All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found

For M.J.

PART ONE

Up in the Air

A
sense of obligation drew me to the Southwest that first time. My brother had recently proposed to his girlfriend, and although we weren’t close—I’d seen him just once in the two years since he’d moved to New Mexico—meeting his fiancée before the week of their wedding seemed like the brotherly thing to do. With the celebration just a few months away, my January break at college offered the last best chance to get an introduction.

I reached Albuquerque in two long days of driving, only to find we were the same oddball brothers we’d always been, perhaps more so. He shook my hand in our aunt and uncle’s driveway, pointy-toed boots on his feet, a ten-gallon hat on his head: playing cowboy, I thought, a little derisively. I’d arrived in my own borrowed costume, the garb of the campus outlaw, black combat boots and surplus East German Army pants, aggressive sideburns sculpted on my cheeks. If we hadn’t been brothers and we’d passed in the street, one look would have soured me on him, and no doubt him on me.

My soon-to-be sister-in-law was a pale kid with hair dyed black and nails painted purple, a look that spoke of rebellious instincts not at all in keeping with the vision I’d had of my brother’s future wife. She was seventeen years old, the daughter of Dan’s boss, an electrician who would soon make Dan foreman of his own crew. Emily would graduate from high school just weeks before the wedding. She showed an adoring deference toward Dan—a kind of puppyish infatuation in her eyes and in the tilt of her head—that I knew would one day fade, and I hoped it wouldn’t curdle when it did, not least because she was the boss’s daughter. She appeared inordinately curious about me, as if every word out of my mouth might contain a clue to parts of Dan’s past and personality about which she knew too little.

Food offered the organizing principle of our time together, as was customary in our family. Over the course of several days I received a tutorial in the versatility of New Mexico’s famous chile peppers. The state question, Dan told me, was three words long—
Red or green?
—and was usually asked in reference to that staple of New Mexican cuisine, enchiladas. Red sauce, smooth as velvet, was made of dried ripe chiles run through a blender and a sieve; green sauce took the form of a chunky broth built around fresh diced chiles. Either could run the gamut from mild to apocalyptic, and the hottest iterations, to which Dan was partial, had the potential to tear the roof off your mouth. We added raw chiles to our eggs at breakfast, and our aunt used them in an apple pie. My tolerance for spicy food, always high, helped me pass what I came to understand was a kind of test administered to the first-time visitor. We ate out most evenings, washed down our food with ice-cold Mexican beer and reposado tequila, and when the mood loosened Dan spoke of flying. That was to be the prize of the trip.

He told me about the annual balloon fiesta, the main event in the public life of Albuquerque and the largest gathering of its kind in the world, a tradition dating back more than twenty years. Each October several hundred balloonists ascended over the city while tens of thousands of spectators gathered to look skyward. Dan had been taken with the romance of flight from the moment he’d arrived in the city. He’d logged trainee hours for months to earn his pilot’s license, flying almost every weekend with his boss. The Albuquerque weather was ideal for ballooning much of the year, with prevailing winds creating a phenomenon known as the box. Surface breezes typically blew one direction, upper elevation winds blew the other, a crosscurrent caused by temperature inversion and the geographic features of the valley, with mountains on the east, the big mesa on the west. A skilled balloonist could make use of the conflicting winds to take off and land in the same general area, avoiding an embarrassing trespass of private property or a nightmare descent in harsh terrain.

Dan liked to be in the air as early as possible, before the warmth of the sun stirred the wind, so we rose on a Saturday morning before dawn and dressed in haste. A pot of coffee, made on a timer, awaited pouring into a thermos. All other preparations had occurred the night before.

The air outside was brisk, scented with the unmistakable tang of the desert in winter. The horizon above the mountains had begun to glow like a coal. Four of us got in the truck and set off. We each took a turn at the thermos. I looked out the window at the pale, naked earth. My stomach felt sick from strong coffee and lack of sleep. I’d never been much of a morning person, another way in which Dan and I differed.

Dan turned the truck off pavement and followed a two-track road, a rooster tail of dust rising behind us. In the middle of a mesa he found an opening in which to park, and everyone set to work as if they’d done this a hundred times, which in fact they had, a mechanical ballet involving earth, wind, and sky, though I did not fully grasp it yet.

I helped my aunt Ruth lift the wicker basket out of the truck bed. My uncle Robert readied the gasoline-powered fan. Dan unrolled the envelope of the balloon on the face of the mesa, securing it to the basket with a series of cables. Once Robert had the fan running, Dan pointed it at the mouth of the balloon. The envelope began to fill with cold air, and he tugged on the cloth here and there to keep it from snagging as the panels of yellow, red, and blue fabric rippled like a flag in a big wind. I stood back, watching silently, feeling useless and a little bit awed. I wanted to offer help but I didn’t know how, and Dan gave no sign that he needed any, so I stood with my hands in my pockets, trying to stay warm, trying to look ready but not too eager.

Dan lit the propane burner mounted above the basket. He fired off a horizontal sword of flame, slowly warming the air inside the balloon. The burner roared and went silent, roared and went silent. No one said a word. The balloon slowly stretched taut. Everyone looked up, at the balloon and the sky beyond it, the sword of flame now and then appearing in the balloon’s mouth, until the silken bubble swung into place overhead.

Get in! my aunt Ruth yelled, as a gust of wind came up, the first of the morning. The urgency in her voice jarred me from my reverie. No time to grab the two-way radio for contact with the chase truck. No time to grab my camera to document the moment. No time to waste if I didn’t want to miss the ride.

