Look at Flower Read online

  “That was good,” Butter says. “It’s going to work.”

  I look around. The basket’s still tugging at the metal ropes. “Shouldn’t I get the basket lower?”

  She shakes her head. She’s still holding the rope. In a flash she scurries up it, till she’s looking at me from only a foot away. “See,” she says.

  “O.K.”

  She lowers herself down the rope again, then glances up and places her hands together, palms touching, for just a second. “This time for real.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Without asking her, I reach over and push the button again, then pull down the lever. I want to give her as much help as I can.

  “On three.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “One.” More air hisses out the top, though the basket itself still strains against the rope. “Two.”

  I close off the air valve and get ready to grab Butter’s hand as she climbs into the basket.

  “Three.”

  She pops the clasp that holds the rope taut, and the balloon and the basket suddenly rise. I brace myself, legs against one side of the wicker basket, my elbows digging into the straw on the other side.

  Butter starts up the rope, hand over hand.

  The basket’s about ten feet up now, Butter a few feet below it. She puts one hand over the other. I lean out as much as I can and reach down for her. I feel her fingers. . . .

  Then a gust of wind hits the balloon, and it jolts upward. I thrust my hand down to grasp Butter’s, but . . . her hand’s not there.

  She’s still hanging onto the rope, but she’s not pulling herself into the basket. I don’t understand it. This terrible feeling rushes through me, a sudden ball of terror in my stomach. It’s just like with Run and the train. I reach down farther, touch the skin on the back of Butter’s hand. . . .

  The basket’s still only ten or so feet up, but it’s sweeping swiftly over the sandy floor. I don’t see why Butter doesn’t climb the rest of the way. Is the balloon moving too fast? We can’t go on like this. “Butter!” I cry, but if she says something back, I don’t hear it.

  I’m torn. I gotta pull her into the basket, but she’s not close enough. If I take my hands back from over the side of the basket, I could push the button again and pull down the blue lever. That might collapse the balloon too quickly, but even that has to be better than this.

  Then Butter pulls herself up another foot. She’s right at the bottom of the basket; she only needs another foot or so and I can tug her in.

  I lean all the way out of the basket, my own feet braced on nothing, and reach for her wrist. It’s odd, but what I’m thinking is: Oh, Run, let me save you. Let me pull you in. . . .

  But Butter doesn’t make it. With a terrible cry she lets go of the metal rope. Without her weight, the balloon lurches up as it keeps sweeping along. I look down. Butter’s fallen onto the sand. I think she hit on her feet then rolled backward. Her face is turned up at me, but I don’t see any movement. My heart’s in my throat. She’s . . . she’s—

  Oh, she’s moving. Thank God! Wobbling. Standing. Waving her hands at me.

  “Butter, what should I do?” I scream.

  I’m at least a hundred feet away from her and rising fast. She cups her hands over her mouth, but whatever she cries, I can’t make it out.

  Think fast, Flower, think fast. I don’t know how to fly a balloon. I have to get it down. But the balloon keeps rising—I’m up at least a hundred feet—and I’m soaring toward the hills that rise along the west edge of the Balloon Farm.

  It’s the most amazing thing up here. The ground . . . I see bold stripes of light and shadow. Our van back in the Balloon Farm parking lot is no bigger than a Matchbox toy. Butter is just an arm-waving dot; not any bigger than a spider, an ant. It’s weird, but I don’t feel any wind. That puzzles me. There were all those gusts down at the ground. . . .

  I’m over the hills now. The ground I’m above is steep and rocky; I see boulders and craggy outcroppings with sharp points. I put my finger on the release button and grasp the blue lever—but I can’t pull it. What am I doing? I don’t have a clue. But I know that if I drop the balloon too fast, I could crash on the rocks and bust up the wicker basket—and me.

  I look back toward the Balloon Farm. It’s just the buildings now and the wide beige parking lot; I can’t even make out Butter. Oh, God! I’m breathing really fast, and I tell myself, Flower, get yourself under control. You’re in this. Deal with it. Deal with it.

