This New and Poisonous Air by Adam McOmber

enjoying the warmth of the sun on my bare arms. “So, what is it you want?” I asked. “For men like our fathers to close shop?
What’s the harm in it, Amon? Old men need something to struggle at.”
    He glared at me. His combination of pale hair and dark eyes could be frightening. “If a pattern doesn’t exist, and one continues to search for it, that’s mad, isn’t it Roddy? And the idea that I am the son of a madman is—” Amon stopped speaking and stood abruptly, as if about to be sick. I thought his tirade might have driven him to dry heaves, but then he made a scrambling motion in the air and lurched forward, stumbling down the hill. Before I could stand to help him, he’d brought his left leg up and didn’t bring it down again, as if preparing to mount some invisible staircase. Our stableman was prone to epileptic fits, and on a number of occasions, I’d witnessed his contortions and would have thought the stableman possessed, had my father not been there to explain the illness. I feared one of those fits was taking hold of my friend, but then, without lowering his left foot to the ground, Amon stepped off with his right so that both feet were no longer touching the dewy grass. The clouds ceased their westward trek. The hill was silent.
    I’ve tried to come up with a comparable experience to describe what I witnessed—not only for myself but so I could put it down in this journal—and the only event that comes close to seeing Amon Garrik levitate is seeing my father in his coffin, his body impossibly stiff and painted among the silken folds. The lack of motion in my father’s normally animated face was so unbelievable that my mind attempted an adjustment. I actually saw his brow lift, his lips purse because I knew they must move. They’d always moved. Likewise, seeing Amon step off the ground and stand in midair, my mind attempted a correction. Such defiance of gravity wasn’t possible and therefore I couldn’t be seeing it. I imagined the shadow of his boots had taken
on some unknown weight and become a part of his foot, that the shadow was, in fact, pushing him off the ground. Then in the next moment, Amon was falling face first into the grass. His face. I try to remember the look on it. Though what, I might ask myself, is so important about remembering an expression? The events that occurred during the months following the day on the hill should carry more weight. But without a memory of Amon’s expression when he first discovered his miraculous ability, I have no notion of his emotional experience, and it’s necessary for me to believe that I knew him, both inside and out. The question that I should really put to myself—the more frightening question—is whether I remember Amon’s face at all, not the general outline but the specifics of his features. Neither of us had the sort of money necessary to have photographs made, and our warring fathers who daily stepped on one another’s egos, would have never loaned us money for such a purpose. I therefore have no visual record of my friend. I tell myself that I do remember his face. How could I forget? I begin one attempt at recovery, and then another, until I’ve made a hundred Amons, each closely resembling the next except for some significant feature, making me believe that none of the boys I’ve pictured is an accurate representation. I’ve simply made a desperate series of simulations, only to watch them fall, one by one because they don’t live up to my friend’s actual presence.
    I know he had fine hair on his cheeks which he referred to as his Viking’s beard. Amon Garrik was vain about his heritage and refused to trim the growth, though his mother threatened a number of times to do it as he slept and, in the process, to forget to be scrupulous with the razor. Beyond the ruddy down, Amon had a rather plain face, often tanned and primitive, despite the fact that
he was the son of an academic. We’d met at a university party, in the