Memories of Waves

In my memory the red flag is enormous. It’s at least ten feet, twenty feet high. When it snaps in the wind, it sends a crack through the air that can be heard up on the roof of the hotel. The pole is so large it’s sagging in its hole in the sand and in desperate need of a cement base.

But in reality the flag was a modest thing. Barely waist high, limp as a ragdoll. Just big enough to call your attention to the sign next to it warning of undertow and riptide. And just small enough to forget you ever saw the sign.

I think I remember it being so big because I think if it had been, I wouldn’t have gone out in the water. Or maybe I just feel so stupid about ignore any red flag, no matter the size, that in my memory it looms over me and snaps at me in anger.

But the red flag couldn’t compete with allure of the water. The beach was not deep, but it was as wide as the horizon. It curved away gently from me in both directions, giving me the illusion that I was standing, barefoot in the soft sand of a peninsula that could be glimpse on a map with very, very powerful magnifying glass.

The tide rolled in and out, in and out, and every time it drained away it took a little piece of me with it. But it also brought a little piece of me back each time. And a promise. A promise that if I didn’t run out there, if I didn’t throw myself into the white-tipped waves, that I would forever regret it. That this would be a moment that I would look back on later in life as a moment when my best self had failed.

And so I was off. I leapt into the water, laughed as the waves sprayed my face. Grimaced as the sand changed to rock. Gasped as the ground fell away from feet and I plunged in completely before regaining my footing.

There I stayed for minutes, or hours, or days. I jumped with the waves, I let them drag me closer to shore, but then also pull me back out. Each time I took a few steps back, each time feeling a little bit more alive.

Until the water turned against me. Looking back, I realize that the water had only been biding its time. That the soft caresses against my ankles were promises of something more. But at the time the violent jerk pulling me out, farther, much farther than I wanted to go, felt like a violent betrayal.

I screamed as a I lost my balance and plunged beneath the water. I windmilled my arms under water, unsure which way lie safety. When I finally came to the surface again, I was so far from shore that the other people were barely dots, little specks in the distance with knobby arms and legs.

I fought the waves with all I had, kicking and battling, but it was never enough. I felt alive, but knew it was a fleeting feeling. Finally, exhausted, I turned onto my back and surrendered to the waves.

Apparently the sea didn’t want anyone that wouldn’t put up a fight. Slowly, ever so slowly, with my legs out from the undertow, the waves pushed me back toward shore.

In my memory, I drifted for an eternity and more before my shoulders bumped into the small, gritty rocks of the lower beach and I crawled back to safety. Memory is funny like that. It plays tricks with you, makes you remember things like the red flag that were so insignificant at the time. And makes your forget other things that were so, so important.

Like that I didn’t go into the waves alone, but that is how I returned.

Hometown

Nestled among the rolling foothills of Central Texas, the town is in the middle of nowhere but on the way to everywhere. The kindest thing anyone says about the place is that they drove through there once. It’s not in a hot and blasted desert like West Texas, or in a humid forest like East Texas, but in shallow valley ringed by hills that for a few brief weeks in Spring grow with the green of new life, but that, for the most part, looked like they just got a buzz from an errant fire. It would be beautiful if anyone ever bothered to look over their shoulder as they left.

Not that anyone ever really leaves. There are outsiders and foreigners, most of them brought by the prison or the army base. There are a few transient souls who blow in with the Summer storms but then are gone again with the Winter freeze, if they can coax their car out of the valley with highway sheathed in ice. But for the most part it’s a town of long-timers. A town of people who know the old steel bridge that you can still drive over (if you’re brave), who remember (or remember that their father remembers) when the railroad was diverted forty miles South and the town began its long, slow march to insignificance, who know that if anything interesting is happening in town, it’s at the courthouse or at the high school

But the town refuses to acknowledge its inevitable demise. The town comes alive every Friday in the Fall for the high school football team, and nightly in the Summer for baseball. On the weekends it teeters and totters awkwardly between its twin poles, the Baptist church on the North end, and the Methodist church on the South. Every year the old train depot fills to the brim with the annual food drive, the city hall fills up for the next play, and the square empties of cars for the art and handcrafts festival. For a place on death row (and without a bar), it manages to keep a lively pace.

Going Home and Leaving Forever

“Look, I know you don’t want to go back,” he says.  He starts out strong, confident, but by the end his words are jittery and sound a bit like a head of lettuce going through the garbage disposal.

She doesn’t say anything but answers with a slight dip of her head and a tightening of her lips.  It’s a gesture that acknowledges the need for a response but only just.

