Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
The Wind’s Road
Monday, March 14th, 2011
Ollie released the rope, quadruple-somersaulted, caught it again inches from the end. Let go with one hand and felt the crowd’s roar as an updraft. With it, the smell, even up here, of the midway’s frying oil.
A jerk to pull himself along the line and he let go, then caught it in his teeth. He couldn’t hold the pose as long as usual– the balloonsuit was overfilled, and Ollie felt the strain in his molars.
The spotlight swung to Marnie and Del, holding each other by the ankles, sliding cartwheeling up a pair of ropes. Ollie heard the showmaster’s patter–“No nets! No harness holding them back from the deep, deep sky!”–as he hauled himself downrope.
Marnie tossed her line away as Del grabbed her ankles, and began orbiting her while she revolved. Ollie readied, leapt/floated to catch her arms.
Missed.
Head down, he saw her grasp after him, and his heart contracted to a knot at the sight of her shoe, loose in Del’s hand.
Shrieks from the crowd. Clowns suddenly serious fired grappling hooks from stashed blunderbusses. He heard a hook slide across the back of his suit, didn’t feel it catch. Too long upside-down, he saw his pulse at the edges of his vision; but couldn’t take his eyes from the retreating ground.
A grapple had caught Marnie, but, when the clowns rushed to tow her down, it had torn all the quilted compartments on the suit-front. She lay in the ring, leg at a bad angle.
No one looked at Ollie. He waved and rose, drifted. Tents, then trees cut off his view. The accident might kill him but it voided the terms of his indenture.
An old air-soldier who’d roustabouted years back had told stories of free-fly missions. Gain height. Find the knife.
Their balloonsuits were military surplus–cloudy blue camouflage showed where painted-on gaudy had cracked. The knife was where it should be–left shoulder, slightly behind. One-inch blade; big loop handle.
Houses were matchbooks and the circus a distant crumple before he was nerved-up enough. Small holes: slow fall, the soldier had said.
The first was a hissing pinprick; the second, a larger than intended slit. He sank fast while that compartment emptied. Then careful cuts, a gradual descent over hours.
Treetop high in the twilight, he coasted above a country avenue, free to see where the wind would take him.
The Moalai
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Koda was supposed to have been out hunting for clues to the whereabouts of the ape-man of the forest. Another one of the Americans had come to her village with a television crew and there was money to be made.
The day wore on and she found herself deeper in the jungle than she had ever been before. She stopped to rest by a clear pool of water surrounded by lush greens of every kind. As Koda rested, the surface of the water came alive with color. Big fish were jumping, their scales scintillating where the sunlight found their scales.
Koda fashioned a makeshift line and hook out of vine and stick and ran it into the pool with the remains of her lunch as bait. After only a moment she had pulled out the most beautiful fish. She hurried home; her previous money making task eclipsed by this new found good fortune.
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Koda sold the beautiful fish for a handsome price. She returned to the pool again and again. It turned out no one else in her village had ever seen the pool nor could find their way there, no matter how they tried. Koda’s fish, which she called Moalai, were in demand and became a source of fortune. Koda became rich. Her fishing trips to the clear pool were her source of comfort and connection to what was beautiful in the world. Sometimes she even saw the ape-man of the forest on the other side of the pool quietly drinking or just watching the fish. Over time she was courted by the sons of businessmen and fisherman from the coast. After many years she chose one and had a large family but always returned to the pool once a week to bring home a Moalai.
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Koda and her family prospered for many decades. One day her daughter asked her if she was still happy. On her next time at the pool she did not take a Moalai. She walked farther into the forest, perhaps into the domain of the ape-man. She knew she would never return to her family again. In her mind she answered her daughter’s question of why? You love something until you can not or do not any longer, Koda thought. And then she disappeared into the woods, chasing good fortune.
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