I got one leg over the edge as the basket made a lateral hop. It came to ground with a thud and hopped again, and I feared I’d lose my balance and tip over the side. Dan was working the burner, trying to achieve the requisite heat for lift-off, and I had one hand on the basket’s edge and one hand raised behind my head like a bull rider for balance, waving a frantic goodbye to the ground, or what I hoped was goodbye and not hello, for in that moment it could have gone either way.

Dan grabbed the collar of my jacket and pulled hard, yanking me into the basket with him. For a second I crouched at his feet, breathing with quick little rasps of fear at how close I’d come to missing the ride. He looked down at me and laughed, shook his head. He hadn’t expected the sudden wind and admitted as much. Still, he couldn’t resist a poke at such an easy target.

Way to be quick on your feet, he said.

After a two-beat pause he added: You might want to stand up for this.

I rose and looked down at the world we were leaving behind. Ruth waved up at us, a stick figure receding on the mesa; the mesa itself shrank to the size of a tabletop, then a postage stamp. The whole of Albuquerque slumbered in the cold light of sunrise, the dun-colored earth inscribed by the valley of the Rio Grande, a gray thread curling through the city’s sere heart. The rugged spine of the Sandias loomed in the east, a sky island dark with pine in the upper elevations, stark contrast to the spare, lion-colored flora of the desert below. Across the valley to the west little conical peaks rose here and there like scale-model remnants of ancient volcanoes. From somewhere off in the distance I heard the faint bark of a dog. There were no other sounds but the burner and the breeze.

Two thousand feet below us suburban rooftops glinted like bits of confetti. Cars moved like tiny beetles, scuttling on the stems of the interstates. The entirety of the city had the look of a modular, mutant amoeba stretched across the surface of a pale brown sea. Ten minutes earlier I’d been an earthbound creature. Now I floated in the sky as if cupped in the talons of some magisterial bird. I was twenty-two years old and I’d never been in an airplane. I’d never defied gravity for longer than a bounce on a trampoline or a flop from a high-diving board. The grace of our lift into sky made me giddy. I pretended to shiver from cold even as I trembled with something like euphoria.

Dan’s demeanor encouraged me to play it outwardly cool, though. He tended the propane burner with confidence, one hand slung free at his side, his face accented by his first real stab at a mustache, not shabby for a twenty-one-year-old. He’d filled out in the time since I’d seen him last, gaining twenty pounds, much of it muscle. His calm self-assurance had nothing of a pose about it. He was clearly in his element. He pointed out the city’s major landmarks: the university, the airport, the bosque along the river’s course, the Old Town where we’d walked the day before through narrow streets hemmed by neat walls of adobe. I nodded and looked where he told me to, but from the corner of my eye I couldn’t stop watching him. It was as if I were seeing him clearly for the first time in my life—no longer the eternal kid brother, but a man in his own right, possessed of a passion I’d barely known about until I was invited to share in its pleasures.

See the mountains over there? he asked, pointing at the Sandias. Someday I’m going to fly over them. Not many people have tried it. It takes a serious tailwind, and you have to be prepared for anything, because the wind shear on top can smash you to pieces on the other side. But I think it’s worth the risk.

He continued looking that way for a moment, as if gaming it out in his head. I wanted to know more about the logistics of such a flight, but I couldn’t think of what to ask, so I joined him in silent appraisal of the morning light on the mountains.

My joy lasted the entire ascent and more than half the descent. We drifted down and caught the low-level breeze again, moving lateral to the surface of the earth, then found a pocket of calm and drifted down some more. I looked away, looked at Dan. His concentration on the task at hand was total, both hands working the rope line running to the parachute vent in the top of the balloon, through which he let hot air escape.

I forgot to tell you, he said, looking upward through the mouth of the balloon. My friends nicknamed this thing the Cactus Plower. Landing is always the most interesting part.

He surveyed the ground below us, judging the suitability of potential landing zones. None of them looked soft. The earth was rising to meet us in a game of chicken we couldn’t win. At some final point of surrender to wind and gravity he let go of the rope line to the parachute vent and braced his arms on the edge of the basket. I did likewise. I closed my eyes seconds before we came to ground, unable to bear the sickening wait for impact. The force of the landing made my teeth chatter. The basket tipped on its side; my body went momentarily airborne. When I opened my eyes I found myself curled in a ball, covered in the crusty soil of the desert. I brushed the dust from my jacket and squatted on my haunches, careful not to stand before my dizziness passed.

I muttered something about having had all the excitement I could handle in one day.

That’s too bad, he said, because there’s one more thing before you’re legit.

Among hot air balloonists there was a baptismal tradition that Dan honored: when a person made his virgin flight, the rite of passage was marked with champagne, cases of which had been the ballast of choice for the earliest balloonists. Our aunt Ruth having tracked us down in the chase truck, the balloon having been packed and stowed, we drove back into the city. In Ruth and Robert’s back yard I was told to kneel, hands behind my back, and bend toward a small paper cup placed on the ground in front of me. The idea was to grip the lip of the cup in my teeth and drink the champagne by lifting and tilting my head. Dan sat facing me, giving instructions. He insisted that I not use my hands, that I not leave my position until the cup was emptied in my mouth and set back on the ground with my teeth. I was a willing acolyte, eager to do anything he told me. I should have sensed the whole thing was a setup, meant to place me in a defenseless position. At the moment of my most intense concentration, when all I could see of the world was the cup attached to my face and Dan just beyond it, Ruth and Robert came forward and poured their glasses and the rest of the bottle over my head, and Dan doused me with his own glass for good measure. I roared up off my knees, shaking like a muskrat, dabbing with my shirtsleeve at the champagne in my eyes.