"I've never been in these parts," says Nellie after a while, breaking the comforting silence of the bubble that is our car moving through the stillness of the country afternoon.

We round a bend. I gasp. The field ahead of us looks like something out of a storybook. Giant balloons, all different, all in birthday-party colors. It is like being in someone's imagination.

"Can you see them too?" I ask, thinking maybe it is my imagination they are in. "Those things in the field?"

"Of course I can. They're right ding-dong there," says Nellie, who is beginning to look hot and cranky, pulling the car over to the side of the road with a thunk. "A bunch of hot-air balloons. You know what hot-air balloons are, don't you?"

"Hot-air balloons?" I say, breathing dizzily. Why has no one ever told me?

"Well, I expect you live in ignorance a fair amount of the time," says Nellie, sighing. "I always say to your mother that it's wrong cloistering you children like that down at the end of the beach where you're so sheltered from the world."

I think this is a strange way to look at it. As if, if we'd moved to town, the whole of mankind and its mysteries could then make its way to us and we'd know about everything that is. My best friend, Ginny, lives in our town's only new development. She has houses packed all around her and I know for sure she doesn't know everything there is. I envision the world coming to us, full of its hot-air balloons and countries and peoples and cities, all piling up in a giant mess at our doorstep. We'd never sort it out and all kinds of things would get broken and lost.

"See those baskets under the balloons? People ride in those," says Nellie.

"Do you think we could ride in one?" I ask Nellie. I pray right at that moment to get a chance. If I can, then I will let the universe off the hook for the other ninety-seven adventures it owes me.

"No time," says Nellie. "We've got important work ahead of us today."

She pauses a moment. "Those folks that are going up, though, they'll be covering a lot of territory, I'll be bound. Come on."

And then I see what she has in mind. She goes to the back of the station wagon and hauls out a box of Bibles, her knees nearly buckling under the weight. She bids me do the same and we trudge across the rutted field, getting bitten by bugs we are unable to swat.

"Now, what have we here?" asks one of the balloonists as we approach, but a kindly-looking lady says, "Shhh," and comes up to us. Nellie declares that she would like all the balloonists to take a few Bibles to distribute wherever their balloons take them, and that they can keep one for themselves to read on those long flights. One of the men starts laughing and the kindly woman puts her hand on his shoulder and tells him to go off and check some valves. Then she leads us over to a bright purple balloon, explaining that the balloons can't take a lot of extra weight.

"Maybe the two of you would like to get into the basket to see how it feels," she offers.

Nellie says she is too big and ungainly but that I'd probably like to. She frowns at me meaningfully. I can't think why. She knows I'm dying to get into the basket.

The kindly lady explains the workings of the balloon to me and tells me to be careful of the burner, it is hot. She shows me how the port line is used to maneuver the balloon as it lands and how the blast valve gets the balloon up and how you make the balloon go down again. I keep hoping she will offer to take me for a ride but she doesn't. Never have I felt so much like a candle on a cake ready to be lit.

Instead, someone calls to her that they need help and she leaves us.

Nellie moves swiftly. She picks up a box of Bibles and goes around to the side of the balloon, which shields her from the others, and starts pa.s.sing me Bibles. "Quick, quick, child, you just lay these in the bottom of that basket."

"Oh, Miss Phipps," I say. "It's no use. As soon as they get in, they'll just throw the Bibles out again. You may as well leave them lying in the field for all the good it will do."

"Hush, child, you do as I say," she hisses, busy pa.s.sing them to me.

So I indulge her until nearly the whole bottom of the basket is full and then I say, "Besides, they told you it wasn't safe. The balloons can't take the extra weight. You don't want to endanger them."

"You don't weigh more than a feather, now do you?" asks Nellie. "We're just giving you a little necessary ballast. Now, you let those Bibles out over the houses as you go by."

"ME?" I squawk.

"Don't you get it? The universe has led us here," says Nellie.

I remember my prayer and how I wanted to ride in a balloon. I should have asked for someone who knew what they were doing to be there with me.

"Wait a second, Miss Phipps," I say. "I don't know how to work this thing."

"You've got your valve and your port rope. You heard the lady explain it. You'll do fine."

I want to say, Yeah, but what if I don't?, but it's too late because Nellie has untied the last rope and I am skyward bound.

Once I am aloft I am surprised how well I operate the balloon. I figure out the blast valve as I move very slowly on currents of air. It is quiet and peaceful and I wonder if I will be going to jail at the end of this.

