On the Wing (28 page)

Albertine wrinkled her nose. “Odorizers?”

“Yeah. You get your choice. We use cheap booze and stale cigarettes. Place down the road uses the cold sweat of fear. We tried it. Kind of overpowering. Not for us.”

“This process of community redefinition seems to be a growing phenomenon,” I said thoughtfully. “In fact, the entire town of Babbington, New York, my home town, has been redefined based on the day when I returned from a solo flight I made to Corosso, New Mexico, aboard an aerocycle that I—”

“Holy shit!” he said. “Look at the time! I had no idea it was so late! I hate to bring this symposium to an end—”

“This will just take a minute. I—”

He rose and extended his arms, beckoning to us to get up, and then herded us toward the door.

“Sorry,” he said, “but I've got to make my rounds, do some paperwork—you know how it is—too much to do and not enough time to do it.”

“What I thought you'd find interesting,” I said, “is that Babbington actually has a redefinition authority that—”

“Good night, Giggles,” he said, swinging the door closed behind us. The lock clicked. The neon sign buzzed. The night claimed us.

Chapter 23

A Muddleheaded Dreamer

I WAS ROLLING ALONG through a small town, and as I rolled along I began to see the many ways, mostly small, in which it resembled Babbington. You can imagine how this moved me, a boy so far from home, whose thoughts, while he was rolling farther and farther from home, so often turned backward, toward that home that late he'd left, noticing the similarities.

“You see Babbington everywhere,” said
Spirit.

“You're right,” I said, struck by the truth of it.

“And you see dark-haired girls everywhere, too.”

“That's right, too.”

“It's getting annoying.”

“I think it has something to do with wishful thinking,” I admitted. I was going to say something more on the subject of wishful thinking. I don't remember what it was going to be. I never got to say it.

“Watch out!” shrieked
Spirit.

“For what?” I asked.

“That dog!”

Dog? What dog was she talking about? Oh. That dog.

I squeezed the brake levers with every ounce of strength I had. The front brake grabbed with such suddenness and force that
Spirit
pitched forward, up and over her front wheel. I was thrown from my seat and flew a couple of yards before striking the pavement. (NOTE: I have not included this brief flight in my tally of the distance I was airborne on the journey. It would have been wrong.)
Spirit
landed upside down. Like her, I pitched as I flew, so I landed flat on my back. I lay there, unmoving. I assumed that I must be injured, too injured to move, much too seriously injured to get up. I figured that, any minute now, a crowd of the curious and concerned would rush to form a ring around me, buzzing with speculation about my condition, putting odds on my survival. In the movies, someone always rushed forward to command the quickly assembling crowd to stand back, give the victim some air, and avoid moving him. I waited for the crowd and for the person who would take command of the crowd.

Time passed. I heard no crowd, no buzz. No commanding voice.

I opened my eyes. Someone was standing over me, looking down at me.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” I said.

“Why don't you get up?”

“I think I should wait until I know if I've broken anything.”

“Like what? Your watch?”

“I don't have a watch. I meant a bone. I might have broken some bones. One anyway. I might have fractured my skull.”

“Does that happen to you a lot, fracturing your skull?”

“Um, no. It's never happened to me before.”

“I don't think it's happened to you now, either. You just flipped over your handlebars, that's all. I done it lots of times.”

“You have?”

“Sure. I get a little tanked up, there's no telling what I might run into. Over I go.”

“You have an aerocycle?”

“Aerocycle? Is that what you call this?”

“Yes.”

“What's with the wings?”

“She's—it's—supposed to be able to fly,” I whispered.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Oh, I don't know—must be something in my throat—dust.”

“You're whispering because you don't want your bike to hear you, aren't you?”

“Heh, heh, heh.”

“You talk to your bike, don't you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. You talk to your bike.”

“Well—”

“So do I. We all do. Come on, get up. You're okay. Let's go see how
she
is.”

He extended a hand. I took it, and he helped me up. He was wearing a black leather jacket with
Johnny
written on it, dark sunglasses, a white T-shirt, a cap like the ones that taxi drivers wore, blue jeans, and motorcycle boots. He had long sideburns and a grin that resembled a sneer.

“I shouldn't have braked so hard,” I said, dusting myself off.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” he said with a shrug. “If you'd hit the dog, you woulda gone over just the same.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, yeah. I hit that dog maybe four or five times. Went right over, just the way you did. Didn't hurt me none. Didn't hurt the dog none, neither.”

Together, we righted
Spirit
and walked around her, inspecting her for damage.

“What's this?” he asked when we got to what was left of the banner advertising Porky White's clam bar. “‘Kap'n Klam is coming!' Is that you?”

“No,” I said. “It's my sponsor. It used to say ‘Kap'n Klam is coming! The Home of Happy Diners,' but that's all that's left of it.”

“Must embarrass her,” he said.

“You think so?”

“Dragging a ratty old thing like that around? What do you think? Of course it embarrasses her. I'd get rid of that if I were you.”

I began removing it while he continued his inspection.

“She's got a cracked chassis,” he pronounced a moment later, shaking his head sadly.

“Really?” I said, crouching down to look at the part of her frame that he was running his fingers along.

“Ask her if she's in pain,” he said.

“I—um—are you serious?”

“Of course I'm serious. I can't ask her. She's not my bike. She wouldn't hear me, and I wouldn't hear her.”

“Spirit,”
I said, “are you okay? Are you in pain?”

“Am I in pain?” she said. “It's one long line of pain from my nose to my tail.”

“You've cracked your chassis,” I said.

“Am I going to die?”

“No, no. Of course not. You're going to be—just a minute.” To the biker I said, “She—she's in a lot of pain.”

“Awww, the poor thing,” he said, caressing her chassis with tenderness and affection.