“I’m sorry, I–” he breaks off, not sure what to say.  He’s actually quite articulate, usually, but for him conversation is a two-person sport and he doesn’t know how to play by himself.  “Anyway, thanks.  I think it’s the right thing to do.”

He reaches out and grips her shoulder briefly and barely restrains himself from rubbing her arm.  She hates it when he does that.  Hates it so much that her usually bright face darkens with what could be called rage and she’ll swat his hand away with real force.  But most of the time he can’t help himself.  It just seems like the kind of thing a husband should do.

With a sigh he leans back into the train seat and lets his forehead fall against the window.  He knows he should be interested in what’s flying past.  Small towns with clumps of rotting buildings interspersed with clean homes sporting new plastic siding.  New developments that have all the personality and diversity of a squad of cadets.  Office parks that make him shiver with the thought of being trapped behind a desk all day, as he knows he inevitably will be.  And, his favorite, and hers too, though he’s not going to mention it now, a few tracks of land untouched by bulldozers or lawnmowers.  The gently swaying grass and crazy-quilt of weeds and flowers reminders her of home.  And reminds him of her.

But there’s no enjoyment in the view now.  He can never focus when she’s mad at him.  Another quick glance at her face reveals no change in her mood.  He barely suppresses a grimace, more at himself than anything else.  She has a right to be upset, he knows, and he should give her some room.  After all, he’s taking her back to his family.

To the lions’ den.  That’s what she calls it.  She has other terms for it, but they’re even less polite.  But all the more deserved.

Finally eternity passes and the conductor’s voice howls out of the speakers that their stop is coming up.  He stands up quickly and winces at the tightness in his neck.  Serves me right for leaning against the window for a couple of hours, he thinks.  He fishes the bags out of the racks overhead and throws hers down next to her.  For a minute he thinks she’s not going to respond, but then with a sigh and a straightening of her shoulders she grabs the bag and pulls it into her lap.

She meets his eyes and as she does so he feels a flood of relief.  She’s not happy about this, not by any measure, but at least his partner his back, the other end of his circuit reconnected.

Moments later they’re standing at the streetside, rubbing their hands together to ward off the cold.

“So, I guess they’re not coming?” she ventures, with a touch of exasperation.

“I guess not,” he answers.  “Should have expected it, I guess.  But you can never tell.  Last time we rented a car and that was a huge problem.”

“Last time . . . ” she starts, but doesn’t finish.  He knows what she means though.  Last time had not been a pleasant visit.

With the sort of fuss usually reserved for the DMV or traffic court, they manage to secure a car and shortly find themselves parked in front of the house.  It’s the kind of house that can be forgotten in a moment, a sort of neutral color that’s impossible to describe.  Tan?  Mauve?  Something like that.  The drapes twitch in the front room and they know they’ve been spotted.

“Well,” he says, and they climb out of the car.

After a flurry of awkward hugs, handshakes and an assortment of clasps and clutches (the ingredients of real human contact, warmth, physical closeness, and so forth, have always been a little spotty in his family), they’re standing in the main room, shrugging out of their coats.  The room looks as it has for the better part of a decade.  Two walls dominated on top by windows and on bottom by a sectional couch.  The other has the TV and a set of double sliding doors that manage to make the whole room seem cheap rather than elegant.  Sliding doors don’t really belong on carpet.  Or, in his wife’s opinion, anywhere at all.

He steals a glance at her, and in between polite smiles he sees the stress in her face and the guardedness in her eyes.  Like him, she has one foot in this moment and one in the past.  And neither is on very firm ground.

“Well, aren’t we glad y’all are here,” his mom says, her arms folded and eyes bright with the reflection of the smile on her face.  He smiles, really smiles, in response.  Maybe this time it will be different, he thinks with a small glimmer of hope.

“We’re glad to be here,” he says, sliding his arm around his wife’s shoulders.  It wasn’t particularly true, but he hoped that it would be at some point.

Dinner starts on a high note as well.  The table is too small for them all, but it’s always been that way.  The other siblings are stabbing each other with forks under the table, the rolls are placed on a shelf next to the table, and someone is missing a glass, but overall it’s a good spread.  His wife even laughs, really laughs, at one point when his little sister is saying something about her history class.

But it doesn’t last long.  He should have known better than to hope that it might.  These times always start to fall apart because of something small, something insignifcant that should be forgotten and brushed aside.  But his family can’t seem to ever do that.