  O.K. O.K. There are two buttons and two levers. The blue one lets air out; the balloon goes down. The other has to light the burner Butter mentioned—yeah, that metal ring there. I look down and see I’m skimming too close to the hills. I hope the burner lights by itself; I gotta get higher right now.

  I’m holding my breath when I push the lift button, then pull the red lever. Above me there’s a tremendous whoosh. A circle of spiky blue-yellow flames bursts out from the metal ring. There’s a hood over the flames so nothing burns, but the flames are hot enough that I pull back from their heat. The air around me gets warmer and warmer.

  And it works! Nothing happens right away, but about half a minute later the balloon starts shooting up. The line of hills . . . I’m clearing them. Oh, my! I have to be hundreds of feet up now. I still don’t feel any breeze, but the balloon sails right along.

  My breathing slows. I look around me. It’s soooo quiet! I’m high enough to see the curve of the earth. High enough to feel the yellow-blue dawn blooming above me. High enough to believe there’s nothing in the world but me and the glorious purple-and-pink balloon. High enough to know my every dream of freedom and release lift and soar inside me.

  The Girl in the Lost Balloon

  Look at Flower, I’m looking at myself on the small black-and-white TV. Actually, what they’re showing is the balloon, going down north of Phoenix. By the time I landed, I’d become news: The Girl in the Lost Balloon. That’s what they’re calling me. It’s become a really big deal. There I was, just floating along, and all of a sudden helicopters flew up and cameramen took photos of me. Now I’m all over the late-evening news. Look, in that shot I’m waving from the wicker basket.

  I never got that good at flying the balloon, but I was able to keep it going. I had no idea where I was, though a compass in the basket told me that I was mostly heading west, which was fine by me. It was so quiet and peaceful. At first I flew over flat desert, yellow and gold strips of sand, as well as croppings of red and gray rocks, below me. When I came to a set of hills, I shot more hot air into the balloon. The air currents bore me along sweetly. And finally I figured out why I couldn’t feel any kind of breeze. It was so simple: The balloon and I were moving at the same speed as the air around me; I was the wind.

  The news helicopters came first, hovering as close as they dared get, their rotary wings whirring as loud as a storm of insects all around me; but then there was the police helicopter. It was longer and all military gray and read phoenix p.d. on its side. A guy in a uniform called out to me through a bullhorn, but I couldn’t hear him; besides the noise of the copters, it was strangely muted up there in the sky. All along I felt I was in my own bubble of silence, bobbing along.

  The police helicopter flew around me a few times, then hovered directly above. I could only see part of the copter, the rest blocked out by the purple-and-pink balloon skin. I was gazing out at the news helicopters, now keeping their distance, when, like that, a ladder dropped right next to me.

  Jeez! I nearly jumped out of the basket. Then a uniformed man with a parachute packed on his back suddenly appeared.

  He was hanging on the ladder ten feet away from my basket, but he was able to swing the rungs back and forth. He kept getting closer, and finally he swung just so; he wrapped his legs over the edge of the basket, then twisted himself into it.

  “Are you all right, little girl?” was the first thing he said.

  I gave him a huge smile. “Absolutely.”

  “Well
, let’s get you down. You must be terrified.”

  That surprised me. I shook my head, but I don’t think he noticed.

  “Here, I’m experienced at this.” He looked over the side, and I looked, too. We were about four hundred feet up and half a mile from a two-lane highway, a gray ribbon bisected by streams of golden sunlight. “I’m going to put us down over there, sweetheart. Don’t worry about anything.”

  Well, O.K. The officer was in total command of the balloon. I just nodded.

  He put one hand on the blue lever and teased it down just a touch. The balloon dropped, but only a few feet. He nodded; adjusted the lever. I heard a slow, steady hiss above us. I looked down. Even though it didn’t feel like we were falling, the ground kept getting closer, the road nearer. I could make out the white-painted line between lanes. A minute later we were just skimming the ground. There was nothing but sand in front of us, and as gently as he could, the officer set us down. The bottom of the basket caught; he pulled the red lever and we bounced up again. Then his hand was back on the blue lever, and this time he brought us down soft as a kiss.

