I Can Fly
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ordinary. She didn’t quite trust me, still. There was only one way to fix that.
I bounded, one, two, three and lifted my feet off the ground. With her back to me, she had no idea I was breast stroking around behind her. The phrase “breast stroking” made me laugh, and she whirled around, expecting the worst. Why did I keep laughing at the wrong moment?
When she saw me, though, she laughed too. “It worked!”
“Well, of course it did.” I did a fancy little kick-roll and touched down right in front of her. “Maybe the magic that keeps us in the air also keeps us from showing someone who doesn’t also have the magic.”
“That’s gotta be it! So…do you want to do it together?”
Boy, did I. As we worked out the ground rules for our first flight together, I sheepishly admitted my ironic fear of heights, and she agreed to keep it low and slow for me, even though she had no problem going over the treetops. We also agreed we wouldn’t touch while we were in the air, at least at first. Once we were comfortable…well, then we would see.
So we bounded through the grass and lifted our feet off the ground in tandem. She pulled ahead and did a couple of barrel rolls with outstretched arms. “This is awesome, Warren!” she cried. I wasn’t worried about anyone seeing us. The road next to my secret place was little-used, and anyone looking up from the valley would be dazzled by the city lights.
We skimmed over the grass, then she took off and led me on a chase through the woods. We dodged tree limbs and bushes, giggling like school kids.
When we emerged from the trees, she touched down and traipsed a bit before coming to a stop, and I followed. “I’m so happy to have someone to fly with!” she exclaimed.
I drew her to my chest and pressed my lips against hers, then whispered, “Take me up there.”
She followed my eyes to the sky and smiled. “Come on!”
That night we soared higher than I had ever thought possible. We held hands and swooped in and out of the clouds. It was, without a doubt, the most magical night of my life. I was holding her in mid-air when she said, “Do you think everyone can do this? I mean, we didn’t know we could until we tried.”
“Maybe so. We’re just a couple of ordinary people. But if anyone could do it, why wouldn’t we be able to fly in front of anyone? I don’t know, Edith.” I tightened my arm around her and snuggled my face into her hair. “But I’m glad we found each other.”
“It’s just like we were meant to be together.”
Exhausted, we lowered slowly to the ground, hand in hand. The moon was so bright we cast shadows as if it were noon. We had just touched down, when I stopped short. Someone was standing just outside the tree line, a grizzled old hunter who stared at us with his gun slung over his shoulder. He shouted to “If you all want to frolic in someone’s field, you can do it in someone else’s. Crazy druggies.” And with that he turned and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
Now, that gave me pause. He’d seen us descend from the heavens, had seen us touch our feet to the ground, and it hadn’t fazed him. “What do you make of that?" I asked Edith. "He didn’t see us flying. He thinks we’re drug addicts.”
“It must be the magic. He didn’t see us.”
I shook my head. “But the magic is what kept us from being able to fly, if that was magic at all. This guy saw us land.”
She stared off into the woods for a long moment. Suddenly she bounded off the ground and glided a short distance toward where the man had entered the woods. She realized I wasn’t following and swung around to retrieve me. “Come on, we have to go get him,” she said, tugging on my arm as she landed in front of me.
“Why?”
“It’s obvious that he can fly, too. He’s probably a member of a whole secret society of flyers.” Her eyes shone with excitement.
“So why didn’t he just say hi?”
“Because he’s grumpy,” she said, “and they’re secret. Come on.”
“Okay, but let’s walk.” I waggled an imaginary cigar and said in my best Groucho Marx, “I just flew in from Albuquerque, and boy, are my arms tired.”
She punched my bicep and dragged me toward the woods by my wrist. Okay, so she wasn’t in the mood.
We looked for a half-hour, but the old man was gone. Edith said, “No one can walk that fast. He must have flown out.” I reluctantly agreed. She didn’t need my agreement, however, because she’d made up her mind and that was that.
That was the first time we flew, and the only time we ever saw the old hunter, despite flying there at least a couple of times a week for the past two years. Of course, now that she’s expecting we don’t fly so high, or for as long. She says she’s too jiggly to enjoy it much now. She wonders if the baby will be able to fly on its own, or if we’ll have to push it out there, like a fledgling from the nest.
The things we do for love. Agreeing with your future wife when there’s no way to know the truth, for instance. Or ignoring several enlightening, impartial outside viewpoints. Searching for a secret society for which you have no evidence. Also, quietly planning to intervene when your wife tries to throw your firstborn off a building.
Are we really flying? Yeah, I think we are. But as the immortal Gerald Hopkins once said, girl’s crazy, dude.
Yep, she’s the girl for me.