The Grass his Shape by John Biron

There were June bugs already stirring the morning we snuck onto the grounds. Sweat pooled in our socks. We got underneath the thing while it was lying there deflated. He said it’d help me get over the fear of flying in it if I got to know it some. He had a whole head over me, lean with skinny wrists and deep brown eyes that always looked down or up but never straight out. 

Our breath came in snatches and we laughed and laughed, chests pumping, and everything was colors like we stepped onto a different planet. It became like a regular escape where we could hide out and especially him too cause of the yelling, angry sound he lived in. He talked about it only in short and broken statements. What he told me would make me flinch but it was alright for a moment under all the colors.

“You never been scared,” he said.

“Sure I have,” I said. “Scared of floating off in this balloon, for one.”

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “If you had been you’d know.”

“Know what?”

“That nothing up there could come close to the scary down here.”

He’d brought a whittling knife under once and was carving at a piece of thick wood. Said he was making a horse, like the one he’d seen his grandpa ride. When he held it up I couldn’t help but crack. Could barely breathe, and I told him it looked more like a mutated rat. He tossed it at me and snatched it back, said in that high voice “You wouldn’t know a horse if it kicked you in the forehead.” The small scraps of wood fell softly in the grass, us smiling like carefree. When he was finished, he handed it over and I pocketed it. 

Whenever the pilot came through with the balloon, practically the whole town came out. He was the first to ride and went up every weekend. The day he fell, he was up way high. Me waving from the fence and him waving back, giving a little bow. People cheered. He was a big favorite, having ridden the thing higher and longer than anybody else cared to go. Multicolored, huge, the thing filled with heat, burner hissing gas and fire into the wide opening, slowly rising up and expanding out across the sky. 

Near to the highest point I’d ever seen it go, mean gusts strong enough to blow food off the table came up and shook the thing. Pilot had him for a second but to my eye it nearly looked like he wrestled away. Can see him still against the sky and falling but looking like he wasn’t moving any. The sun was hidden and pale. Sort of like a painting, muted blue and clouds like stone, gray and motionless. His long body a black spot like the painter made a mistake and dripped him there. A backdrop of fire and rainbow. People shouted and screamed and started running, calling for help. Wasn’t flailing at all. He looked completely still. When he hit, he all but disappeared. 

After that the thing was packed up and the pilot quit town. It wasn’t like we blamed him. There’s no accounting for a wind like that. No accounting for those outbursts of nature.

They gave us the week off school, and at the service his sister was there but nobody else in his family. For a few weeks, any time we went by his house we heard that yelling, worse than ever, vicious, just the way he told it. I tried to touch up that carved horse some as a memorial kind of thing, to pay respects. Never worked up the stomach to bring it over to them. Either way, they’re long gone now.

Sometimes bring the whittled horse out to where I can see that slight flattening of the grass his shape. There’s a warmth to it, like the fire that sent him rising decided to stay down here with him. Squeezing my eyes shut, can see the purples and reds and greens of our hiding spot like the sky of a new and nicer planet.

John Biron will scribble for food or alcohol. @JohnBiron90196 on twitter.