Today's The Day

“Son, it’s time we got you a real bike,” Dad said.

I couldn’t believe my ears.  I had been learning to ride a little kid two-wheeler with training wheels, a hand-me-down from my older sister.  I didn’t like it, but even a girls’ bike is better than no bike at all.  After a week I was getting the hang of it.  With the training wheels up as high as they would go, I could ride down the whole driveway and back without the little wheels touching.  When Dad got home from work that afternoon I showed him.  He sized me up and that was that.  Today was the day!

Dad and I climbed into the station wagon and headed for the tire store.    I was so excited I don’t remember the ride and we got there before I knew it.  As we walked into the store I smelled fresh rubber.  There were tires everywhere, in stacks on the floor, on shelves with flashy signs and on racks hung from the ceiling.  I scanned the room taking it all in, then zeroed in on the back of the store.  There they were!  Bicycles, dozens of them, lined up in neat rows, all shapes and sizes, everything smelling like rubber.

Dad went out back to find a salesman.  I was left to wander in wonderland, rows and rows of shiny new bikes.  They were more than I could count and I’m a pretty good counter.  In front were little kid bikes, which I walked right passed.  Next was a row of  spider bikes, six of them, with high handle bars, banana seats and small wheels with fat tires.  They were racy looking, some with streamers from the hand grips, but not right for me.  Bobby, the kid next door, had a spider and he had to pedal like crazy to keep up with the other kids.  But I was planning on covering a lot of ground so I gave them a good looking over and moved on.

Next were the English bikes with downturned handle bars for racing, hand brakes and skinny road tires on tall spindly rims.  One even had a tire pump hooked on its frame.  These were built to travel and I liked that.  I looked around to see if anyone was watching.  The coast was clear, so I thought I’d try out a fast looking Schwinn racer.  As I swung my leg up my foot sort of got stuck on the bike’s crossbar and I nearly fell over,  taking the row of bikes with me.  Hopping on one foot I managed to catch my balance and unhook my sneaker from the Schwinn.  That was a close call.  Maybe these English bikes aren’t as good as they say.

In the last row were the regular bikes, touring bikes some people call them.  The first few were girls’ bikes, with no top crossbar.  I think that makes it easier for girls to ride with skirts on.  Next to those were four boys’ bike, heavy and strong, built for action.  There in the middle of the row I spotted her.

It was a dream bike, tall and red, long and shining like a new penny.  She was a Western Flyer, with its frame curving up from the rear axle to meet the steering part in the front.  Above the bar the frame widened into a tank, just like a motorcycle, which was just for looks, it didn’t hold any gas.  The tank had a headlight stuck into the front.  She had chrome fenders, chrome rims and white wall tires, a red and white seat with a red carrier rack on back.  All red and chrome, just like a fire truck, or at least a bike a fireman would ride.  This was the one for me!

Dad came back in with the salesman.

“How old are you son?” the man asked.

“I’m seven.”

“You’re big for age,” he said.  I liked the sound of that so I grinned and nodded.

“Our small frame bikes are over here,” he said, pointing towards the kid bikes and spiders. 

My heart sank.  I didn’t want a kid bike.  I looked down at my feet, still holding the white handgrip of the Western Flyer.

“How about these?”  Dad asked, pointing to the regular bikes.

“Yeah, how about these?” I said.

“Well, those are mostly full-size, might be too much for him to manage. But that red one there might be okay.  It has 25-inch wheels.”

“Wanna give it try, son?” Dad asked.  I nodded eagerly and got ready to mount.

“Here, let me get this,” said the salesman, flipping up the kickstand.  I took hold of the grips and swung my foot, hooking it on the seat the same as I had done on the Schwinn.  I struggled free and swung again.  No luck.

“Let me try something,” said the salesman. Stepping over to the counter he grabbed a wrench.  He gripped on a nut below the seat, loosening it.  Giving the seat a twist, he wiggled it from side to side until it slid down, hitting the frame with a clunk.  The hair on the back of my neck felt prickly as he worked.  He lined the seat up straight and tightened the nut.  “Now give it try,” he said.

Once more I held the grips and with everything I had I swung my leg up.  I made it!  I was on top of the bike and I slid up onto the seat, one foot just touching the floor on the tippiest tip of my toe.  

“How’s that feel?” asked the salesman.

“Good.”

“Looks like a bit of a stretch.”

“Well, I have my short sneakers on,” I said.  “My other ones are taller.”  The men laughed and smiled at each other.  The truth is I couldn’t reach to put both feet down, but I could just reach with the toe of one foot.

“Are you sure it fits okay?” Dad asked.

“Yes sir,” I said with confidence, struggling to stay up.

“This is the one you want?” he asked.  I nodded eagerly. 

