twenty-five

Our plan was to cross the German border at the coastal city of Swinoujscie. From there we would ride to Rügen, our last Baltic island, for a celebration before heading back to Bremen. I’d seen pictures of the high, white cliffs that overlook the sea there, and I had once imagined Suzanne and me camped on the edge, dancing around a bonfire in an orgy of self-congratulation. But as we were leaving that morning Helga’s boyfriend informed us the border at Swinoujscie was closed. “You must go south, to Szczecin,” he said. He was packing up and said we could follow him if we didn’t know the way. His girlfriend was already perched in the passenger seat ready to go. I said thanks, but no, and we headed off on our own.

We left Rewal in the glare of another perfect day and rode south through a low-lying region of meadows, slow streams, and forests. We merged onto a wide, four-lane road and in no time at all we came to the border. We crossed so easily it could have been a tollbooth. We were in Germany again.

I pulled over beside an apple orchard that had been left to go wild and adjusted our map. We had come to a fold, a portion of the map I’d bent and pushed beneath another so it would fit in the clear plastic pouch of the tank bag. When I removed and reset the fold I saw Bremen, the end of this journey.

A flock of starlings lifted themselves on blurred wings into the sky from the gnarled limbs of one of the apple trees. They leaned as one toward the east and streaked back the way we’d come.

At the first opportunity we turned onto a small road heading north. The map showed we could ride northeast, back toward Poland to the village of Linken, then west toward Pasewalk, and north again for a direct route to Rügen. The road turned to a narrow path of up-thrust cobbles and depressions the bike juttered over. Our bones shook. My cheeks vibrated and rubbed against the inside of my helmet. Suzanne began to hum behind me, her voice a staccato that broke into a ragged laugh. The front shocks of the bike wheezed as they compressed and released between our weight and the rough surface of the road. I held my jaw open to prevent my teeth from clapping. My hands grew numb and twice slipped from the handlebars. Suzanne shook behind me and I could feel the complication of her weight coming down on the tail of the bike.

“C-a-a-a-n-n-t y-o-o-u-u d-o-o s-o-m-m-t-h-i-i-n-g?” she called through the back of my helmet.

I tried different speeds, as pilots try different altitudes to escape turbulence. At faster speeds the shaking quickened. It became harmonic and penetrated my bones, penetrated to the core of the bike so the engine sounded different. I tried slowing and the bike began a sharp bucking that felt like the tires were square. A truck appeared behind us. It pulled close and impatiently rode just a few feet behind us. I put my hand out for the driver to hold back and he interpreted it as a signal to come around. The lane was too narrow but he came anyway. The left mirror of the bike filled with part of a headlight and a portion of the grill. I moved as far as I could to the side and let off the throttle. We rode through a pot-hole, some mud. The front tire slipped and I felt Suzanne wobble behind me as she caught herself. The truck continued to move past and I saw it was a flatbed loaded with hay. It smelled green and fresh. The truck was its own universe of sounds: clattering valves, worn springs and metal seams abrading like the fiddling of cricket’s legs. It finally pulled ahead of us and I moved the bike onto the road again as tufts of hay swirled over the cobbles.

We stopped twice to feel the solidity of the earth and to restore feeling into our arms and legs. While stopped near Locknitz Suzanne asked me if I smelled it, if I smelled the rain.

We looked and saw an assembly of clouds in the west. I hoped that by heading to Rügen we would pass clear of the storm, and from a spot farther north we could turn and look back as it passed harmlessly out of reach. The road improved and we sped toward Pasewalk trying to beat it.

“Did you see that?” Suzanne yelled. “Lightning.”

I followed the trajectory of her gloved finger past my head. I saw a wall of roiling black clouds.

We rode into an open plain that revealed the size of the storm. It made me think of pictures of sandstorms in the Sahara, the way they curl and bloom, explode, and then envelop everything in their path. Thin veins of lightning projected like feelers from the front of the storm, as if they were feeling for us. We crested another rise and the road began a gentle, well-engineered turn to the left. Off in the distance I saw where our path would soon disappear beneath the clouds.

Of course, I said to myself. This is the way it has to end.

I searched for a building or barn but there was nothing. We rounded another turn and rode through a saddle I considered stopping in. Then from nowhere we were struck head-on by a gust of wind that felt as though someone had jammed our brakes on. The force pushed me forward. My arms compressed and my head struck the windscreen. An instant later the front of Suzanne’s helmet struck the back of mine. Her chest collided heavily against my back, and for a moment I could only see a portion of the instrument cluster from the corner of my left eye. The bike wobbled and I thought to myself, almost with a sense of relief: This is it. We’re finally going down. I pushed backward from the handlebars and we swerved into the opposite lane. There was a strip of broken pavement, some gravel, and then an open field I was thankful for. Then the bike corrected itself. I eased it back into our lane and we rode on.

The storm rolled right over us. The air was charged from the lightning. I felt the rumbling of the thunder in my chest. Light was drained from the sky. The first sad drops of rain whacked against the windscreen and my helmet. Suzanne hunkered down behind me and her arms circled my waist. I looked again for a place to stop but there were only churning meadows of grass and the narrow band of road ahead. We passed a wreck, a car upside down and a battered truck on its side. Flashes of lightning exploded around us like strobes.

We stopped beneath the roof of a gas station on the edge of Pasewalk. Suzanne bought us coffee in thick paper cups, some sandwiches, and we leaned against the side of a pump and watched the storm. I thought if we ate slowly enough the storm would pass and we could continue to Rügen. The car from the wreck was hauled past on the back of a truck. We bought more coffee and continued to wait.

“Allen,” Suzanne said. “I haven’t asked for very much on this trip, have I?”

“No. No, you haven’t.”

“Well...”

“I know what you’re going to say,” I said. I realized immediately our journey was over.

“I think,” she began, “I think Rügen is an unreasonable goal in this storm.”

I was watching a man fill his car with gas. He wore a yellow raincoat with a plastic hood that kept filling with wind and flipping off the back of his head. His wife sat comfortably in the passenger’s seat looking straight ahead. The man kept pulling the hood back over his brow, but each time it filled with air like a parachute and blew backward.

“Allen. Is that okay?”

The man’s wife flipped the rearview mirror over and checked her appearance. She turned her face from side to side, licked a finger, and wiped the lower lids of her eyes. She bared her teeth and picked at one. The wind took the man’s hood again and he reached angrily back and jerked it over his forehead. He used his knee to hold the gas nozzle in place and began to tie the hood around his neck. A gust of wind shoved him as he was doing so and the nozzle fell to the ground. He began swearing and flipped the hood off his head. His wife turned to see what happened. She opened the window just enough to say something though it. The man yelled at her. She closed the window, shook her head, and went back to her teeth.

“Yes,” I said to Suzanne. “You’re right. There’s no need to go to Rügen.”