C Hribal - The Company Car

Eddie is the balloon operator, a man with an orange-gray walrus mustache, a beer gut, and a comb-over. Their balloon is red and blue, tethered to steel stakes driven into the ground with a mallet. Up close, it looks like a malignant mushroom.

“Welcome, welcome, is this the happy couple?” he says. “Fifty years? I don’t believe it. You look like you just eloped,” he says. Sotto voce he adds, “Do your parents know about this?”

“Their parents are dead,” Flo hisses. “And we’re not getting any younger ourselves.”

Eddie breaks into his pitch. How fast they’re going to drift, given the wind, how high up they’ll go, again depending on wind conditions, how it’s going to be marvelous, marvelous, marvelous. “You’ll see your friends’ and neighbors’ houses like you’ve never seen them before,” he says. “We’ll be sneaking up on deer, on cranes, on geese. Keep your eyes peeled for the deer herds. My favorite thing is how they don’t know we’re there until our shadow crosses over them. For some reason that spooks them. Somehow they can tell we’re not just another cloud. Maybe it’s something they teach in deer elementary school—”

Flo, meanwhile, is handing out business cards to all of us, and a sheet of paper detailing prices for both the B & B and the various merchandise they sell from the back of their pickup truck—glassware and coffee mugs featuring balloons, ballooning T-shirts, scarves, sweatshirts, baseball caps, and the matching purple Polartec fleece jackets Flo and Eddie are wearing, which sport a bright red balloon and their company logo across the breast pocket.

“They’ll scatter every which way,” Eddie’s saying. “It’s something to see.”

“So why don’t you get aloft and see it?” says Flo, taking a stepladder out of the truck. She puts that up against the balloon’s woven basket and stands there waiting, her hair blunt and unkempt, her face pinched. She wants to get this show on the road. You wonder if maybe a certain bitterness hasn’t come to her on account of it appears that Eddie gets to do the cloud hopping while she’s stuck on earth, driving the support truck.

We head over to the balloon, form a loose semicircle around it. Flo and Eddie help our parents aboard. It’s tricky with our father. He’s big and bulky and unsteady on his feet. Our mother’s no spring chicken, either, but with a boost from Eddie she steps into the basket. Our father needs to be propelled in by Flo and Eddie, and even then it appears he’s in danger of tipping backward. Robert Aaron and Ike and I rush forward, and it looks a little like the flag raising on Mount Suribachi, the last couple of us straining but not really helping.

“Remember,” says Eddie once they’re all in the basket, “I’m the captain of this ship. If you want to get married while we’re airborne, I can do that.”

“And if you want to get divorced,” Flo mutters just loud enough for me to hear, “see me.”

“You kids can follow your folks in your cars, or you can drive ahead. I know where your place is, and I’ll be aiming for that X you painted in your field. I don’t think I’ll be able to miss that, though with a balloon you can never tell. You catch the wrong current, and the next thing you know you’re drifting towards Canada and points west.”

“I should be so lucky,” Flo mutters. I have half a mind to tell Flo she’s in the wrong business, but it’s a nice afternoon and I don’t feel like getting my head bit off.

Eddie says, “Sometimes I do that just so’s I can get out of the house for a spell, right, dear?”

“Ha-ha,” Flo says. She’s smoking a cigarette, waiting to cast off the lines. She gestures to Robert Aaron and Ike and me to help her. Eddie turns to our parents. “You folks have any last words before you start the ride of your life?”

Our mother takes our father’s hand and says, “I believe I’ve already been on the ride of my life, thank you.” Our father chuckles. “But there is something I want to say to my children.” Our mother takes in a deep breath. She’s collecting herself. “I never told you kids this, at least I don’t think I ever did, but when Nomi died, the last words that came out of her mouth were ‘More! More!’ That seemed so much like Nomi. And I’ve always wondered—was she calling out for something specific? Did she want more light, more warmth, more water, more coffee, what? When I asked, she couldn’t tell me—she was answering to God right then, not me.” Our mother pauses, her face trembles, she wipes her eyes. Her voice quavering, she continues. “But I think what she was really doing was calling out for more of everything. I understand that. You kids don’t know this, but I called out ‘More! More!’ every time we made one of you. And I’m glad you got us that station wagon. You don’t know this, either, but most of you were conceived in the back of one. Exuberant excess is not a bad thing. And that’s what I want to say to you kids. I—your father and I—we’re not ready yet for things to be over. We still want more of everything. You may find that hard to believe, but we do.” She pauses again. Then she says, “I want to leave you with Nomi’s blessing. She used to say it at weddings and anniversaries, and since she’s not here to say it, I suppose it should be me: ‘May your progeny be as the sands upon the sea, and may they be as good to thee as ye have been to me.’ ”

“Is that a threat or a promise, Mom?”

Our mother smiles through her tears. “Which do you think?”

“What about you, sir?” says Eddie. “You want to say anything?”

We’re waiting for the litany of clichés to come pouring forth, but our father shakes his head. “No,” he says, “I believe their mother has said everything there is to say.”

“Well then,” says Eddie, checking around the basket and the gauges on the propane tank. Satisfied, he says, “You ready, ma’am?” Our mother nods assent. “Ready, Wally?” Our father gives us the thumbs-up. “Ready, Flo?” Flo flaps her hand at him, as though she’s saying, “Leave, already.” Eddie adjusts a nozzle just beneath the canopy, and a jet of flame shoots blue and yellow into the canopy’s neck. Flo yells at us to cast off the lines, and the balloon jerks up a few feet, then lifts and sways and rises as Eddie opens what seems like the throttle. Our mother whoops, our father starts to fall backward, then steadies himself with his hands. They look over the side, at the ground and at all of us gathered on it. To them, we are shrinking rapidly.

“Bye! Bye-bye!” we call. We’re waving like mad. Our mother waves, our father gives the thumbs-up again. We get into our cars and follow them, caravan-fashion, for a dozen miles. It’s a matter of making the necessary turns on the back roads and keeping them in sight. Flo gestures us ahead. We’re to speed up, shoot ahead, and greet them when they touch down.

Borowski is on the lawn with the other guests. We’ve arrived and climbed on the roof—we want this show to go on right over our heads. But something is keeping our parents—did the wind die down for a while? Did they have problems with the balloon? It’s getting dark enough for the yard lights to have gone on. To pass the time, Borowski performs backyard theater, comically reenacting dramatic scenes from movies under the yard lights below us. His rendition of Steve McQueen at the end of The Great Escape is magnificent. It’s hard to fake a motorcycle leap, but he does it, launching himself onto an invisible fence. Also magnificent is his “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” scene from Gone With the Wind, which he performs solo this time, holding himself in his arms, half bent over while delivering Clark Gable’s line. Everyone claps and cheers and calls out for their favorite scene. Borowski’s honoring as many requests as he can—he is our crowned fool—when Peg Leg Meg cries out, “I see them! They’re coming!” and we cross around to the other side of the roof, the other side of the house, to watch them drift in.