Despite All The Smoke

Despite All the Smoke

The boy floated ten feet above the boat resting on the lake floor. He was connected to it

by a thin yellow rope that ran from a deck cleat to the center of his life jacket, holding him in the

water as if he were a frozen pale and orange balloon. Kevin choked out bubbles at the sight. He

moved his head away along with the flashlight attached to his mask and the child disappeared

into nothing. The sound of his breathing evened out and he could feel his breath escape in little

spheres of air caressing the sides of his cheeks as they rose. Marine snow drifted down in front of

him, but against the black of the water it looked as if her were in space among stars and galaxies

he was much bigger than. Down there he felt as big as a god, and suddenly, just as lonely. He

turned his head back and his only company was illuminated again.

It’d been two days since the boat had gone down. The boy’s lips were blue and his hair

stood suspended in the water except for where small fish passed through the strands and thumped

their mouths against his head. It was peaceful, the way everything stood motionless even as the

tail end of the storm system lashed at the surface. But staring at the ghost of the child created a

sensation of sinking that didn’t come from the water pressure hugging his chest sixty-seven feet

underwater.

Kevin was the first of the dive team to get to the wreck. After waiting in the waning

storm for half a day, and even longer for the news crews to clear out, he had gotten restless, and

upset that he had to miss a day at the zoo with his family. He’d been on the deck of a pontoon

boat with his boss, Chief Lancaster, and a few divers out of their wetsuits. They were more

interested in huddling around a phone to watch a baseball game than imagining the dead boy

Hellstrom—Smoke—2

swaying in the current, and how they were going to bring him up. The rain cover flapped in the

wind.

The only one still wearing a wetsuit besides Kevin was Paul. Paul was a shaggy haired

high school senior with a thin shoreline of acne on the left side of his jaw. He had something

between a job shadow and an internship at the police department, meaning he scrubbed a lot of

things and laughed along with the other cops even if he didn’t know what was funny. He also

happened to be SCUBA certified, and looked very eager to get away from the insane rocking of

the boat and into the water by the way he clutched the handles on the dirty blue cooler where he

sat. Lancaster had let him come along to haul equipment, but said there was no way he was

actually going to dive.

One officer shifted his gaze from the Braves game on the phone to Paul and laughed until

he sneezed into the crook of his elbow. Paul looked down and stared at the valve on his oxygen

tank while empty energy drink cans clinked against each other inside the cooler. The sun

bleached rain cover poured a small river down into his lap.

Kevin waited for Lancaster to start messing with his handheld radio again, then hefted his

tank onto his back and adjusted the straps. He walked up to Paul and squatted next to him,

flicking the wet tank clutched in between the kid’s knees. “Get suited up, we’re going in.” Paul’s

face didn’t change, but Kevin winked at him and stood up. Lancaster stood at the bow of the boat

and turned the dial on his portable VHF, held it up to his ear, shook his head and then twisted the

dial more. Kevin tightened his flippers then stumbled in them over to the chief and turned the

radio to channel 16 for him. At the back of the boat Paul checked his tank’s pressure, and Kevin

waited for him to put it on his back and start to strap on his flippers. Lancaster wiped rain off his

forehead and tightened the hood of his black rain poncho.


“Hey, chief,” Kevin said and leaned in close to him to point out into the rain, “looks like

another news crew is coming in.”

Lancaster looked past the end of Kevin’s finger, and clenched the railing of the pontoon

boat to steady himself against its rolling as he leaned through heavy rain drops to look. Paul

finished adjusting his flippers while biting the collar of his wet suit. Kevin gave him the thumbs

up and made his way to the back of the boat, pulling his own scuba mask down over his eyes and

popping in his mouth piece. The rest of the team didn’t notice him, but sighed in unison as the

Brave’s struck out to end the inning. He took a few breaths and waited for Paul to do the same,

then hopped backwards and sunk into the water. On his way down he caught Lancaster rubbing

his eyes and squinting as he tried to find the imaginary boat Kevin had pointed out.

Kevin was laughing when he hit the water.

