The Bike

Andrew’s house was a couple farms down from mine; near where the pavement ended and the gravel began. Just about every morning all of us would meet up on our bikes at the end of the road and disappear into the woods. We rode bikes in those woods so much that we wore trails through the underbrush; around the biggest trees and on down to the stream. We built a fort there, down near the flood plain of the stream from tree limbs we had picked up. One day Clay brought a shovel from home and we made a jump out of a dirt pile on one of our trails. We would ride those trails all morning; going around, gripping the handle bars as tight as we could to take the jump as fast as each one of us dared.

Andrew never took the jump very fast; he would just ride over it while the rest of us always tried to see how far we could jump our bikes. We always thought he was scared, but after a couple of times we stopped teasing him about it and let it go. One day Clay took the jump a little too fast, or maybe he just forgot to lean back some when he hit it. Anyway, he ended up landing on his front tire, which of course meant that he went right over the handle bars. Brad, Sam and I stood there and laughed at him. Andrew didn’t say anything; he just stood there with his bike and watched. Clay didn’t say anything either for a few minutes. He just kind of laid there and moaned because he had racked himself pretty good when he went over the bars. I straightened Clay’s front wheel by holding it between my knees and twisting the handle bars.

We would spend most of the morning in those woods, just riding the trails and playing in the fort. Later as the heat and humidity of the day would begin to set in we would wade in the stream where the silt from the bottom would ooze up between my toes. We would look for rocks to skip or maybe launch broken branches downstream to see how far they could go before getting hung up on a sand bar or fallen tree limb. Andrew was always kind of quiet; he would wade around, maybe pick up a rock here or there to look at. He never really got excited about anything, even when Clay wiped out on the jump.

Late afternoon we would all start to head home. It would be time for supper soon and we were always dirty, sweaty and hungry. Most days I would head on up to Andrew’s house while everyone else went on home. He would park his bike in the barn where he would wipe all the dust off of it with a rag from his father’s work bench. He would lift it up and spin the wheels to make sure that they were still straight. He would squeeze the brakes to see if the cables were beginning to fray and wipe the dirt off the chain, before oiling it with a squirt can. It was a red Huffy; banana seat, five speeds, cheater slick back tire. I think his parents bought it for him at a garage sale last Christmas. It had a few scratches and some duct tape on the seat but, never the less he seemed to love it. He always parked his bike out of the way of the tractor so his dad wouldn’t have to move it. I never said anything, but I always thought it was kind of funny how he took care of that bike.

Some days I would go on in his house with him for a little while. We would sit in his room and talk about things we could add to the fort or maybe some of the rocks that Andrew had found near the stream. He had a lot of those rocks on his book shelf. Some looked like plain old gravel to me, but there was some shale, some sandstone, and a couple pieces of granite. Andrew didn’t have much else in his room. Besides his rock collection, he had some books and a couple of toy tractors he had made from wooden sewing spools. He or his father had carved notches in both ends of the spools to look like big tractor tires, then put a rubber band through the spool with a couple of match sticks on the ends so he could wind them up. They would scoot across the wood floor pretty good unless they ran into the rug or some thing. I normally didn’t hang around too long because I would get bored. I knew Andrew’s parents didn’t have much; they only had a small television and there were no video games at all in their house.

Today I had stayed longer than usual and was really getting bored. I told Andrew that I needed to get going. He said, “Here I found this one today; you can have it.” He pulled a rock out of his pocket; it was a small piece of granite about half the size of a golf ball. Brushing some of the silt off of it I could see the small crystals imbedded on the surface. “Thanks” I said, “that’s a nice one.” “I already have a couple of these; you can have this one.” He smiled at me. I stuffed the rock into my pocket, “gotta go, see you tomorrow.”

I rode home, leaving Andrew with his sewing spool tractors, rocks, and his red Huffy in the barn. Leaning my bike against the back wall of the house, I went in to sit on the couch and play video games until supper was ready. While I lay on the couch Mom was talking to someone on the phone in the kitchen; I didn’t know if she even knew I was home. She stuck her head around the corner. “Oh, you’re home. What did you do all day?”
“Nothing much; I think Andrew’s parents are poor.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They don’t have anything, a little T.V., no games, no computer.”
“Farming can be hard some years; his father isn’t as lucky as yours to have a good job.”
I was getting my butt kicked at Duke Nukem. “When are we gonna to eat?”
“We’ll eat in a little bit; your dad will be late so he’s going to pick up something on his way home.”

I was still losing at Duke Nukem and getting tired of playing. I tossed the control on the floor and went out the back door. Mom was on the phone again and probably didn’t even hear me leave. I grabbed my bike and headed back down the road as it was just starting to get dark. I didn’t really plan on going back to Andrew’s house; I just wanted to get out for a little bit longer. But, when I rode by I could see the light on in the living room so I turned up his lane, while a couple of chickens scooted out of my way. I dropped my bike and walked through damp grass to the kitchen window. I could see Andrew at the table with his parents as I pushed my chin up to the window sill. Andrew and his Dad were laughing at something while his Mom spooned potatoes onto his plate. I took the rock out of my pocket and looked at it in the light below the window. The crystals caught the light from the window and gleamed like the dew forming on the grass. I placed it on the sill outside their kitchen window.