by Jack Finney
A breeze touched the balloon momentarily and it slowly revolved. As he turned in the air Charley suddenly saw over his shoulder the great shiny-black expanse of San Francisco Bay far ahead and far below. From ground level it lay behind rows of hills and could not be seen. But hanging up here in the sky he saw it all, saw the mysterious lights of its great bridges—dotted lines of luminous orange-juice-color lights curving across the shiny blackness. A path of moonlight silvered the water between the bridges silhouetting Angel Island, humping up out of the bay, lusterless, black, and light-less. White mast lights and green side lights, the ship itself invisible, moved across the ink-shiny blackness and beyond all this, rising up in light and splendor, was the glorious glitter of San Francisco. The shining city crisscrossed by the pattern of its streets and the vast black Bay edged in light on the Oakland rim were a great living map far below his hanging feet. It was an awesome sight, incredible and beautiful, and Charley shouted in delight.
The slow revolution of the balloon continued and when Charley again faced south the Bay had disappeared, the tops of the hills that concealed it rising beyond his head. The heated air in the balloon cooling in the night, the balloon was sinking and within minutes, he knew, it would gently collapse in the street directly below him. He tried to make it stop by an effort of will, tried to make himself lighter on the bar he sat on. But like an ancient slow-moving elevator, it descended steadily until, well below the level of the surrounding hills, a breeze suddenly took it.
Nearly every night during the summer, beginning just after sunset, an easterly breeze flowed down this street, channeled between the hills like a river. Charley moved with it now, along the curving street toward home, perhaps ten feet above the street lamps moving past him on either side of the road. Down here between the bases of the hills, the breeze narrowed and quickened, and now he moved swiftly, the trapped current carrying him silently along the wide street precisely over the white-painted center line following its curves and windings exactly.
Slipping through the night just over the roofs of the familiar houses, he glanced from one side to the other as he passed. He knew or at least spoke to the people in most of these houses. But now the houses were dark, the cars parked before them dead and silent, their windows blind with dew, and Charley thought of his own empty house and felt suddenly depressed. A cat darted across the street through a circle of light from a street lamp; it stopped suddenly, crouching motionless in the gutter to stare up at him over a shoulder as he swung past.
Just ahead the road curved, and now the breeze curved with it and Charley swung around the bend nearing his house. His dangling legs swinging from the turn, Charley rounded the curve and a movement ahead caught his eye. Then he saw the big Dalmatian dog trotting briskly beside the curb and just entering a circle of lamplight. This side of the circle he caught the slower movement of a woman in a tan polo coat. He knew who she was. Once or twice, driving home late at night, he had seen her walking this dog. She was a Mrs. Lanidas who lived a dozen houses down the street from his.
There was nothing he could do, there was no time to spill ballast. His feet and half his body were below the level of the glass-shaded street lamp now and his shadow flashed across the circle of light on the lonely asphalt road as Mrs. Lanidas walked into it. She stopped, her chin lifting quickly, and for the space of a heartbeat she and Charley, looking back over his shoulder, stared into each other's eyes. Then Charley swung on around a final bend. Just before his driveway, the balloon sinking fast, his stockinged feet touched the road and he ran, tugging at the tennis nets to bring down the collapsing balloon.
Still running, he swung into his driveway dragging the balloon through the air on the very last of its buoyancy. Then it melted onto the concrete before the garage door in a rustling mass of striped cloth. Stooping quickly, his hand on the door handle, Charley paused for an instant, listening. In the almost complete silence of the late-at-night street he heard the slight grate of leather on pebbles. The steps were hurrying, he thought, and he heaved the garage door up. Tugging, yanking, he dragged the balloon in alongside the car, then grabbed for the garage door. But even as it slid down again, the footsteps stopped and he knew the woman was standing in the street at the end of his driveway staring at the door as it closed.
