Rachel Wiley was not the only person in town turning thirteen on the June 21st Saturday in question. No one counted what the actual number was but, by the end of the day, everyone knew that at least one other person in Bobbing Apple had a birthday the same day as Rachel’s. That person’s name was Jeremy. Jeremy J. James.
Jeremy James wanted to be a pilot. The boy wanted to be a pilot so badly that he had already memorized a lot of things that pilots need to memorize. Since it would take many pages to summarize just what those things are, they won’t be listed here. Suffice it to say that there are lots of things that pilots need to memorize and already, at thirteen, Jeremy knew most of them. Unfortunately, for Jeremy, Mr. and Mrs. James did not exactly share their son’s enthusiasm for altitude. In fact, they shared pretty much none of it. They couldn’t understand how a child of theirs, another human who shared their genes, could have been born with such a craving for flight. The boy was nuts about it. As a baby, he tried to roll off beds. As a toddler, he jumped off stairs. As a first grader, he climbed into trees or atop the family home and pretended he got there by landing from above (some of the falls as a toddler had convinced him that further study was required before actually jumping out of the trees or off the family roof). As a seventh grader, he read everything he could get his hands on about the things that that were in books that pilots needed to get their hands on.
What type of birthday present do parents give a son who is turning thirteen and eats, sleeps, and breathes the sky? Books wouldn’t do; the boy had already checked all of them out of the library or read them on-line. Neither would clothing; over the years, the young man had received more flight uniforms, outfits, and pajamas from friends and family than could fit in his small bedroom closet. Model airplanes? There was no more space to hang them from his ceiling. Puzzles? The floor had the same real estate problem as the ceiling. Posters? The walls of his room looked like billboards. Videos, magazines, movies, and other stories? Jeremy had so many that any further additions would be an insult to his collection. There was only one thing that sane parents of a thirteen year-old who was insane for the sky could give that thirteen year-old for his birthday: some sort of flight plan. The boy needed something to keep him from jumping off the surfaces he had learned to ascend. He needed something to do instead of letter-writing to commercial pilots, private pilots, people who once had been pilots, and people whose factories might make things that pilots could use. He needed some experience, some hands-on activity that could, in some small way, mollify his passion for flight and distract him from heartfelt essays on the future of flight, factory assembly lines, and his one boy “flight factory for Bobbing Apple” letter campaign. So Mr. James proposed a flying lesson. When Mrs. James almost passed out in the kitchen at the mention of the idea, Mr. James accused her of being too dramatic. When Mrs. James retorted that a flight lesson had as much a chance of distracting their son from the skies as a birdbath had of convincing a blue jay to become a duck, a compromise seemed in order. It took a few weeks but Jeremy’s parents found one: a ride – a one-time ride– in a hot air balloon.
McGillivibe’s Glides were advertised as “low altitude slides on a cushion of soft air”. While Mrs. James didn’t believe that there was anything cushiony about the clouds that floated above the treetops, she had seen the McGillivibes’ hot air balloon float across the Bobbing Apple trees on an occasional calm morning. The ride looked smooth and enjoyable; Mrs. James had once noticed people in the basket beneath the balloon pointing into the horizon and waving. Who they were waving at in a balloon a hundred or more feet off the ground was not Mrs. James’s concern. Her interest had been piqued, however, enough for her to propose the hot air balloon idea to Mr. James as a compromise between the options of sending her son off to flight school and keeping him locked in his room with books, posters, and puzzles. She had noticed that Jeremy was changing. His extremities were stretching, as was his chin. It was only a matter of time before Mrs. James had no control over the boy’s choices. Mrs. James didn’t loiter on that realization because any thinking about the rapid aging of young men in adolescence made her weak in the emotions. She just looked up McGillivibe’s Glides on the internet and made a reservation for Jeremy to have a balloon ride on his birthday. Unfortunately – for Mrs. James at least – she rushed a bit when she made the reservation and accidentally checked the website box for the family rate, instead of the box for the individual fare. Mr. James had been due home from work at any minute and Mrs. James did not want to hear any more of her husband’s wild ideas about Jeremy taking a safe flying lesson in a real plane. Real planes moved too fast. Real planes flew too high. Real planes did not “glide on a cushion of air”. So she completed the on-line form as quickly as she could, paid with a credit card, and told Mr. James, when he shuffled in the door some moments later, that everything had been settled.
Jeremy found out on Friday, the night before his birthday. As anyone who has ever dreamed of flying can tell you, he was beside himself. No, he was more than beside himself. He was around, below, over and above himself. The poor boy could barely sleep he was so excited. He made sure everyone was up in time, even made them all breakfast. He was in the car before anyone else, like a family dog making sure it wasn’t left behind at vacation time. He was also prepared for a small chore that he needed to complete, while he was up in the air.