This time, like most times, it’s his stepdad.  One of the younger siblings interrupted him, and his stepfather is off on a harangue about how disrespectful she is.  But then it gets worse.  Phrases like “dumb as a rock” and “like a dog” pop up.  His wife’s hand is grabbing his forearm under the table and he knows that if he doesn’t speak up she’s going to draw blood.

“Hey,” he starts, “c’mon, it’s not that bad.  It’s just a conversation.”

Silence settles on the table.  His stepfather’s head swivels in his direction and he feels his world lurch out from underneath him.  This is no longer the safe home that he grew up him.  This is the home that he came back to last time.  And should never have returned to.

“I don’t need you to correct me in my own house,” his stepfather says and pauses.  He shares a tense heartbeat with everyone else at the table, and then his stepfather continues.

“You sure have changed since you left, and it’s a damn shame.”

“Oh, c’mon,” he answers his stepfather.  He’s heard this particular line before and he’s tired of it.

“You watch your tongue,” his stepfather snarls and points a finger at his face, cocked like a gun.

“It’s true,” his mom chimes in.  “You have changed.”

He glances back and forth, from mom to stepdad, and a sick feeling roils his stomach.  His heart is beating too fast and it’s echoing through his head like a gong.  He’s been here before.  Many times before.  He knows what he should, what he always has done.  Acquiese.  Deflect with humor.  Whatever it takes to defuse the situation.

“Ever since getting married,” his mom says.

“Yep,” his stepfather adds, “this wife of yours–“

He doesn’t think consciously of his next steps.  He can’t trace his steps back to the moment when he decided to explode up out of his chair, to swat his stepfather’s hand aside like an annoying fly.  All he knows is that he’s now standing over him, shoulders tight with range, and now it’s his finger in his stepfather’s face.

“No, you listen,” he starts, but then pauses.  He’s breathing hard, he knows, and not thinking clearly. Some small part of his mind is screaming at him to sit down, to back down, but he’s through listening.  The anger and bitterness of years wells up inside him and threatens to break through.  He has a thousand angry things he wants to say, words of accusation and rancor.

But he knows that if he starts he won’t stop.  And there’s really only one thing to say.

“You’re right, I have changed.”  He locks eyes with his mother for a brief moment.

He grabs his wife’s hand and she’s already standing.  They don’t have to communicate at this point.  He reaches out a ruffles the hair of his brother sitting next to them, winks to his sister across the table, and they walk out of the house.

Behind him he can hear his mother crying.  He can hear his stepfather yelling.  Plates and glasses crashing.  But it’s all behind him.  For good.

Murder in the Rain

[Disclaimer: this is the intro to a series of crime-related stories and this piece describes the murder. I’ve never done any writing in this theme before, so my apologies if it’s a little off. I don’t think it’s gruesome, but might be unsettling.]

The woman gulped air hungrily as she came to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Her legs trembled with fear and exhaustion and her shoulder fell heavily against wall next to her. The impact sent a flash of pain down her arm and up her neck and split her skin beneath the almost sheer blouse she was wearing. But she didn’t feel the pain, or notice the bright flash of red that suddenly spread across her shoulder. She was entirely soaked from the heavy rain that was pouring down in huge icy drops. They assaulted the pavement, the glass storefronts, and the canvas awnings all up and down the street. The rain and the cold drove everything else from her mind. Except the fear.

“Help me, oh help me,” she sobbed into her shoulder. With a grunt of effort she lifted her head and screamed for help, eyes closed as rain drops slapped her in the face with a thousand stings. But her voice was lost in the rain and the drum of millions of drops against roofs and awnings.

With another racking sob, she pushed herself off the wall and stumbled forward. She slipped on the edge of the sidewalk and nearly went down into the flood of water racing from the middle of the street into the gutters on either side, but manage to right herself with one hand. She moved in fits and starts, first darting a few steps on bare feet whose soles were already beginning to bleed, and then she would stop suddenly and sob again, feet barely inching forward.

She made it across the street before she stopped. This time she stopped suddenly, gone completely still. The traffic light covered her in blinking red glare as she slowly turned her head to look back for the way she had come. She did nothing but stare, searching for something in the rain that did not reveal itself. She held her gaze for a moment.

Then another.

Tiny puffs of steam coalesced around her nostrils as she started breathing again. But then she gasped. There, across the street, was a flash of movement, and suddenly there was a person standing on the corner that she had left moments ago. The person was wearing a beige trench coat that stretched over broad shoulders. In his hand he held a much smaller, much more delicate looking black jacket.