But nothing could have kept him from going up again. He got through the next day at the office. At home, even before he changed clothes, he was prowling through the garage, the attic of the tract house. There he found the little kerosene brazier he'd once bought for a camping trip he'd never taken. After eating a can of salmon and half a jar of black olives, he made a bracket of wire for the brazier, bending its ends into hooks. That finished, Charley sat on the davenport wearing his ski suit and socks, waiting for full dark.
It was past ten when he had the balloon strung up on its rope over the brick barbecue and stood tending the coals. Occasionally he glanced up at the balloon watching its sides unwrinkle, puff out, and gradually swell into roundness. Then he heard some slight sound, a sigh or little movement. Eyes squinting, he searched the blackness, then found the faint blur of a face a dozen yards out in the night. But even before he found it, he knew who it would be. And when she knew he'd found her, Mrs. Lanidas walked slowly toward him and Charley saw a movement at her feet, a sudden dilution of the darkness, and realized that her dog was with her and had sat silently watching him, too.
In her tan polo coat, Mrs. Lanidas walked into the little circle of firelight and for a moment they stood staring at each other. "I've got to go up, too," she said quickly and desperately. "I want to come with you. Please. I've got to. I've simply got to. You must take me. Please!"
She continued, the words spilling out, and all the reasons for refusing came rising up in Charley's mind. But he didn't speak any of them; he knew the truth when he heard it. For whatever reasons—and what they were didn't matter —she, too, had to do what he'd known he must do the day he lay out here staring at the hawk in the sky. And because Charley understood that feeling of absolute necessity, he couldn't refuse it and didn't bother going through the motions of protest. He said, "All right," then gestured at the dog. "What about him?"
"I'll tie him up here. He'll sit quietly." She spoke anxiously, afraid he'd change his mind. "I'm out with him every night, sometimes till one, two, even three o'clock. My husband never waits up or even notices I'm gone. He'll never know."
"It's dangerous." Charley glanced up at the balloon but he spoke perfunctorily, and she simply nodded to acknowledge that she'd heard and accepted the warning.
The balloon was puffed tight now and tugging hard. Charley turned off the blower switch, then threw a bucket of water onto the coals and the cloud of smoke turned milk-white in the moonlight. He hooked the wire bracket holding the kerosene burner into the netting and the brazier hung under the open neck of the balloon several feet below it. Charley lighted it, then thrust the stovepipe up into the balloon neck and let it slide down over the brazier and now the heat from the intense blue flame poured up into the balloon.
Mrs. Lanidas had tied her dog's leash to the barbecue and he lay on the patio watching them, head cocked. Charley gestured politely at the swinglike seat hanging just over the flagstones. Mrs. Lanidas nodded, took off her coat, and Charley saw that she was not, as he'd thought, wearing black stockings; Mrs. Lanidas had on a skintight black leotard.
She sat down on the bar, holding the support rope, legs straight out over the pavement, ankles gracefully crossed. Charley sat beside her, glanced at her, and she nodded. He pulled at the rope and they rose instantly into the moonlight.
They rose swiftly, the houses, street, and hills contracting beneath them, and when he looked at Mrs. Lanidas the fear was gone from her eyes. They were half closed in pleasure now, the breeze rippling her hair, and she smiled at Charley in delight and he grinned back. Tonight the balloon didn't drift. Somewhere above hilltop level a high-up breeze took them, carrying them south, the balloon slowly revolving. As it turned Charle
y watched Mrs. Lanidas' face. She caught sight of the Bay, a vast blackness striped by moonlight, and of the jewel-bright orange dots of the bridge lights, and of the clustered white towers of the lighted city rising in splendor beyond the black water, and she gasped in pleasure and said, "Oh, my god!" and Charley laughed aloud, his pleasure reinforced by hers. The balloon completed its revolution, and, their backs to the Bay now, they moved over the land watching it slide out from under their feet.