After he was under the surface he heard another splash and saw Paul fiddling with his

tank straps since they’d loosened after he flipped backwards over the railing to look cool. Kevin

decided not to wait for him and turned on the flashlight connected to his mask. He swam down

and thought about how stupid it was to wait any longer, especially with the boat tied to a buoy so

it wouldn’t drift away. It was the same buoy the father held onto in the storm, staring at water he

knew was not empty for hours before a fishing boat spotted him. While Kevin sank he imagined

his two daughters roaring at lions with ice cream on the tips of their noses. They fed sheep brown

pellets out of their hands and giggled when the pink tongues licked their palms. But as darkness

and cold crept into his suit he thought of the boy’s father, the man standing in between two

planks of wood riddled with pegs that stretched out forever into black. On each peg was a length

of rope tied in a different knot, one of which he would find tied to the boy’s life jacket. One of

which was probably the reason the boy drowned.


Now that he was at the wreck he wished he’d waited for Paul. He made diving in against

orders something fun. He’d forgotten they weren’t going down to escape the troubles of the

world above the surface. They weren’t going to look at a coral reef or explore caves adorned

with starfish made to look like curved interstellar void; he was there to get the body of a dead

boy and return it to his father. The kid would never get see any more polar bears swim up to the

glass of their tanks, or watch the necks of giraffes brush against tree branches as they stretched to

try and lick the sun. The memory of his laughter made him nauseous. Self respect was slowly

squeezed out of him in breaths and replaced by something heavier, making him sink.

The boy rose above him as he drifted down to the back of the boat. His light glinted off

the metal railing of the fifteen foot fishing boat with its steering wheel frozen in the middle of a

right turn forever. A school of minnows swam into a hole in the boat where one of the two

engines had fallen off. His flippers made contact with the cockpit and he kicked off it to keep

from disturbing anything important on the wreck. He found the stern cleat where the line

connecting the boy to the boat was tied. The line was cleated off perfectly on the thin anvil-

shaped piece of metal. It would’ve definitely held the boy if he’d fallen overboard during the

storm, which was why the father had tied him to it in the first place.

The knot showed that the boy’s dad knew what he was doing and had the calm about him

to do it right. If the knot on the boy’s life jacket was one that could be easily untied, something

with a long end of line that could be tugged on to easily undo the entire knot then the father

might be able to rest easier.

Kevin pulled out a camera from a bag tied to his waist and took a picture of it. He kicked

hard and swam backward to where the hole was in the hull. It was square with patches of rust

around where the bolts had been. Wiring and fuel lines dangled out of it and he could see where


they connected inside the boat to the other engine that was barely attached. This meant the

engine couldn’t have been ripped off from an impact because there would’ve been gashes and

fraying in the fiberglass where the mounting bolts were torn out from it. He took some pictures

of the dark inside where the water had flooded in, thinking that the motor mount had been

improperly installed. After just enough rattling the engine had gotten tired of supporting its own

weight and dropped off. Kevin wondered if the engine would have committed suicide if it knew

that it was killing a boy, too.

He searched around the boat for the engine, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Fish darted

away and kicked up mud from the lake bed in swirls of brown calligraphy. He waved his hands

to clear the water and a thin layer of silt came off what looked like the snout of a large crocodile

emerging from the mud. A piece of dark glass shined back at him and he covered it up again,

making sure the imaginary reptile’s eye slits were closed so it wouldn’t shake his hand with its

mouth and drag him under.

A note pad floated in front of his mask. You need to look at this, was written on the

waterproof paper. Paul tapped him on the shoulder and Kevin shrugged. Paul shook his head and

swam back up while Kevin kept his camera pointed at the bottle. After a moment he stowed it

without taking the picture and buried the bottle back under the mud. They swam back to where

the boy floated, their lights shining off the silver reflectors on the jacket and casting dark

shadows behind him. Paul blew out a long stream of bubbles and pointed to the knot on the life

jacket.

The rope looped through several straps on the life vest. It was tied in such a way that

even though the thick buckles were undone the child couldn’t loosen it enough to get out. The

yellow nylon wound around the taut line over a half dozen times, forming loops, granny knots


and half hitches: knots tied by hands that were anything but calm…knots that the boy’s hands

had frantically clawed over and pulled at while his father dove underwater to try and save him,

feeling his son’s scream-filled air bubbles crash against his hands and face as he swam down.

