All This Life

The music blares from Sara’s car, a rock and roll song with the singer rapping over the electric guitars. Balloon Boy wants to hear the whole song, wants to soak up the way the rapper deflects all those quick syllables off of one another. That’s what he wants for his birthday: words coming fast and agile from his mouth.

“Don’t hurt my car,” Sara says to Felix while flinging her door open and standing up like she wants to fight. Balloon Boy used to joke that she’s so small because someone shoved her in the dryer without reading the tag first.

“You almost killed me,” Uncle Felix says. “Why can’t you drive like a normal person?”

“What do you know about normal?” she says. “You’re fishing in the road! Hank’s going to kick your ass for busting up my car.” She hops back in the driver’s seat, tearing up the street something jugular.

Uncle Felix picks up her side mirror, shaking his head, and says, “She sure made some choppy waves on our calm waters, right boys?” and Larry agrees, tilting the bottle again. They go back to what these three remaining members of the Curtis clan had been doing in the first place, two enjoying some time practicing their fly fishing, while one imagines a life outside the concrete river of Traurig.

Before long, Sara’s car comes screeching back toward them, bolting from the cul-de-sac and barreling their way. Past a yard with an aboveground pool out front, surrounded by an army of tricycles. Past the house with all the wind chimes hanging out front. Past the cactus decorated to look like the Incredible Hulk. No one else is outside their house, late morning, too hot, too stifling, and yet this is the specific time that Rodney’s dad and uncle like to road fish: They’ve told Balloon Boy many times that they thrive in extreme conditions, drawing a comparison between their noon sessions and boxers who train in the mountains, at extreme elevations, so when they go back and fight at sea level, they’re in superior cardiovascular shape. Does the analogy hold up? Not really, but Rodney would nod at them, Yup, you guys are like professional boxers, uh-huh, no doubt.

Once he sees the car coming, Uncle Felix steps into the middle of the road again. Pulls his arm back for another cast when the car hits the brakes and Sara’s brother, Hank, rockets out. He’s gowned in muscles like an old-fashioned gladiator.

“You kick her car, Felix?”

“Ease up now, Hank.”

“Did you?”

“I did.”

“It was me,” says Larry.

“Me,” Balloon Boy says for the sake of solidarity. He doesn’t want to get involved, but that’s what the remaining members of the Curtis clan do, stick together no matter what. Unlike some other Curtises, a gone mom who fled to California after the thump-splat ouch.

Hank points a paw right at Rodney and says, “Stay out of this, Balloon Boy.” Then he snaps at Uncle Felix, “She’s only eighteen. What kind of man scares a little girl?”

Felix throws his fishing pole down on the grass, saying, “The kind who almost gets made road kill.”

“Give me her mirror,” Hank says.

“That’s my mirror now,” says Uncle Felix.

“It’s mine,” Larry says.

“Mine,” Balloon Boy says, fearing the worst.

The Curtis boys and their skyscraping loyalty, unlike some Curtises who need fair weather all the time. Whenever Rodney asks where his mom went, Larry says, “It never rains in California so she went there,” and Balloon Boy wants so badly to ask more questions — why in California, why not here with me, is she still at that old return address? But it would take him too long to gut out those inquiries and he knows his dad won’t tell him much.

Hank spots Sara’s side mirror lying snapped and jagged on the lawn and moves toward it.

“Don’t touch that,” Uncle Felix says.

But Hank picks it up and threatens each witness from the Curtis clan: “Don’t treat my sister like that again or else.” He goes back across the lawn and steps on and cracks in two Felix’s fishing pole.

“Three of us against one of you!” Uncle Felix says, incensed.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Hank says.

Felix lunges toward Hank, who cocks his fist, the one holding Sara’s side mirror, and hits Uncle Felix with it. Felix falls, bleeding from the temple. Larry tries to tackle Hank but gets fixed in some vicious headlock and tumbles down after one hit in the kidney.

Hank looks at Balloon Boy. “You wanna dance, too?”

He doesn’t, of course. Doesn’t even want to be outside, in this sweltering pointless situation. Doesn’t want to road fish or watch them drink whiskey anymore. Doesn’t want to be here in this disconnected head, the muscles in his mouth not responding to any cues from his brain. Rodney doesn’t want to be stuck away from all the good stuff, the real stuff, doesn’t want to feel this cruel division between himself and all the other humans, those people with their own baggage and yet solely because his words are slow, he’s ostracized.