“I can give you a deal on this,” said the salesman.  “It’s a holdover.  The company quit making ‘em a couple of years ago.”  That cinches it, I thought.  Dad loves a bargain.

They went and wrote up a paper and Dad gave the man a check.  Then the salesman wiped her down and checked the tire pressure with a pen looking thing he had in his shirt pocket.  “Be sure to keep both tires pumped up to forty-five pounds, son,” the salesman said.  I agreed, even though forty-five pounds sounded pretty heavy to me. 

I walked the bike out the door with my Dad’s hand on my shoulder.  “Thanks Dad,” I said, as we loaded her into the back of the car.

“You’re welcome son.  I still remember my first bike.  You enjoy it now, you hear.”  I smiled and nodded, then smiled some more.

It seemed like a long ride but we finally arrived home, Dad, me and my Western Flyer.  Lifting the bike out of the back of the car, Dad said, “Why don’t you give her a spin while I go in and tell Mom we’re home?”  I nodded as he handed me the bike. 

I jumped on and wobbled my way along the driveway.  It was scary and I took a couple spills, but after a few laps I could manage okay.  I was riding high above the ground, rolling easily along and feeling the wind in my face.  I was free.  It was the first day of the best summer of my life.

           

Facebooking the Dead

I have a friend on Facebook.  She has a busy profile: lots of photos of her smiling with friends, game and cause requests, wall posts of current events, and notices saying “you were tagged” in so-and-so’s photo, altogether about 3 or 4 wall posts per day, with 118 friends, 25 of them in common with me. 

It’s was a couple of months since I’d seen her last.  I posted on her wall to keep in touch.  I sent her a message, “Hey Roxanne! Long time no see."  And another, "You forget who your friends are? How you doing?”  A couple days with no response, so I gave her a poke.  Nothing.

Not surprising.  I’m facebooking the dead. 

An inkling came with questions on her wall:  “Roxanne, are you OK?”  and “When are you coming home?”  Then, “You are loved.” -- “People are worried about you.” -- “We miss you.” and “Hugs are waiting for you.”

Wall post activity increased as the word traveled through the FB community.  Mixed in with the usual game requests and events were posts like “We’ll miss you Roxanne” -- “You’ve gone to a better place” -- “I can’t believe I won’t see you again” and “My thoughts are with you and your family.”

No one says it outright, but Roxanne is dead. 

It was a tragedy.  Roxanne, wife, mom, co-worker and friend was gone, leaving a husband and three children behind.  I look at the photos, I read the posts on her wall and I can’t understand. How could this happen in front of us all?  One hundred and eighteen “friends”, no one sensed the pain Roxanne was in?

That was five months ago.  The latest post on Roxanne’s wall was within the past twenty hours.  Her picture is the same, an attractive woman in her early forties, with an air of boldness and delicate strength.   Her FB page deftly masks the inner struggle which took her life.  Roxanne is gone, but her Facebook persona remains.

What happens to us on FB after we’re gone?  Will it carry my ghost back to haunt those many earthly “friends” I'll leave among the living. How many dead are present among us even now on Facebook?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  A million, or more?  Their pictures still fresh and alive, their pages still sharing personal aspects of the former lives of the departed.  As social networks grow into maturity, as with any human endeavor, generations shall pass. 

But the profiles of the dead remain.   

September Rain

Cloudy, gray,

tears are falling.

Silken cheek flush,

tinged with mercy.

Brings forth change,

falling leaves of pain.

Petal lips

drip honey balm.

Anointing grace

eyes glistening green.

This good earth

soft, warm and fragrant.

Furrow deep,

rich wholesome bed.

Acorn broken,

tendering green shoot.

The sower’s gift,

sister, lover, friend.

Implication

A shaggy head poked out of the tent flap, the white hair and beard like old St. Nick.  His puffy, red-cheeked face scanned the perimeter and popped back inside. 

“All clear,” Scotty said.  “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hold on,” Buck said, straightening up the bedding strewn on the dirt floor.  “We’ll go when I say so.  Help me clean this place up.”

Scotty stuffed an armful of soiled clothes back into an orange crate.

“I know it’s here somewhere,”  Buck said, opening a rusted coffee can stashed behind the bed.

“You surmise it’s here.  Doesn’t mean it is.”

“Don’t give me that surmise crap,” Buck said.  “You saw him same as me.  Jake wears that T-shirt and gym shorts when he goes down for his bath.   No place on him to carry a stash.”

“But he’s too paranoid to leave something valuable unsupervised.”

“Maybe so,” Buck said, as he pulled a hunting knife from his belt and pried the lid off of a five-gallon plastic pail.  Inside were two books, some newspapers and a box of friction matches.  Closing the lid, Buck froze.

“I heard something,” he said.  

Scotty peeked outside.  “He just turned up the path.”

