A Very Good Run......

It had been a good run -- over Lolo Pass into Montana, then over Beartooth Pass into
Wyoming, and then over the Bighorns onto the High Plains. The bike, with the cylinder heads I had to have rebuilt because I had screwed up and timed them 180 out, ran sweet and cool – but in a campground at Springfield, Missouri, I hurried an oil change and stripped out the threads for the oil filter basket.

“Damn, “ I said to the Redhead, who sat on a picnic table watching me.

“What happened,” she asked gently.

“Ah, hell.” I looked at her and rubbed grease off my fingers. “Stripped it! Can’t believe I did that! I’ll try and borrow a big wrench somewhere and put the damn thing in anyway. I just hope it lasts the trip!”

I borrowed a big crescent wrench off a drunk in a Chevy and slowly and carefully
tapped the cross-threaded nut into the soft aluminum of the engine case. I tightened it
as much as I dared, and then I started the old Wing up and we both watched the gravel underneath
for new oil drips, our hearts in our mouths.

After a moment, the Redhead looked at me.

“It’s not leaking, huh?”

“Nope. And that’s good. That’s real good!”

The rest of the Missouri Ozarks went well, and then we dropped into velvety Arkansas,
with its twisty roads and heavy, muggy air. And then we were in Louisiana, where the red eyes of
alligators gleamed in the Cypress swamps at night, and New Orleans, our destination this trip,
lay less than 100 miles ahead.

We stopped at a convenience store to refuel. Black and white youths milled around the
pumps, both speaking a beautiful, soft and lilting dialect that we could barely understand. A black
man, drinking from a wine bottle in a paper sack, looked at our license plate.

“G’lawd, man,” he sang out.. “You is a long way gone, now, hain’tcha?”

I grinned at him, “Yessir.. A long way gone is a good way of putting it!”

“Washin’ton,” he said. “Nevah been thar.... no, I hain’t!”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Just like this place!”

He grinned at me.

I went inside to pay for our gas.. At a formica-topped table drinking a coke, sat the oldest
black woman I had ever seen. Her face was corrugated and lined and weathered, like pine
wood boards that have been in the wind for fifty winters. ‘Over a hundred years old’, I thought to myself, ‘she’s at least a hundred years old.’ She watched me as I put my helmet down on the counter and dug for my wallet.

“Y’all wear that big thang to protect yore brain?”

Her voice was vibrant, surprisingly youthful, and she stared steadily at me with gleaming
eyes that I could barely see. And then, somehow, I sensed the merriment in those ancient eyes..

I grinned at her and said, “ You are telling me that is hardly worth the bother, huh?”

She laughed gently. Her laugh, like her voice, was youthful, gentle, compelling.

“Why’y’all ride them thangs, anyhow? Doncha get wet when it rains?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “We get wet sometimes..... but it’s cheap this way. And fun. We feel free when we ride.”

The old lady took a deep swallow of her coke. She stared at me for a moment.

“Wahhl...,” she said. “That’s awright, Ah guess. All freedom ...even the middlin’ kind ... is
worth havin’.”

The young black girl waiting for my card said to the old woman gently, “ leave him be,
now, Auntie, he’s got somwhar to go....”

Outside my wife stood by the bike talking to man with the bottle in the bag.

“Who were you talking to,” she asked.

“Some ol’ lady that knows more ‘n me,” I answered.

“Quite a few of them around!” She grinned.

“That’d be ol’ Auntie,” laughed the man with the bag.

We geared up and pulled out, accelerating gently in the dusk, watching for the shining eyes of deer on the road and for the first glow of New Orleans. So far, it had been a very good run.

1992, The Peace River Valley

In 1992 and in the middle of the Peace River Valley, British Columbia, we pulled our 81' Goldwing and sidecar off of the highway to refuel at a small gas station and convenience store. My six year old son, his motorcycling patience evidently exhausted, shot up and out of his sidecar like a being possessed. My wife Red got off, pulled off her helmet, stretched, and smiled at me.

“Oh, damn,” she said, and tore off after the boy, who was already making the lives of some ducks on a small pond miserable by flinging stones at them. I cracked open the gas cap and refueled, and then went to pay.

