I was in the law school court
yard holding the red folding bike by its handle bars. It had seen a lot. It had
been through a lot too. One time, desperate to get back to Cali so I could get
back to my job (my job, anyone’s job, get 15 bags and drop them in front of the
black crane), I feared there would be no room in the bus for the bike,
disassembled and bungee-chorded together. Moraline always spoke of papayas,
papaya-stealing—no, no, the metaphor. Yes, the metaphor. The metaphor is that
you take a juicy papaya and, depleted but still below the high city, you eat
the kilogram of orange flesh, wash off your hands, and wonder where, precisely,
you are going to, and why you are rushing. Why not just ask the old lady for
something? Ask her if, with her, you could let you guard down for once. Jesus,
she sold you a papaya. Is she going to steal your papaya? She’d have to claw
her way inside your abdomen, like the Satanists of Buga. Maybe the old woman
would get into bed with you in the night. In exhausted haze her warm earth
covered dress would not contain her heat. You would still be dreaming of the
papaya as she straddled your nighttime erection. It would be as good as any and
in the morning you’d wonder why the sap, that if deep within hot fruit there is youth. There is no taking of papayas. It rots
or runs down your face and if you’re hungry enough for the seeds you have a
mouthful of black pepper. That bike almost didn’t make it. The man in St. Agustin sold me the ticket but there was no room on
the bus. No way the bike would fit in the jam-packed luggage compartment in
back. He shoved that folding bike into the other baggage and the chain marked
the cargo black and the teeth of the rings cut into leather and cardboard. I
was rushing back to it. First the adults tell you about it in vague and
frightened tones, and then the teachers, scared shitless by something that
spilled outside of some jar, if that’s the noise inside, but they point out the
force field. So here I am at the law school with this bike. Without it not much
makes sense to me, but with it I feel like I’m walking around with a sword,
looking for a battle field. He’s a fit man with a grey beard and I have the
impression he is a law professor. How do you like the folding bike, he asks. It
was almost too much for him to say it, you can’t contain yourself when you see
a folding bike with the panniers and beaten up and looking like it’s been on
the road for ever and ever. Back in better times cycling was my life. I took a
boat to Haines and cycled through Whitehorse and
on the way he ran into a fella, completely ratty and filthy, who had been
riding in the Arctic Circle and must have
certainly been fed by the Inuit. Swiss or German guy I think, he said. That’s
hard core. I knew a Swiss guy who rode from Anchorage
to Tierra del Fuego. Yeah, I’ve ridden in Mexico myself,
a few sketchy roads, few close calls. The whole time both of us wished it
ended. Too much, too much for me not to be riding and too much for a young man
trapped in an ’86-year-old’ body not to be able to ride. He still wanted to
ride. He wasn’t a coward. He could take my body, damn it, finally some new
blood, finally a swift and strong spirit. I’m hoping you still have many travels
ahead of you. No, no, the doctors said I can’t ride again. Neurological issues.
Sometimes the parts wear out. I’m 86. But you look 60, and it could have been
true. You don’t believe old age. You don’t believe in the stories of frailty.
The stories of death are terrible arguments and can easily be picked apart.
People stop seeing a man and make up stories. No one dies. The ‘old men’ are
actors. Wyndham is just there to remind me of something. Have you ever met
Reinhold, the founder of Foldingbike, he asked. No, but I’ve been there. You
can spend the whole day there. Each time someone comes in you share stories and
you talk about gear. If they had beds maybe people would live there. I helped
them get started back then, he said. Good people. Very, helpful people, I
added. I said goodbye to Wyndham. I walked home with the bike and light rain
fell on my head and it was cold and damp.
