v.
“Childhood is tricky business…” Maurice Sendak
One day Balthazar and Marge are lying on the ground of their cloud watching spot, when all of a sudden out of the Eastern sky, Balthazar’s mother shows up and she’s floating above his head. He can’t believe it and rubs his eyes but it’s not a cloud that looks like his mom but her actual self. Balthazar is not sure what that means but she’s definitely not a cloud; though she floats like one or like a mother made of dirigibles. She’s wearing a fast food uniform taking orders. Balthazar calls to her, “Mom over here!” She looks over at Balthazar and gives him one of her, “I see you” looks like she used to do when Balthazar would do his acrobatic feats of daring and would literally try to jump to the moon from the backyard trampoline, and then she goes right back to taking orders. Marge leans closer to Balthazar pointing to a fat cloud low on the horizon. “That cloud right there, see it Balthazar, that cloud right there reminds me of my stuffed rabbit Ivan when I was five years old.” Balthazar thinks, “Five years old…that was so long ago.”
ix.
In the closet, Balthazar and Marge stare at the firefly in the glass bottle. Its light pulses like Morse code, at least that’s what Balthazar tells Marge and how he learned it on a cable TV show about ships that were sinking. “Well then…Balthazar?” He tries to make out what the firefly is trying to say, but he only knows S.O.S., and the rest makes no sense. He wishes that he could glow like the firefly and send Morse code, which some alien could see from outer space and save him from sinking. Balthazar doesn’t know exactly what that means since he isn’t in the ocean but he knows the feeling.
xv.
Balthazar’s father is sitting in the chair–with its back to the front door, weeping. This makes Balthazar very uncomfortable. He walks slowly past him, opening the screen door slowly and once past the threshold, takes off in a flash. The screen door slams back against the doorframe with its tinny thud. Balthazar’s father, shaken by the sudden noise, hurriedly wipes the tears from his eyes, “Balthazar is that you?” But Balthazar is already across the lawn and entering the backwoods. Walking through shadow and light Balthazar thinks of adults crying. He’s never seen an adult cry before, not one and is trying to understand why he ran. Maybe it’s because, he’s always thought, that once you grew up and are an adult, all that crying stuff will be over. He thinks about it a lot and has been pretty set on the idea that being sad is a kid thing. Maybe he is wrong after all and that is too much to imagine.
xvii.
Balthazar can’t sleep because it’s too hot, too hot even for the flies on the window sill that fan each other with their wings. He lies there and can feel the shadow man watching him from the closet. He can’t see him at night, though sometimes with a full moon he can pick him out but he can always feel him. At first the shadow man scarred Balthazar but then he realized that, the shadow man showed up around the same time he was trying to Think a new brother. Balthazar thinks that maybe he didn’t Think a new brother hard enough or long enough and ended up with the shadow man instead. Balthazar just sort of got used to him always being there and the shadow man never really tries to scare him; he’s quite and seems to just watch whatever it is that Balthazar is doing. Balthazar always imagines him as an older brother simply not cooked enough by his Thinking to be a complete person. Lying there in the heat, Balthazar says in the direction of the closet. “Sure is hot shadow man, sure is hot. “ Balthazar, on his back, stares up at ceiling as his eyes get heavy, heavier listening to the click of chain hanging down from the fan.
Christopher Anthony Leibow has been published in numerous journals and online, including Sugar House Review, Interim, Barrow Street, and Circa, with upcoming publications in 2Bridges, The Moth and NanoFiction. He is a two time Pushcart Award nominee and currently lives in Salt Lake City, with his girl and their dog Miss Penelope the Perpetual Wonder Pup and her sidekick, Count Orly the Caterwauling Cat.
–Art by Sagi Kortler