The frame had bent and snapped, the handlebars hanging by a single screw, the seat turned around like a head on a broken neck. The chain was off its sprockets, the front tire warped from its rim, and the snapped spokes sticking up. I almost cried at the sight of such carnage, but even though my heart hurt, I knew crying wouldn’t help. My bike had simply worn out; it had come to the end of its days, pure and simple. I was not its first owner, and maybe that made a difference, too. Maybe a bike, once discarded, pines away year after year for the first hand that steered it, and as it grows old it dreams, in its bike way, of the young roads. It was never really mine, then; it traveled with me, but its pedals and handlebars held the memory of another master. Maybe, on the rainy Wednesday, it killed itself because it knew I yearned for a bike built for me and me alone.
I have an IF. Three, actually. And an Ira Ryan on the way. My bikes will not kill themselves.
This is Robert McCammon, by the way: Boy’s Life.
2 Comments
July 20, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Here is a coincidence. I am looking for information on Richard Bausch and discovered that he is one of your favourite writers. In the collection of stories chosen by him that I am reading, the first one is about a man who owns a bike shop. Maybe you’d like it. It’s called Alice and the book is called Best New American Voices 2008.
July 29, 2009 at 9:25 pm
The rattling that a well-used bike makes on a fast chipseal descent and the creaking it makes going up the hill on the other side is comparable to the sound a 40 year-old man makes when he gets up out of his chair to unlimber for the lunchtime hammerfest. Ahhh. Crunch. Pop. A sign of aging that everybody within earshot notices, but evidence of a desire ad ability to go faster for just a bit longer.