One of the first things I see from on high is Nellie running for all she is worth across the field with a pack of angry balloonists after her, but they are out of sight before I see the outcome. I am surprised by how fast Nellie can run.

I float above woods and fields serenely in the quiet s.p.a.ce between earth and sky, heaving Bibles until I remember the backs of my family going over that hill as though it were the last time I would ever see them. Was that a premonition? I'm awfully high up.

This thought puts the brakes to the endeavor and I find a good field and maneuver the balloon down with a minimum of b.u.mping and jerking. I am a natural balloonist but I doubt if anyone will be interested in this by the time they catch up with me. I am not surprised when I hear sirens and the sheriff appears.

But it is not me who goes to jail, it is Nellie. It turns out the sheriff had just dropped her off there when he got the call to pick me up. He tells me all about it as he drives me home. When he asked Nellie what in the world she was thinking, sending me up in a balloon, she insisted she was merely doing G.o.d's work, just like the saints. She told the sheriff he martyred her and asked if he planned to torture her too. He said he didn't own a rack but he could always bring her dinner from the Bluebird Cafe.

The sheriff gets a call from his office while we drive. They have already let Nellie out. The balloonists have decided not to press charges. The sheriff says he's glad and anyhow everyone knows church folks are simply crazy.

All my mother says when the sheriff drops me is "That Nellie Phipps." The sheriff tells my mother no one is blaming me. Nellie was the responsible adult. She was the brains of the outfit. Now that I am no longer eaten up by the desire to go for a balloon ride and can think straight, it occurs to me that I have kept all the balloonists from the day of ballooning they had planned. I ask the sheriff to please tell them how sorry I am.

Then the sheriff says he is glad no one is pressing charges because his wife is holding dinner for him.

Once he goes home I sit down and have clam chowder with my family. We are at the picnic table and the wind is blowing little salty blasts over our bowls. My mother says you don't need a saltshaker when you eat outdoors by the sea. Hershel says you don't need a sand shaker either, because sand has blown into his soup. My mother says she will get him a fresh bowl but he says don't bother, he likes the taste of sand.

"That's gross, Hershel," I say.

I tell them about the balloon ride. My mother says it's a miracle I wasn't hurt and I think she is right and then I remember gazing up at the balloon, a circle of purple light against the sky-the sign I had asked for. Goose b.u.mps come up on my arms.

"What did you do in the balloon?" asks Maya.

"What was there to do but just ride?" I say. I don't mention dropping the Bibles.

The sea is turning bloodred in the sunset and I wonder what it means about the kind of week we have had. Even my mother says that it is a violent-looking sea. But all's well that ends well. Nellie Phipps got let out of jail so there's no reason to think this is a portent. It's just a sunset.

My mother pa.s.ses me a bowl of strawberries.

"Enjoy them," she says. "They're the last of the season."

The Poetry Reading.

My Fourth Adventure.

The Raspberries Are Ripe.

For five days nothing happens except summer. My adventures must be over because I have gotten my balloon ride and that is the bargain I have struck. But one morning a girl I don't know comes over and I think hopefully that this may be my next adventure beginning. She tells me she is a page at the library. This throws me for a second. I am thinking of all those book pages. Then I realize that it is a job t.i.tle. She has a note for my mother. My mother has been out fishing from the pier on the lake all morning because last night we had chicken and rice for dinner without the chicken. I take the note and sit on the porch waiting for her. We have never gotten a hand-delivered note from the library before and I want to know what it says but it is sealed.

Finally my mother comes home with a small bucket of perch and sits down next to me. "The raspberries are ripe," she says. She holds out a small cupful she has picked and we eat them together. She smells earthy from digging worms and when she opens her letter, she wipes a tendril of hair off her forehead and out of her eyes in order to read, leaving a dirty smudge.

"Well!" she says when she is done reading, and folds the note up again. She stares into s.p.a.ce for a couple of minutes. Then she remembers I am there and hands it to me.

It is from Mrs. Stewart, the librarian, saying they are having a poetry reading at the library tonight and three poets were to read but one has had to cancel. The others are H. K. Thomson and Ca.s.sandra Lark. The library is offering my mother a hundred dollars to come and read her poetry as the replacement. I know she hates doing this. She doesn't like being the center of attention. She says it gives her the w.i.l.l.i.e.s.

