Stella And The Motorcycle

Stella noticed him almost at once. On the crest of the hill between her house and Kolb’s cornfield, there first appeared a bobbing head, and then a round headlight. It was a man pushing a motorcycle. As she switched off her morning radio show and wiped her hands dry on her apron, the man with the motorcycle took a respite on the top of the hill, leaning against the bike, his labored breathing obvious even from Stella’s kitchen window. Outside, the Iowa midday sun beat down ferociously, and even from the window she could see that the man’s white tee shirt was dark with sweat.

After a moment, the man ran a few steps pushing his machine, and then jumped aboard, coasting silently downhill, all the way down into a deep pool of shade cast by the giant oak tree outside of Stella’s front fence. He stopped the bike, got off, swung down the center stand, and heaved the machine up with obvious relief. He then stepped away to a roadside ditch, where he sat down, his sun browned arms draped over his knees. After a moment he hung down his head, his hair rich and dark and glossy.

Stella stood for a moment, and then from the icebox removed a pitcher of fresh lemonade and took down a glass from the cupboard. She walked to her screen door, hesitated, and then pushed it open.

“G’mawning,” she sang out, coming down the flag-stoned walk, and pushing open the front gate with a hip. “You’ve got trouble?”

The man raised his head and stared at her. He was younger than she thought, about her age actually, with deep-set blue eyes, and high cheekbones. She was suddenly conscious of her faded dress, her everyday apron, her hair wrapped in a tight bun.

He stared openly at her for a moment, and then said, laughing, “yeah... a little trouble, maybe... She died dead under me just before the lip of that hill.... just shy enough of it that I had to jump off and push! Didn’t think I’d get her to the top without fallin’ it over, but I did. Saw your nice shade tree here and jus’ couldn’t resist.... hope you don’t mind?”

“No, of course not. Can you fix it, you think,” she asked as she poured the glass full and handed it to him.

The man laughed. “Hope so! It’s a long walk to Cedar Rapids! I always have fixed her before.... it’s always kinda been ‘ride and fix, ride and fix, and then fix and ride’ some more on this ol’ thing!” He laughed again as he accepted the glass. He raised the glass in salute to her. “I thank you, ma’am,” he said. “Durned hot day!” He then drained the glass in steady, eager swallows. “Mmm, good,” he said. “Thank you again,” and he extended it toward her.

She didn’t take it, but stepped forward and refilled it.

“Well, “ she said. “If you need anything, tools or such, I’ll do the best for you.” She turned and looked at the fields behind her house, shading her eyes with her hands. “My husband, Henry, is out on the tractor. He’s pretty good workin’ with tractors, and he’ll be comin’ in soon..... he could help you if you like.....”

The man stared at her again, his blue eyes locked on her face. He stared just a moment longer than she was used to, and she was aware of her hand holding the half-empty pitcher beginning to shake. Her eyes fell toward the ground.

The man laughed, and pulled free an old leather jacket tied behind the bike’s saddle. He went down on one knee and spread the jacket at the side of the engine. “Well, you’re most kind, but I think I can get it! Only two things to look for...... spark and fuel. It’s gotta be one or the other, no spark or no fuel! I learned that as a dispatch rider in the army...... spark or fuel, one or th’ other!”

Her eyes raised up to him. “You were a soldier,” she murmured. “In the war?”
He didn’t look at her. “Yes.”
“You were in France,” she asked, still murmuring.
“Yes.”
“My cousin’s husband was in France,” she said. “Artillery.”
He knodded, but didn’t say anything. He unwrapped a piece of oilcloth. Inside were a score of tools, shiny with oil and use, and he laid them out side by side on the leather jacket. For some reason, she liked how he handled the tools, gently, with long fingers, the nails rimmed with grease.

“Well,” she said. “If there’s anything we can do..... Henry and I.... please come up and knock.”

The man, his hands already deep in the engine, turned his head and smiled up at her, his teeth as clean and white as pearls. She was aware of a unbidden, sharp intake of her breath, and she turned in confusion and walked toward the house.

“I’ll remember your offer of help, sure... “ said the man behind her. “Thank you so much.”

Stella stood in front of the mirror the cool gloom of her bedroom in the old house, her hands pressed to her burning cheeks. “Oh, Lord.... please,” she murmured. And then, she pulled the pins from her hair, and the thick tresses fell and spilled over her slender shoulders like a silk shaw... She sat, and pulled a soft brush through her hair, fifty times on each side. Standing and reaching behind her, she unzipped her old dress and let it fall down around her ankles and stepped out of it. Outside, the motorcycle engine barked... and then barked again.... She held her breath. And then the engine barked again, and ran unsteadily for several seconds, and died. She let out her breath, and went to the open closet. Taking down her new dress, she hurriedly put it on, smoothing it in front, smoothing it over her flat stomach and rounded hips.