  I’m at the police station now, and everyone keeps wanting to know how frightened I must’ve been. It’s funny; I’ve been trying to tell them that the balloon flight was the most wonderful thing I’ve ever done—the boundless light, the perfect silence, the sun so close, free as a cloud—but nobody seems to hear me. It’s all how scared I must have been.

  The Girl in the Lost Balloon. There’s no way to be anything else; and finally I realize that for Flower that might not be so bad.

  The good thing is that nobody is saying I stole the balloon. Good ol’ Butter: Who knows what wondrous story she cooked up for how I got loose at the Balloon Farm. She must’ve said all the right things, because all Tex Albom is saying is that he’s thrilled I’m safe and that nothing happened to his balloon. And nobody’s asking me a thing about Old Bison, which is good because there’s another hot story on the news: A bizarre plot to steal a tiger from the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque was nipped in the bud. A bunch of drug-crazed hippies had plotted to break into the zoo in the middle of the night, but authorities were tipped off and seven men and women arrested. The police investigation is continuing. Charges are expected soon.

  But all anyone wants to do for the Girl in the Lost Balloon is to help her. I put on my biggest, saddest smile and simply let them.

  “Lucinda, I suppose after your ordeal you just want to go home,” this nice social worker woman says. Her name’s Mrs. McGirten, and she has squirrel-gray hair in a tight bun, with two yellow wood pencils stuck into it (like a geisha, I think). She’s sitting across from me in the police interrogation room. She has a clipboard with paper on it.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  She pulls out a pencil from her hair and taps it against the clipboard. “And where is your home?”

  My home? Hmmm. O.K., my . . . oh, look, her mouth is tightening and she’s giving me a look. Think fast, Flower. Where is your home?

  “San Francisco.”

  Mrs. McGirten raises a long-lashed eyebrow, but then she smiles. “You’re a lucky girl. That’s a lovely city.” She nods to herself. “I was there with Mr. McGirten right before the war. He shipped out from there.” She starts writing on her clipboard. “I’ll never forget it.”

  I’m nodding encouragement to her as I see visions play behind her eyes of Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge and that famous tower that’s supposedly shaped like a firehose nozzle.

  “And that’s where your family is, right?”

  “Yes,” I say without any hesitation.

  “O.K., well, I’ll see what we can do to arrange a way to get you back to them.”

  “That’d be great,” I say. Then, I don’t know what gets into me, but I add: “Nobody’s going to need me to stay longer here in Phoenix? For the investigations?”

  She gives me her look again. “I haven’t heard anything like that.” She shakes her head. “What investigations?” She lifts her chin. “Is there something I don’t know?”

  I freeze for just a second, then vigorously shake my head. “Oh, no, no. I think everything’s all cleared up. I’m just—just The Girl in the Lost Balloon.”

  - - - - -

  Look at Flower, I’m back on Haight Street, half a block from Ashbury (where there aren’t street signs anymore; I hear tourists are ripping ’em off). Boy it’s crowded here, at least three times as choked as the sidewalks were when I first came here back in February. Flocks of longhairs and gypsy chicks pass on by, and there are a lot more bikers than before (whenever I hear the ground-shaking roar of a mufflerless motorcycle, which is nearly every minute, I look out, wondering if it’s my friend Harley), but there are also a lot of guys with short hair who look like they could’ve come out of the backfield at Bend High and young chicks who look about thirteen with finger-painted flowers on their foreheads and older chicks in suits wandering around with pens and narrow pads of paper; and the other thing is, everybody seems to have a camera, even the freaks, and they’re all taking each other’s picture. Snap, pose, snap, pose: Up and down the Haight everybody’s making souvenirs to send home. It’s like the new orgy is picture taking.