"Are you going to do it?" I ask.

"Yes," says my mother, sighing and getting up. "I'd better go prepare something. Could you take a note back to the library for me?"

She writes out an acceptance and as much as I know she doesn't want to do it I am glad because it has been five long days since the balloon ride and I am bored. I have reneged on my promise to G.o.d. I want my other ninety-seven adventures. I pray for them with renewed vigor.

I run across the sand barefoot and sit on a cement divider as I put on my sandals. People are piling out of cars to go down to the beach. I don't know any of them. A lot of them are probably tourists. They probably see our house and think how lucky we are.

I am walking past Dr. Callahan's office, which is next to the library, when I trip over one of the Gourd children. "Hey, watch it!" snaps Mrs. Gourd. She is coming down the doctor's steps with a baby carrier. There are little Gourds everywhere. The one I tripped over is crying so I put him back on his feet. Dr. Callahan waves at me from the top of the steps.

"Jane Fielding, look at you go!" he calls down. "Tripping over children! Dropping Bibles out of balloons like missiles. When you kids in town start growing up and sowing your wild oats, why, you really sow them, now, don't you? You'd better be careful, Mrs. Gourd might sue next time!" He goes back inside.

Mrs. Gourd stands stock-still. She is thinking. Her eyes kind of roll when she does this. It is not the normal way a person thinks. It seems to require more mechanical effort. As if her eyes are needed to crank her brain into gear and keep it running. "You were dropping Bibles out of balloons like missiles? You're that hot-air-balloon girl."

"Why?" I ask. I really would like to forget the whole thing but she whips off the baby blanket that is covering the baby carrier and I gasp. There is a large purple lump on the top of the baby Gourd's head.

"That's why," she says grimly, and stares at me.

I just look at the b.u.mp dumbly for a minute while the little Gourd I tripped over wails.

"Well?" she demands finally.

"What do you mean?" I ask, but my mouth is dry even before my mind can form thoughts.

"I'll tell you what I mean, missy. I was walking with these children and one of them Bibles you was slinging out of that contraption hit my baby on the head and may have scarred him for life! That's what. He may never have no normal intelligence now."

"NO!" I say as the full implication of Dr. Callahan's words and what I have done comes over me. "NO!"

"Yes indeed. Now, just what're you planning on doing about that?"

One of the library clerks runs down the steps. "Hi, Jane, I hope your mom can read at the event tonight!" she calls to me as she dashes off. "I love her poetry!"

Mrs. Gourd's eyes go to the posters on the library door and windows about tonight's big poetry reading. "Which one is your mother?"

"My mother's Felicity Fielding but her name isn't on the poster because she is just subst.i.tuting," I explain. Didn't I look down when I dropped the Bibles? Am I crazy? Didn't it occur to me I might hit someone?

"Well, well. I guess I better just show up at this reading and see what she plans to do about her daughter maiming innocent babies. It's like the doctor said, I could sue, you know!"

I don't say anything and now she starts to smile and nod to herself in a satisfied manner. "Must be nice to be so rich that all you gotta do is write poetry all day. I gotta go make supper for Mr. Gourd right now but I'll be talking to your mama later and we'll just see about sharing some of that wealth."

Mr. Gourd is our school janitor and he scares me. He creeps around the hall with his mop and pail and a half-smoked cigarette always dangling from his lips. There are rumors that he has come to school drunk, that he has. .h.i.t children, locked them in closets. I don't really believe these rumors but I don't want anything to do with him. Suppose my mother says no to Mrs. Gourd and Mr. Gourd comes to our house to try to talk to my mother. It will scare Max and Hershel and terrify Maya.

I think of last night and the bloodred sea. All has not ended well after all. I know what Nellie will say when she finds out. "I'm going straight to h.e.l.l," I say, thinking aloud.

"You're going straight to jail first!" says Mrs. Gourd indignantly as if I have tried to skip a step. She gathers up her children and leaves.

I look around. It has been as if everything, even time itself, had stopped during this debacle and now it has reset itself; people are once more walking by on their way to their various errands, their lives exactly where they left them when my life came to a crashing halt. For me things will never be the same. I have maybe injured a baby so seriously it will change his life and the life of his family forever. But overriding this is the terrible fear of my mother finding out, of her ruination on top of my own. I cannot let her find out about any of this.

