They heard the cackle behind them, echoing on the hillside. Pamela turned, sighed. “He’s in the air before us. Again.”
Henry turned. A great green balloon floated above the scrubgrass. The madman dangled from his basket, waving a loaf of bread. He stopped cackling, shouted: “You used too much baking powder. Not enough water! This is Kenya, not Dubuque, you bulbous tit! I win again!”
Pamela looked at Henry, then down at their bread. Henry said, “Oh, god, don’t look up.” She instead looked at Henry, who scowled. She kept her eyes low. “He’s humping something, isn’t he?”
“Of course. That’s all he does. A lifetime of humping motions as victory celebration.” Henry shouted through cupped hands. “Enjoy that sandbag, Christopher! That’s why you bring an assistant! Gonna be a lonely trip!”
Christopher shouted back. “You’re a gross little kid and you’ve always been! Stay away from my ex-wife!”
Pamela was confused. “What is he talking ab– ohh.”
Henry grinned sheepishly. “That’s why you brought me, right?” He didn’t see her bewildered glance as he crouched to examine the malformed bread. He squeezed it with his fingers. The loaf came apart like styrofoam. “Shit. Maybe he’s right about the recipe.”
Pamela moved toward the tent, yelled back: “No time to discuss baking at high altitude. He’s in the air. Just leave that crumbly turd for the gophers and help me.”
Henry said, “They’re hyrax.”
She reached the tent. “What?”
“Hyrax. Not gophers. We’re in Kenya, you bulbous tit.” He grinned.
“You sound just like him.”
“Don’t say that!”
“You do. Even correcting me on taxonomy.”
Henry walked over and they broke down the tent. “I only hope,” he said, “that when one of those rodents has you by the ladyparts, dragging you to its lair, that you say, ‘Help me, Henry, there’s a hyrax eating my bits,’ because if you call it a gopher, I’ll just stay in the tent.”
She rolled her eyes but steered clear of the varmint hill anyway. Soon the tent was packed. Henry kicked apart their makeshift dutch oven and snuffed the fire. Pamela got in the basket and warmed the balloon. It tugged at its tether. “Hurry up,” she said.
Henry sprinted over with the last of the gear, tossed the bag to Pamela. She unfurled the ladder. He released the tether. The balloon bobbed. Henry grasped the ladder quickly, climbed into the basket.
They were moving. Christopher was just a speck in the distance. Henry wondered, as he had nearly every morning for a month, whether this was a dream worth pursuing – beating his father at his own boast, and purely for spite? Then Henry remembered baby pictures of himself placed inside of carved pumpkins, or trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey, or tucked in a stocking. And the millions his father made from the Baby Henry books.
Henry’s resolve hardened. Yes, beating his father from Iowa to Iowa around the world in a balloon was a petty dream, but a cathartic one. Yet every morning Christopher would be floating first, and they’d scramble to catch him. Henry looked to Pamela. “Why can’t he pull away from us if he gets a head start every day?”
Pamela was slow to respond. She was deep in morning introspection. What a strange moment, discovering that you shared a bitter dream with your former stepson. A dumb dream, a costly dream, but a dream. They would beat Christopher at his own goddamned game. For all of the times he placed ads in the Herald, proclaiming his victory on family board game night, for the boobytrapped shoes, for those goddamned Baby Henry books. She smiled, noting that her divorce settlement – thanks to those books – was funding this dream. “Hmm?”
“I asked how we catch him every day.”
“Your father is like some horrible, manic monkey. He is up late, awake early, and between spends his time cackling and fidgeting and scheming. But his balloon is terrible. We’ve got a propeller. He’s just floating with the breeze and whatever propulsion he can generate from tugging upon himself and the ropes.” Her eyes hardened. “But also, he doesn’t get too far ahead because he wants to see your face when he beats you.”
“Then why don’t we pull ahead if our balloon is faster?”
“Because I want to see his face when we beat him.”
A cackle, muted by distance, reached them in the morning silence.
Matthew A. Roberson, 4/1/2011