“Can she be fixed?”

“Oh, sure. We got a guy in town can work wonders. Practically bring a bike back from the dead. I've seen him take a twisted mass of metal and make it back into a bike again.”

“You're going to be fine,” I said to
Spirit.
“We're going to get you to a doctor.”

*   *   *

I PUSHED HER along the street, following Johnny, who was riding an enormous motorcycle, just chugging along at walking speed, balancing the bike now and then by putting a big boot on the pavement, allowing it to drag along. He turned down an alley, and I followed. At the end of the alley there were dozens of motorcycles, or, as I realized when we drew closer, parts of dozens of motorcycles. They were in various stages of disassembly—or reassembly.

“Oh, no,” wailed
Spirit.
“You're not going to let them do that to me, are you?”

“No, no,” I said. “They won't have to—just a minute.” I asked Johnny, “Are they going to have to take her apart?”

“Nah,” he said confidently. “She's just got a thin crack in a couple of pieces of her tubing. Big Bob'll take those out, bolt new tubing in, and she'll be good as new. Between us,” he said, lowering his voice, “she'll be better than new. Whoever did the original assembly job wasn't—”

“I did it,” I said.

“Nice job,” he said. “Considering.”

*   *   *

WE LEFT
SPIRIT
in the care of Big Bob, who promised that she would be ready for the road when I was ready to leave in the morning.

“Come on down the pool hall and have a beer,” said Johnny. “Meet the gang.”

The pool hall? A beer? The gang? Was he talking to me?

“Me?” I said.

“Yeah, you,” he said. “You're shaken up. You've had a crash. You are deserving of the hospitality of the MDMC.”

“What's that?”

“That is the club. Specifically, those are the initials of the name of the club.”

“What do they stand for?”

“That is known only to the members of the club.”

*   *   *

“A MOMENT'S INATTENTION,” Johnny was saying. “That's all it takes for a rider to get himself in trouble.”

“Or for a young aviator to come crashing to the ground,” I said with the wisdom and exaggerated precision of a kid who's had a couple of beers.

“Or a young aviator,” said Johnny, saluting my wisdom with a tilt of his beer bottle. “Now the thing is, if a rider—or an aviator—comes to grief through inattention, he's likely to feel ashamed of himself. He knows that there's no shame in crashing if crashing is not his fault, but—”

“And even if it is his fault,” I said, “he shouldn't feel any shame if he crashed for a good reason.”

“A good reason? What would be a good reason?” Johnny asked.

“Hmm?”

“What would be a good reason for crashing?”

“Well—ah—for one thing—how about—trying to fly too high, the way Icarus did.”

“I don't—”

“Wait, wait, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that the reasons for Icarus's crashing—vanity, pride, willfulness, and foolishness—are not good reasons.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Well, let me tell you, Johnny, just between us, there have been times while I've been rolling westward en route to New Mexico this summer when I envied Icarus.”

“That so?”

“What's the story, are they out of beer here?” I said, peering into my empty bottle.

“You want another?”

“Sure. Where's the waitress with the tight sweater?”

“Hey, Marie,” he called, “how about two more?”

“Yes,” I said, shaking my head to show that I, too, found what I was saying difficult to believe, “I have envied Icarus not only for his flight, but even for his fate.”

“He crashed, right?”

“Yes.” I sighed. I shook my head. “He crashed.”

“Tough luck.”

“But Icarus at least crashed from overreaching, which a young aviator may consider a noble error, even a good reason, and Icarus also had the advantage over this particular young aviator of having actually soared above the earth, while
Spirit
and I seem everlastingly anchored to it.”

Marie brought the beers.

“Ah,” I said, “it's the beautiful Marie. You know, Marie, back at home, in Babbington, New York, I used to read those Larry Peters adventure books—I was just a kid back then—and the Peters family had a maid named Marie, who was a real beauty, but she couldn't compare to you! What hair! What eyes! What lips! And what a sweater!”

That got me a laugh from Johnny and a swat from Marie. Could life possibly get any better?

“As I was saying,” I said, “my crash came about through the less-than-noble failing of allowing my mind to wander. In my defense, I will point out that a trip like mine has its long, tedious stretches, and that such stretches dull the senses. There's really no telling what kind of thoughts a young aviator may come up with, or what trouble they may get him into.”

“Hey, don't be too hard on yourself, Petey,” said Johnny.

“I know,” I said. “You're going to tell me that my inattention was only a minor factor in the equation.”

“I was going to say, in your defense—”

“You're going to say that most of the fault belongs to the dog. The cur was crossing the main street of the town as if he owned it.”

“I was going to say that inattention is a common failing. You can take it from me. I have extensive experience in inattention. Some of it beer-induced, I admit.” He smiled at his bottle and took another swallow. “Your second failing is also a common one,” he said, in a cautionary tone.

“Oh,” I said. “Wha's da?” I laughed, amused at the way my lips had tripped me up. “I mean, what's that?” I said, as precisely as I could. I looked at my bottle. Was this the same one Marie had brought a minute ago? I looked around the room. Had it always been turning like this? Had the other members of the MDMC always been arrayed in a circle around Johnny and me, watching, listening, with their arms folded across their black leather chests?

“Overreaction,” he said.

“Overreaction?” I said. “Me? Pffft.”

“I seen the whole thing. You overreacted.”

“I had to do smothing,” I protested. “I mean mosthing.”

“Overreaction is often a consequence of inattention,” he said.

My head dropped to my chest for a moment.

“You've got your inattentive rider rolling along, being inattentive,” he explained. “Then suddenly he's startled out of his inattention by the screams of his woman, who's riding behind him, holding on to him for dear life. He asks himself, ‘What the hell is she screaming like that for?' He snaps his head up—”