“No, no, no” she whispered to herself in a plaintive chant. Her eyes grew larger than the raindrops pelting her scalp as she watched as the person reached one large, masculine hand out to the wall. One finger pressed against the wall where her shoulder had been moments ago and held it there.

The women finally tore her gaze away from the man and broke into a run in the opposite direction. She ran unsteadily, favoring her left foot where the ankle was already visibly swelling. She waved her arms in around he as if to ward off the rain, and screamed until her voice was hoarse and scarcely more than a whisper.

The man across the street waited a moment, and then followed after. In the harsh, alternating glare of the traffic light his features were dark, his brow furrowed and partialy covered by the dark hair plastered down by the rain.

His eyes never left the woman.

His mouth was set not in a smile and not in a sneer, but something horribly bereft of feeling. The corners of his lips were as steady as the pavement beneath his feet. They didn’t twitch when the woman screamed, and they didn’t spasm when, moments later, she slipped on a flattened cardboard box and went sprawling to the ground.

On hands and knees the woman continued forward. Her knees ached from scraping them across the soaked street and her hand throbbed with a deep cut from a piece of glass she had inadvertently discovered on the ground. Her fear overcame her pain and discomfort and propelled her forward, desperately hoping that the next street corner would, unlike the many before it, hold someone who could help her.

But then she reached the end of the alleyway.

She looked up to see her way blocked by a large garbage container, and, behind that, a ten-foot high fence topped with loops of barbed wire. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the barbed wire. She couldn’t begin to understand what it was doing in the middle of a city. She was furious with whatever unnamed person had placed it there and had so dashed her final hope.

She was still fuming, irrationally, at the barbed wire when she heard the man’s step behind her. She whipped around as fast as she could and plowed the ground with her feet in an effort to back away. But soon she hit the base of the wall and had no where left to go.

“Why,” she sobbed with a hoarse whisper.  “Why are you doing this?”  There was a sense of intimacy in the voice that was echoed in her eyes as she looked at the man.  But it found no answer in his face.

She started screaming when she could no longer move, but her scream, already hoarse, did not last long.

The murder, compared to the chase that came before it, was short. The man stood over the body for several minutes afterward as the rain sent rivulets of blood swirling into the frothy mix on the street headed toward the gutters. He tossed the jacket he had been carrying onto the body, and turned and walked away.

Father of My Heart

“You look so much like your dad. Yes, just like your dad.”

I get that kind of comment a lot around here. People are always asking to see a picture of my family, and, after a few days of futile protests that I don’t actually carry pictures of my family around with me (what am I, some kind of homesick freshman?), I gave in and pocketed a portrait of my mom and dad. Now I flash it around like some sort of government badge, as if no one will believe I’m a real person unless they see what my parents looked like. It never seems to cross anyone’s mind that I could have just torn this picture out of a frame at the store. But of course I didn’t.

I’m not even sure how the picture ended up with me in college. My siblings and I each got one a couple of years ago, some crackpot idea of my parents that if we could carry a picture of them around with us we’d remember them more. Or not get into trouble. Or something like that. All I carried around with the picture was a desperate, almost hysterical fear that anyone else would find out that it was in my wallet. I had dreams, sweat-soaked, heart-thumping nightmares, that the picture would somehow jump out of wallet and parade down the hall, with my frozen-face parents shouting to my classmates that I needed to hold their hands and be a “good boy.” I ditched the picture after a two days.

“You look so much like your dad. Yes, just like your dad.”

On its face, the comment is perfectly pleasant. The picture is starting to fade and the top-left corner, which always finds itself dangling outside my wallet, is worn away. But you can still see the people in it just fine. My dad is a nice looking guy. Moderately fit, with some respectful middle-age jowl (which either says something about the cooking prowess of the other individual in the picture, or his ongoing, not-really-a-secret love affair with Milky Ways) that doesn’t quite hide the strong jaw, and a slight peppering of gray hair at the temples. All-in-all, not a bad state of affairs for someone pushing fifty. Or sixty. I don’t really have a clue how old he is. Too old to be pounding Milky Ways, that’s for sure.

The problem is he’s not my dad. He’s my stepdad. But no one here really understands that concept. Back home, if your parents haven’t been divorced at least once, you’re family is boring, or rich, or secretly separated. It’s not that we don’t respect families back home — we certainly do. It’s just that we have a more, what’s the word?, capacious understanding of them. Of course, we don’t use words like that, so I’ll say flexible instead.