It wasn’t exactly a chore. Not quite. It was more like a mission. Something had been lost and Jeremy needed to retrieve it. While there were simpler ways of completing the mission, a retrieval from above was a retrieval that no one would expect. It was bold and daring, just like the missions that he had watched over and over again in his flying movies or read about in his flying books. So Jeremy stayed up most of the night planning the details of his mission, slept in his daring mission flight jacket, and had his daring mission tools ready, neatly concealed beneath the zipper and sleeve of his flight jacket, when the family finally joined him in the car and drove out to the field where Mr. McGillivibe was filling his balloon with hot air.
Bonnie. That was the hot air balloon’s name. When the James family arrived in the McGillivibes’ field, Mr. James parked the car facing the rising sun, so obscuring Mrs. James view out the windshield of the car that she thought, when she squinted through the windshield, that the writing on the balloon said Bonne. Mrs. James had studied French in school. Although McGillivibe did not strike her as a French name, Bonne, which means good, did. It seemed like an auspicious sign. It settled her nerves. It made Mrs. James decide to listen to music, and turn away from the massive teardrop of hot air, while the final preparations for lift-off were made.
There is more to preparing a hot air balloon lift-off than most people think. It involves hard work and careful calculations. The right mixture of weight and warm wind is required. While Mrs. James listened to her music (some old disco songs, songs that helped her remember what things were like when she was thirteen), Mr. James, Jeremy, and Jocelyn (Jeremy’s seven year-old sister) learned about some of Mr. McGillivibe’s careful calculations. They also learned, from Mrs. McGillivibe, about the reservation that Mrs. James had been paid on-line for a family excursion. This news was wondrous to Jocelyn. It was shocking to Mr. James. It didn’t faze Jeremy, who was too preoccupied with finding a way to speak with Mr. McGillivibe alone to notice that anything was amiss.
Depending on your perspective, misunderstanding can be either marvelous or miserable. It was marvelous for Jocelyn; she secretly shared Jeremy’s enthusiasm for the sky, and so scrambled into Bonnie’s basket before anyone could ask her twice. It was miserable for Mr. James; he shared Mrs. James’s attraction to the ground and everything solid about it and about not trying to be too lofty in one’s aspirations. But, when Mrs. McGillivibe explained that a thirteen year-old and seven year-old girl could not ride in a hot air balloon without a parent, when Mrs. McGillivibe showed Mr. James the completed payment form, when Mr. James saw Mrs. James waving through the windshield of the family car in response to his questioning gesture, he decided that his fate was sealed. He stood there, his hands turned to the sky like a beggar. Mrs. James hands flapped back at him like a parent shooing her child onto a sports field. Mr. James then did what many a father does when he finds himself stuck in a situation that will bring enjoyment for his children but misery for himself: he misinterpreted his wife’s intent. Reasoning that Mrs. James was still angry over the flying lesson that he had originally suggested for Jeremy, Mr. James in turn reasoned that the family air balloon ride was a way for Mrs. James to help the entire family understand just how foolhardy it was to fly. Mrs. James waved for bravery while Mr. James gestured for help. And so, when Mr. McGillivibe himself motioned to the trembling wicker basket, Mr. James followed Jocelyn into it. Lift-off, Mr. McGillivibe proudly proclaimed, was imminent. Payback, Mr. James silently understood, was vicious.
Anyone familiar with the basic rules of marital common sense might have immediately corrected Mr. James about his blunder. Sadly, for Mr. James at least, no one who fit the description was there to advise him. The McGillivibes announced conditions perfect for flight. Jeremy and Jocelyn bounced like puppies in the basket at Mr. James’ sides. And Mrs. James continued to wave at Mr. James as if this was the grandest surprise of the year.
It was. But it was a surprise for Mrs. James as well as her husband. Because Mrs. James had not been waving at Mr. James, Jeremy, and Jocelyn from the front seat of the family Chevrolet. Instead, she had been swatting at a bee that refused to acknowledge that the front seat of the Chevrolet was not bee territory but was instead the terrified domain of the mother of a thirteen year-old boy about to soar, like Icarus, into the sky.
Never park your car pointing into the morning sun. For the rest of her life, Mrs. James offered that advise to anyone who would listen. Never park your car pointing into the morning sun because your husband might mistake your battle with a bee for encouragement to climb into a hot air balloon basket with both your son and your daughter and sail them off into danger.
Which is what happened.
The morning was glorious – at least from Jeremy’s point-of-view. Bonnie was off the ground, Mr. McGillivibe had agreed to aim its trajectory toward Camelot Court, and everything Jeremy needed for his retrieval mission was safely stored inside his flight jacket. Pilots don’t just fly without a mission, Jeremy later explained to a journalist. Not the good ones, at least. Good pilots leave the ground with a goal. Jeremy’s goal was his boomerang.