Paul waved his hand in front of Kevin. He blinked in return. The camera in Paul’s hand

hummed as it rose, ready to take a picture of the gnarled rope, a picture that would soon be

shown to dozens of people with the father claiming that it was a knot, or that the two of them had

messed it up on their dive. Kevin thought about the father, how the news channels showed

pictures of his first wife and son who had died in a plane that crashed into the ocean, and how his

next wife died of cancer and left him a stepson that he had to watch sink to the bottom of a lake,

crushed by water just like his first family.

Kevin put his hand over the lens on Paul’s camera as the flash went off. He aimed it

down then took Paul’s note pad from him and grabbed the pen dangling from his waist and

wrote: I’m going to re-tie it. Paul’s eyes remained brown reflections of the lake bed through the

scratched plastic goggles. They had a look in them that resembled one he had seen countless

times in kids at parties holding beer cans or joints when the police busted in on them. Paul’s

were different though; not showing a fear of trouble he knew was coming like all the rest, but a

fear from seeing right and wrong balance on a moral set of scales. Paul closed his eyes, and when

he opened them he was staring at the boy, taking in every detail from the little giraffe emblem on

his shirt sleeve to the sketchily drawn rocket ship on the side of his left sneaker, blasting off into

cold, wet space. Kevin put his hand on his shoulder.

Paul’s face relaxed. He muttered something that came out in bubbles and then gave him a

thumbs up. Kevin kicked twice and floated over to the boy. He grabbed onto the life jacket not

containing any and the boy softly recoiled. He felt wrong for moving him; the way his hair


rippled and the angle his arms bent and rose were unnatural, but almost made it seem as if he

were coming back to life if it weren’t for his wide, black eyes. They stared off over his shoulder

at some concept one can only grasp in the moments before death, and looking into them turned

the air in Kevin’s chest into heavy water. He had seen that look before, too.

A year earlier he’d been radioed in to an emergency while on patrol. The dark blue house

was in an average carbon-copy suburban neighborhood with freshly cut lawn clippings stuck to

the driveway. A mailbox saluted him with red and blue balloons straining against it for their

freedom. It had been a backyard birthday party.

Kevin felt his hand moving through the water toward the boy’s head to brush his hair

back, but it grabbed the tangled line instead. He did his best to keep the boy still with one hand

while pulling line through the knot with his other. Light shone brightly off the reflectors on the

orange life vest and he turned the light on his mask away from it. The dull silver color they

turned to was the same as the balloons tied to the girl’s wrist in that backyard, the ones that tried

to tug her up into clouds as white as her dress had been. They wouldn’t let go of her, just like the

girl’s mother who knelt by her side to cover the wound on her throat with an oven mitt shaped

like a dinosaur head.

He felt his hands make the same shaky movements while untying the line as they had

untying the ribbon cords of those balloons on the girl’s wrist before he accidentally let go of

them. They floated away and disappeared into grey clouds.

The boy kept his gaze on the thing he didn’t want to understand but did, just like the

brother of that girl. The girl who’d just wanted to give her dog that’d been acting funny some

birthday cake. Her brother had kept his hands in the pockets of his overalls, his face inches from

the chain link fence of the dog cage when Kevin walked up to him. He stared at the German


Sheppard with a smear of blue and yellow on the fur of its face that was icing, and a smear of red

on its nose and mouth that wasn’t. The boy didn’t cry. He just stared at his best friend and

wondered why the dog had betrayed his sister and his trust. Kevin thought if he handed the boy

his gun he would’ve shot the dog without so much as a blink. His thumb grazed the diamond-

pattern grip on his pistol, but ended up moving to the boy’s shoulder to rest.

Then Kevin’s vision blurred as Paul shook him from behind. When Paul let go he was

staring at his hands that held the untied rope, but not the boy. He glanced up and saw an orange

spec getting smaller as it rose towards the infinite black ceiling. Paul swam after him but Kevin

stayed. Other than the sound of air escaping his mouth piece it should have been quiet, but there

was a noise: a gentle hiss that sounded like a child whispering.

