All This Life

The only furniture in the room now is a small couch, a record player sitting on the floor in the corner, hooked up to a couple of cheap speakers. All of Felix’s old vinyl is in a pile around it, Hank Williams, David Allan Coe, Johnny Cash. He’s been known to crank up the volume and howl along to his records, Rodney always staying in his room until these recitals are over. He barricades himself away because he hates that old hillbilly shit, but more importantly, he doesn’t like listening to his uncle sing — something he so badly wishes he could do — especially if a melody is being wasted on some redneck twang.

There’s also a swamp cooler jutting from the living room wall, an ancient one that looks like a lawnmower has been turned on its side and jammed into the cinderblock. It makes so much noise when it’s on that the whole room reverberates, the mewling ricocheting off the concrete walls and floor.

Not all three of them can sit on the couch at once. Rodney and Larry take a seat, while Uncle Felix lays the two halves of the broken fishing pole on the concrete floor and kneels down next to it, a doctor conducting an autopsy.

“He is an evil man,” Felix says. “He wants to fight, fine. I am not opposed to physical violence. But ruining another man’s fishing pole?”

“How’s your head?” Larry asks his son, running his finger across the boy’s cheek.

“I’m,” Rodney says, then five seconds later, “fine.”

“A fishing pole can’t even defend itself!” Felix says.

“Do you need some water?” Larry asks his son.

Rodney shakes his head no.

“I’m sorry about this,” Larry says to Rodney.

Uncle Felix takes both pieces of broken pole, waving them about like he’s conducting a choir, and Balloon Boy dreads what’s coming next. He’s seen this look on his uncle’s face many times, right before a bad idea: The look is like a whistle on a speeding train, telling you danger is on its way. The same face Uncle Felix had right before fighting Hank, or a couple weeks back when he rifled through the neighbor’s trashcans looking for salmon skins, convinced they’d stolen a fish from the fridge, or a few weeks before that when Felix jacked a battery out of someone else’s car in broad daylight, not even hurrying, calmly thieving, and then put it in his truck. Rodney knows this face and he fears it.

Uncle Felix brings one of the broken pieces of fishing pole up close to his face. “As much as it pains me to admit, this pole is a goner. Hank can’t get away with it.”

“He’s already gotten away with it,” says Larry.

“The battle has only begun,” Uncle Felix says.

Larry stands up off the couch, clapping his hands, swelling with toxic camaraderie. If Balloon Boy has seen the crazy look in his uncle’s eyes as he conceives and executes a bad idea, he knows this face from his father: a blank-eyed, abject agreement. He’s going along with whatever plan his brother spins.

“I say we light her car on fire,” Uncle Felix says. “Let’s hold it responsible.”

“Good plan,” Larry says.

“Bad,” Balloon Boy says, then four seconds later, “plan.”

“Hush,” they say in unison.

“But wait,” Larry says, “won’t Hank kick our asses again?”

Felix smiles and swings those broken poles about, keeping that deranged choir singing: “We need backup. Call our softball team. Call every Wombat. Get our whole batting order here and we’ll light her bucket of bolts on fire and get some revenge on Hank.” As he finishes his thought, he begins using the poles as swords, fencing thin air.

Balloon Boy isn’t on the softball team, but he does go to the park to help with their practices, collecting equipment and whatnot. Sometimes a Wombat will look around the park and ask Rodney, “Isn’t this the place where it happened?” and he’ll say, “Yes,” and sometimes a Wombat will say, “How high’d you get on that balloon anyway?” and he’ll shrug with a smile, not wanting to talk about it.

Now Larry gets on the horn, calling Wombats, and Balloon Boy sits and watches, knowing there’s nothing he can do to talk them out of this. But he can make sure that Sara stays safe, which is what concerns him the most. She might not love him anymore, yet that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten his own feelings for her. They’re locked in him. That’s what makes Balloon Boy feel so alone, all the swirling thoughts that can only clank around his brain like shoes in a dryer.

Alone, with no way to articulate himself.

The two halves of him, much like the busted fishing pole. Rodney and Balloon Boy. The same. Different. Permanent. Terrible.

“Excuse,” Rodney says and gets off the couch, “me.”

“Where you going?” Larry says, cupping the phone with his hand.

“Need. Fresh. Air.” The whole sentence takes sixteen seconds to choke out.

“No such thing in Traurig,” Uncle Felix says.