“It’s just balloons,” says Joshua Shelton. “Just balloons! I can pop them, easy as anything! I can pop them!” He takes the knife from under his pillow and he has at the creature, he stabs away at every one of the segments of its demented body, he slashes hard and they burst one after the other. He begins to laugh as he does so, this killing is easy, and there’s so much of it to kill. It seems that the balloons are red hot suddenly, they burn his fingers, but that’s all right, if it causes him pain then that’s just the way it has to be, and at last he is done, he has popped the last of them, and there’s broken rubber on the caravan floor still sizzling, and he looks around, and the father and the little girl have long gone.
Summer is over, winter’s passed too. And Joshua Shelton wakes in the night and there’s a storm raging outside. He listens to the rain for a few moments as it batters against the window, he feels the caravan rock in the wind. He gets up from his bunk.
The trapdoor isn’t there. “No,” he says, “no,” and he gets on to the floor, and feels for where it should be, he’ll pull it up with his fingernails if he has to — but it’s gone, it’s gone, there aren’t even the thinnest of cracks between this world and that for him to claw at and gain purchase. “No,” he says, and he looks around the caravan, as if perhaps he’s misplaced the trapdoor somehow, it’ll be by his bed, by the stove, in the ceiling even! “Come back!” he cries out desperately, and then, “I’ll be good!”
And then he hears it, faint, underneath the wind and the rain — a rapping at the door. He freezes, listens for it again, wanting to believe but not daring to believe. And — there it is again, weaker this time, someone wanting to be let in.
He opens the door. The rain blows in, he misses his breath. He can’t see. And then, in the blackness he sees a shape — it has given up waiting for him, it is moving deeper into the storm. “Wait!” he calls. “Please!” The figure cannot hear him, or doesn’t want to hear at any rate — and there’s nothing for it, he rushes out into the wet and the cold, his night clothes immediately sodden and sticking to his skin, there’s water in his mouth as he calls out again. He runs toward the figure, he reaches it, he touches its shoulder, he turns it around.
It is not a balloon. It doesn’t float, it falls exhausted into his arms.
He doesn’t know how Ruth found him. Doesn’t ask then, and never asks her. He doesn’t know why having found him she had changed her mind, why she’d hurried back out into the rain.
He helps her into the dry. He hugs her, he kisses her. Cries — his face is already so wet it doesn’t matter, maybe Ruth can’t tell. She says nothing all the while. He has kept nothing for her to change into. He fetches towels. And then, because she won’t do it herself, he strips off her soaked clothes, he sees his daughter’s naked body before he turns away his head in shame and wraps the towels around her.
Her face is marked with old bruises. One of her arms is swollen, it was probably broken, it doesn’t seem to have set right. Her stomach is swollen too, but that’s because she is pregnant.
He puts his arms around her then, he holds her as tight as he dare.
“I love you,” he says. “I love you. I forgive you.” At this last he feels her stiffen. He lets her go.
He makes her hot soup. She eats it all, but slowly, without any apparent appetite.
“I love you,” he says again. “Thank you for coming back to me. And you can have your child, and it can help us. With the balloons. Three generations of us, making animals, just as my father taught me. I’ll teach him everything he needs. I’ll be his grandadda. Or her, if it’s a girl, it might be a girl. I forgive you. Do you forgive me? I need you to forgive me. Do you? Do you love me too?” And he only stops then because she turns and looks him in the eyes, and what he sees isn’t acceptance and it isn’t even blame, it’s just embarrassment he’s going on so.
And still she doesn’t speak, and he wonders if she can speak, whether it’s something Ed has done to her, and he wants to look inside her mouth and see if she still has a tongue. But he doesn’t like to ask.
She sleeps that night on her old bunk bed, and all the next day too. He looks at her sleeping, and at least in her dreams she smiles and seems to be at peace. When she wakes he has more soup waiting for her.
The next night she cries out in pain, and he lights a candle and kneels hunched by her side. She speaks to him at last, weakly, as she kneads at her belly. “Help me,” she says. “Help me.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he says.
He boils the kettle. He knows there should be hot water, but he’s not sure what for. Maybe its use will become apparent. He fetches more towels too. He strokes her forehead, it’s running with sweat, she doesn’t seem to notice. She lies out on the bunk, legs splayed, and she’s screaming now, it’s more than he can bear, she’s thumping down on her stomach with her fists as if that’ll help push the baby out, and he’s watching to see whether a tiny human might emerge, a head, an arm, some legs, anything.
“Help me!” she roars.
He prays to God. He stops. God hasn’t helped him in all these years, and he’s not going to help him now. He prays to the Popping Fields.
“For all that I’ve done for you,” he cries out. “For all the mercy I’ve shown! Save my daughter now. Save her. I love her. Save her. Take the baby if you want it, that’s no matter. But spare my daughter’s life!”
One last terrible shriek, and Shelton thinks it’s all over, that Ruth is dead — and he turns back to her in slow dread. But she’s alive, he sees her blinking and gaping with astonishment and panicking too — the pregnancy has passed, her stomach looks curiously deflated now — and from between her legs something is seeping out. Red, blood red — but it is not blood, it is too thick for that, it oozes over the sheets, thick and rubbery and stretching taut. Shelton dares reach his hand out to it. Shelton dares touch it. He grabs hold, he tugs, and out it comes, there’s so much of it, it’s as if his poor daughter has had her insides stuffed with a giant balloon. But it’s popped now, it’s all right. Out it comes, and you can see the nozzle you blow into, lying there limp like a shrunken penis, you can see the little swelling at the top where the head might have grown.
“Well,” says Joshua Shelton. “That’s that all over, then.”
Ruth says nothing to her father. Ruth says nothing to him ever again. She glares at him with pure hatred, and he flinches. Then she turns on to her side against the wall.
Shelton goes outside, and, as dark as it is, he digs a hole, and buries the useless burst balloon skin within it.
Ruth refuses more soup, she’ll recover without it. It takes a week before she’s strong enough to stand. As soon as she does, she gets into her clothes, she makes for the door and leaves. This time she doesn’t leave a note.
He waits for her to come back, although he’s sure she never will.
He never regrets sacrificing her baby, and he knows he would do it again.
He waits for her.
He looks in the mirror and he seems so very old. His whole beard is grey. He thought it would make him look like his father. But he isn’t grand and he isn’t mysterious. His cheeks hang limp and thin like empty bags. He traces his fingers across the wrinkles. He puts the tip of his knife into the deepest of the grooves, presses the blade downward, and a trickle of blood lazily drips out. It’s strangely satisfying. But the cheek doesn’t pop the way it should.
He waits.
And when the knock at the door comes Shelton knows it isn’t Ruth. He knows it won’t even be the balloon animals. Ed stands there, and of course he has brought a stick. He hits Shelton with it; Shelton staggers back. Calmly Ed climbs into the caravan and closes the door behind him.