Slipping out of the tent they slunk from Jake’s clearing and followed the path away towards the railroad tracks.  

“That was close,” Buck said, wiping sweat from his red-rimmed eyes as the two men clambered onto the tracks.  “We best go into town and stay there for a while,”

“Hold on a minute,” Scotty said,  puffing.  “You think that’s a good idea, us going to town together?”

“Hell yeah.  If Jake notices somebody’s been in his tent, we don’t want to be nowhere around.”

“Think about it.  You and I don’t go to town together.  And when I go in I usually take my bike.”

“You’re right.” Buck rubbed his stubbled beard.  “You go back.  I’ll head into town.  That way nobody can put us together and we’ll each have an alibi.”

“I wouldn’t call it an alibi, not without corroborating witnesses.”

“Alibi or not, we better split up.”   

Scotty nodded. 

“Let me have a chaw for the road, would you?” Buck asked.

Scotty pulled a plug of tobacco from the pocket of his stained gray sweatpants.

“Thanks partner.” Buck reached for his knife.  “Where is it?”  he patted the empty sheath and searched his pockets.  “My knife -- it’s gone.”

He ran back to the spot where they had climbed onto the tracks and searched the path.  “It’s not here,” Buck said.

“Where did you have it last?”

Buck sat down on a rail and scratched his head.  “I slipped the knife in my belt on my way to take a leak this morning.”

“Did you have it at breakfast?”

“I used it to open that can of beans.  And then I…  I had it at Jake’s. Used it to get the top off that pail.”

Scotty blinked his eyes.  “And?”

“That’s when you saw Jake coming and we skedaddled.”

“You sure you didn’t put it back in the sheath?”

“I just can’t remember,” Buck said.

Jake trundled up the path from the river, his black brow a shelf over his ominous  dark eyes.  His rangy hair and scraggly beard gave him an unkempt appearance. But Jake was fastidious by local standards, faithfully taking his morning sponge bath.  He was the only man at the outpost to do so.   

The occupants of the tented enclave had adopted “the outpost” as a fitting name when Scotty had showed up five years ago.    He was good at finding the right words for things, a former educator, Scotty was the brightest of the dozen men that called the outpost home.

The outpost was perched on a wooded hillside a mile outside of town.  Just over the hill to the north was the interstate highway.  To the south lay the railroad tracks, a river below them.  The only way in was the rail bed, followed by a climb up a steep slope.

Jake halted at his tent.  The bottom corner of the tent flap was unhooked from a twig he had placed there as a security measure.  Had a breeze blown it loose? 

Just inside the tent flap Jake found a plastic cup on its side, spilling the twigs it contained.  The bed roll was too neatly laid out, the clothes crate sat at an odd angle.  Reaching for his coffee can, Jake stepped on something – a hunting knife.  Picking it up, he noticed a chink in the blade at the hilt.  He pulled a small brown wad from the chink, touched it to his tongue, then sniffed it. 

“Those bastards,” Jake croaked.  “We’ll see about this.”

Scotty made his way back up the hill.  Through the slanting rays of morning sun, wisps of smoke rose from the campfires of two nearby tents.  No one was stirring, just another quiet morning, with no sign of Jake.  Scotty ducked into his tent and stretched out on his cot.  His hands behind his head, he stared at the backlit, blue tarpaulin roof and  considered the situation. 

Better if I hadn’t heard about that check Jake got or seen him walk out of the bank with that thick envelope.  Ignorance is bliss, Scotty reflected.   Now a dangerous greed had been awakened and Jake was not someone to trifle with.

The outpost community knew only two things about Jake’s past.  One was that he came from out west, near Seattle, because he talked about the fish there.  The other was a story that came from a hitchhiker who had passed through a year ago.  This guy knew Jake from somewhere and had let on how Jake had been incarcerated ten years ago for manslaughter.  Jake was livid when he found out what the guy had been saying.  But no more was learned about it because the next day the man was gone and not heard from again. 

I should have kept my mouth shut, Scotty thought.  Once Buck got wind of Jake’s money, he wouldn’t let it go.  We had to go in there and toss the place.  Now Buck’s gone and lost his knife, Scotty scoffed, shaking his head.  If he left it at Jake’s there will be trouble, that’s sure.  But what if he lost it somewhere else?  We would be in the clear. 

Scotty decided some reconnaissance was in order.

“Hey, Jake!” Scotty said, approaching the tent.  “You in there?”

“Who is it?” Jake replied.

“It’s Scotty.  I’ve got a new plug here and thought you might want a taste,”  he said, pulling the tobacco from his pocket and wiping spittle from his chew-stained Santa beard.

“Come on in,” Jake said.

Scotty lifted the flap and stooped into the tent.  Jake was sitting on his bed whittling something in his lap.