Because I am thinking of my mother I make my way home, forgetting about the note, and when I get there, find it clutched in my hand, all sweaty and crumpled, and have to go back to the library, desperately aware of how little time I have left to come up with a plan.

Yesterday I was so full of hope. My life seemed blessed, full of adventures and answered prayers, and now something very, very bad has happened and it will never be the same again. And it all happened because I was greedy. Because I couldn't have an ordinary life. Because I was so taken with the wonders of the world that I could not be content with anything less than the constant awareness of its miracles. And you cannot have that in your basic nine-to-three schooltime routine, even with the best of teachers. Even with books to read. Even with the sound of the ocean every night. You need more.

"So," says Mrs. Stewart when I hand her my note. "She's saying yes for a change, is she?"

"Yes," I say breathlessly because my mind is racing ahead to my dim future. If we cannot pay what Mrs. Gourd wants, will I really be sent to jail? I see myself in a plain, round underground cement cell in which water drips on my head no matter where I stand and c.o.c.kroaches are the size of birds and water bugs are the size of cats. But I have to eat them because they have forgotten my gruel tray again. And then for a change of pace I go to h.e.l.l.

Mrs. Stewart makes a face that is kind of a sneer and kind of triumphant. "Well, I guess she sees she has to do this sort of thing now and then," she says, making another mean face. I don't know why she is so mad at my mother. "I'll put her on in the middle between Ca.s.sandra and H.K. They're both experienced at this sort of thing. Tell your mother we'll need about twenty minutes is all. If she's got it. I'll give H.K. and Ca.s.sandra the bulk of the evening as that's who people are coming to see."

I nod and head home. For a moment I formulate a plan to tell my mother that the library has changed its mind and she needn't do the reading. But she will just find out I lied and Mrs. Gourd will track us down at home. Besides, now we need every penny to pay her off.

When I get in I tell my mother that Mrs. Stewart said she needs twenty minutes.

"Goodness, is that all? Thank heavens," my mother says. "Can you watch Maya and Max and Hershel for me if I bring them along?"

I nod.

"Are you feeling well, Jane?"

I nod again. She looks at me searchingly as if to discover what has besieged me and fix it but all she can think to say is "Maybe Ginny would like to come with us?"

For the first time since I talked to Mrs. Gourd I feel a stab of relief. Ginny is smart and clearheaded and practical. But even more important, she is always on my side. She already knows what she wants to do with her life. She is going to be a dress designer in New York City. She has it all thought out. If anyone can help me come up with a plan to circ.u.mvent Mrs. Gourd, it is Ginny.

My mother sees how happy this thought has made me and she says, "Well, for heaven's sakes. Run and get her now. She can have dinner with us."

I run across the sand to the development where Ginny lives. I weave my way through the new roads with their black asphalt and crisp sidewalks edged by fresh-cut gra.s.s. Ginny's house is neat. The garage is large and in front of the house and gapes at you. Our house stands guard over us but Ginny's feels like a soft plush monster that swallows you into the comfort of its great carpeted maw. Everything is so soft you do not even know you have been divided from all that is alive. You cannot feel the wind or cold or damp. There are no hard surfaces or sharp sounds. There is no danger here. Streetlights outside her window keep light always around, inside and out. This artificial light pretends that here there is only safety and life, but this light itself is a kind of death. It is death to the deep night.

Ginny answers the door. Her mother and father are at work. She takes me up to her room. The walls are slick with shiny wallpaper. She has bunk beds. I always thought I would sleep in one if I slept over but I have never been invited. Ginny has never said so but I think her mother is somehow suspicious of my family and the way we live on the beach.

I begin to feel that I cannot breathe. I feel caged. The soft, quieting carpeting makes me crazy for the sound of the sea.

"Can you come to my house for supper? Can you leave your mother a note?"

"What's the matter with you?" Ginny asks, but I cannot talk in this smothering place.

She writes a note to her mother and we run until we are someplace where I can see the wind moving the trees. Where I feel the universe at work again. Then I sit and tell Ginny everything that has happened.

"Oh no," she says, putting her hand to her mouth in horror. This is why I like Ginny. She does not try to talk you out of the gravity of the situation.

She does not remove her hand from her mouth but says through it, "You've been busy since I last talked to you." It is inestimably comforting to have a friend, someone who is not horrified at you but with you.

"It's all so terrible and it all started because Mrs. Parks had a thrombosis and it wasn't interesting like Mrs. Nasters's cancer."