Inside stood the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. About nineteen or twenty, she wore her short blonde hair in a page boy crop; her skin was as smooth as cream; her eyes were a deep water blue. She stood with unconscious grace, her lean figure slouched against the counter she tended. I could smell the soap in her freshly laundered shirt and jeans, and some sort of perfume in her hair. I swallowed hard.

“Pump four,” I said.

She glanced at her machine. “Nine forty seven,” she said. “Canadian.”
I handed her a ten, and received the change from her cool, delicate fingers.

“Going far,” she asked, her voice controlled, and low and slightly husky.

“Alaska,” I replied.

“That far, hey?”

She leaned over the counter to look outside at the Goldwing, her hair like silk in the filtered sunlight streaming through the grimy windows.

“Take me with you?” She asked with only a slight smile. “I am hard-working and clean.... won’t be any trouble. Can I go, please?”

I swallowed again.

“Well, huh, I’ve got two people already.... not enough room, you see.”

She smiled into my eyes. “Bad timing, hey?”

“At least that,” I said.

I went outside and beckoned to my crew. Red and I got the boy settled back into the sidecar, his hands full of toy soldiers, and then we put on our helmets, started the bike, and pulled out onto the highway heading north. I squeezed Red’s knee and looked into my mirrors, where the girl from the station leaned against a gasoline pump watching us go. I watched her figure grow ever smaller, and squeezed Red’s knee again.

“She was pretty, wasn’t she,” said Red, over the bike’s intercom.

“Yeah, very much so. But not as pretty as you......”

I could feel her smile through the back of my helmet.

Budget European Motorcycle Tour

After 28 years of caring for other people’s sons and daughters, after turning 62, and after having pre-paid my son’s college tuition with a state program, I felt the need for change.

“I think I’ll retire. And... oh, what the hell! Let’s go tour Europe by motorcycle,” I said to Red, my unflappable red-headed wife.

She smiled at me. “Let’s go tour Europe by camper van instead, “ she said.

She had a point. There were places in Europe I wanted to see -- Paris, Venice, Rome – in which I didn’t want to ride a bike. And a camping van would take care of the two most pressing and most complicated travel concerns for unsophisticated Americans: where to sleep and how to travel.

“Okay,” I smiled at her. “Let’s do it!”

And so we did; and, after a false start or two, it proved remarkably easy. We bought the van sight unseen over the internet from a 300 lb, dope-smoking, expatriate American hippy in Utrecht, who operated out of a 300 year old townhouse filled with bad artwork, dogs and cats, and the strong smell of marijuana and cat pee. After her chief mechanic, a jolly and affable Turk, tried to spike my coffee with vodka at 9:00am, I turned to Red and whispered, “Damn! Hope we didn’t buy a pig in a poke! Hope we don’t get burned on this damn van!”

But the hippy and her staff proved as honest as the day is long, and the ‘86 VW diesel conversion ran sweet and true for the eight weeks we owned it. With Red driving and me navigating from a portfolio of good Michelin maps, we drove to Rome, back up to Denmark, and back to Utrecht, without trouble and without difficulty. Amsterdam, Brugge, Paris, Normandy, Alsace-Lorraine, Colmar, Spolito, Rome, Cinque Terra, Venice, Innsbruck, Rothenburg Aum Der Tauber, Geneva, Interlaken.....Europe had been everything we’d hoped it would be – a rich tapestry of life and culture flowing past the windscreen of our camping van like a non-ending travel show. We learned early to camp outside of cultural areas and cities and then to take commercial transport into the heart of them. We experienced nothing but kindness and authentic interest from all the people we met . For two Yanks raised in small, humble, and dusty towns in western America, it had been a life-altering, life-enriching experience. Our camping costs had averaged around $20 a night, and had often been free.

As we stood outside the van in the spacious and beautiful Alpenblicke campground in Interlaken, Switzerland, looking up at the towering peaks of the Berner Oberland, I turned to Red and said:

“I wanna rent a bike! There’s gotta be some hellacious roads up there.”

