One Black And One White

Contributed by Matthew Hartwell on 12/09/09

His life was in one of the balloons. That much, the old man was certain of.

As a child, he had been given the balloons while playing on the moor, by a mesmerizing woman who smelled like rain. She had approached him as he ran with his new puppy, and he had been polite, as he had been taught by his parents. The puppy immediately took to the woman, and licked her fingers as she laughed, a small noise that sounded like the song of hummingbirds.

“You have such a fine puppy,” the woman said, as she stroked its head and scritched behind its ear that had flopped over.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

“You can tell he is regal,” she said. The dog rubbed his head into her palm. “I would not be surprised to learn he is the grandson of a duke.”

“A duke, ma’am? People can’t have puppies!”

“Who said anything about people?” The woman smiled at him and the shine of it was warm. “He must be your best friend.”

The boy knelt down beside the pup and ran his hands up and down the dog’s ribs.

“I hope that will be the case, Miss,” the boy said. “I just got him this morning, for my birthday.”

The woman stood up from her crouching position and placed her hand on the boy’s head.

“Birthday’s are important days! I should have known it was yours, but you’re so new, everyday smells like a birthday, doesn’t it?” She reached her hands behind her back. “Pick. Right or left?”

“Left!”

“A rare choice, and not at all an ill one,” she said as she brought her left hand forward. Wrapped around her finger was a string, and floating at the end of said string was a white balloon, an image of the full moon. The boy reached out his hand and she transferred ownership of the joyous artifact to him.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said as he stared up at the balloon. The puppy stared at it also, and then resumed attempting to give the woman kisses.

“It is freely given, and since you chose the side most men avoid, I think you should have two presents.” The woman brought her right hand around her side, also wrapped in string. A second balloon, this one pitch-black, like a hole where the moon should be, rose from her fingers. The woman tied its string around the boy’s other hand so he would not lose the balloon.

“Thank you even more!” The boy stared at his two new treasures. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything for you. We ate my cake already.”

The woman smiled her smile on lips that taste like cantaloupe, and tousled his hair.

She was gone. The balloons were still there, the boy noted, but the woman was nowhere to be seen, as far as he could see, though the hills rolled, and she could be hiding behind one. He must have been really excited about the balloons, he realized, to have not noticed her leaving.

The balloons sat in his room for two days, before his mother went to throw them out. He found them in the garbage, still inflated, still willing to take to the sky. He hid them in the woods behind the house from that point onward, and checked on them at first once a day, and after several months, once a week.

As he should have outgrown the fascination of balloons, he instead found himself more interested. In Science class, he learned about permeable membranes, gas expansion laws, helium, the impossibilities of his birthday present from so many years ago. In History class, he learned about his country. In English class, he learned about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and decided it was hi favorite play.

When his dog was older, and blind in both eyes from cataracts, and unable to hear when called, and visibly pained when walking, he took the dog to the moors it played on as a puppy with him. The dog began barking, as he used to do when the boy was coming home, and took off like a bolt over the hill. The boy lost sight of him over the crest of the hill, and gave chase. There was no dog on the other side of the hill. He smiled, and assured himself there was an unknown country better than death.

A full life waxed and waned, and the old man found himself trapped by his children in a wheelchair locked in a nursing home, miles from the moors. His balloons stayed in a storage shed, unbeknownst to his family. He had made arrangements with a nurse as the cancer worsened. The moor of his childhood, he explained. He wanted to see it once more. And if they could make a quick stop, first, he would be grateful to the tune of several hundred pounds.

There was an unknown country better than death.