A group of men in heavy parkas cluster by a bench on our main street.
“I like your light!” one calls in accented English. The others guffaw. Well, you can’t pay much attention to stupid comments. A headlight is practical when you do a lot of night riding. If they find me foolish, so be it. Some of the immigrants in town ride bikes too, but I get the impression it’s because they can’t afford cars yet, and as soon as they can buy a nice pickup it will be adios, bicicleta.
Everyone’s in a rush to get a driver’s license, but I’m in no hurry to get a car. You know those old movies, British mysteries or French classics, where you see a guy riding a bike in a tweed jacket and tie? That’s very classy. Except that in the U.S. you would have to wear a helmet, which ruins the look.
Why hasn’t anyone done a movie about a group of bicyclists? It would open with kind of a skittery theme on an electric fiddle, which gets louder as a dozen classic bikes appear, another dozen, forty in all. They burst into stunts: ramp jumps and wheelies. The scene looks like pandemonium but has been drilled to clockwork precision. It could be the story of outlaw bikers taking midnight rides on hacked bikes that defy safety laws, or musicians who work as bike messengers by day. Or an action movie about rival gangs, loaded with street-fighting scenes. I can picture the movie poster: “Spokes. What goes around comes around.” A closeup of a guy’s face through the wheel he’s repairing. His eye is circled with a gang tattoo.
Maybe if Dad rode a bike again, like he did as a kid, he could get his old energy back. It could be that easy: tire himself during the day, sleep better at night, and we all go back to normal. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I try not to think about it too much. But Mom and the doctors have to keep trying. If they weren’t saying maybe, maybe, maybe they would just sit around asking why, why, why. As in a traditional blues song. Something like:
Why does a man feel tired
Why does a man feel dead
When something something something
And the something in his head
It’s a world of trouble, baby
Oh Mister Trouble, let me go
Get your something from my something
And leave me to my—
Studio? Radio?
I should be able to plug in that rhyme. I don’t want to use a rhyming dictionary unless I’m absolutely, definitely stuck.
“Hey, Bicycle Boy!”
At the red light I feel something wet across my eyes and cheeks. Not blood? A Ford Explorer screeches forward, bolting from me as soon as the light turns green. Guys in the car are laughing, and one turns back to taunt me, holding a bottle out the window.
I pull the bike over to the curb and press my hand against my face. My heart is slamming. No, not blood. Something cool and clear. I sniff. Probably just water. He squirted me with a bottle of water. Could be worse. Could be bleach. Or urine.
Who would do a thing like that?
Probably frat boys from Hawthorne State, looking for a cheap laugh. If so, is there something about me that provoked this? Were they cruising for victims, or did my appearance make them want to humiliate me? Are they threatened by my challenge to automotive dominance?
Christ, I wish I had had something to throw into their car. Or at least that I recovered in time to say something back. “Bicycle Boy.” Really clever. Really humiliating. That put me in my place, all right. Oh my gosh, you’re right, I am riding a bike! Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn’t realized it! And now I realize how socially unacceptable that is! Idiot me! It’s four wheels from now on!
Or was the “boy” part the big insult? Crap, I’m only fifteen! That makes me unfit to live! If only I could be a college guy like you, with nothing to do but drive around soaking people!
Now, what was I just thinking about?
Still, it could be worse. Awful things. Like bleach, right in the eyes. Or, I heard of somebody riding along when a car passenger smashed a glass bottle in front of him, probably hoping that broken glass would fly up into the cyclist’s face. Or girls getting their rear ends grabbed. You could fall right into traffic after something like that. Why can’t people just get along?
What could you say to those guys? “Bicycle Boy.” Why is that so clever? Is it the repetition of the b at the beginning of both words (i.e., alliteration) that they think is devastating? If so, would they be devastated if I alliterated them back? College Clowns? Water-Wielding Wusses?
Explorer…Excrementheads? But that’s the thing about these incidents. You dwell on them too long, and you never do recoup. You think you’ll get your own back, but you can’t. It eats away at you. They’ve got you either way.
Okay, now I’ve completely lost my train of thought.