Marin County, California, is low softly rounded hills and little valleys winding between them; and it is flatland, seashore, and bay shore. It is towns with apartment buildings and not enough parking space and it is still-untouched areas where foxes and deer live. It is rows of squeezed-together tract houses, a commuting area; and there are ranches yet where real cowboys round up cattle. It has a mountain twenty-five hundred feet high, a forest of giant redwood trees, and there are miles of coastline on which ocean waves break. Soundlessly, effortlessly, they moved over this patchwork and Charley kept his bearings by the tiny moving lights on the highway that cut through the hills below. Sometimes he spilled sand from the paper ballast sacks strung in the netting beside him. Sometimes he released hot air from a vent in the top of the balloon or raised or lowered the flame in his burner. He had the feel of ballooning now. Moving steadily along through the sky and the night he had never, not even as a child, felt so free.
Off to the right lay the floodlighted buff-color walls of San Quentin Prison looking like a miniature castle. Behind it the lights of San Rafael lay scattered on its hills. Below them lay moon-washed darkness, an area unbuilt upon. It was glorious moving along above it; a thrill glowed in Charley's breast. At the same time it was an utter contentment, and glancing at Mrs. Lanidas beside him—who turned to smile —he knew she felt the same way. The air was soft and warm and pressed gently against their faces. He glanced over his shoulder; the great Bay, though still far ahead, was appreciably closer and Charley lowered the balloon feeling the decrease in pressure of the bar under his legs as they began sliding closer to the ground in a long, slow arc. The breeze held and Charley lowered again till they were perhaps a hundred feet above ground so that he could descend quickly if he had to before they were blown out over the Bay.
Swinging on their bar they crossed the boundary of a tract such as the one they lived in. From here it was a crisscross of sparsely illuminated streets; of squares of darkness that were front or back yards; of lighted windows; of rods of moving light which were automobiles; and of occasional rectangles of moonlight which were swimming pools. Sound moved up to them distinctly. The night was balmy, windows were open, and they heard—glancing at each other to smile—the familiar nightly blasts of gunfire from television sets. They crossed a back yard and saw the red glow of cigarette ends and the quiet voices of two men.
"Four kids named Stephen in his grade alone. Aren't there any kids named George or Frank any more?"
"I know. Same with girls, these days. Ten million Debbies and no more Ednas."
"Or Edwins."
"Or Gladyses."
"Or …"
They heard a child call, "Mom!" and the mother answer. "What is it? Now, get to sleep!" As a dog glanced up at the moon they saw the moonlight eerily reflected in its eyes. Then the dog saw the balloon's black silhouette moving across the face of the moon and raced the length of the back yard, its chain rattling, barking at them. Then for miles around and minutes afterward the barking was picked up and repeated like a tom-tom message. Not ten feet off in the darkness they heard a duck honk and the beat of its wings.
Charley felt godlike, drifting soundlessly and invisibly over the rooftops. He wondered what the people under them were doing and thinking. He loved them, suddenly, all of them, and wanted to bestow a blessing on them and did so. He trickled a little sand into his palm, then scattered it benevolently over the community below saying, "Blessings. Blessings on you all, from your friends Charley Burke and Mrs. Lanidas."
Then they laughed and in simultaneous impulse lifted their feet, ankles together, legs straight out, and leaned far back at arm's length, their free arms around each other's waists, supporting each other, and began to pump together, like children on a school playground. Alternately tucking their legs far back under their perch, then shooting them forward and up in unison, they swung back and forth in a great arc under the balloon and Charley began singing. "Come, Josephine, in my flying machine!" he shouted. "And it's up we'll go, up we'll go!" A man in pajamas hurried out into a yard directly below them, head turning rapidly as he looked all around. But he never looked up at Charley and Mrs. Lanidas grinning a hundred feet over his head and moving silently past.
They moved with the breeze, dipping with it into the valleys, then riding it over the hills again. They did this now, riding up the slope of a hill higher than any others they'd passed so far. They had left the tract, and the area below them was black and lightless. The balloon had revolved several times as they traveled so Charley was confused, not sure where they were, and when they reached the crest of the hill and rose over it the whole sweep of the Bay suddenly lay before them. Down the other slope, they moved with the breeze and an instant later sailed out across the shoreline over the Bay—and the enormous length and tremendous height of the great Golden Gate Bridge suddenly dwarfed them, towering over their heads and incredibly close, not fifty yards to the right.