A minute passed while he listened and felt his heart race, another engine rattling in an

attempt to fall off and sink somewhere never to be seen again, another hole for deep water to

rush in. Right after it did he began his ascent. Near the surface he felt the metal of one of the

hulls on the pontoon boat slide along his neck as he came above the water. To his right Paul was

half way out of the drink, being pulled up onto the boat with his mouth piece dangling beside

him. In front of him was a boat from News Channel 4. On the side of it was a picture of the

weather man in a Speedo holding onto an alligator that was water skiing into a hurricane. Above

it was the railing lined with camera men, guys holding fuzzy microphones on long sticks and

news anchors standing under black umbrellas. Kevin had seen plenty of camera men, but never

their eyes that were always planted firmly to viewfinders. He saw all of them now, their mouths

forming one long, solid and straight line.


Then he felt a pull at his tank harness and he was lifted out of the water. He wanted to

scream at everyone watching him. Instead he just imagined that he was a fish, caught and being

reeled in. As they dropped him to the deck he felt stupid for thinking that, but when he stood up

he couldn’t help but wonder if they’d throw him back in or mount him on a wall. Then he saw

the blue tarp with a lump underneath it. Lancaster was looking right past him at an angle that let

Kevin see the scar he got in Vietnam while saving his friend during a firefight as if to say, “What

have you done to save what little of this boy’s dignity he had left?”

But then he noticed Paul sitting on the swing gate at the bow of the boat. He stared at the

tarp with a faint smile, his head cocked to the side with his mask dangling from his fingers. He

was able to keep his balance despite a large wave that dipped the front of the boat completely

into the water. As Lancaster began to yell Kevin kept looking past him while Paul, without

moving his head or changing his expression, lifted his middle finger up to the back of the chief’s

head. Kevin tried to match the angle of the stare Lancaster had given him to show the dozen

drops of rain on his cheek as if to say, “More than you’ll ever know.”

The boat ride back to the dock was choppy. Everyone avoided Kevin like three week long

suspensions were contagious in their department. Paul eventually made his way to the back

around everyone pushed against the railings to be as far away from the heaped plastic sheet as if

death were contagious, too. He stopped on the way and tucked the tarp snuggly around the boy to

stop a corner from flapping in the wind. The rain kept him quiet but it didn’t stop him from

smiling or patting Kevin on the back. At the marina Kevin and Paul walked behind the rest of the

officers down the rain soaked dock, trying not to step in their shiny water shaped footprints. The

chief was out in front and pushed the stretcher with the boy on it. Its wheels left two straight


trails that glistened on the wet wood and the two walked on its path. They were the only ones far

enough back to see it.

The stretcher was loaded onto an ambulance and it drove off rattling along by pine trees

that shed their dead needles into the potholes covering the parking lot. Lancaster told Paul that

he and Kevin were to be at the station at 11 a.m. with the pictures they took to debrief the

department and to give the news to the boy’s father. He also told Paul that Kevin was to

immediately leave the station afterwards. After Paul relayed the chief’s orders he loaded his gear

into the trunk of his Subaru and drove off, saluting Kevin as he exited the parking lot. Kevin

tossed his pack into the flatbed of his truck beside a wooden and mangled bird cage he’d picked

up on the side of the road on his way to the marina. Its paint was beginning to peel off and the

metal to its door had a hole in it as if something with claws and teeth and torn into it. He stood

imagining a small monster eating the bird in a flurry of feathers then got in the truck and drove

home.

He pulled into his garage a little after nine at night. The T.V. in his living room showed a

female lion yawning while her claws dug into a black and white Zebra carcass. It shone light on

his wife asleep on the couch, her hands on their two daughter’s English homework. A stuffed

elephant, missing one tusk, was shoving its other into a monkey’s neck that sat on the floor. He

guessed their owners must have passed out while watching a movie in their room. He’d promised

his daughters if they did their homework Friday night they’d all go to the zoo that day. The pages

his wife slept beside were only half way done. He slid them out from under her and set the

elephant and monkey on top of them, propping a pen up in the monkey’s hand.