He’s swarthy and dark-haired, with a passion in his eyes that speaks of a Southern European ancestry. Somewhere they value art and life and love. His wife, my real mom, could be more opposite, but it would be hard to pull it off. Pale white skin, light eyes, and a firm set to her mouth that, according to her, says a lot about good breeding and a lineage that goes to back to Northern Europe. If there’s any passion there, it’s well-hidden.

“You look so much like him. Nothing at all like us.”

That’s what my older brothers (all pale-skinned, all light-haired, and, as if that weren’t enough, all taller than me) would say. That’s what they still say. I’m the dark-haired, dark-eyed child of William Wallace and Rob Roy and all those other grim English heroes. Countless generations of men and women with ruddy skin are looking down at the latest issue and thinking, “Wrong side of the bed, what?”

I’d like to say that I handle these comments with the logical reserve my mom her true sons apply to just about any situation. But I don’t. Because it’s not just about looks. They ponder, cogitate, reflect, and debate. I steam, brood, angst, and argue. Their world is all right angles and squares, a disciplined balance of work and play. Mine is not. It’s all squiggly lines and asymptotes, of substanceless dreams and complete disregard of normal sleeping hours. I’ve tried to be like them, tried to gather up all my squiggles and limits, and force them into something regular, something like a square, or rhombus, or a dodecahedron (anything, really, that looks logical). But it doesn’t work. The thoughts in my head, the feelings in my heart, don’t fit into regular shapes. They don’t fit into any shapes at all.

I’m not like them. Not at all.

In fact, I’m just like him. Just like my dad. Stepdad, I mean. Just like my stepdad. Illogical, irrational, passionate, fierce.

Which is why I’ve given up explaining the difference.

Beyond the Rim: Chapter 7

[This is the latest installment in the Beyond the Rim series, a science fiction story of personal and societal conflict centering on two young people set in a dystopian future.  You can find more information on the series here.]

Percivel hummed softly to himself as the lift swiftly descended from the upper levels of the Drake Tower to the main level of the Core The lift was all sleek metal and bright lights, indistinguishable from a dozen other lifts that riddled the Drake Tower The lifts ferried Drake Family members and their almost innumerable cousins and distant relatives from the main level of the Core through the hundred and more floors of the Tower A large vid display dominated the wall above the lift doors For most other Family members, it would display some random entertainment, or adverts for the latest fashions from the Independent Sectors But the Tower scanners knew Percivel preferences and  automatically switched it to today’s coverage of Council speeches and Rim activity. The volume was pitched just low enough for High Family members to ignore if they wished, but loud enough to catch with their altered ears.

Secret Place

High school is full of lots of things. Lots of different things, depending on who you ask.

Mom says it’s full of opportunity.  Dad says it’s full of hard work.  I think my brother thinks it’s full of chicks (and, apparently, they agree with him).  The counselor says high school is full of “bright young minds,” but I’m pretty sure he thinks it’s actually full of rural red-necks and dopeheads.  The principal agrees.

But what high school is really full of is secrets.  Secrets the students keep from their teachers and parents, from each other, and, of course, from themselves.  Some secrets are pretty normal.  The band students know the secret combo to the back door in the band hall.  (All sorts of things happen there after dark, none of them cool, but plenty illegal.  That’s band for you.)   The office aide knows how to get absences wiped from your record on the office computer.  My brother knows everyone’s phone number.  (It’s absurd really — do all the girls just line up and give them to him?  Is there a form they fill out?)

Some secrets are less normal, or at least more harmful.  Football players know which coaches will give them some beer and something else.  The calculus teacher knows which students are actually failing but keeps them propped up because we’re in the playoffs again.  The cheerleaders know…well, I don’t know what they know, but it’s a secret.  (To me, not to my brother, but I think I’m repeating myself here.)

But my secret is the best.  It’s not just my secret, unfortunately, because I share it with a bunch of other students.  With the entire drama club actually.  (You may be beggining to appreciate the difference between my brother and I vis-a-vis chicks, cheerleaders, ladies, etc.)  The secret is the hidden dressing room off the stage.  But the secret goes farther than that, and this is pretty much just my secret.  The drama teacher doesn’t let anyone in there during the day.

Except me.