And they were dropping. Here over the water the current of air that carried them flowed on down to the water's surface, moving just over it, and in the blackness beneath them Charley suddenly saw the white caps of waves. Then he heard them, too, heard their cold and watery ripple, and understood how very close they were. High, high overhead hung the roadway of the bridge, its yellow lighting shining far up into the shadowed red superstructure of towers and cables even farther beyond them. An instant later, arms tight around each other's waists, gripping the support ropes, they were staring directly up at the underside of the bridge, silhouetted blackly against the moonlit sky, and Charley understood that they were being swept under the bridge and out to sea, dangling just above the white-speckled black water.
He spilled ballast. He tore open the sand sacks as fast as his free arm could move. Their trapeze seat jerked under them, and they shot toward the sky. Kicking his feet sideways, gripping both ropes and jerking his body at the waist, Charley managed to turn the balloon so that they faced the bridge. But even before the half-turn was complete they'd shot to the level of the roadway and for an instant—not a dozen feet out in the blackness west of the bridge—they stared over their shoulders directly into the windows of cars driving past them. Then, Mrs. Lanidas clinging with one arm to Charley's waist, they were staring down at moving car roofs, yellowed by the bridge lights, and the car roofs were shrinking and they were still rising.
But now they were free of the surface breeze and climbing vertically. Even in his rigidly suppressed panic Charley was observing, judging. They rose but more and more slowly until—just higher than the flat tops of the enormous bridge towers—they stopped and through several moments hung absolutely motionless not six feet from the northern tower of the bridge and nearly level with its top. Far below the cars had shrunk to miniatures, the six-lane roadway to the width of a man's hand. Around them the air lay still and unmoving through a dozen heartbeats while they held their breaths. Then they felt the air stir infinitesimally, and ever so slowly it began to move them not seaward but back toward the bridge and for an instant Charley closed his eyes in relief. Then he opened them quickly to grin at Mrs. Lanidas and after a moment she smiled back.
Almost precisely even with the level top of the bridge tower, they drifted slowly toward it and would have bumped gently into it if Charley hadn't fended them off with his free arm. For a moment the flat top of the great bridge tower lay directly before them like a moonlit table top, their knees almost touching it. Inspired by the excitement of relief, Charley reached overhead and rubbed a finger across the base of the kerosene brazier. I
t came away blackened with soot and he leaned forward slightly and in the moonlight wrote "C.B." on the very top of the northern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. He looked at it for a moment—proudly, smiling—then glanced at Mrs. Lanidas, and she reached up to the brazier, then wrote "E.L." just under his initials. Once more Mrs. Lanidas rubbed her finger through the soot of the brazier, reached out to the tower, and began to draw something—a circle, an oval, or something else—around the set of initials. But what it was to be Charley never knew because the breeze had them again now, their moment of motionless-ness over, and they moved on across the bridge leaving their initials on its very top to the eternal mystification of the steeplejacks who painted it.
They were out over the Bay moving high above it in a wide arc that was carrying them, Charley saw, north toward the Marin County shoreline again. Off to the right lay the shining city and they stared down at it in awe. Its lights were scattered thinly now, most of the city asleep. But they picked out the floodlighted front of the Fairmont Hotel and, directly across from it at their own eye level, the huge windows of the Top of the Mark. Far to the south they saw Market Street angling across the city, the great dark rectangle of Golden Gate Park, and the whole maplike crisscrossing of San Francisco's streets rising over and then slipping down its hills. And they heard—very clearly—the toylike cling-clang of a cable-car bell.
Then they were across the shoreline moving almost due north in a straight line which, Charley saw, would intersect their mile-and-a-half-long east-and-west street. Almost sleepily now, they simply sat waiting until they should reach it. Presently, when he recognized the curving pattern of lighted dots ahead which were the lamps of their street, they moved along it, following the curving white center line toward home.
