"No, it's O.K." you can go first if you want to. I don't care."
"No, fair is fair. You're the one who thought it up you go."
Monroe had him there, so Bobby could not very well back down now.
"O.K." if you're scared, I'll go first if you want me to."
"I'm not scared, it was just your idea, that's all."
"Then you go first if you want to."
Monroe looked back up at the top. That settled it.
"I don't want to."
Bobby assumed a nonchalant attitude.
"All right, I'll go first, but remember Macky Warren said the trick is not to look down until you get up there."
"O.K."
"All right then, let's go." Bobby took a deep breath and put his foot on the first rung of the ladder and started up the long, thin steel stairs that led to the top. As they both soon found out, it was a long and steep climb. What they had not counted on was how hot the sun would be the higher they got or how hard it was to hold on to the slippery rails with sweaty hands, not to mention the wind that almost blew them off the ladder. After what seemed an hour of climbing, they finally made it, both of them out of breath, dripping wet with perspiration, hot, and thirsty. When they stepped off the ladder onto the small, round corrugated-steel platform at the very top, their legs were so shaky from the climb that they had to sit down and rest.
Monroe's face was now about as bright red as the balloons in his pocket. After a while they mustered the strength and the courage to stand up and look over the side. The first thing Monroe said when he looked over was: "Whoa!.. We must be ten thousand hundred feet up in the air… higher than an airplane or the Empire State Building even!"
They weren't, of course, but you sure could have fooled them. Bobby and Monroe had never seen the world from anything higher than a tree or the top of a garage. They could see for miles around, and when Monroe spotted a cornfield way off in the distance he was positive he had seen all the way up to Iowa.
Bobby was so overwhelmed at the sight he was speechless. He stood there stunned. He had not known what the world would look like from this far up. He had thought maybe it would look round, like the world globe in his father's den, but to his surprise it was all flat! Nothing before him but big flat brown and green squares as far as the eye could see. It looked just like a map! But when Monroe spotted their town off to the right and pointed it out, Bobby was in for the second shock of his young life. "Look," Monroe said, "there's the church and the school see it?"
Bobby's mouth hung open in total disbelief. Elmwood Springs, which an hour ago had seemed to him to be such an enormous place, was now nothing more than a block of buildings, houses, and streets no bigger than an inch, just stuck sitting out there in the middle of nowhere.
He could see where downtown was, the church on one end and the Masonic Hall on the other. The small black specks walking back and forth were no bigger than ants, and the cars looked like Matchbox toys; the buildings were the same size as the ones in a Monopoly set.
Monroe said, "Look, there's your house… see the radio tower in the backyard?"
Bobby peered over to where Monroe was pointing. It was his house all right. He could see the red light on top of the radio tower and if he squinted he could just make out a black speck moving around in the backyard, hanging clothes on a clothesline. Then it struck him: that speck was his mother! At once another thought hit him, scaring him half to death. What if he were at home right now and out in the yard and somebody else was up here looking down at him? Then he would be no bigger than an ant. No, half an ant… no bigger than a flea! From up here he would no longer be the huge center of his huge universe, the apple of his parents' eyes; from up here he would be nothing and nobody special, just another black dot. Suddenly he broke out in a cold sweat.
"I've got to go home, my mother's calling me," he said. He started back down, leaving a startled Monroe calling after him: "Wait. You can't go… we haven't done the balloons yet. Wait!"
But Bobby did not hear him. All he could hear was the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears and his only thought was to get on the ground as fast as he could. He had to get back home, where he was the right size.
But Monroe, who had been deserted, abandoned, was not going to leave.
He was determined. If he had climbed all the way to the top, people were going to know about it. The heck with Bobby Smith; he would just blow up the balloons himself As he pulled one out of his pocket and started to blow, he suddenly remembered. He ran to the side and yelled down the ladder. "Bobby, wait, stop, you've got the string! Throw me the string!" But it was too late. Bobby was more than halfway down the ladder.
Sometime later Bobby hit the front door of his house running and didn't stop until he got to his room and onto his own bed. When Anna Lee, who was out on the porch, saw the look on his face as he went by, she figured someone was chasing him. She got up to look and see if it was Luther Griggs, the big bully who was always beating Bobby up any chance he got, but Luther was nowhere in sight.
Poor Monroe had stayed up on the tower for at least another forty-five minutes, trying as hard as he could to attach one of those red balloons to the side of the railing, but they all flew off.
But for Bobby the day had been far more than just the failure of the balloon caper. It was the first time he had seen his life from a distance or from anywhere, for that matter, except from the center of his own giant universe. Could it really be possible that he was nothing but just another small dot among a bunch of other small dots?
He had always thought he was something different, something special.
Now he was thrown for a complete loop.
That night Bobby was especially sweet and after dinner, when they were all out on the porch, he went over to his mother in the swing, lay down with his head in his mother's lap, and went to sleep, something he had not done since he was six. It was an extraordinarily warm evening and the entire family, including Jimmy and Dorothy's red-and-white cocker spaniel, Princess Mary Margaret, all sat out trying to catch a little night breeze. It was a quiet night and they were enjoying the sound of the crickets and the soft squeak of the swing. Dorothy looked down at Bobby. He was now in such a deep sleep that when she crossed her legs with his head in her lap he did not awaken. She smoothed his hair back off his forehead. "He must have been up to something today because he's dead to the world tonight."
Anna Lee said, "I thought Luther Griggs was after him again. He ran in the door this afternoon going about a hundred miles an hour."
His mother sighed. "I'm worried that the Griggs boy is really going to hurt him one of these days. He's already a head taller than Bobby."
Doc knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the side of the porch.
"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much. He'll have to catch him first. Bobby may be little but he's fast."
Dorothy thought about it and was somewhat reassured. "Well, that's true. The other day, by the time I got my switch he was out the door and so far out in the field all I could see was the top of his head."
Anna Lee, who, now a teenager, had recently started referring to her brother as "that child," made an observation. "That child is certainly a lot of trouble, isn't he, Mother?"
"Yes, but he can be sweet when he wants to. He's just at that age, I suppose."
"Was I ever like that?" asked Anna Lee.
"No. You were just a little angel, wasn't she, Mother?"
Mother Smith agreed. "Absolutely. You were the best-behaved little girl. I used to take you everywhere with me and all I had to do was to put you down with one of your little dolls and you'd sit there and play and I never heard a peep out of you."
"You loved your dolls," Dorothy said. "That big Raggedy Ann was your favorite; you used to take it everywhere."
They sat there in the quiet listening to the crickets for a few more minutes. Then Dorothy turned to Anna Lee. "What ever happened to your Raggedy Ann doll?"
"Bobby knocked its head off."
"Oh."
Just then Tot Whooten, a frazzled-looking woman, walked by on the sidewalk headed somewhere in a hurry. She did not stop but waved her hand in the air and called out over her shoulder, "Momma's left her purse at the picture show again and I've got to get there before they close."
Mother Smith shook her head. "Poor Tot, that's the second time this week."
Dorothy agreed. "Poor Tot."
A few minutes later, Tot came walking by again, this time with her mother's huge black purse on her arm. Mother Smith called, "I see you got it."
"Yes, thank heavens Snooky found it and was waiting for me. Good night."
They all said, "Good night." Mother Smith added, "Tell your mother I said hello."