“Have a seat,” Jake said, indicating towards a plastic pail.

Scotty handed his tobacco to Jake and sat, the pail making three sharp snapping sounds as the lid resealed itself.  Jake’s head turned towards the sound with a faint  crooked smile.  Reaching into his lap, Jake retrieved a pen knife and cut off a chunk of tobacco, lifting it to his mouth with the blade. 

“Tastes pretty good,” Jake said, sniffing the plug and returning it to Scotty.  “What kind is it?”

“Cannon Ball.  Hard to get sometimes.”

“I like it,” Jake said, resuming his whittling. “You’re partner over there, Buck, you fellas been running together quite a while, haven’t you?”

“Almost three years.  That’s a while.”

“Know each other pretty well, huh?”

“I suppose so, as far as it goes, you know, rooming with a guy.”

“One the boys asked me, ‘What’s Buck’s last name?’  And I said, ‘darned if I know.’  I been here almost two years and I don’t remember hearing the name.”

“It’s Walker.  Buck Walker.” 

“So that’s it.  Well, mystery solved,” Jake said, continuing to carve, thin curls of wood dropping to the floor. “You guys are running mates, aren’t you?”

“I guess so,” Scotty said, growing uncomfortable.  He’d never heard so many words out of Jake at one sitting.

“Like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.  Find one, and the other fellow ain’t far behind.” 

“I don’t know, I go to the library three or four days a week.  Buck, he never does.  And he frequents that girly bar over on Broad Street, and that isn’t my thing.”

“I see what you mean,” Jake said.  “But besides that you guys are together a lot.  You eat together.  Go down to the river together.  Sleep together.” 

“What’re you getting at?”

“Nothing, just commenting.”  Leaning closer, Jake said, “Tell me, Scotty.  Are you Buck’s ol’ lady?”

“Huh?  What are you talking about?”

“Are you boys close like that, you know, homo?” he said with a wink, sitting back, his lip curling.

“Are your nuts?” Scotty said, rising to his feet.

“Calm down.  I’m just pulling your leg.  Here…” Jake said, reaching into his back pocket and producing a bottle.

“Take a pull on this,” handing the fifth of gin to his offended guest.  “No harm done.”

Sitting, Scotty took a long draft, draining a third of the bottle.  Jake picked up the wood he was whittling and examined it closely.

“I need a bigger knife to finish this,” Jake said.

Reaching into the crate next to his bed, he retrieved a hunting knife, watching for a reaction out of the corner of his eye.  Scotty fidgeted in his seat and blinked his eyes, reaching for his tobacco.

“Ain’t she a beauty,” Jake said, holding up the knife.  “Lucky me, I found it down by the river this morning.”

“No kidding?  That is lucky,” Scotty said, biting off some tobacco, his mind racing.  Buck wasn’t down at the river with that knife. 

“Well, I should move along,” Scotty smiled, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and pulling at his beard.  “Thanks for the drink.” 

Scotty ducked out the tent.

Laying down his whittling wood, Jake picked up the pen knife and began carving on the handle of the hunting knife.  When he had finished carving, he scratched a pinch of dirt from the floor, rubbed it into the carving and polished it with some chaw spittle.  Jake turned the knife to examine his work, the rosewood handle deeply engraved with: ‘BW’.

It was near dusk as Buck reached the outpost.  The air was smoky from cooking fires and there was movement throughout the camp.  Back at their tent, Buck found Scotty asleep on his cot, his back to the door, with a blanket pulled up snugly over his head.

Buck downed a couple of swigs from his water jug and said, “Scotty, where you got that tobacco, partner?” 

Scotty didn’t answer.  Buck helped himself to the pockets of a heavy flannel shirt he found hanging on a peg above Scotty’s bed, but found nothing.

“Wake up, would you?” Buck said, giving the sleeper’s shoulder a shake, with no response.

Shaking him again, Scotty’s body rolled towards Buck, his vacant eyes staring at the blue roof.  A prominence showed under the blanket a few inches below the chin.  Buck pulled the blanket down revealing a knife, the blade plunged to its hilt in the center of his best friend’s chest.  On the rosewood handle he read the initials ‘BW’.  

“What the hell?” gasped Buck, his throat constricting.

He felt the neck for a pulse and turned to leave.  In sudden impulse, Buck pulled the knife from the body.  He ran out the door to dispose of the weapon by tossing it down the hillside towards the river.  Buck turned to make sure no one was looking and he froze, his heart thumping in his chest.  Jake was walking across the clearing with two policeman in tow,  gesturing in the direction of Buck and Scotty’s tent.

Buck dropped the bloody knife behind him, kicking at it awkwardly.  It tumbled a few feet and came to rest on the edge of the path.

Buck sank onto a log outside the tent and sat, his head in his hands.

© 2012 Craig Roberts