Sam Crocker listened from his favorite recliner while his niece Mary Lou described the problem of the balloon bomb. Sam seldom left the comfort of his bungalow home due to the pain in his hips and his knees. He had always refused the idea of artificial parts, and at ninety-four years of age, Sam suspected he was no longer a candidate for bionic supplementation. But he missed the world outside of the window, and he hated that he had not been strong enough to rise from hic recliner and attend the gathering in the municipal garage. He had been so strong even at seventy. It was cruel for the Lord to leave him so weak and dependent during the twenty years since.
“Go back now, Mary Lou. Take your time and describe that balloon to me again.”
Sam thought his demise may have been approaching, for news of that strange, deflated balloon bomb on the back of Hank Reverman’s trailer summoned many ghosts into his memory, all howling for his company. The Japanese took him prisoner long ago in the Pacific when Sam was hardly a man, and by the threat of the bayonet and death, had forced him to march for so long through the heat and the jungle. Though he wasted away in the torture the Japanese called a prisoner camp, though his skin turned to nothing more than a thin paper over his bones, Sam Crocker had never doubted he would return home, never doubted that back in his hometown he would sire children and grandchildren with the intelligence and entitlement to conquer the world. Sam’s face turned taciturn as he listened to Mary Lou do her best to tell him of that paper balloon, with its ugly bombs fastened to that iron ring held at the end of so much rope.
“That sure sounds like a terrible, terrible thing.” Sam rubbed his chin’s small, gray whiskers.
“Do you think we should destroy it? Do you think we should burn it?”
“Good heavens no, Mary Lou.” Sam winced at the suggestion. “Just hang on for a moment and give me some time to think.”
“Maybe we could bury it.”
“I said give me some time to think, Mary Lou.”
Sam had grown old right along with the rest of the town, but he didn’t put things beneath the ground as casually as many of his neighbors. Sam knew more than most the truth of those war years, but his heart still dreaded the idea that the horror of those years could be forgotten. Many of his neighbors had long ago thrown in the towel and considered the world too changed for them. But Sam had not. He was not ready to concede that he had become a relic of blood and bone.
Sam felt trapped within his home. The walls gave him a sense of claustrophobia. He would’ve much preferred to walk beneath the sun. It had not been so long ago when Sam had still walked in the annual parades, dressed in his old uniform of the war years, with his crisp beret and white gloves. Not too long ago, those holiday parades had given him a reason to polish his medals and shoes. Yet the parades no longer marched at any time through town. There were no longer enough people to line along the sidewalks to watch them, and the years made it too painful for anyone to step any longer down the asphalt. Sam missed those occasions, and he missed having a reason to wear that old uniform kept in his closet. Others in town talked happily of how the rest of the world had forgotten them. Sam did not. For he did not wish to be forgotten, certainly not when he remained alive. That felt like two deaths instead of one.
That deflated and wrinkled balloon crafted by his enemies had much in common with Sam. That balloon wanted to be buried no more than did Sam. Nothing might be done for the pain in his knees and hips, but there remained something that could be done for that balloon. Sam closed his eyes, scratched his chin and smiled as an idea floated into his imagination.
“Listen, Mary Lou, I know just the thing we should do. You’re going to have to help me.”
“Of course I’ll help.”
“First thing, I want you to hurry into the back bedroom and find my favorite cane.”
Mary Lou hesitated. “You don’t want to use your wheelchair?”
Sam’s face wrinkled in disgust. “No time for wheelchairs. Just go and get my cane. Then, you’re going to get my old war uniform out of the closet. We’re going to iron those slacks and brush even the finest grain of dust off of the jacket. And then, you’re going to drive me over to that meeting in the municipal garage so I can tell everyone what we’re going to do with that balloon.”
“But I haven’t driven for years.”
“Hell, Mary Lou, you only have to navigate one street in this town.”
Mary Lou swooned to watch Sam jump out of his recliner and shuffle to the bathroom a moment before she heard him running a shower.