Outside, the engine barked again, and again died away.....

Stella went to her kitchen. She took from the icebox a plate of cold ham and a large round of cheddar cheese. She quickly made two sandwiches on homemade bread, and pulled another pitcher from the box, tea this time. She took an ice pick from a hook on the wall and chipped shards from the block ice into two glasses.

She balanced it all on an old tray and carried it outside. He was standing by the motorcycle, an oily part in his hand, jabbing gently at it with a piece of bent wire.

“You must be hungry.... and I’ve made us sandwiches. Not much, but.....” She smiled at him.

“It’ll do just fine, and I thank you..... huh......?”

“Stella,” she replied softly. “Stella Worthington.”

“Well,” he said softly. “Thank you....I’m Dan O’Reilly..... I can pay a little.”

“No need.....well, what is it, Dan? Fuel or spark?”

He laughed as he picked up a sandwich with just his fingertips. “Durned if I know! I thought the carburetor was plugged up with dirt or somethin,’ but I can’t get her clear........at least not yet, I can’t!”

He had pulled from somewhere off the bike an old army hat, with a wide brim and a crown girded by a faded blue cord The hat suited his sharpish face, but it cast his blue eyes in deep shadow.

“Tell me,” she said softly, almost whispering. “What was France like?”

He was silent long enough for her to believe that he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “France? The country? Beautiful, with big stone churches and good-farmed fields.... very lovely, in fact. They have seen so much there, they know so much more than we....”

He drank some tea and then turned to stare at her, his eyes burning into her even under the shadow of the hat brim. “If it’s about the war you are asking, well..... I’ll beg your pardon and forgo that... I won’t talk about it, and you shouldn’t ask. That war was like all wars before and those to come... People dying and nobody knowin’ why..... It was an abomination. An unanswerable abomination... an unanswerable horror.....”

Scarcely daring to breathe, she whispered, “I’m sorry....”

He pushed the hat brim up and smiled at her, deep lines at his eyes crinkling, lines she hadn’t noticed before. “Not your fault, Stella. It’s a normal question.... the problem is that there ain’t any normal answers...... it’s a misery. And I ain’t gonna talk about it....no use....”

After awhile she left him, and went inside and stretched out upon her bed, the sun lowering behind the drawn shades. The daily heat had reached a zenith, and her skin felt inflamed, her dress damp. Insects thudded against the bedroom window. Stella felt again her great sorrow, and she almost wept, but slept instead.

She awoke suddenly in the late afternoon, and outside the machine was running again – but strong and steady now, with a regular thumping rhythm. She rose and ran to the kitchen, where she wet a cloth and held it against her eyes. She then ran outside and down the front walk.

“You did it!”

Dan smiled at her. The hat was gone, and a pair of leather rimmed glass goggles hung around his neck. “Yeah...it was the carb,sure.... intake tube plugged up good! I finally blew it out.”

She stared up at him. “Are you from around here, Dan....from Iowa?”

He shrugged into the leather jacket. “Yes, ma’am .... from around Dubuque.” He looked around at the fields surrounding them. “Raised on a farm...very much like this one... corn and cows!”

She waited a moment, and then said, “and do you live there now?”

He pulled on a pair of long gloves. “Tried to.... after France....but it wasn’t no good. Couldn’t sleep there, anymore.” He stared toward a lowering sun. “Funny, before the army, I never thought I could leave Iowa...but now I don’t think I can ever stay.”

She held her breath.

He looked at her and smiled, and said. “Gonna, gotta, keep on going.... to the Rocky Mountains, maybe even to California.....to the Pacific Ocean! Been across the Atlantic, maybe find a boat....”

She couldn’t speak

“Stella,” he spoke very softly. “Would you like to go? Come with me? To see snowy mountains higher than the sky, and then to see what’s past them.....?”

Her eyes swam with tears, and she spun and ran up the walk.....

“Stella......,” he said behind her.....

She ran to her bedroom, and picked up the wrinkled and torn newspaper notice of Henry’s funeral service from the dresser, and threw herself upon the big empty bed, her face buried deep in the pillow, the paper clutched to her chest. Outside the motorcycle engine changed tone, and then grew steadily fainter as he rode away. She could hear the rhythmic beat of his motorcycle for a long time, until it faded among the cornfields in the darkening evening, and then the great sorrow came upon her and she wept her endless tears. The sorrow was as vast, as deep, as the heaving of a great dark ocean sea, always oncoming to the very end of time, sweeping all before it.