So, during the day, during lunch when I don’t want to eat with my other drama club friends, I can escape to the dressing room.  (I’m not really like them, you see.  I do mostly normal things.  I don’t have piercings.  Or father issues…Well, maybe I have those, but no piercings.)  The room is nothing special.  Probably not a hundred square feet.  But it has a couch, a shelf, and a door that latches.  I collapse on the couch, let my legs flop listlessly off the edge, and open a book.  If I’m pierced with anything, it’s a desire, a craving to read.  As soon as that cover cracks open and the first few pages flip by, the whole world fades away and it’s just me and the story.   On a good day, I’ll get an hour and half in before someone notices I’m missing from class.

On a good day, I’ll get an hour and a half away from this school, my brother, my mother prodding me to be more like him, and everyone else who’s never going to leave this worthless town in the middle of the burnt out plains.  For an hour and a half, I’m somewhere else entirely, somewhere deep inside a book.

Brothers

It’s always there, simmering with latent heat under our mostly cool conversations.

“How are the Heat doing?” I ask.  But I’m thinking, “Does he have time to watch TV?  Is he working all the time?”

“Good, better now that LeBron and Wade are really starting to click.”  Is there a hint of condescencion in his voice?  A tease that he, the successful one, has the right to watch sports, but not me.  No, not me, the one still in school.

We chat about useless things mostly.  Sports (basketball is the favorite though neither one of us can play worth spit), weather, news — but not politics.

It’s always there, lurking in the corner of my brain and just beyond the whisper of my thoughts.

It’s 5pm, time to head home.  Papers stack, laptop closed — but wait.  Is he still working?  Would he go home now?  Is that the difference between us?

In the morning, it’s already 7am, and I’m just waking up.  Is he already been up?  Is he already working?  Is this why he’s so successful?

It’s like having a metronome follow me around.  Click, click, click.  It sounds in my head.  But no matter how fast I move, or how hard I work, the beat is faster, quicker, more dominating than ever. I wake up early, try to get a jump on the day.  I’m at allegro, but the metronome is already at presto, click-click-clicking wildly.  I skip lunch and dinner, move up to presto, but by then the metronome is at prestissimo.

How did we end up like this?  We were thick as thieves once.  We had the same friends, played on the same soccer teams, won (or in my case, lost) at the same video games.  (We did, however, never date the same girl, though there were a couple of close misses.)  We were mates, protectors, friends, but, above all, brothers.   But he was the driven one, the ambitious one.  Worked like a machine, or like a laser.  I was the dreamer.  Big dreams, dreams with no foundation.

There was no conscious choice.  No break up or wild confrontation.  We drifted apart, but we’re brothers, not acquaintances, so we have a radar relay for each other that has unlimited range.

Maybe it’s all in my head.  Maybe it’s all because of Mom.  (She was, of course, always saying things like, “You’re good at that, but he’s good at this,” etc., etc.)

I hope it’s all in my head.  It’d be nice to have a mate, protector, friend and brother again.

Memory

The bike is old.  There is no ignoring that or discounting it.  No amount of paint, or lubricant, or new handlebars would disguise that.  It has a heavy, flowing frame, that says nothing about speed but has much to say about comfort and relaxation.  The seat is wide as are the handlebars, and neither have ever heard of aerodymanics.  The pedals are broad and flat, and, curiously, metal, made when a day when plastic did not coat or form everything.

In its day, the bike was beautiful, with a bright maroon paint, white-walled tires, and colorful streams trailing from the handlerbars.  But now it is rusted and worn, tattered and stain.  A clumb of straggling streamers trail from just one handlebar.  The tires are flat and dead.

But, unlike new bikes in stores, the ones with gleaming, chromatic coats and thin, powerful frames, there is a hand is resting on the bike’s seat.  No, not resting, not inspecting for purchase, poking or prodding.  Holding.  Holding the bike in a way that would be a caress if the hand were not reverently still.

The hand and the bike are a matched set.  The hand is creased with wrinkles just as the seat of the bike is seamed with tears.  Once smooth skin is rough, dry, and splotchy.  But, like the bike, there is a memory of strength and beauty in the hand, in the broad palm and long fingers.

The man attached to the hand does not own the bike.  That much is clear at a glance.  He is much too tall and there is a quiet reserve to him that seems ill-suited to streamers, tattered or not.

But it is not really the bike the man is holding, caressing, remembering.  It is the memory of its rider, of the many the man and she spent together.  Memories of sunlit days with a slight breeze, of watching her riding in front him, of seeing her face framed by the sun as she turned her head to look back at him.  Memories of when they all, man, woman, bikes and all, were fresh, new and vibrant.

Little Scribbles

 

My youngest son’s latest composition. He always, always knows where my phone is and how to unlock it. From there, it’s only a matter of what buttons he finds most colorful.