THE MAN WHO FLEW TOO MUCH
R.B. BANFIELD
Copyright 2013 R.B. Banfield
Cover Art: SelfPubBookCovers.com/Daniela
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ISBN: 9781310024535
www.storiesfrommyhead.com
For Monterey, the beloved Wuss Puss, and Faaaaaaaaancy, who never raised a claw in anger, and Major Julius Marfelous, and Princess Zazzapazazza, even though none of them can read. Yet.
Contents
Incident First
Incident Two
Incident Three
Incident Four
Incident Five
Incident Six
Incident Seven
Incident Eight
Incident Nine
Incident Ten
Incident Last
Incident First:
Where Bennet Tries To Fly
Bennet Noble had a dream. It was favourite, it was memorable and it persisted. The more he remembered it, the more he wanted to keep thinking about it in the daylight hours, lest it never returned to him in the night.
How could a sound so beautiful be left alone to die when he woke with the morning? To die with no one hearing what caused him joy? It was too great to cast aside, not without trying to see it come to life, not without an attempt to make it breathe.
Can he walk as no man has walked? Can he defy what holds everything down, pinned and imprisoned to the earth? Only the birds are free from that shackle. He was envious of their skill, how they take to the air with nothing more than a hop and flurry of wings. He would copy, and hop like them, and hope like them, and in his dream glide as well as any bird could.
Sometimes he floated as he walked, or drifted upward from when he stood, hardly to be noticed. Other times he went up high and swooped down, casting away danger and fear, and thinking only of how far he may go.
He laughed at those thoughts, each time they returned, each night that he dreamed. But then he began to worry that the dream might disappear, and he could only visit it again in the type of dreams that fill the day. He reasoned that it was better to fulfil the dream than leave it to die. The idea that he may never know the sensation of the air, made him sad.
To help him, he decided that it would be better to share his dream with others. It was so wondrous that it would be a great loss to keep to himself. To begin, he would need to find someone similarly inclined in mind. After wondering about who to tell, he realised that he knew no one like that. No one even close to it.
There was no other option but to fulfil the dream.
He stood in his narrow hallway, at the doorways to two shadowy bedrooms, full of crammed bookshelves that decorated the walls, where forgotten memories were stacked in an ugly discarded fashion. The doorways were uninviting and cold. The hallway itself was narrow, with plenty of forgotten areas. The dull carpet had worn into holes in a half-dozen spots, and stringy bits ran everywhere. There was a large glass lightshade on the ceiling that looked like it might hurt him if he went too near. The bland wallpaper was peeling at the corners, and whatever the design was that served as its pattern, he had long lost interest in wondering what it was.
All things considered, it was not the best place to begin the fulfilment of his dream. The only reason he chose it was because it was where no one could see him.
Time to stop thinking about it and begin.
He closed his eyes and took one step. Just a normal step to start, with gravity pulling his foot down to the carpet, as it always did. The great enemy gravity. The fact that he could identify it, meant that he was beginning to have it licked. He knew it was there, watching him, taunting him, waiting for him to raise his foot in hope of gaining the air, and pulling it back down again. But it was also fearing him, knowing that he had half the battle won.
Again he tried, this time with more thought. He closed his eyes harder, lifted his foot higher, and made a small jump as he made his step. Gravity, again, won his feet. His foot caught the ragged carpet and set itself into it, followed by his hopes. Without a beat, he went back to where he started and put that negative thought out of his mind. There were no negative thoughts in his dream, only the thrill of being free. Being negative had nothing to do with being free.
Run. I will run and jump, and leave this floor, and see my dream. I will share it. The world will know.
Against the bathroom door he moved, and sprang up, and his head almost touched the ceiling. He hit the ground again, and hurt his right foot just a little. Now he was interested in that ceiling. It was far too low. If he should fulfil his dream, his head needed to be free from restrictive obstacles such as ceilings. At last he admitted that the environment was too restrictive. While it was true that no one could see him, it was not a place to fulfil dreams. It was, instead, a place where dreams died.
He went outside, into his backyard, and pondered the sky. What would happen if he indeed left that gravity and took to his dream? How high would he go before he could stop? He realised that it was one thing to leave gravity, but another to control it. High up were birds, and even airplanes. Beyond that, satellites and the edge of outer space. The thought of not coming back made him fearful, until he remembered that he had rope.
From the dust-filled shed that sat in the shadows of the back of his garden he found a good piece of old rope. Most of it was buried under boxes and old tools, and dead spiders and unidentifiable bugs, and he spent too much energy yanking it out of there. The more it protested being taken from the shed, the more determined he became. Once it was out, he tested its strength. Satisfied that it was still good, he tied one end to a leg of his outdoor wooden furniture, and the other around his waist. With a good tug, he was confident that it was sturdy enough to keep him from joining the stars.
First there was a small jump, then an extended jump, but nothing happened. Next he tried to walk quickly, to get some speed up, and he made a hop. For just a second he wondered if he had succeeded. He felt a small lift, when he hopped, and it gave him more confidence. He went back to where he started and did an identical walk and hop. Five minutes later he was running and hopping, trying to recreate the initial lifting feeling but not finding it.