The boomerang, an early birthday present from Uncle Marauder, was genuine. It came from Australia and was brilliantly shaped and colored. The instructions that came with it explained how to hold it, how to aim it, how to throw it, and how to catch it when it returned. So Jeremy had climbed into the tree house in his backyard and practiced the hold and the aim. He knew that he should wait for a big field to practice the throw and the catch. But he couldn’t resist a short test flight. So he flung the boomerang, with “intention” (which is what it said to do in the instructions), and waited. It is easy to guess that the boomerang did not return. It is harder to guess that the boomerang caught the wind, sailed around some trees, sailed around the house behind those trees, and dropped into Rachel Wiley’s front yard. The Wiley’s front yard had a fence. Behind that fence lived a dog. And with that dog, as Jeremy discovered when he had jogged down Camelot Court to retrieve his boomerang, were Rachel Wiley and Theodora Flannery. Theodora Flannery made Jeremy speak English like he needed a lot more practice. She made his feet dance like they heard some sort of distant music. Consequently, Jeremy passed by Rachel’s yard without getting his boomerang.
That had been Friday afternoon. Aborted boomerang retrieval, phase 1. Today was Saturday. Today was boomerang retrieval, phase 2.
Boomerang retrieval phase 2 was simple, really. The plan had come to Jeremy all at once when he had learned at dinner on Friday that his parents’ birthday present to him on Saturday was a ride in a hot air balloon. It had made so much sense that he had a hard time believing anything except that this was destiny. Here were the details of boomerang retrieval phase 2:
- Friday night – Jeremy would rig something together, a contraption of some sort, to retrieve the boomerang from Rachel Wiley’s front yard.
- Saturday morning – Jeremy would convince Mr. McGillivibe to steer the balloon down Camelot Court.
- Saturday morning (later) – Jeremy would retrieve the boomerang from the hot air balloon with the contraption he had rigged.
- Saturday morning (later than that) – the mission would be completed.
Step 1 had been easy. Being an inventive type, Jeremy had easily rigged a contraption that worked something like a fishing rod. In fact, it was a fishing rod (of sorts), just one with the reel taped to his forearm and a sturdy fiberglass net tied to the end of some high test fishing line.
Step 2 had also not taken too much work; Mr. McGillivibe relented, swiftly changing his attitude from curmudgeonly to conniving, when he learned (from Jocelyn) that the friend who lived on Camelot Court, the one that Jeremy said that he wanted to impress, was a girl.
Jeremy decided to ignore what his sister Jocelyn said. It produced the desired result and, on a mission like his, the objective was all that mattered.
So, the hot air balloon, errantly departing McGillivibe’s field with not one but three James family members, was headed for Camelot Court, the BRS2.0 (boomerang retrieval system, version 2) was inside his jacket sleeve, and the sun was on his brow. All was ready for steps 3 and 4. Jeremy could not have been happier.
Mr. James could have been. He was clinging to the ropes connecting the basket to the balloon, as if he might hold the balloon and basket together should the knots connecting them somehow give way. He was still trying to understand how Mrs. James had been so happy to send the family off toward their doom. That thought led him to wonder why hot air balloons didn’t have some sort of safety system for their passengers. A person had to wear a life vest in a boat. Shouldn’t there be some similar required flotation device for a hot air balloon, in case something happened to the large balloon above the basket? Within five minutes of lift-off, Mr. James was so preoccupied with the things that didn’t seem right about the flight that he ignored many things that did. One of those was Mr. McGillivibe’s kind offer of a muffin and hot coffee.
Mr. McGillivibe set the muffin and coffee on a tray for Mr. James. He patted the smiling Jocelyn on the head. He liked the thrill that the ride was already giving Jeremy and he decided, on the spur of the moment, to do something that he knew Mrs. McGillivibe would not approve of. But he knew it was the right thing to do. Here was how he knew it:
- Mr. McGillivibe had met Mrs. McGillivibe when the two were thirteen. The meeting had taken place after a daring backyard baseball retrieval mission by Mr. McGillivibe.
- Today Jeremy James turned thirteen. A girl Jeremy liked lived on Camelot Court.
- If Mr. McGillivibe brought the balloon low enough to the girl’s house, perhaps years from now Jeremy and the girl would be together, like he and Mrs. McGillivibe.
- Perhaps, years later, the couple would remember Mr. McGillivibe.
It was a flawed line of reasoning. Not to mention a selfish one. But it was a strong line of reasoning, from the romantic male perspective. It was a line of reasoning that resulted in one of the lowest passes over Bobbing Apple that Mr. McGillivibe could remember.
It all worked perfectly for Jeremy and his mission. He pointed to the location of Camelot Court, which was easy for an aspiring pilot who had studied Bobbing Apple air maps for years. Mr. McGillivibe smiled and let Bonnie drift lower. Jeremy saluted and leaned over Bonnie’s side as Mr. McGillivibe (and the luck of the morning) guided the balloon into perfect position.
Jeremy extracted the net from the inside of his jacket, connecting it to the fishing line clamp he dug out of his jacket sleeve. He cast BRS2 into the Wiley yard with precision movement. He let BRS2 slide along the yard toward the boomerang in the far corner. He got the boomerang. But he got more than his boomerang. He also got Bumpers.