Nancy Pinard - Butterfly Soup

“Have fun, big guy.”

They halloo to the driver. Release him as the boat takes off into the wind. Cold air rushes his face as the chute lifts him into the air. His weight settles into the sling seat. His knuckles whiten around the handholds. The beach disappears and he is over water. The waves reach for his feet, then curl into white fringe. He kicks his feet at the nothingness that suspends him. The water drops farther below. The waves look like ripples. He glances back. The shoreline forms a crescent behind him. The Perry Monument is not so tall after all. The red-and-white carousel awning rotates slowly, its pie-shaped wedges emerging from a stationary center point. Its calliope is silent now. Even the noise of the boat motor has faded away.

It is very still.

The article hadn’t mentioned stillness. His skin breaks out in goose bumps. He’d expected rushing wind, rocking him in the harness swing, his hair blowing every which way. Everett has never heard such silence. Even in farm country in the middle of winter there are sounds—the echo of a car door slamming, a train whistle, the snap of icicles, the wind wiffling across stubbly fields or snapping frozen branches. The silence threatens to swallow him. He can’t relax and enjoy the view in the face of such calm. How does he know he’s still living? That he hasn’t died of heart failure? Maybe he was wrong about heaven—all his visions of angels and cherubim, the many-headed monsters from Revelations, the only book of the Bible he’s read. Maybe the giant throne room, the old man speaking in a booming voice amidst sulfur and magical creatures and terror and judgment is Oz, not heaven. Maybe heaven is a lot of nothing. A total void.

“Anybody home?” Everett calls into the stillness. The question goes nowhere. Maybe it’s trapped in his head, like the sound of his voice when he plugs his ears with his fingers. Maybe he hasn’t spoken at all. He lets go of the strap and holds his ears with his palms, then hollers.

The boat down on the water speeds around in circles. To his right a gull flaps its wings a few times, then glides, riding an updraft before circling around and descending to the water. For a minute it grazes the surface, then splashes and disappears. It surfaces and flaps off with a fish in its mouth. Everett envies its fluid movement, its freedom. He caws like the gull and flaps his arms. He pictures himself bailing out, as he had from swings when he was a child, then jackknifing into free fall, arms and legs spread wide to embrace the approaching earth like skydivers in James Bond movies.

Everett quells the urge. From this height, he’d never survive. Suicide is the coward’s way out. But if he were closer to the water…the boat heads toward shore. He’ll descend soon. He doesn’t have much time. The buckles are locked into each other. He kicks his feet and plucks at the webbing threaded through the buckles on the crotch strap. Finally he pulls it free. The waist strap is all that remains. It’s tight, and he can’t see it over the bulk of his life jacket to loosen it. While he fumbles with it, jerking and cursing, the boat slows down. Everett’s chute drops like a reeled-in kite. His time is short. The wind blows him toward shore. The beach approaches. The frat boys gesture, pointing and waving their arms. They holler and motion to pull down, like a train engineer on the whistle. He pulls all right—at the strap under his gut.

The boat idles offshore. The chute drops farther. The engine glubs. The calliope frolics. He’s almost too late, too close. Then the strap gives and he’s free. He thrusts his head out to propel his weight forward, spreads his arms and legs, then smacks on the blue-gray mirror.

When Everett regains consciousness, a frat boy’s face is enlarged in the center of an expanse of sky. “He’s coming to.” The boy’s voice is soprano and distorted. Other faces appear in a circle around his. Water runs from the kid’s sun-bleached hair down his neck and chest. The seagulls’ cries no longer sound like laughter. The clamor of the calliope mocks at his pain.

“Back off, everybody,” the kid orders. The perimeter of faces clears out. “You okay, mister?” His eyes look earnest, as though the answer matters.

Yeah, Everett mouths. He has no air in his lungs. His head aches. His skin stings all over.

“What the hell were you trying to do? Are you fuckin’ crazy, man?”

Everett gasps to breathe. There’s a crushing weight on his chest.

“That life jacket saved you. Lie still. The ambulance will be here soon.”

Everett heaves himself partway up. The kid pushes on his shoulders to lay him back down, but Everett resists. “No hospital.” He shakes the kid’s hands off. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. They have to check you out. Insurance stuff.”

“Hell with insurance…They’re not…checking me out… I’m outa here…soon as I get…my breath.”

A siren is coming toward the docks. Everett rolls onto his hands and knees, struggles up and staggers in the sand. The kid is on his tail, fussing at him.

Everett waves him off. “Beat it, kid. And while you’re at it, get a real job.”

“Crazy bastard.”

Everett grabs his duffel off the sand and heads for the bathhouse. When he looks back, the kid is staring after him. Everett hates the boy’s sculpted chest and taut, square jaw.

Back in the car, Everett cuddles his dog. The wind was cold on the trip across the bay, and the afternoon sun feels good, baking him through the windshield. Now that he’s been to Oz and back, he’s decided to name the dog Kansas. She puts her front paws in his lap and licks the sweat from his palms. Her tongue massages his calluses, but its grainy texture feels a bit removed until she moves to the skin on his wrist. His skin stings all over where he hit the water. His stomach is sour, his saliva bitter, but he’s not sorry he did it. The way that boy fussed to save him, maybe there’s something of his life left to salvage.

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