  I’m trying to get my bearings, it feels like I’ve been away a lot longer than four months. Mrs. McGirten made sure I got a hundred dollars from the social work agency, so I don’t have to spare-change anybody; I feel absolutely rich. But all this traffic on Haight is bummin’ me. There’s a psychedelic-painted bus that says haight free bus line in front of me, with nothing but freaks hanging off it, but right behind it stuck in the traffic is a Gray Line bus . . . and, look, those people hanging out the window, in their fishing caps and Penny’s Sta-Prest shirts and small-town perm jobs, they’ve all gotta be tourists; my God, that couple there are wearing overalls just like my folks back on the farm. I shudder. Imagine Mom and Dad coming down here to see the freaks. What would they say? They’d probably throw peanuts at us like we’re monkeys in the zoo.

  O.K., in every way that thought’s bummin’ me, so I get up, decide I gotta get off of Haight Street. Think I’ll head down to the Panhandle. Maybe a band’s playing there. That’d be cool. Hear some music. Maybe the Airplane are playing, doing their great new song White Rabbit.

  I head along Haight for a few blocks first, just to catch the changes. Look, the Straight Theater’s closed; I remember seeing a really great show there with Quicksilver and another group called Big Brother and the Holding Company. There was this wild chick singer, she could really belt it. Wonder if they’ve put out a record yet.

  Hmmm, Love Burgers is still open, and, all of a sudden starving, I decide to spend a little of my new fortune and order a double, with lettuce and mayonnaise. It comes on an onion roll. I still got the taste of the root-grain goop from Old Bison in my mouth when I take a big bite; meat juice and oily mayonnaise spit out and cover my chin. Wow! My mouth explodes with flavor. God, that burger’s good.

  Lunch done, I take a right on Cole; the Panhandle’s two blocks away. There’s a huge throng there, way more people than before. Must mean there’s a free concert going down. God, when was the last time I really danced? (We kinda tried at Old Bison, but Chester and Sally weren’t that into it.) Maybe it’s the Dead playing. I kind of miss them; have this feeling I might like the band better now than I used to.

  But when I get to the grass and eucalyptus trees of the Panhandle, there’s nobody playing music, not even the old wooden stage. Instead it’s just like Haight Street: hundreds, maybe thousands of kids, colorful as can be, but lots with what I’m coming to think of as trainer long hair; you know, boys with their brown or blond locks just a couple inches over their ears (long as it would’ve grown since high school let out in May), and girls with hair so straight you know they ironed it before they got on the bus to the city. Everyone seems to have flowers painted on their cheeks, and when I’m inside the park I see why. There’s a Digger table with a sign that says free sandwiches (no f
ood on it, though; they must’ve run out) and next to it three blonde women in white fairy dresses and silvery tiaras, fine-pointed brushes in their hands, dipping them into pots of paint and glitter, doing up whoever’s in front of them.

  There’s a line of kids waiting to get decorated, and I’m walking past it when I hear someone call out, “Hey, Flower. Flower, is that you?”

  I turn, and there’s Loretta, my old friend from when I first got here.

  “Flower, it is you.”

  “Hey, Loretta,” I say. She’s waiting in the flower-painting line and beckons me over.

  “I don’t want to butt in,” I say.

  She gives me a shrug. “I’m sure it’s cool.”

  When I’m standing next to her, she gives me a long glance. “You look different.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  I quick shake my head. I haven’t done anything to the way I look since I left the Haight four months ago; haven’t even cut my hair, and how much longer can it be? “I’m sure I’m just the same.”

  She shakes her curvy light-brown hair. To me she looks exactly the same; another fairy goddess. “No, there’s something—” She leans in and looks moonily right at me. I feel a little self-conscious. “It’s like something in your eyes, it’s all different.” She purses her lips. Then: “So where have you been?”

  I give my head a shake and tell her, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “I haven’t seen you here—you’ve been away, right?”

  “All over the place.”

  “That’s groovy.” She looks away for a second, then adds, “I’m thinking of splitting also.”

  “How come?”

  The get-your-face-painted line inches forward.

  She shakes her head. “It’s not the same here, Flower. A lot . . . a lot of crazy stuff’s gone down.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like bad shit. Like Superspade. You hear about him?”

  I shake my head.

  “Got himself killed. They found his body near Point Reyes.” Loretta leans in toward me. “He had a bullet right here.” She reaches around and points to the bottom of her neck.