He lay down on the floor, still in his wetsuit, in between the couch and coffee table. He

closed his eyes, picturing his family running around the zoo, pointing at the animals and

laughing. They all had their faces against the polar bear tank and he was surprised when he saw

the boy there, too. He wasn’t pale and lifeless trapped in a life jacket floating in the polar bear’s

water, but alive and eating vanilla ice cream out of a cone right with his wife and kids. Kevin had

always wanted a son, and having two girls never bothered him, but imagining the boy as part of

his family made him remember what really happened, and how in remembering it looked and felt

as if he were sinking away from the boy instead of the boy floating away from him. The thought

stirred the water in his chest and he put his hand through the square hole there to feel it. He knew

it was the same kind of dense water that filled the hole in the boat, and it made him curl up and

face the darkness underneath the couch until he fell asleep.

When he woke up his right hand was reaching through the small crack under the couch

for something that wasn’t there. His neck was stiff but he was warm. Stuffed animal eyes were

staring at him when he rolled over, and he grabbed onto the blanket now on him and read the

note at the monkey’s feet.

Hi dad! We went out for pancakes with the Morloks. Hope you slept well and we promise

to do the rest of our homework when we get back, love K and J.

He sat up and smiled. They had to have been really quiet not to wake him up. The

morning news on the T.V. said it was nine o’clock and he saw the police pontoon boat bobbing

up and down on the screen. He slapped the remote on the couch to turn it off then got up.


He found his camera on the table. The pictures came up in an instant, and he wasn’t

surprised that the feelings he had while taking them came back just as fast. It only took him a

minute to set the pictures into a slide show presentation, but he spent twenty just staring them.

He saved it and went upstairs to his bedroom. The rubber suit stuck to his skin and when he got it

all the way off he flung it onto the white tile floor of the bathroom. He adjusted the shower head

so he could keep his cheek pressed against the coolness of the sliding glass door and have warm

water run down the other. After he dried off he went to his closet and took his uniform off a

hanger. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he dropped it to the floor. He got his wet suit from

the bathroom and put it back on before slipping his feet into a pair of brown loafers. It didn’t

make any sense but it felt right when he rubbed his hands along his side and wiggled his toes.

The laptop hummed quietly as he scooped it up on his way out the door and when he started his

car he could still hear it. He turned off the radio and listened to it as he drove to the station.

Vans from the news stations were already lined up on the other side of the street by the

park across from the department. Their satellite dishes rose with mechanical whirs on white,

straight necks trying to be as tall as the trees. Men in suits holding microphones stood beside

women in dresses who were teasing their hair in front of the brick archway and trimmed hedges

by the flagpole. Someone tapped his window. Paul stood in his wet suit with his weight shifted

on his left foot while thumbing the strap of his backpack slung over his shoulder. They both

laughed. Kevin got out and put his laptop on the roof of his truck and leaned his back against its

side.

“You know,” Paul said, “I didn’t really take any pictures, except one I accidentally took

of the kid’s leg and shoe as he was floating up.” Kevin nodded.


“It’s okay. I managed to snap ones of everything we needed. You, uh, got rid of that—

“One I took? Yeah, I deleted the picture, but not before printing it out and hiding it in my

desk.” Kevin bit the inside of his cheek and looked past Paul into the park. Paul tapped all five of

his fingers against the door of the truck. “Judging by the rocket ship he drew on his shoe he was

going to make one hell of an astronaut someday. I don’t want to forget that.”

Kevin closed his eyes. “You won’t.”

He nodded towards the crowd at the front door and grabbed his laptop. They walked

through the door while cameras followed their footsteps. The reporters held microphones at their

sides with mouths open and silent from the two suits of rubber and one pair of loafers. Press

wasn’t allowed in for the meeting so the pale green hallways were empty, but the glass sided

conference room was full of people standing and sitting around a long oak table. There was a lot

of noise coming from the room and when Kevin and Paul entered it didn’t change. Only when

Kevin hooked up his laptop to the projector and displayed the first image of the sunken boat with

a yellow line sticking straight up out from it did the room become silent. He couldn’t tell if it was

from him and Paul being dressed like they were, or the dead boy the picture implied was floating

somewhere above them in between a sagging ceiling panel and one with a coffee colored stain on

it. Someone dimmed the lights.

