-like bulwark
(Bumper was just tall enough to look over its edge), and just big enough to carry up to half a dozen people. Safety vests were attached to the carriage sides, which Dr. Sazerac had the boys put on. As soon as they were ready, Dr. Sazerac called out:
“Prepare to launch!”
The boys seemed to know instinctively to line up, their hands grasping the sides. A couple of young men in tee shirts emblazoned with the face of Dr. Sazerac stepped onto the platform and began unwrapping the length of cable attaching platform to carriage.
“Ready, gentlemen?” Dr. Sazerac cried. “Are we set? Then launch!”
Chapter Five: A Shape in the Clouds
The men kicked away a couple of blocks from the bottom of the carriage, and carriage and balloon rose gently into the air as platform, booth, Bumper’s mom and dad, who were staring up and waving, then the fairgrounds, the town, the surrounding valley, the forest, the fields, the hills that Petey had ridden through and across only a few hours before, slowly, then more swiftly, shrank away, widening beneath him.
Petey had never flown before. He stared down and across the landscape as it swiftly expanded beneath him. Fear was the last thing he felt; on the contrary, he felt a tingling along his back and a delicious sense of excitement and freedom as the earth showed to him its infinitely varied face as only birds had seen it for millions of years, showing it now to him for the first time.
Something that awed him was the immense quiet. He could hear sounds as they rose from below—voices, toy horns, noisemakers, the sound of the band—but immensely far away. It was most blissful moment he had ever known. It was glorious . . .
He needed to share his excitement and looked over at Bumper, who was standing right next to him.
Bumper had turned green.
“I’m . . . a- . . . fraid . . . of . . . heights . . . ,” he whimpered.
Petey stared at him.
Chace was standing on the other side of Bumper. As usual, he was pretending to be blasé and drawled:
“So of course what better way to indulge one’s little weakness than to take a ride in a balloon? Without a parachute?”
Bumper squealed when he heard that.
“Don’t be mean!” Petey reproached his friend. Chace gave him an arch look, as if to say, “There’s no parting a fool from his folly.”
“Are there any problems, gentlemen?” asked Dr. Sazerac, who had been leaning his tall form out of the carriage and quaffing the air in great gulps. He looked ironically at his passengers; they were showing the usual gamut of emotions he had seen so often: terror, wonder, joy and pretended nonchalance. People were so predictable!
A moth fluttered nearby and settled on the edge of the carriage, stretching its wings. Perhaps it had been sleeping behind a cushion, or even had just been born.
“We have a fellow passenger,” noted Dr. Sazerac. “Pro bono celestio!”
There was a gentle shock as the cable reached its furthest extent.
“See, Bumper?” Chace said to the green-faced ten-year-old. “If you think about it, we’re still attached to the ground. It’s like being at the top of a skyscraper. Think of the balloon as an elevator.”
He was trying to be helpful, but Bumper was not having it.
He had once been at the top of a “skyscraper” in Burlington (it had been ten stories high – an immensity for Bumper), and he had gotten sick as a dog. He was already beginning to feel the hamburger and root beer from lunch beginning a fandango in his tummy. He sank to the floor and solemnly hugged his knees.
“Oh well,” Chace sighed. “More for us!”
Though, of course, Petey thought, that makes no sense. We can all enjoy the view at the same time.
For example, that shape in the clouds: it looked like an enormous clock, then it
changed into a grinning cow, then into a huge sieve, then into the end of a violin, then into a bottle of aspirin, then into a hammer, a snake, a rocket ship, a coil of rope, then into a face that was watching something far behind them, with its eyes wide open and a funny nose and a crazy smile that turned almost immediately into an enormous O, and then . . .
There was a crash louder than anything Petey had ever heard before.
The carriage careened, almost dumping its passengers, who clung with shouts to the sides.
The thing—wind, lightning, or some enormous hand—struck again, then again, then again. Petey grabbed Bumper’s hand and with his other hand held on to the carriage side. Chace looked grim and wrapped the side with his arms.
Petey felt something else: the carriage, with the balloon above, was moving again, but up and away . . .
The cable must have broken, and they were being blown up, up into the sky.
The carriage rocked and careened over precipitately, and Petey looked in panic as he saw Dr. Sazerac go over the side. He was the only passenger who hadn’t bothered putting on the vest tied to the carriage. No doubt he was too sure of his skill in balloon piloting to think he would never need it.
The last thing Petey saw of him was a look of bewildered dismay as his hat flew off and his beard and moustache were a sudden confusion of hair and wonder as he tumbled into a reef of clouds the balloon was soaring into as if it had acquired a mind of its own, or was being directed by an unseen power.
Sunlight vanished, a cloud engulfed them, and the balloon was seized by the storm.
____
Christopher Bernard is a prize-winning author of both poetry and fiction. The two earlier stories in the “Otherwise” series are If You Ride A Crooked Trolley . . . and The Judgment Of Biestia (winner of the Independent Press Award in Preteen Fiction and short-listed for the K M Anthru International Literature Award).
