Homecoming.....

He kept coming back to it, the sleek gray bike with the high chrome pipes and black vinyl bench seat. For three days in a row now he had come and stood mutely before it. He reached out and touched the shining rubber grips with his finger tips, gently, like a lover tracing the palm lines of a woman’s hand. The fuel tank was narrow and angular and paneled with rubber. He could smell the acrid, fresh rubber of the tires.

“How much again,” he asked.

The irritable salesman brought the front legs of his tipped chair down smartly and squinted at the boy through a cloud of tobacco smoke. He sighed, bored with the question.

“$895 plus tax and license. Out the door.”

“Is the insurance gonna be much,” asked the boy, his faded army jacket had the outlines of corporal stripes and a combat patch.

The salesman shrugged. He drew hard on his cigarette and then stared at the boy.

“Glad to be back, glad to be home?”

The boy didn’t look at him.

“Home where,” the boy asked.

And then.

“How’s the gears work?”

The salesman got up, walked over, pointed down.

“See that lever down there? Push it with your toe. One down for first, all the rest up…..just like a car. This here’s the clutch lever…… it’s easy, really.”

The boy nodded, almost imperceptibly. He then walked to the salesman’s desk and dug from a cargo pocket a thick roll of currency. One by one, two by two, he smoothed the wrinkled and torn twenty dollar bills, which he stacked on the gray desk. As they both watched, the stack grew.

The salesman stood perplexed.

“Is this gonna be cash,” he asked, scarcely daring to hope.

“Yeah,” said the boy. “All cash. How long’s the paperwork, can you do it tonight?”

“Hell, yeah! You’ll be riding it outa that door right over there!”

Twenty minutes later, the motorcycle idled smoothly in the wide doorway of the bike shop…. outside the door, acres of city lights were now sparkling in the summer dusk, gleaming against a lilac-hued sky. The boy released the clutch lever with a jerk, and the bike bucked and stalled.

The salesman grabbed his arm.

“Nah, man! You gotta let it out easy, let out the clutch easy and twist the gas easier! Gotta be smooth on that throttle, man, smooth.”

The boy smiled, and restarted the bike. He gunned the throttle a couple of times, and then looked up at the salesman.

“You know that question you asked, about being home?”

The salesman nodded.

“Well, I’m not any smarter than when I went over there….so…I don’t know, man, not a clue really…….”

The boy let out the clutch, and the bike wobbled off into the street. He made a shift, then another, and then his taillight faded into traffic.

The salesman stood for a moment, and then he lit another cigarette…. and walked back inside.