The neighbour directly behind his house, who had a good view of his yard, had never spoken to him. They had exchanged polite waves from time to time, but that was all. The man worked odd hours and Bennet never knew when he was home or not, but this day he was. Reading the sports section of his paper, wondering what horse he should waste his earnings on, the man noticed that Bennet was running around his yard. At first the man tired to ignore him, but then he saw that Bennet was also jumping with his arms up, eyes to the sky. He reached for his blind, but then could not resist taking another look, just to be sure that his usually quiet and reserved neighbour was not wearing a cape.
Another neighbour, the elderly Eve Weebley, whose house was so close to his that their roofs almost touched, was more friendly. She was instantly chatty to everyone, and always treated Bennet like a long lost grandchild. She was out on her patio, pruning her collection of miniature roses, when she noticed what Bennet was up to.
An independent and resilient woman, Eve never liked the thought of not knowing what her neighbours were doing. She found an excuse to grab her stepladder and prune away at the vine that was getting too high against the side of her house, fr
om where she could see Bennet better. By the time she was up high enough to see down into his yard, he was gone.
A sound of creaking made her look up to his roof. Bennet was up there, walking with small, hesitant steps, towards the edge. He still had the rope tied to his waist and it was beginning to become taut. Eve watched him with curiosity, noting that he was fearful at looking over the edge. There was something else about that she detected; a look that she had never seen from him. He was elated, like a child.
He saw her and froze.
“Having a case of the little nasties?” Eve asked with a pleasant smile.
“I’m sorry?” he asked as he tried to conceal the rope.
“Your guttering up there, dear. Full of little nasties? I have mine cleaned every half-year, without exception. Couldn’t help myself but notice, you do not clean yours. Sometimes it’s best to clean even if it doesn’t need it. That way, you prevent those nasties. A penny saved is a penny wasted, as my husband Eric always said.”
“There’s nothing nasty here that I can see. But my sort of roof, I don’t get nasties.”
“Why else be you up on your roof except looking for those nasties? You be careful up there, good neighbour. I’d hate to see you fall off. I have few good neighbours and I don’t want to go losing any. Not today. Not with the weather so nice.”
“Yes, I’m up here checking the roof, and it’s fine enough.”
“While you’re up there, can you see what’s the commotion in my tree?”
The oak tree that was in the back of Eve’s yard was so big that one of its branches stretched out over the fence and almost reached Bennet’s house. He never thought much about it, except in the summer when it provided nice shade to his backyard.
“I only see leaves,” he said, unsure what she wanted him to say.
“The sound, boy. Leaves make no sound like that. Listen, please.”
He listened and heard birds. “The tweeting?”
“All day long they go, those birds. Those wretched birds.”
“I think that’s natural. It’s what birds do.”
“There’s too many of them in there, that’s what’s happening. They’re working themselves into a state with all their fighting. I wouldn’t care so much, if they’d just keep it down.”
“I don’t think they’re harmful ...”
“Harmful?” she snapped. “Birds have germs. Dirty creatures, that’s what they are. If I had my way, I’d have them all killed.”
This was a Mrs Weebley he had never seen before.
He returned to worrying about how far the ground was from the roof. By stopping and talking he had lost some of his confidence. For what he planned to do, he could not afford to lose any bit of confidence. It now seemed a better idea to go back down to the ground, where he would give no time for negative thoughts to stop him, where his mind could react positively to the prospect of being hurt. Now he thought that he should start off with small jumps on the ground, and not off the roof.
“Have you thought about chopping it down?” he asked Mrs Weebley politely as he backed away from the edge.
Eve was offended. “My Eric built that tree with his own hands.”
She was so annoyed with him that if she was near to him she might have slapped him. Just given him a good open palm to the face, to show him what she thought.
“You mean he planted it?” he asked as he retreated further away and back to wherever his ladder was.
“He took care of that tree every day from when he bought this house until he died. That’s why it’s so big, since he gave it his attention, more than anything, except his beer and replica World War One fighting aces airplanes. And now hoards of birds think they can own it. Dirty creatures. I would kill them all myself, if I was younger, and a man. A younger man.”
“Thank you, Mrs Weebley.”
“Tweet tweet tweet they go. Driving me mad. I would tell Eric to get his shotgun and there’d be nothing but feathers left of them. I have a good mind to get that old gun out myself, if I knew how to use it. If they keep it up, it won’t bother me that I don’t, and I’ll shoot them to pieces, if it’s the last thing I’ll do. If I was a man, I would.”
He climbed down his ladder feeling humiliated, but also sad for her, since she had become increasingly delusional over the last year or so. When he moved into the neighbourhood, eight years before, he clearly remembered that Eric was a little yappy dog and Oscar was her late husband. A subdued and respectable man, Oscar bore little resemblance to the man Eve would talk about now. Bennet doubted that any of the stories she attributed to him were true. He did not remember if she always hated birds, but he guessed that she did not.
He returned to his quiet lounge chair, leaving the rope sprawled on the lawn, still attached to the outside chair. With his hands over his face he closed his eyes and tried to remember what his happy dream actually was. One thing he was certain of; it was devoid of unhappy neighbours.