The presentation was straight forward. Kevin flipped through all the photos explaining

how the motor had probably been improperly mounted and since it wasn’t recovered, it would be

nearly impossible to be certain as to what exactly caused the boat to go down. Paul explained


that while Kevin examined how tight the knot was it slipped loose the moment he touched it,

letting the boy free to drift to the surface.

Everyone shouted at once. They answered a few of their questions.

How could the boy not have untied it while going down?

Panic.

Why’d the father even tie him to the boat in the first place?

So he didn’t fall overboard during the storm.

How did Kevin not manage to grab the child when he started to drift away?

We, we don’t know.

How could you take Paul down on the dive?

No one else wanted to.

(Silence and several bowed heads.)

Why were there no pictures of the knot?

Everything happened too fast.

Who was to blame for everything?

No one?


The father stayed expressionless but Kevin and Paul’s had gone from relaxed and

confident to sullen and ashamed with every question asked, not because they told truth or lies,

but because they were the two who had been in the water. They remembered all of it. The rest of

the room took in a breath all at once to release another onslaught of questions.

Then Chief Lancaster stood up at the head of the table and the air diffused out of

everyone’s lungs without a sound. He had stayed quiet during the meeting, frowning as usual,

but his mouth changed shape to give the faintest hint of a smile as he stared at the table. “Okay.

That’s all we need to see. Mr. Seibold, we’re going to take you out the back of the station now, if

you don’t mind. We’ll let the sharks outside have a go at these two,” motioning at Kevin and

Paul with an upturned palm. Then he looked up at the two and said, “Just as a distraction, not

because they deserve it.”

The room obeyed. Mr. Siebold kept his head up and led the procession out into the hall.

Kevin had hoped Lancaster would stay behind and talk, but felt that what he’d said was the

closest thing to an apology he would ever get from him. Paul nudged him with his shoulder and

they left the room. They headed towards the front door to be stabbed with microphones and shot

with questions.

“Do you ever think,” Paul said, dragging his fingertips across the wall, “I mean, do you

ever wonder what a crocodile thinks right before it lunges out of a river at a water buffalo? What

it must feel like to have those teeth puncture a warm neck before deciding to snap it in half,

before you dance and roll around with it in all that mud?” Kevin concentrated on the sound of his

footsteps echoing off the walls.


“Yes,” Kevin said, stopping in front of the tinted glass doors at the front of the building.

“I think it feels sorry for the buffalo. That’s why crocodiles are different than humans.” He

smirked at Paul then pushed through. There was no one waiting for them. All the vans across the

street were still there and a thick cloud of smoke rose straight into the air from the shopping

center beside the department. They walked out to the parking lot and saw that the animal shelter

was on fire. The cartoon dog perched on the end of the building was charred black from the

flames and its head bent forward at the collar and fell to the ground with a neon crash.

The shelter had moved out of the building across town the week before, but all the

reporters and camera crews were banging on the door and trying to film through the windows.

They had no idea. Kevin and Paul ignored them and took turns kicking a pinecone in front of

them as they walked to their cars. They heard three fire engines coming down the middle of the

street before they turned into the parking lot and cut the sirens off. The firefighters worked

without talking, connecting the hose to the hydrant and checking pressure gauges on the side of

the truck silently. Paul leaned against the back of Kevin’s truck. “I guess ‘Fifty Burning Cats and

Dogs’ makes for a more exciting headline than ‘Drowned Boy’s Father Looks Unhappy’. What a

joke.”

Kevin sat on the bumper beside him. He was lower than Paul and had to look up to see

his face. His wetsuit made him a silhouette against the blue sky and thin trails of cloud. He was

relaxed, letting his shoulders slump with his arms crossed over his chest. Kevin wanted to feel

that way, too. Paul looked down at him and crossed his legs. “When we were under there,” he

said, motioning to the asphalt with an arm. Then he shook his head and exhaled while watching

the column of smoke bend in the wind.


