The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert

balloon seemed to have no captain.
    The thought of hovering up there, carried by ether, gave me the shivers like nothing else. You wouldn’t get me in a tree even if the ground was squirming with rattlers. I wasn’t one to hammer a shingle on a roof or to climb the ladder that would get me there. It reminded me of the dream that showed up again and again in my nights, which would start sweet, with me waltzing a pretty but faceless lady in a pavilion, under paper lanterns, only to end with us both stumbling down an open well. I would wake, my heart pounding to get out of my ribs.

9.
    A S I WATCHED THE BALLOON rise above the midway, the wind picked up. The balloon bounced at the end of its rope, tugging, the wind threatening to carry it to the clouds.
    The wind would blow, then rest, then blow, then rest, and in between the gusts I’d catch snatches of the speeches from the amphitheater of the Grand Court behind me, and the oompah of tubas from the marine band. I returned Oscar to my back and wandered toward the edge of the crowd.
    â€œThese mighty ssssstructures sssstand where fifty years ago were clustered tepees of the Omaha Indianssss,” the speaker said. The man shouted into a megaphone that magnified his lisp. The megaphone periscoped far out before him, its various snaky segments propped up on stilts. “The sssssilence of this place was disturbed only by the Indian war sound, by the revelry of the Indian dance, and the prairies rang with no sound but the war whoop of the aborigine. Today it is ssssurrounded by twenty thousand buildings, the homes of one hundred fifty thoussssssand people, who are the members of the rich commercial city of Omaha.”
    â€œWhooooop,”
came a shout from the back of the crowd, and people turned, their brows wrinkled with annoyance. I didn’t have to look to know it was August. I recognized his voice and his gumption. August shouted something else, to heckle, but the wind had kicked up again and carried his voice away to get lost in the rustling of the shrubbery.
    The gusts began to scatter lost things across the court. A man’s derby rolled by like a runaway wheel. Handkerchiefs were plucked from pockets, sheet music spun away, stealing off with an unfinished song. Flowers were picked from women’s hats. And the gondolas rocked like at sea, as the gondoliers struggled to return to the docks before their passengers fell seasick.
    I waved to August, and when his eyebrow rose and he squinted one eye to sum me up, I remembered my rough-and-tumble condition. I slapped some dirt from my sleeve and from the knee of my trousers. August stood next to Rosie’s makeshift rickshaw, a contraption of odds and ends. The taxi was worse off than I was, its two wheels uneven, its bench an old, short sofa of wine-colored velvet that had been tossed from a bordello saloon. Rosie had stitched shut some rips in the velvet with thick black thread. Wired to the back of the sofa was a parasol with a snapped stem repaired with string. The dainty parasol, its silk patterned with roses, cast barely an inch or two of shade.
    â€œDid you fall into a pack of sssssavages?” August hissed. He licked his thumb and rubbed my cheek with it. He then showed me the smear of blood he’d wiped up. I pressed my fingers to my scratch.
    â€œI’m in love,” I said.
    August sighed with pity and nodded. “Looks it.”
    The speech ended and the crowd applauded to be polite, but they were clearly eager to move on. Nonetheless, no one took the rickshaw rides Rosie offered, even when discounted to a nickel. He did, however, sell a few of his lovelies—the postcards were clothespinned all up and down the ratty silk lining of his coat. Whenever a gentleman passed, Rosie would fan himself with a picture of the three muses in sheer robes, and if the girls caught the man’s eye, Rosie would lift his coat open to offer a peek at the others. Rosie liked it most when a