“I know,” she said dubiously. “But we’re dangerously short of cash.”

“I want a bike,” I insisted, digging up a cherished copy of John Herman’s Motorcycle Tours in the Alps and Corsica from the bottom of my rucksack.

“Mmmmmmm,” said she.

The next morning we drove alongside a clear blue lake to Thune, where we had heard there was a very good motorcycle shop.

“Do you know how to find it,” Red asked.

“Naw,” I replied casually. “We’ll just drive around until we find it. How big can Thune be?”

Well, damn big, as it turned out. After hours of fruitless searching and some true frustration later, we finally pulled into the parking lot of one of the biggest, most modern motorcycle dealerships I’ve ever seen, Moto-Centre, Thune. The place was staffed by young, healthy, and athletic youngsters, most of whom spoke impeccable English.

“Many, many bikes to rent we have,” said one of the young and healthy athletes. Red and I strolled around the impressive selection of Beemer R machines and Honda Viffers and Pans, mentally counting up our cash and our wants – the Beemer GS 1150 I had my eye on rented for the equivalent of 1500 USD a week.

“Not enough, huh,” I asked Red, scarcely daring to hope.

“Well, “ said Red. “Let me put it this way; if we rent that GS, or any other bike for that matter, we don’t eat for the rest of the summer!”

“Damn it!” I turned away and started walking toward the van, knowing that she was right but angry about it anyway.

“What’s that,” I heard Red ask.. I turned and saw Red and the staffer bent over a low, sculpted shape. “Honda Silverwing scooter. 600cc. Ver,’ ver’ practical,” replied the young man.

“How much,” Red asked.

“That’s a motor scooter,” I said.

“$500 – for a week,” said the young man.

“I’m not touring the Alps on a ridiculous motor scooter, “ I yelled.

Minutes later I was doing practice figure eights in the parking lot on the Silverwing. Aside from the fact that I threw myself into the windscreen several times while trying to pull in the non-existent clutch, which is really a brake, and made myself look like an idiot waving my left foot around trying to find a non-existent shift lever, it wasn’t too bad.

And by the time we had reached our campground again, she in the van and me on the bike, after twenty miles of twisting lakeside road, I was literally enthralled.

“This damn thing rocks,” I yelled. “It corners faster than a cat on fire!”

Red just grinned.

For the next eight days, we experienced an Alpine vacation that surpassed all expectations. Every morning early, we’d crawl from our sleeping bags in the van, load the cargo area under the Silverwing’s comfortable seat with our rain gear and some bread, cheese, and water, and then head for Andermatt, the place John Hermann refers to as the center of “all thing motorcycling.” One by one some of the major alpine passes fell under our spinning scooter wheels: Susten, Firka, Grimsel, Oberalp, Lukmanier, St Gotthard, Brunig, Schallenberg, Glaubenbuelen. We visited Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, ate lunch in Swiss restaurants that were half cow barns, and drank $4 cups of coffee over a deep rocky gorge in which Napoleon had annihilated a entire Russian Army. We were, in fact, doing what we’d dreamed of for years. Without guides, without any money really, without much preplanning, we were doing it!

“I love you, “ I told my wise and precious wife. “How’d ya know this scooter thing would pan out so well?”

She smiled at me. “I have an advantage, “she said. “To me, a motorcycle, a scooter, whatever – they are all the same... just the means to an end. The shape, the size, doesn’t matter....”

I marveled again over how someone could be so gentle, so sweet, so strong, and so wise all at the same time.

And when we finally took and turned the scooter back in to the young staffers, I almost grieved for the damn thing.

“We gotta come back here, “ I said to Red. “Gotta come back someday. And soon!”

She smiled at me. “Why not,” she said.

The Jacket In My Closet

Hanging always in my closet is a roughly made rubber jacket, cut and sewn from a U.S. Army poncho and lined with camo parachute silk. I have owned the thing for forty three years. It is the oldest personal possession I have.