“What?” Kevin asked and stood up.

“Nothing,” Paul said. “It’s too nice a day for anything else to really matter.” He pushed

himself off the back of the truck and took a few steps towards his silver Subaru with the fire

reflected in its windshield, which made him stop. “And I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it,

despite all the smoke.” He got in his car and crunched the pinecone they’d kicked as he pulled

out of the lot and saluted Kevin again, keeping his arm extended out the window until he

disappeared down the road.

The inside of Kevin’s truck was hot so he left the door open for it to air out and watched

the trees sway in the park across the road. They looked at peace while they rustled and danced. A

minivan packed full of kids with all its windows down drove by. A boy stuck his head out along

with the Power Ranger birthday hat attached to it, and the kid took aim at him with a confetti

popper. He pulled the string and colored paper strips blew all over the road in a puff of white

smoke. The van pulled through the gates at the front of the park and paused in the middle of the

road. Its driver turned in her seat and smacked the birthday boy in the back of his head, making

his hat fly across the car and land on the dashboard. He heard them laughing before they drove

over the hill to where the parking lot was.

Kevin tossed his laptop bag on the driver’s seat and closed the door. He crossed the lot to

the sidewalk and smeared the pinecone fragments across the white cement with his shoe while he

waited for cars to pass. When the road was clear he walked across two lanes to the median and

then jogged across two more. The grass was slightly overgrown and brushed against his ankles as

he walked up the hill to where the park trail began. He let his fingers graze the trunk of a gnarled


oak as he shuffled across leaves until he came to a bench beside a bird bath, a stone statue of a

girl dipping her toes deep into its water. A monster eyed her from underneath its surface.

He sat down and felt the warm metal rivets in the wood of the bench. The park was a

giant circle of meadow outlined by the jogging trail and was full of trees to shade the picnic

tables and shed leaves into the five tiered fountain shaped like a pineapple in the middle of it all.

Kids poured out of the van throwing Frisbees and blowing through noise makers that extended in

tubes of shiny green and gold foil. The mother saw him and waved while holding a cake with

one hand, and Kevin wondered if it was at all strange for a parent not to be worried about a man

sitting by himself in a wetsuit at a park.

Kids chased each other like fish darting around sagging branches and the pineapple

fountain. Kevin thought about casting out an imaginary line to try and catch one. An image of a

minnow swimming through Ben’s hair floated up in Kevin’s mind. He flushed it out and ran his

fingers through his own, pausing to watch a girl in a dirtied blue flower print dress gently head

butt a smaller boy, making him flail his arms before he fell into the fountain with a small splash.

Water stained the dry concrete.

A cloud passed over the sun and he felt colder. Staring blankly out at the park, he

watched the girl with the blue flowers on her dress poke at an anthill with a stick. The boy with

the Power Ranger birthday hat ran by her, holding onto a shiny silver balloon. The mom waved a

knife covered in blue and yellow icing at him and shouted that the cake was ready. The boy

turned in a wide arc under a tree and jumped over one of its limbs that dragged the ground, but

his foot clipped the top of it and he fell down, letting go of the balloon. It floated up into the


branches and nestled itself in a thick patch of green leaves. The boy ignored it and ran to the

picnic table surrounded by all his friends.

Kevin gripped the armrest of the bench. His fingers tightened around the thin metal as he

watched the tail of the balloon wave at him. He bit his lip, then stood up and walked across the

grass to the tree. The balloon was twenty-five feet up, but within arm’s reach from the center of

the trunk. Thick limbs covered in teal barnacle moss spiraled and twisted up near the top, far

away from the heavy ones that bowed down to the ground. He stepped out of his loafers and onto

the rough bark of a branch. It slanted up and he was able to bend over and grab onto its sides to

take slow steps up to where most of the branches stemmed from at the center of the tree ten feet

in the air.

