driving down the small country highway that cuts trough her town, stuck at a traffic light at 7 am, she has to do a double take to make sure she’s really seeing what she just saw. the day is crisp and bright, the way only October mornings can be: sharp and cold without being freezing, a reminder that winter is not far behind. from here, it looks like a dot in the sky, but as she drives closer, she sees that it is, in fact, a hot-air balloon. she brings her eyes back to the road, notes that none of the other drivers on the road have noticed. no one looks up anymore, and life passes them by just like this. she tries to look ahead, but her eyes are drawn up again to the balloon, floating serenely in mid-air. all these people, and no one finds it strange, no one either bothers to look. in a flash, she is alarmed. have all people become so heartless, such drones that they no longer marvel at man walking on air? 7 am in the morning, and all they care about is beating the rush hour. she always promised herself she would never be like this, never be a drone, would follow beauty if it called out to her loud enough, if it beckoned like this.
at some point in her adult life, reason and maturity won out over whim a spontaneity. she thinks about this awhile, reaches for her cell phone. before she knows it, she has called out from work and is speeding down the road, trying to catch the balloon where it lands. it’s lunacy, she has no idea where it will touch ground, it is simply floating on, further away.
she turns off the highway onto a dirt road, where they’ve been selling strawberries and jersey tomatoes in the summer, corn and pumpkins in the winter, ever since she was 5 years old. the farmer’s stall is still there. they’re opening up for the day, hauling ears of corn and pumpkins and apples from the truck, when they see a determined-looking young woman, flying down the road in the direction of the town’s farmland. none but the farmers go down this road this early in the morning, but they just shrug their shoulders and continue about their work: “mebbe she’s just from outta town” mutters the farmhand.
she drives and drives, past frost-bitten farmland, harvested fields. the balloon has started to sink in the sky, and finally, she sees it touch down in front of an old farmhouse, some ways down the road. the car slows…what now? she’s followed the balloon, but won’t she look ridiculous going to ask after it? what will she say? and to whom?
she bites her lower lip and tries to think, when a man emerges from the farmhouse and sees her. he starts walking towards her, and she looks around wildly, unsure of retreat or surrender. but as he gets closer, she sees that he is smiling – she kills her engine and gets out of the car, conscious suddenly of her business clothes and his rugged overalls. he’s old and weathered, a smell neatly-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
“I knew someone’d come,” is all he says when he reaches her, but there’s a smile on his face that reaches his eyes and makes them glow.
“I-I…I just followed,” zara sputters. “it’s 7 am in the morning. who’d take a balloon ride this early?”
he looks up at the sky thoughtfully, then back at her. “come into the house for some cider – my wife’s made it fresh this morning. it’s warm, and inside’s where the story should be told.”
still unsure, but liking the sound of hot cider (her breakfast would be around now, grabbed quickly from the wawa down the street), she follows him in.
zara loves rambling old farmhouses like this one. there’s a coziness to them, an oldness, a solidness. the rugs, the fireplace, a dog sitting by the hearth. the kitchen is warm, the farmer’s wife crinkly and softly doughy, rosy-cheeked and cheerful, unsurprised by the visitor. even a brown visitor.
they sit at the table, introduce themselves. the farmer’s name is jonas, his wife’s is Margaret. after a few sips of cider and companionable silence, his story begins:
long before the town sprawled out, before the strip malls and the new high school, before the country highway that now cuts through the heart of it, there used to be a carnival. it came every year around this time, odd that it came in October, but people welcomed any sort of fair back then. it was grand and mysterious, a little frightening with its haunted house and ghost clowns. but there was music and noise and eating and color, and a bonfire burned that rivaled the autumn leaves themselves. it brought light into October, it brought shivers to the town folk. but the grandest thing, the attraction everyone came for, was the massive hot air balloon, which took flight with dawn’s early morning rays. it was large and loud and colorful, decorated with eyes and mouths and pictures, looked for all the world like ray bradbury’s Halloween Tree kite, made up of fragments from some long forgotten circus. the carnival would last late into the night, and in the early rays of morning, some of the braver townfolk would set sail, across the rolling landscapes and sleeping town. every year, more would try, until even the most timid became bold enough to soar, until every person in town had flown to the moon.
then one October, the carnival didn’t come. the townspeople waited and waited. but there was no sign of the carnival that year, or the next year, or the year after that. shortly afterward, the highway was built, the town began to shuffle and stir, to awake to the new world and mechanical machines that did its work. and people forgot about the carnival.
but jonas did not. he was a boy when the magic entranced him, old as Methuselah now. he remembered the balloon, and the wonder it stirred in him. when he grew older, he built a balloon, adding on to it every year, scraps of pictures and figments of imagination. every year, this day in October, he would fly with his children, then his grandchildren, now his great-grandchildren. and every year, some curious soul or two would make its way to his farmhouse, to hear the story of the October balloon, at 7 am in the morning.
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