As a young soldier in the U.S. Army Security Agency forty three years ago, I and others in my outfit took our issued army ponchos to a Chinese tailor in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and had the ponchos made into jackets. It only cost a few dollars and we thought we could clamber in and out of our 3/4 ton truck- mounted commo vans easier that way. We also thought the jackets and their camo linings looked pretty damned cool. And, at that time and place, maybe they did. The army let me bring the altered poncho home, but, if I remember right, and since I showed them the jacket rather than claim it as a combat loss, they charged me for it. A tour in Vietnam and the U.S. government charged me for the poncho. $11, I think. A grateful government’s thanks.......

I don’t love the jacket; and I don’t hate it, but I’ve never been able to throw it away. Someone somewhere once said, “Be careful what you do when young, for you are stuck with it for the rest of your life.” That rough jacket and I are bound together forever with bands stronger than iron and steel. Twice a year, Veterans Day and Memorial Day, I pull it off the closet hanger, pin on my meager two rows of ribbons, put it and my VFW hat on, and march in a parade, or stand an Honor Guard. I am not a “professional veteran,” and I don’t know why – twice a year – I still wear the damn thing.

But I think it’s because I yet hear in my heart their youthful voices of nearly a half century ago, coming to me out of the murky ether of years and distance, laughing and yelling in the morning twilight between restless sleep and fretful wakefulness.

“You dinky-dao numbah ten mutha-fuh......!”
“What the hell are they gonna do, draft us and send us to Vietnam?”
“It don’t mean a thing, troop, it don’t mean a thing.....”
“When I get on that freedom bird, man, when I get on that old bird......”
“Back in the world, man, back in the world.....”

Yes, I can still hear their young voices, some long dead now and forever silent except in the dark orchestra pit of my mind... I also hear the thunderous beat of 58,000 pairs of combat boots marching between the dream only worlds, never to rest, never to stop, and, most importantly, never to matter.... and never to be banished from the desolate, empty parade ground of my soul. I only knew three of them personally, one well and the other two briefly, but because of them I am bound forever to that cursed ghost army, the American dead of Vietnam. I cannot ever leave them; I can never quite catch up with them; I am never of them or free of them.... It’s like I got somehow separated from them and can never get back....I will never be with them; and yet I will never be without them.

And the quick hot tears come again as they always do when I first run my hand over the jacket, over the peeling, flaking rubber and the moldy silk. “I’m sorry,” I mumble to an benevolent, unlistening universe, “I am so sorry.....”

Magic Chariot

The motorcycle has been many things during the century of its development: cheap transportation for the masses, military vehicle, sporting vehicle, image builder, and for some, like my wife and I, the motorcycle has been a pure life-enhancing machine.

When Red and I first got together in 1991, I had already gone through a mid-career divorce and had nothing but a job and an ‘87 Honda Magna to show for it. As a low-paid public school employee, I was not going to have much of anything else very soon, either.... I had two and a half months vacation every summer, but no money to spare – absolutely none.

As we sat facing each other on the only two living room chairs I owned (thrift shop, $5), in the tiny house ($37,500) that I had somehow managed to purchase with the help of a sympathetic -- maybe even pitying -- bank manager, I looked at Red and said, “Aw, the hell with it, wanna ride to Texas and get married? I got a brother down there.....”

She grinned and said. “Sure, why not?”

Several days later, I looked up at her grinning face from the pile of newly purchased camping gear scattered around me and said, “ I can’t strap enough of this crap on the Magna to make it work!”

“Maybe we need another kind of bike,” she speculated.

So we went down to Ellensburg Honda “just to look” and there found our first Goldwing, a battered and beaten ‘81 Interstate with many, many miles on its clock. The handwritten sticker read $2495. “This damn thing will barely get us out of town,” I said.

“This baby is barely broken in, “ gushed the hot-eyed salesman, his glance, incidentally, roving all over Red. “These babies run for ever.... change the oil, change the timing belts.... they just run forever.”

I looked at Red. “Let’s give it a go,” I said. “If we head for Texas and the bike coughs it up, we’ll part it out and take a bus home!”