Light came down through the leaves and turned their undersides into a bright green

stained glass window dotted with clusters of acorns. The branches shuttered as he climbed and

rustled the leaves, holding his weight with ease as he shuffled around the tree’s heart and

climbed up its arms. He hugged one branch as he dangled his legs below him and he felt the bark

scraping against his skin. His legs swung down and he let go to land on another limb, then

examined the small red cut surrounded by a brown smear of bark on the inside of his hand. It was

pretty. The sun shone brightly off the silver foil apple hanging from the branch above him, and

he had to hold a hand over his eyes to see where to go in order to climb higher. He pulled himself

up to another branch and stood up at eye level with the balloon.

Through the leaves he could see all of the kids around the picnic table watching him. The

mother held up a piece of cake on a plate and waved at Kevin. He leaned out and grabbed the

balloon’s string and pulled it to him. It spun around and he saw that the other side had a picture


of the Red Power Ranger fighting a large monster on it. Seeing it made him wonder why adults

said the T.V. shows kids watch don’t prepare them for real life. He wrapped the thin ribbon

around his wrist until the string was only ten inches long. It bumped against his chest as he

climbed down, making sure it didn’t brush against any sharp edges where twigs had broken off.

When he got to the junction near the bottom of the tree he gave the balloon some slack, and sat

on the branch he’d climbed first and scooted halfway down it before jumping off into leaves and

mulch.

His shoes blended in with the soft ground and he left them, walking out from the shade of

the tree and across the prickly grass to the party. The kids laughter died down as they turned to

watch him quietly walk up to them. The mom nudged the boy and he stopped licking his plate to

look up. He slid over the bench and walked over to Kevin with his mother following behind.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said with a smile and looped her thumbs through the

belt loops on her shorts. Kevin shrugged and said, “It wasn’t a big deal.” He hid his scraped hand

behind his back.

“Jordan, shouldn’t you be thanking him for climbing the tree to get your balloon so you

didn’t have to fall out of it and break your arm like you did at Taylor’s house?” He rubbed his

elbow and glared at her, but it made her laugh instead of silencing her.

“Thanks,” he said and turned around and looked up to him.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. He bent over and braced his hand against his knee and

offered the boy the balloon. “Just make sure you always hold onto it. Don’t ever let go.”


The boy reached out and took the string while still looking up at Kevin. Jordan squinted

with focus and rolled his tongue against the inside of his cheek. The balloon drifted over to him

and bobbed over his head, tugging at his hand. The boy closed his eyes and took a deep breath,

releasing it in a sigh and opening his eyes to look up at a cloud.

“No,” he said, and let go of the string.

The balloon took off and Kevin’s arms shot out and fumbled against its tail, managing to

get a grip on it at the very end. He kneeled down to the height of the boy, clutching the string

tight against his chest and looked up to the mom. She kept her thumbs in the loops of her shorts

and cocked her head.

“Why?” Kevin asked the boy.

“Do you feel it tugging against your hand?” he asked. Kevin nodded. “I was kind of

bummed when I let go of it at first, but then I wasn’t. It wanted to go up. It wanted to fly.”

He laughed and sat down on the grass, extending his legs and bracing his hands behind

him. “If I kept it, took it home and never let it free it would just slowly deflate. Have you ever

seen those balloons? How they get wrinkled and sink down to the carpet? I didn’t want that to

happen to it. I wanted it to do what it wanted. I wanted to let it be free. I wanted to let it have fun.

Have fun before it couldn’t anymore.”

Kevin sat down on the back of his legs.

“Fun,” he said. The boy nodded. The mother let one corner of her mouth rise. Wind

batted at the balloon and the boy crawled to his knees and took Kevin’s hand in both of his.


“It’s okay,” the boy said. The little fingers were strong and sure as he pulled at Kevin’s

hands, pried open the monster’s jaws one finger at a time. Kevin saw and felt the black water

inside him pour out the square hole in his chest over their hands and sink into the ground. The

engine surfaced from some depth and reattached its veins and arteries. It beat steady to close the

opening. String slowly slipped through his fingers and the boy looked into his eyes, smiling. The

boy separated his hands completely and the balloon took off into the air.

They both watched it shine as the balloon aimed for a cloud and got smaller and smaller.

Kevin lowered his head but Jordan kept his raised. The boy was whispering.

Date post:	30-Mar-2016
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Despite All The Smoke

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