"Between the Dark and the Daylight"
by Tom Piccirilli
His face was so anguished it was writhing. That was Frank Bradley the first time I saw him, about sixty feet off the ground.
His feet twined above me while we both dangled from the safety-line ropes. His forlorn moans echoed across the front-range hills, and he’d bitten through his bottom lip. Blood misted on the wind and flew down against my forehead.
The balloon smacked broadside into a pine tree and shook the other two guys on the ropes loose. Neither of them screamed on their way down. One landed on his back, and the impact drove him three feet underground. The other smacked a boulder that shattered his pelvis, severed his spinal column, and saved his life. He pinwheeled off the rock and came to rest on his face along the dog walk, in front of an elderly woman clutching a Pomeranian I held on, just like Frank Bradley, who shrieked at me, “Don’t let go! My son, my boy! Johnny!”
I wasn’t letting go. You can make decisions in an instant that will forge the direction of the rest of your life. You can perform acts that will curse you with a hellish mark forever. You can sell your conscience by making a single mistake. You can do your best and still not make things right. Spinning in the wind, I couldn’t see the kid in the basket, but I could hear him crying. He sounded terrified and very young. Maybe only six or seven. Too damn young to work the controls and hit whichever valve had to be pressed to lower the thing. I thought, What kind of father takes a child that young up in a hot-air balloon? And how the hell did the idiot get outside of it on the ropes with the kid still in the basket? A lot goes through your mind when you’re six stories in the air and rising.
Despite his misery, I wanted to beat the hell out of Bradley—whose name I didn’t know then—all across the park meadow speeding by below us. Except I was still holding the line, and we were running out of acreage fast.
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