Around my neck hung a disposable camera on a piece of baling twine. Sean sported a backpack full of sandwiches and a pair of binoculars. Chip was wedged in between us like a wad of deli meat. It was time to fly. I had a sudden thought, and swiveled around to look at Chip.
"How will we steer?" I asked. Chip scrunched his face up one side at a time so that his cheeks would push his glasses further up on his nose. I'd always admired his ability to do that.
"Lean" he said.
"Oh yeah" I said.
Sean had weaseled his way onto the maiden voyage. I'll never know why. We couldn't argue with his logic that there was room for him in the back, and we were happy to have him along anyway to bear witness to our triumph. Also we needed his help getting the thing onto the roof. It had been no small task.
We had manhandled the heavy, awkward pile of lumber around to the back side of the shed, through the burdock bushes and onto the roof with remarkable force of will. Negotiating the burdock bushes was the worst bit.
A burdock plant, for those who have not had the pleasure, has large broad leaves which are very cool and are good for any number of things. Nestled inside the shadow of those leaves are the burdocks themselves: Little marble-sized seed pods completely covered in tiny hooks. They're like little Velcro balls. Here's a picture I found online just now:
http://changingaging.org/blog/how-foraging-can-help-prepare-for-life-after-adulthood/burdock-burrs/
^^^Hey, that's the first time I've ever given credit for a picture I gribbled from another website! ^^^
It is physically impossible to walk anywhere near a burdock plant without later finding at least one of the sneaky bastards clinging to your clothes, shoelaces, or even directly to your skin. Burdocks absolutely suck. Testify.
We managed to wrangle the aircraft onto the roof, and then managed to drag it all the way up the steep sheets of tin. There, it rested comfortably between the ripples, denied the pull of gravity by three small pairs of double-knotted sneakers. It was time to fly.
With joy in our hearts and sausage gravy for brains, we started the countdown. At "one", six sneakers lifted from the tin, and gravity took over with a vengeance. We were fearless. We knew as soon as we got up to speed we'd break free of the Earth in a volley of cheers, and we'd be wiping cloud-mist from our glasses alongside the eagles.
That's not what happened. Seeds of doubt began to burrow into our collective psyche just as the nose of the craft ran out of tin. But there was no time to bail out.
The seven-foot plummet into the burdock bushes was at once instantaneous and infinite. Somewhere in that paradoxical pocket of space-time we became separated from the craft in a flying pile of elbows and binoculars. The aircraft landed with a combination sound of thump and splinter. We landed among it and ourselves like so much thrown spaghetti.
We thrashed around in the pucker-brush for quite a while. When we emerged, many things had changed. Sean had an entire burdock-afro. He had launched with a bowl-cut and emerged from the crash site looking like Richard Simmons. Baseball-sized wads of burdocks clumped under my armpits until I couldn't put my hands on my sides, and thousands more clung tightly to every square inch of our clothes. Chips shoes were nowhere to be seen.
Somehow, miraculously, perhaps thanks to youthful flexibility or perhaps because fate wasn't paying attention at just that moment, none of us was the least bit hurt. The pile of boards that lay inches from our fragile selves, with nails protruding from every angle, had not injured us in the least. Gravity had failed to destroy us. My mother, on the other hand, no doubt would.
Previous: Part III
Next: Part V
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