The bike made it to Texas, and then to Alaska, and then back and forth across the states four or five times. We saw the California coast, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Canadian Maritimes, the whole spine of the Rocky Mountains...... we rode in awe-inspiring thunderstorms, in mountain snows, in desert heat so fierce it melted the adhesive holding on our boot soles. We were able to meet with Maine Lobsterman, Texas Ranchers, New Orleans Blues Musicians, Alaska Fisherman and Iowa Corn Farmers. We camped in nearly all the states, on the shores of both oceans, and on mountains so high and cold we would shiver in our precious sleeping bags, and often had to take our butane camping stove in to bed with us so it would operate in the morning. We saw bear, deer, elk, moose, buffalo, snakes, soaring hawks, and giant pelicans flying in formations of military-type precision from the saddle of our old and faithful bike. When my son was old enough, we bolted on an second-hand sidecar and took him with us. When we ran out of U.S. roads, we started looking overseas, and spent a wondrous summer touring the Swiss Alps on a rented scooter -- and then, eight years later when we could afford it again, spent another glorious summer touring the Dolomites of Northern Italy.

That battered old bike carried us more than 160,000 miles. And when I did have to part it out for real, we bought another one and kept on going, and we had nearly 80,000 miles on it before we wrecked it against the side of a deer. We promptly took the insurance money and bought another. And these low budget bikes have taught us an essential truth: the quality of one’s life depends not upon money, or net worth, or anything else other than the joy of simple existence, a loving partner, freedom, good friends, and the crisp, achingly lovely mornings on the road. The day we bought our old Wing is the day we were blessed, the day we were reborn.

We still live in that $37,500 house, but it’s now paid off and we have built a wing on to it, and we love every board, every nail, every stick of furniture in it..... That small house became our Palace of Joy, and the bike our Magic Chariot. The bike taught us how to live small, to use and love what we had, and not to pine for what we had not... We don’t live on a hill, and we don’t have a view, but we’ve seen things together most people never will. The bike, in a sense, salvaged the quality in our lives, and opened up a world of love and enchantment and adventure to us. Even after one serious accident, my wife still rides with me, whispering words to me over our intercom that only we can hear, and my son rides his own bike on his own roads. Outside of my wife and son, our family and our friends, my motorcycle has been the most quality-producing thing in my life. I will never stop riding a motorcycle, never...

Prairie Lunch Stop

Sometimes, when Red and I are out on the prairie, we'll stop at some greasy spoon and walk in, helmets dangling from sodden gloves, rain still streaming from our jackets, and most of the people inside will look away, and will try not to notice us.......will try to get back to where they were before we arrived.... before we came in, we two all free and wet and alive...... But, also, sometimes... I'll look across the tense dining room, and some old boy will slowly raise his head from his Senior Special bowl of soup. He'll look out the foggy window at our loaded bike, at my smiling partner, and the fire will begin to rise again in his rheumy eyes, and he will begin to nod to us.... At first barely perceptively, and then with increasing vigor, and we can see him sitting straighter, and breathing faster... calling on us to talk to him, to notice him and this joy rising in him like something long dead but rediscovered...... and so we do."G'day, Sir!" I'll say, sitting as close to him as possible. "Kinda wet out there!"And then he and maybe another one or two old boys, will come and talk to us. Really talk to us. They will speak of the bikes they had after the war, the Harleys, the Indians, the BSA Goldstars....the saddlebags of Mexican tooled leather, the shaved and ported cylinder heads, the Great Hillclimbs, the Saturday night flat track racing...."I loved that damned BSA! Loved it so much I was always afraid of it!"And they will talk of touring from sea to sea, from border to border, when the roads were all lumpy, coated with gravel and nearly impassable, and when the sleeping bags were always wet and cold, their girls' mothers always so terrified of the young them and their bikes. They speak of great bonfires on prairies and in woodlands, and of the cheap beer, and of the joy of being young and free, free from war and alive .... and the misery now of having lost it all. And I listen to them with all my heart, for I am them, and they me. And when we finally leave, waving to those who still have the fire, those with eyes still gleaming, we feel alive and reborn......and blessed. And the prairie calls to us anew...."Ride, ride, my children. It will not be forever, ride, ride.... my laughing children. Ride!"

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.